AND THE WICKED STRUCK

On that fateful day in 1969, my mother Francisca a Cameroonian from Bakosi, but married to my father an Igbo man, arrived the market at Ozu Abam in Ohafia, now Abia state. I was also with her in the market and behind her back was a baby of less than two months, Ifeanyi.

With some other small children of less than ten years, I got excited and played a small locally made rubber ball. As we played, the ball fell into the bush and we rushed into the bush to look for it and while there a harbinger of death appeared in the air and by the time the inferno was over, the market was in ruins. The women and their children were no more inhabitants of this world. My mother Francisca had a shrapnel pierce her heart but she was still breathing. The baby at her back cried and that was how we knew that Ifeanyi was alive. Before my naked eyes, I saw my mother take deep breathes and gave up the ghost.

By the left, right, front and back of my position before my dead mother were over five hundred women and children massacred by the WICKED. When I remember the sights, even today I marvel at the level of wickedness done to harmless, unarmed women and children.

Incidentally, my father was far away in his station at the war front and I served as the father and mother of Ifeanyi and two other siblings until my father returned after four days. To be sincere, I saw horror. I saw decapitations, I saw children’s heads but no body, I saw legs but no heads, I saw head and trunks but no legs, I saw blood like river. I saw man’s inhumanity to women and children. Again, I saw horror. My father moved us back to my home town and while I was telling my horrifying story, I was told that the same thing happened at a market at Umuowa, a village three miles from my own. And the story was the same, the victims, women and children.

My mother and all other women and children murdered by the Nigeria Air force bomber were buried in mass graves beside the ruins of the market. At Umuowa in Orlu (Imo state), mass graves took the bodies of women and children killed by the same wicked men.

We were told later that the plane was supplied by Russia, the pilot was an Egyptian and the paymaster was Britain. There was an organized attempt to exterminate the Igbo race from the face of the earth. Earlier at Asaba, Col. Murtala Mohammed had assembled the elders and all the male children of the area and executed them. He was moving towards Enugu to continue his ethnic cleansing agenda but was ambushed by Captain Uchendu and narrowly escaped. Of course, the arms recovered from the ambush led Biafra through the 30 months war.

Fifty years have just gone as if it was yesterday and the judge of the earth has woken the sleepy souls. The Lord is fighting for His people. The Biafran spirit has woken. The blood of my mother and other unarmed are calling for vengeance. There is Boko Haram ravaging the North East in revenge, there are bandits ravaging North West in revenge, there are Fulani killers ravaging North Central in revenge of the blood of my mother and millions of others killed in the markets, feeding centres and hospitals. You may have heard that Airforce planes bombed IDP camps, you may have heard that HERDSMEN attacked IDP camps, you may have heard that soldiers raped the women of IDP camps. Well, such were Karma at work.

I tell you, Nigeria shall know NO peace until the blood of the innocent women and children massacred during the war are appeased.

Help me knock at the house of Gen. Murtala Mohammed. Is there any man remaining? If there is, WATCH out. Whatsoever a man sows, that he will reap.

The blood of the murdered millions of Biafrans will not stop calling for vengeance and Nigeria will not cease from bloodshed as far as the Igbo man remembers and cries for the blood of the humiliated mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, women and children massacred by the army that was fighting the man with machetes only. The memories of the war still fresh.

#WeRemember.

Written by:

Charles Ehidom

For: Biafra State Media

Published by:

Chibuike John Nebeokike

For: Biafra State Media