The Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. U Thant

The Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr. U Thant, is accounted for to have said, regarding Vietnam, that in war, the first casuality is truth. The Nigerian common war is today another excruciating indication of this wonder. Cases of an uncommon Ibo Jewishness and Catholic Christianity versus other Nigerian gatherings, and counter-claims of an Ibo plot to rule others, have jumbled the scene.

On the other hand, it is the previous perspective that overwhelms the press. Moment worldwide theoreticians of ethnic profiles find in the Ibo a congruous combination of the judaic and christian conventions. In the event that for sure this were a relevent class for the dialog of the Nigerian common war, it would genuinely speak to a huge social accomplishment for an African culture, in perspective of the ridiculous hostilities which have described these two conventions for a lot of Western history. Sadly, the classification is irrelevent. Prepared as it was out of political convenience, this picture now makes it troublesome for the remote onlooker to recover the target arrangement of occasions which prompted the common war.

Regardless of this trouble some present bends must be uncovered due to their quick ramifications for the lives of numerous blameless individuals. The Harvard Summer News has in its scope of the emergency, not been free of these contortions.

In one of his commitments, your journalist composed, bury alia, that Biafrans are being "famished out by the Nigerians". Having grasped the subject of Ibo jewishness, Biafra sympathizers finish the plot by allotting to Nigerians the beast's part Hitler. Such ridiculous attribution of twistedness to Nigerians can come just from a perilously gullible personality or an absolutely noxious one.

No African can be upbeat at the press reports of mounting starvation in secessionist Biafra. The certainty of severance and the resulting human casualities speak to a lasting disaster for Africa. Daily paper ads conveying hungry African babies whose survival depends to a great extent on the result of a walk of-dimes-sort campaign are a mortifying indication of Fanon's miserable decision that dark individuals of our era are undoubtedly the pitiful of the earth. Our kindred Africans who, for different reasons now relate to secessionist Biafra, feel this profound feeling of disgrace too.

Your journalist's affirmation likewise does not accord with the truths concerning the snags to the present "sustenance for Biafra" ventures. The Vatican, the International Red Cross, the London Times, the New York Times (to say just a couple) have reliably expressed that if the alleviation endeavors are to have any effect on Biafran starvation, nourishment must be transported via land from whatever remains of Nigeria, on account of the insufficiency of airplane terminal offices in what stays of Biafra. The Nigerian Government would without a doubt be in charge of Biafran starvation in the event that she declined to allow the transportation of the seriously required sustenance. Luckily this is not the situation. The same universal organizations have attested the status of the Nigerian Government to open up area passages to permit the sustenance to reach Biafra. These same worldwide organizations further express that the significant deterrent right now is the refusal of Biafran powers to acknowledge this offer on the ethically questionable ground that Biafra's political wrongness would be along these lines intensified.

To put it plainly, what is going on, as per a late publication in the London Times, is that the Biafran administration is playing governmental issues with the lives of honest youngsters. They appear to be more intrigued by the potential political capital which our normal sensitivities for affliction kids may deliver, as opposed to in the lives of the youngsters themselves.

Therefore the essential obligation regarding the present mass starvation in Biafra rests with the secessionist pioneers. They can't be definitively pardoned from any moral activity we may take part in on the Nigerian war. In any event Biafran pioneers are blameworthy of gross duplicity. Just a couple of months back they were gladly declaring to the world that the Biafran economy was running proficiently notwithstanding the war. At the time, these pioneers thought of it as politically practical to "demonstrate" the suitability of secessionist Biafra outside of a Nigerian league. Nigerian reports of mass yearning were rejected wild, by expert Biafrans, as purposeful publicity endeavors to bring down the resolve of those caught in the secessionist kingdom. Presently, be that as it may, the ignoble truth of monster human enduring is out. Biafra is not a practical dream without the oil rich regions of five million minorities pressured into the new citizenship.

Obviously, genuine understudies of African legislative issues don't locate this unfeeling disguise of reality astounding. They realize that most of the Biafran pioneers right now parading the world as tribal saints with engineered mottos of autochthonous ethics are the same government officials who, working together with different individuals from the old Nigerian political class, mercilessly misused the Nigerian masses without respect to ethnicity just a couple of years back. These tribal patriarchs of today were the broadly sentenced for yesterday. At the point when the Nigerian masses were rebelling against their misuse in pre-upset Nigeria, the outside pastor, an Ibo, was caught up with singing the glories of Nigeria at the U.N. The Head of State who directed the political debasement of pre-upset Nigeria is currently a Biafran represetative on the loose. It is noteworthy that it is just in Biafra that these degenerate government officials have not been for all time tossed out of office.

These men duped the Nigerian masses before for the sake of free endeavor and unregulated amassing of private riches. Today, as they play the mixed drink circuit at the seats of political response in Portugal, Spain and South Africa, they are at the end of the day covering their particularistic class intrigues behind the tribal veil. It is not they who are biting the dust; it is not they who are starving; it is their hostage Biafran subjects.

In this manner, if our sympathy toward the starving youngsters is to go past insignificant liberal reflexes, we must have the boldness to reprimand the political brigandage of the secessionist tip top. In the event that our radicalism is to have a beyond any doubt moral balance in the Nigerian emergency, we should not permit our eagerness to overflow into a defense of withdrawal.

Just pseudo liberals and adversaries of Africa can genuinely supporter sorted out outings into Biafra with the affirmed motivation behind driving American mediation for withdrawal. For entirely separated from the danger of making another Vietnam, such activity can just sentence Africa to changeless underdevelopment. An Africa in light of tribal units has no possibility. Just our foes can intentionally energize African discontinuity while they themselves appreciate the products of solidarity in their own nations. Omafume Onoge Teaching Fellow Social Relations Dept.