Asari Dokubo
Leader of the Niger Delta People’s
Volunteer Front, NDPVF, Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo has said the name “Biafra”,
adopted by the then breakaway Eastern region is Ijaw.
According
to him, it was an Ijaw man, who suggested the name at a meeting convened by the
leader of the defunct Republic of Biafra, Chukwuemeka Ojukwu to decide on the
way forward for the region after the 1966/1967 pogrom.
Dokubo,
in a statement on Wednesday, stated that the late Niger Delta activist, Maj.
Isaac Adaka Boro affirmed that Ijaw is Biafra in chapter six of his
autobiography entitled: “Twelve Day Revolution”.
He
further said that the ties between the Igbo and the Ijaw ethnic groups were
inseparable, adding that It was another Ijaw Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson, who first
played the Biafran national anthem during the proclamation of independence on
May 30, 1967.
Continuing,
he said, “Ignorance can be a terrible disease but it is curable if the sufferer
is ready to humble himself to learn and accept the cure for his sickness.
Biafra is a Kalabari Ijaw phrase ‘Bia fulo’, meaning not properly cooked.
“The
Kalabari of Kula named the estuary of Santa Barbara Bia fulo because of the
turbulence of the sea at the estuary. The Portuguese, like they did to many
other names, words and phrases which they could not pronounce properly, named
the area Biafra. Later the coastline from the estuary of River Nun to the coast
of Gabon was named the Bight of Biafra.
“The
doyen of our struggle, Isaac Adaka Boro clearly affirmed that Ijaw is BIiafra
in chapter six, page 57 of his autobiography ‘Twelve Day Revolution’
“Col.
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, before the declaration of secession, convoked an
Eastern Nigerian consultative Assembly to decide on the direction and way
forward for the Eastern Region after the 1966/1967 pogrom against Easterners in
the north.
“The
assembly debated on many names put forward by delegates and chose Biafra which
was put forward by Frank Opigo an Ijaw.”
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