Thread by @BryteDude

In the past few days, I've noted tweets from both sides of the divide on the Biafra secession issue. Both those advocating for Biafra through support for IPOB & its ESN, and those who frown against it using words like "Igbos are not part of us", "they should be allowed to go"...

While observing comments from both sides, all I keep saying to myself is "they don't know the half of it". Neither side actually knows everything that played out between 1967 and 1970, despite the many publications on the war.

It could be due to the fact that most of those who experienced the real horror never made it out alive. The few who did have found a way to black out the experience from their consciousness. Although, it still sneaks up on them from their subconscious occasionally.

I don't know about most Igbo parents, so I'm going to speak about my dad's personal experience only.

My dad was conscripted into the Biafran Army TWICE as a child soldier. He was handed over by his brothers & cousins (my uncles) who were all over 18 & eligible for enlistment.

Of course they bribed their way out of enlistment, and handed my dad over as a little boy with the hope he would die there. My grandma, dad's mum, wept profusely and mourned her child as he was taken off to a war he couldn't even understand the purpose.

When my dad narrates his experience, the things he saw and watched other young kids do at the war front, you might think it's a movie he is narrating. Anyways, as God would have it, one of the Biafran soldiers saw him battling with a rifle that was taller than him & shed tears

The man asked him how he ended up there. He explained that his brothers sent him. This made the man cry more. He put his life on the line to get my dad out of there, and sent him home. He got home to songs of praises by his grandma who took him as back from the dead.

Did his brothers relent? Of course not. They went and reported him as a deserter. Biafran soldiers came in the dead of the night to take him back to the war front, barely a week after he returned. That's why I said he was conscripted TWICE.

On his return back to the war front, he had no guardian angel this time. He was made to go through unspeakable horrors as a mere child. That he returned home after over a year in hell was cos God did not will it for him to die there.

A hell he went through as a mere young boy who hadn't even reached puberty by the time he returned home, thanks to his brothers from the same father, FFS! It wasn't done to him by neighbours, or strangers. His own blood brothers sent him off to die.

That's how some Igbos are. That's what some Igbos did to their kinsmen during the war. A needless and avoidable war. To think that till tomorrow, some of my fellow Igbos are still forming victims.

The other day, @Joe_brendan_ tweeted a bit about what other ethnic groups that made up the Biafra of old suffered at the hands of Igbos. Such stories are seldom told cos they don't fit the narrative. But they are true stories.

I had an uncle (he is late now) who retired from the Nigerian Army as a Major. He was among those who left the Nigerian Army to enlist with the Biafran Army during the war. What most of you don't know is that not all of them joined the Biafran Army willingly.

They were simply left with NO CHOICE! And of course, he also had horrible tales of his experience as a Biafran soldier. The things they were asked to do to other ethnic groups and some of their Igbo brothers are best described as unspeakable.

So when some of you ignorantly say "Igbos should be allowed to go", or "SE is not with us", or even "Igbos support IPOB", all I mutter to myself is... y'all don't even know the half of it.