Kingsley Kanu*****(British Queen Elizabeth II)
IT HAPPENED on the afternoon of 14 September last year, 2017.
I
had come back to visit my family home in Biafra a few weeks earlier from
Germany, where I now live. I call it Biafra because Biafra is my country,
not Nigeria.
My
mother and father, my older brother Nnamdi Kanu and I were in the house, along
with friends. It was my son’s thirteenth birthday. I had just been on the phone
congratulating him when the first gas canisters were thrown over the fence
followed by gunfire. It was 4pm. The house was surrounded by Nigerian soldiers.
I found it
hard to breathe. Everyone was panicking. I was witnessing a full on military
attack on my parents’ home. I saw a soldier jump over the high fence that
surrounds our house and open our main gate. He started shooting at the young
men inside. That was when I realised if I didn’t escape now I would die.
There
were soldiers and guns everywhere. How I got out only heaven knows. I remember
I had to jump two walls. There was sporadic firing from the soldiers and one of
the people who tried to follow me, a good family friend, was killed. My
youngest brother, Emmanuel, had left a few minutes before and was only a few
metres away. Since that afternoon, I’ve heard nothing from my mother and father
and my brother Nnamdi.
THE ONLY explanation for my family being targeted by the Nigerian government is that we
believe in an independent Biafra. People may remember the Biafran War fifty
years ago. For a few years, between 1967 and 1970 we were a free state. I was
born during the war in December 1969. My family had to leave our home in
Umuahia to escape the invasion by the Nigerian army then. My mother was
pregnant with me and it was no longer safe. There was fighting just behind our
house.
Biafran people were shot and bombed and starved to death; millions of them. Our experience was genocide. My parents lost most of their relatives.
SO I GREW up in an occupied country, an unhappy country. We were forced to be part
of a state manufactured by colonial rule: Nigeria. I remember my father,
like everyone else, was given the equivalent of £20 in recompense, to start
again.
But despite
everything, we had a very happy childhood and a loving family life. My older
brother Nnamdi and I did everything together. We were about the same height, so
we even shared clothes and shoes. He took care of me as a younger brother and
guided me. My father traded in farm produce. Now he is a traditional ruler.
People look up to him. They trust him.
When
I was younger I knew I couldn’t stay in Biafra. Since the mid-’70s our culture,
our history, our people had been all but erased. My brother and I needed to do
something to help people to remember and we couldn’t do it there.
I moved to
Germany sixteen years ago and raised a family. He moved to London and began the
online Radio Biafra, broadcasting in English and Igbo, the language of
Biafra, stories about our country, music, commentary and news. The
Nigerian government has wanted to shut this down since it first broadcast in
2010.
NNAMDI also started our organisation, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, seeking
peaceful ways to bring about self-determination and independence for Biafra
through democracy. We are a young organisation. Many of our members are too
young to remember the war, but we are passionate that we will see an
independent Biafra and a free Biafran people in our lifetimes.
Many Biafrans have
been killed or detained before, during and after the 14th September 2017.
There have been peaceful protests to commemorate the war where the security
services have just opened fire on us.
AS FAR AS we are concerned, the government of Mohammadu Buhari is
determined to stifle the independence movement. This week, President Buhari will
meet the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The Queen needs
to know that, if my experience is anything to go by, Buhari’s government
will resort to the most serious human rights violations in order to gag the
people of Biafra.
*****
*****
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
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