You can’t wake up and change the name of something you never started or even celebrated. Biafra Heroes Day is a symbolic celebration for Biafra. It isn’t Igbo day. If Ohanaeze ndị Igbo wants to institute an Igbo day, we are not against it. They should bring up a day, and we all will accept it and mark it.
May 30th is not only about the Igbo people. It incorporates other tribes like the Philip Effiongs, Efik, and Ibibio people. It includes those Biafra soldiers from Urohbo, Ijaw, Ogoni, etc who paid with their blood fïghting for that w@r of survival. It was a time when the world came against the Biafrans. We won’t let a group of retired Nigerian politicians being sponsored by current politicians to downplay it.
You guys have tried to distance yourselves from the 30th May celebration and couldn’t. Now you want to downplay the celebration, delete the name Biafra from it and bring Igbo into it, thinking you guys are smart. But in this, you all will also be shamed.
Our fathers did not fight like the Igbo people. They fought as Biafrans, and we will keep their memories alive through 30th May. If we let Ọhaneze play us, it means our children will no longer understand the essence of that celebration. It kị́lls the true purpose and deletes the Biafran memories out of our minds. Since these very leaders stopped the teaching of History in our schools, we hold onto the celebrations like the 30th May to look back into our past, but these rotten elders also want to kị́ll it. And we won’t let it.
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Come 30th May, we won’t celebrate voluntarily. We will celebrate like people under oath and under the law. We will celebrate as if we don’t do that, it becomes our end. We will wave Biafra flags both spiritually and physically. We will meditate on the sufferings and pains of the Biafrans who fought without enough guns, clothes and boots. We will remember the more than 2 million Biafran children who suffered kwashiokor and died miserably while the world looked on and called us rebels. We will remember how Nigeria in total disregard to rules of engagement, b0mbed churches, markets, farm lands and refugee camps. We bleed as Biafrans and died as Biafrans. We will recognise we are Igbo and another is Efik fighting for the survival of Biafra. We won’t let Ọhaneze to fọ́ọ́l us into losing the essence of the 30th May celebrations.
May 30th will remain the Biafra Heroes Day. Ọhaneze will once again be shamed, and one day the real Ọhaneze will emerge, not the ones appointed by the people appointed by Fulani Oligarchs.
Elochukwu Ohagi, Philosopher, Teacher and Activist, 2025.