Nigeria Has Gone Beyond Biafra – Gowon

Kayode Sesan 

Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, has dismissed threat of Nigeria’s unity as he also said that with Biafra it is finished.

General Yakubu Gowon made this statement recently in reaction to the resent protests by some youths.

He said that Nigerians have put behind them the bad memories of the 1967 civil war, and that those behind these protests on Biafra don’t have an inkling what the Biafra war cost Nigerians.

The elder statesman speaking in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital shortly after a malaria eradication campaign questioned that ‘do they want us to go to another war? but hoped and I prayed to God that such should not happen.’

He went further to say that those involved in this campaign were being driven by just a few people and that majority of the Igbo people do not share the same view.

‘It is only them, the few, that are there but the majority of the Igbo people that I know are not with them.’

Acceding to the fact that the protesters have the right to express their feelings he stated “with Biafra it is finished”.

He said these people ‘let them say their views, yes it democracy but let s make sure they can express their wishes and desires but let them remember with Biafra it is finished. it is not a threat.’

He further said that keeping Nigeria one was behind all that he did and not for hatred for the Igbo as that was what Odumegwu Ojukwu also stood for.

All I did is not a result of hatred against the Igbos but on the principle of keeping Nigeria one and this is all we are trying to do and that was why at the end of the war in other to see that there is no heard feeling we used the term no victor no vanquished.

I have said if there is anything of this sort anywhere in any part of the country just like the problem of Boko Haram we should deal with it, Nigeria should deal with it in matured way.

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