In the midst of all the contradictions one sees in modern Nigeria, we are yet to see a pandemic of Kwashiokor, that dread killer of children worse than malaria that ravaged and brought Biafra to its knees.
With all due respect to all sides, I wish to say that Kwashiokor was an indictment against the defunct Biafran nation and its leadership. Biafra as an entity lost its claims to existence after the Kwashiokor scandal.
Kwashiokor in Biafra implied that the Biafran nation was unable to feed itself. It would have been a food-aid dependent nation for long, had that project succeded.
Kwashiokor is a disease that results when there is no protein in food eaten by populace. The only food Biafra could produce in abundance in those days was cassava and garri.
Even today, if the agricultural northern part of Nigeria cuts off food supply to the eastern part of Nigeria, the defunct Biafra, there would be mass starvation.
What happened to the proud farmers of Biafra?
In the midst of the verdant greens of Eastern Nigeria’s ever lush and fertile forest and farm land, children were dying of hunger for no reason. The adults were huddled up in remote camps of fear and hopelessness, they did not go out and battle hunger and malnutrition with hoes and cutlasses and farm wisdom.
Flashing shocking pictures of starving children, their leaders instead begged for the attention of the conniving world powers who they had hoped would help them attain their objectives. They had been duped. All the world power wanted was another place to sell its old arms and ammunitions; and another African country where the blood of youths would be given to the groves of western gods in payment for those demonic instruments of mass destruction.
There has been no other country in West Africa, poor as it may be, wretched and broke as it may stand, civil war or not, that has ever suffered kwashiokor. Why then in Biafra? Why play politics with the life of children?
During the civil war, Ojukwu was offered an internationally sponsored supply line of emergency food coming to the Biafran territory via land over Nigeria. He refused it. He wanted the emergency food supply line to be flown into his airport in Uli. The Nigerian Army refused direct air supply to Biafra for fear of weapons smuggling disguised as food aids. Millions of children died as a result.
Today, most of our young Biafran chauvunists have no memory of these grisly events. They are powered on by an idealistic view of Biafra that is far from reality.
Biafra failed to protect the lives of its millions of little children at all cost. The Biafran state bargained the lives of those children to appease the ego of its elites.
The same corrupt elites who sent the children of poorer Biafrans to the war front with machetes and cutlasses against machine guns, AK 47s, and Jet fighters.
Biafra was a sacrifice of Igbo youths for nothing. They were sold out. It was a ritual to appease the gods of England, Rome, and Washington DC who must have blood from time to time. Was it not them that said, “the grove of the gods of democracy must be watered from time to time with the blood of the youths?”
My dearly beloved, life is the greatest gift, and peace of mind is the next greatest gift.
Seek you peace, seek justice too, but seek it with patience and wisdom.
The wheels of justice may turn slowly, but light will always conquer darkness.
Be ye wise as serpents yet innocent like doves….
Bless!
Kwashiokor in Biafra implied that the Biafran nation was unable to feed itself. It would have been a food-aid dependent nation for long, had that project succeded.
speculation is fake news.
the blockade and international injustice led to kwashiokor not mismanagement, not corruption, not any societal vices . you idiot