Forty- four years after the last gun was fired during the civil war of 1967-70, the ghost of Biafra has returned to haunt Nigeria, with Igbos, who formed the bulk of the Biafran population, asking for N2.4 trillion as reparation and compensation for lost lives and the devastation of Igbo land during that genocidal war.

Apex Igbo group Ohanaeze tabled the demand before the Federal Government yesterday.

In a statement in Abuja, Chairman, Ohanaeze Reparation Committee, Chief Mbazulike Amechi, said the demand was based on the archival records of the atrocities perpetrated against the Igbo race as well as interviews from some of the survivors of the war.

He urged the Federal Government to invest in the massive re-planning of Igbo cities with proper structures with the provision of urban water works, a sort of marshal plan often devised for a war-ravaged area. He also demanded a state apology to the Igbo for the wrongs the Nigerian state had visited on them.

“It is incalculable to put a price on the lives of millions of Igbo who were killed in the civil war and on other occasions,” Amechi said.

“The Federal Government should pay N400 billion each to five states of the South-East as compensation to those who lost loved ones, property and those suffering dislocation today in Nigeria. The same amount should also be paid to the government of Delta State for the benefit of the people of Aniona area,” he added.

In a related development, Igbo delegates at the National Conference yesterday made a case for the extension of the proposed National Intervention Fund (NIF) to the South-East and South-South zones of the country. The group, led by a former Minister of External Affairs, Gen. Ike Nwachukwu (rtd), demanded that since the proposed NIF was meant to address the issues of devastation and upheavals caused by an act of war or by outright war, the South-East and South-South zones should be adequately taken care of by the fund in terms of the physical infrastructure, rehabilitation and development.

In a statement signed by the leaders of the group, they stated that the former Eastern Region and former Mid-West Region which encompass the present day South-East and South-South zones of Nigeria were theatres of the civil war which devastated the two regions and brought untold hardship to their citizens.

According to the group, the case of South-East, which bore the full brunt of the civil war for 30 months, was particularly tragic because most of its territories were turned to wasteland despite Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s declaration of the three “Rs” – Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation.

The statement read in part: “Boko Haram insurgency in parts of the country, and especially in the North-East zone, has brought up the issue of reparation and reconstruction in whatever guise to the fore and the National Conference, through its Committee on Devolution of Power, has tackled it headlong.

“Since what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, the conference cannot afford to ignore the yearnings of our people to rehabilitate and reconstruct the war-divested South-South and South-East zones through the proposed fund or through any other integrated platform or plan available to the Federal Government.”

•Largely based on a Guardian report. Photo shows starving Igbo children during the Nigeria-Biafra War.

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