“The people of the former eastern region of Nigeria had believed, as if it were an article of faith, in the concept of a united Nigeria. No section of then Federation of Nigeria worked assiduously for the attainment of this ideal as did Eastern Nigeria and her people. No section made as many and varied positive contributions toward the realization of true unity.
Having, over the years, spearheaded the movement for closer union, having demonstrated our faith in Nigeria in concrete terms by allowing our sons and daughters to sojourn in other parts of the country, thereby contributing tremendously to the development of such areas to the neglect of our own, it was a hard decision for us to opt out of a federation in which we had invested so much. But we had no other choice.
Over the years, our erstwhile compatriots made it clear in unmistakable terms that they did not want us in the Federation. Since the 1950s our people were expropriated and discriminated against in parts of Nigeria other than their own. Furthermore, the experience of three harrowing waves of remorseless genocide in 1945, 1953, and especially in 1966, involving a total of nearly 50,000 dead and countless others maimed or destitute, provided an object lesson which could not be but taken seriously.
Self-preservation is probably the strongest human instinct, and it is this that has compelled the harassed and prosecuted people of eastern Nigeria to seek refuge in their own home and among their kindred. As a proverb of one of our Biafran languages has it, “A man who is rejected by others cannot reject himself."
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu's "Message on the Pogrom to Biafran Students in America," November 24, 1967
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