Ralph Uwazuruike (left). Facebook/@RalphUwazuruike
The leader of the Biafra Independence Movement (BIM), Ralph Uwazuruike has lamented that the injustices against Ndigbo that led to the unfortunate civil war still exists in Nigeria today, even at a higher level.
Uwazuruike, who spoke through his personal Assistant on Media Matters, Chris Anierobi Mocha said: “the injustice for which the war was fought had worsened today as the defeated Biafrans are still regarded as enemies in Nigeria”.
The MASSOB founder said after founding MASSOB in 1999, he told the then American President, Bill Clinton “of atrocities of the Nigerian civil war in which no fewer than one million people lost their lives and that the Biafran people do not want to be part of the evil contraption called Nigeria again”.
Uwazuruike’s media aide said his principal spoke at a solemn ceremony to mark the foundation of MASSOB last week in Owerri, explained that the aim of reaching out to the then American President was “to introduce an international dimension to the struggle to actualize Biafra”.
Mocha quoted the BIM leader as saying that he also dispatched a letter of application to the United Nations on November 1st 1999, as well extended an invitation to President Clinton to include in his itinerary during his expected visit to Nigeria, a visit to Biafra.
The BIM leader also told Clinton that MASSOB represented the interest of over forty million Biafrans, now known as the South East zone in Nigeria.
“It was due to these injustices that the civil war was fought and it will not be in the interest of Nigerians and the international community to have another prolonged civil war in which people will die. Such war Uwazuruike said could be avoided,” Mocha said.
Mocha said Uwazuruike believes that what the people of Biafra which consist of the five Igbo speaking states of the South East and a large population in Rivers, Delta states, estimated at about forty million people presently want is “independence from Nigeria devoid of violence.”