Two years after the end of World War Two, highly ravaged Europe received all that was needed to cushion the devastating effects of seven years of dislocation.

It was a brilliant idea advanced by United States Secretary of State, George Marshall. The South-east Geo-Political Zone of Nigeria was the major theatre of the Civil War.

It took 54 years for the South East Development Commission (SEDC) to be established. And the war devastated area was only considered, many years after the Niger Delta and North-East had benefitted from a similar set up.

General Ibrahim Babangida’s recent revelation that the Igbo who had war visited on them by the Yakubu Gowon government as a fall out of the January 15, 1966 coup, were indeed unjustly profiled.

The former military president made the assertion recently at the public presentation of his book: ‘A Journey In Service’. Babangida’s bold attempt to set the records straight should be commended.

And it was weighty that he did that in the presence of Gowon and three former Heads of State – Dr. Olusegun Obasanjo, Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar and Dr. Goodluck Jonathan.

All but Jonathan were combatants during the war. It is remarkable that President Bola Tinubu sat comfortably, listening to all that was said and implied. To him now, much is expected. Time has come for the true healing process to begin.

And the least that should be done for the South-east is to pump resources into the much maligned and neglected zone. The post-World War Two Marshall Plan was targeted at, ‘Hunger, Poverty, Desperation and Chaos’. That was the beginning of the European Recovery Programme (ERP) which began its first five-year phase, 1948-1948.

At the end of that period, a whopping 12.5 million United States dollars had been released to help Europe. It was different from what the South-east, fresh from Biafra, received at the end of the Civil War. Gowon had his plans mapped out through what he tagged the Three R’s -Reconstruction, Reconciliation and Rehabilitation.

And all that ended inside his Dodan Barracks office. To the Southeast, the Three R’s merely represented Repression, Reconquest and Resentment. Everything under the sun was done to make life uncomfortable for those who were lucky not to have died during the war.

While Europe received money to come back to life after World War Two, Igbo land got Draconian policies smudged across it, as from 1970. In 1971, there was the Indigenisation Policy that benefited those Nigerians who had money to spare.

The deprivations of the past cannot be carried into the future. Tinubu can bring peace to the area through justice and fair play…

The Igbo were poor because their Biafran currency became worthless and those who needed Nigerian pounds were lucky to get 20 pounds each, which was just enough for a day’s meal. The marginalisation has continued till date. The South-east is the only Geo-Political Zone with five states.

The North-west is made up of seven states while the other four zones have six states, each. The import is that in revenue allocation and Local Government recognition, the Igbo are massively short changed.

What some post war Nigerian leaders failed to realise was that by trying to diminish the Igbo, the nation was the loser. It took Biafrans less than one year to build two important airports, Uli and Uga.

The Uli facility, known as Annabelle, was the second busiest airport in Africa and handled the highest civilian airlift operations globally, since 1945.

Biafra built two refineries at Uzuakoli and Awomama, in less than six months after the fall of Port Harcourt. It is a huge shame that it has taken Nigeria an eternity to complete the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, respectively, with millions of dollars misappropriated.

Biafra extracted petrol from coal, produced rockets without smoke, built armoured vehicles and silencers. Doctors used fresh coconut to produce intravenous fluids in treating wounded soldiers and manufactured drugs for kwashiorkor which were approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Unlike America, Nigeria failed to tap from the vanquished. Many scientists from Europe were embraced by the United States and their developmental impact continues to be felt. Biafran scientists, on the other hand, were frustrated and some of them simply kept their ingenuity to themselves.

Mention must be made of some Nigerians who saw beyond the Biafran loss. Governor of the former Mid-western State, Brigadier General Samuel Ogbemudia offered scholarships to Biafran students and made sure the University of Nigeria, Nsukka was not shut down.

His Kwara and North-eastern counterparts, Brigadiers General, David Bamigboye, and Musa Usman, went into exchange programmes with the East Central State.

This Babangida intervention has opened a big window of true reconstruction. The South-east needs trillions of naira from the Federal Government to be at par with other parts of the federation.

This should be channelled through the SEDC. Industries, international airports, better than what happens in Enugu, coastal revolution and human capital development need urgent attention. The South-east should be treated as an integral part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The deprivations of the past cannot be carried into the future. Tinubu can bring peace to the area through justice and fair play. Babangida has opened the door. Lies do not last forever. Peace is watered by the hand of equity. (New Telegraph Editorial)