We are tired of this forced marriage imposed on us – pro-Biafra protesters

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in southeast Nigeria on Wednesday to demand the release of an activist who operated an illegal radio station calling for a separate state of Biafra.

The demonstration in Aba was the latest by separatist groups on an issue that has again exposed deep and longstanding ethnic fault lines in Africa’s most populous nation.
A previous unilateral declaration of an independent Republic of Biafra in 1967 led to a brutal civil war that left more than one million dead in nearly three years of fighting.
In Aba  the commercial hub of Abia state, some 2,000 people carried placards with slogans such as “Biafra or death” and waved the Biafran flag — a golden rising sun on red, black and green.
Others wore t-shirts and caps with the image of Nnamdi Kanu, the director of Radio Biafra and founder of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) pressure group.
Some sang freedom songs and carried the outlawed Biafran pound currency.

“Getting our leader out of detention is our immediate concern but ultimately we want to be free from Nigeria,” IPOB’s Abia coordinator, Ikechukwu Ugwuoha, told the crowds.

“We are tired of this forced marriage imposed on us in 1914 by the British colonial authorities. We don’t want anything to do with Nigeria again because we have not benefited from Nigeria.”

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