Christiana Olarinde
ESL 100
3rd draft
3.4.2009
A difficult time
The Biafra war had a profound impact on my family; it was a bundle of serious coalition and chaos. The biafrans, these people are from eastern part of Nigeria, a once peaceful community. They called themselves the Biafra’s, this ethnicity was led by Sir Ojukwu, he wanted the Igbo community to have a country of their own, as a result of this, a finite war began, Sir Ojukwu never had the support of anyone or any country, especially the Yorubas and the Hausas and these practically led to a totally difficult time.
Without consent the war began in the year 1967,as a result of this ,people lost their jobs, there was tribalism, complete segregation, distrust among citizens, it also led to a bad economy, This problems did not move Sir Ojukwu in anyway, instead he continued to crave support and eventually he did.
About five countries did support him, and the British government, who at that time, also wanted to exploit the Biafra’s, because from that time till date, they were rich for oil. So platted a strategy and made acceptance to their ideologies, gave them consents and through that they made sure that they had their own share of oil from that community. With all these happening at the same time, the people of the Biafra community suffered until they were eating from hand to mouth. They had a declaration of their independence that was never supported, there was the massacre of young and old, people began trading even their children for food, there was oil drilling pollution, because the oil drillers would not cover the pipes after stealing the oil, families suffered suffered a great deal of loss of children, especially the new born ones, in fact husbands who were not working at the time refused to sleep with their wives, because they knew out rightly that, the baby will suffer. At this point my mum and my dad just got married and lived together in the same community as said. My father worked for an oil company called NNPC, he worked as one of their administrating staffs, he was financially buoyant, at least they could a two bedroom flat and good food to go with. When the war started to set in, it affected his job seriously, and they could not feed like they used, in fact my dad refused his maternal rights.
However they could not even ,at the least afford to sleep with their two eyes closed at night, this is where distrust began to set in, he could not trust those he was working with, because now it was glaring that humans will start exploiting themselves, this economic hazard scared people to death. One death night, without blinking, my mum and dad had to flee from the community where there was no peace, there was fear of being killed by people of your kind, with no second thought, anyone who was sensible enough and knew the way out of that place, found their way out.
All things been said , on the 19th of July 1970,to the surprise of everyone, there was an announcement that the war had stopped, Ojukwu the truant was dead and there was peace again. When all these was said to the people’s hearings. Nigeria experienced happiness again. Even the birds in the sky noticed and enjoyed peace.
However, my father got a new job at the NNPC branch in Lagos and my mum also got a nice furnished gift store. Everything finally became normal.
It then came to my thoughts that there were so many questions that kept running in my head. Of course no one has the answer to it. At least none that I know of.
Why on earth would people of their own kind imbibe this act of deviance?
Maybe I could find an answer to it by myself. “ Every country in the worlds as its own ups and downs, starting from the individuals”.
ESL 100
3rd draft
3.4.2009
A difficult time
The Biafra war had a profound impact on my family; it was a bundle of serious coalition and chaos. The biafrans, these people are from eastern part of Nigeria, a once peaceful community. They called themselves the Biafra’s, this ethnicity was led by Sir Ojukwu, he wanted the Igbo community to have a country of their own, as a result of this, a finite war began, Sir Ojukwu never had the support of anyone or any country, especially the Yorubas and the Hausas and these practically led to a totally difficult time.
Without consent the war began in the year 1967,as a result of this ,people lost their jobs, there was tribalism, complete segregation, distrust among citizens, it also led to a bad economy, This problems did not move Sir Ojukwu in anyway, instead he continued to crave support and eventually he did.
About five countries did support him, and the British government, who at that time, also wanted to exploit the Biafra’s, because from that time till date, they were rich for oil. So platted a strategy and made acceptance to their ideologies, gave them consents and through that they made sure that they had their own share of oil from that community. With all these happening at the same time, the people of the Biafra community suffered until they were eating from hand to mouth. They had a declaration of their independence that was never supported, there was the massacre of young and old, people began trading even their children for food, there was oil drilling pollution, because the oil drillers would not cover the pipes after stealing the oil, families suffered suffered a great deal of loss of children, especially the new born ones, in fact husbands who were not working at the time refused to sleep with their wives, because they knew out rightly that, the baby will suffer. At this point my mum and my dad just got married and lived together in the same community as said. My father worked for an oil company called NNPC, he worked as one of their administrating staffs, he was financially buoyant, at least they could a two bedroom flat and good food to go with. When the war started to set in, it affected his job seriously, and they could not feed like they used, in fact my dad refused his maternal rights.
However they could not even ,at the least afford to sleep with their two eyes closed at night, this is where distrust began to set in, he could not trust those he was working with, because now it was glaring that humans will start exploiting themselves, this economic hazard scared people to death. One death night, without blinking, my mum and dad had to flee from the community where there was no peace, there was fear of being killed by people of your kind, with no second thought, anyone who was sensible enough and knew the way out of that place, found their way out.
All things been said , on the 19th of July 1970,to the surprise of everyone, there was an announcement that the war had stopped, Ojukwu the truant was dead and there was peace again. When all these was said to the people’s hearings. Nigeria experienced happiness again. Even the birds in the sky noticed and enjoyed peace.
However, my father got a new job at the NNPC branch in Lagos and my mum also got a nice furnished gift store. Everything finally became normal.
It then came to my thoughts that there were so many questions that kept running in my head. Of course no one has the answer to it. At least none that I know of.
Why on earth would people of their own kind imbibe this act of deviance?
Maybe I could find an answer to it by myself. “ Every country in the worlds as its own ups and downs, starting from the individuals”.
