BIAFRA AND THE BROKEN DREAMS OF AFRICA’S OTHER BREAKAWAY NATIONS

Last week Eritrea marked its 22nd independence day. That independence came on the back of a three decade fight to break away from Ethiopia which claimed around half a million lives. Twenty two years ago, when that long-sought freedom from Ethiopia was gained, Eritrea looked like the next African star, today it is an understatement to say that the country has lost all its shine. It is one of the A campaign for secession in Nigeria’s southeast is gathering steam. Many people in the region, predominantly of the Igbo ethnic group, want to breakaway and form a sovereign state of Biafra reminiscent of what the old eastern region—of which the present day southeast was part of—unsuccessfully fought for four decades ago. Last week a Nigerian court ordered the release of one of the leaders of the resurgent pro Biafra campaign, Nnamdi Kanu, after his detention, two months ago, sparked protests that sometimes turned bloody. If he is released, as has been called for by even those who do not support his pro Biafra campaign, it will serve to shift media focus from the merits, or lack of, of his detention to the viability of the secession that he is campaigning for. One way to test this viability is to take a look at the two most prominent breakaway African countries—Eritrea and South Sudan—and how they are fulfilling, or not, the promise that their secession held.




most reclusive states in the world, with one of the most repressive regimes, in a perpetual state of paranoia and losing thousands of its citizens yearly who are fleeing persecution and poverty. Eritrea’s rapid descent from the mountain of hope to the valley of despair came as a surprise to many, but the signs were always there.

While Eritreans were fighting for independence from Ethiopia, they were also fighting each other. The infighting led to two separate internal civil wars in Eritrea, while it was struggling to break off from Ethiopia. The disputes were, as is often the case, never fully resolved and followed the country into its independence. Over the years the internal hostilities have only swelled, further aided by the government’s draconian handling of all forms of dissent and opposition. However, not only was pre-independent Eritrea divided, its liberation campaign was also led by warlords who were most concerned about seizing political power. The consequence of this is encapsulated in Isaias Afwerki who, having led Eritrea to freedom from Ethiopia, made the nation his captive. He is till date the only president Eritrea has ever known and by his actions, of crushing political opposition and dissent, has no plans to relinquish power any time soon.


South Sudan, the next breakaway African country after Eritrea, has unfortunately, quickly followed the latter’s footsteps. The country’s four decade battle to separate from Sudan is increasingly looking like a wasted effort as the situation, now that it is independent seems just as worse, if not more, than when it was under Sudan. The country is less than five years old, but already it has gone through a civil war, suffered acts of ethnic cleansing, faced famine and one of the continent’s worst ever incidences of starvation. These disasters are the result of a power-struggle between the country’s leaders, their inability to focus on nation building, and the perversion of corruption in their circles. Again, all of these problems existed in no little proportions before South Sudan’s independence, however it seems that its people were more interested in crossing the line into independence than in addressing the many challenges that they were carrying along. It is the negligence of the latter that has left the country’s survival at the mercy of patchy peace treaty.

The same caution and probity that both South Sudan and Eritrea disregarded—which has obviously come back to haunt them—is what the pro-Biafra campaigners in Nigeria need if they are indeed keen on their pursuit of secession. While the Biafra issue is generating a lot of buzz in the Nigerian media and gaining more sympathizers in the southeast, very little is been said by its advocates on the territorial cum social concept of their proposed country. The pro-Biafra campaigners are also not demonstrating, at least not at the moment, a constructive organization that shows what its post-independence governance structure will look like. Neither are they displaying how their own Biafra will be without the institutional corruption, ineptitude and impunity that has made Nigeria very unpalatable.

The present predicaments of Eritrea and South Sudan are very important lessons for the pro Biafra activists to learn from. While those lessons do not automatically discourage secession (it was right and just for both countries to seek independence), it however serves as a very high point of caution that secession, on its own, does not solve a people’s problem or directly translate into a better lives for them. Rather, the neglect of deep introspection and nonchalance towards settling pre-existing challenges can easily turn the beautiful promise of secession into a bizarre reality of regret. One way for the proponents and sympathisers of the Biafran movement to avoid future regret is to have an exhaustive debate on the viability of the country that they are proposing and extensively demonstrate how their breakaway country, if actualized, will not lead to another broken promise.