How does Buhari 'listen' to Radio Biafra?

Written by Abimbola Adelakun

The saying that nothing sells like controversy cannot be truer for the sensation called Radio Biafra. In the past few weeks, the radio station has become a subject of analyses, commentaries, diatribes, passion, anger, and as is typical of these issues, a re-opening of festering wounds. The attention the radio has received, one suspects, is more about the medium than the contents of the message. The message is not new and after listening to its transmission for a while, I still do not see how its bashing of Nigeria is different from the flagellation the country endures from commentators on social media daily.

Those who argue that the President Muhammadu Buhari led-government should listen to Radio Biafra have yet to articulate how he may "listen" to it when the promoters have yet to present Nigeria with a list of requests that must be fulfilled for them to either shut up or tone down their messages. Some agitations run farther than desires that can be met. There used to be a Radio Kudirat that gave Gen. Sani Abacha sleepless nights during the dark days of military oppression. The only thing that would have satisfied Radio Kudirat was to see the end of Abacha. One gets a similar impression of Radio Biafra - it is Buhari they have problems with, simple.

A short diversion: Radio Biafra consistently describes Buhari as a "paedophile." Beyond the ethnic slurring, one should ask if there is something about erotic feelings or sex with a pre-pubescent child that has captured the imagination of the radio "director" Nnamdi Kanu, and which he expresses by affixing that label to Buhari. Does Kanu perhaps derive some perverse pleasure from his obsession with paedophilia? This information may not help the cause of Radio Biafrabut it may shed some light on Kanu's character.

I do not see what is funny about paedophilia that should be banalised even if meant to denigrate a President he despises.

If Radio Biafra's aim is to plead with Nigeria for a listening ear, and provoke an urgent conversation on lingering national issues, is its cause better served by its combativeness? What if its aim was never to start a dialogue with Nigeria but primarily to provoke? If that is all there is about it, it is doing well for itself already and it has only just begun. Besides, there is not much by way of the issues of nationhood and citizenship that have not been said and which Radio Biafraexpresses that make it an intellectual marvel. From the Biafra war itself to MASSOB to various national conferences, these conversations have been thrashed. What is missing is the requisite action. What we all are currently reacting to is the provocation it spews and which now heightens with its newfound popularity. If Buhari grants Radio Biafraaudience, it would be reacting to controversy rather than the substance of the angst.

The vexation Radio Biafra constitutes does not, one should not forget, in any way delegitimise the grievances that fan the embers of its receptivity. That, I think, is where Buhari's dilemma lies. By payingRadio Biafra some attention at all, he has given them more popularity than they probably bargained for when they started out. If he pays them any more attention, they will gain more traction and then any subsequent attempt at clampdown will turn them into martyrs. Yet, he cannot wholly ignore the concerns that have been adduced as root causes of Radio Biafra's development. The question is how he addresses the issues but not the radio; how does he address the radio without turning rabble-rousing into a legitimate entity? Knowing Nigeria for what it is, one can be sure that more "Radio Biafras" are on the way, hurriedly founded by ethnic and religious copycats who want to present their invoices, asking the country for settlement for historical despoliation. How many of these will the President then address? How Radio Biafra is treated will go a long way in determining the kind of cases we will make in the future for similar voicing of dissent.

There have been two types of responses that have attended the brouhaha of Radio Biafra. On the one side are the attackers, the Joe Igbokwes of this world, who want Radio Biafra stopped because its incendiary messages could goad people into hate and then perhaps cause a war. They point at the case of Rwanda where radio was used to fuel emotions that would later translate to genocide. These people, pan-Nigerianists they are, think the Igbo are better off in this geographical expression called Nigeria and that with time, we can all successfully build a nation out of the rubble we are forever digging ourselves out of. In this season of "change", they want us to look forward to a new and better Nigeria led by President Muhammadu Buhari by ceasing all whining and burying all our grievances in the interest of the greater good of nation-building.

To this group of conservatives, I say Radio Biafra has come to stay. Let the National Broadcasting Commission block its signals all it can, that radio station is an idea that has arrived like a new born that can only grow. The radio, to its teeming band of fans, is an ideology that espouses their deepest desires and valourises their anger. You can jam its signals all you want but you cannot quench the spirit that fuels Radio Biafra. Like the beginnings of most religious movements, state persecution will only strengthen its resolve and help the proponents gain more popularity until it either becomes another major thorn in Nigeria's flesh or runs out of fury to wane with a post-revolution fatigue.

On the other side of the divide are those who defend Radio Biafra and they range from those who approve its message to those who though disapprove its message and methods, look at the symbolism of the voice and even the temporality of its emergence. 

To them, Radio Biafra represents the yearnings of the Igbo who have not been served fairly and whose position in the Nigerian construct can perhaps be described as tentative and subject to frequent negotiations. As a result, they want the existing issues that disadvantage Ndigbo addressed so that the discontent that fuels contraptions like Radio Biafra may be quelled or that it may never even have arisen. While that may have some truth to it, it is also naïve or perhaps, idealistic, to think that a multi-ethnic nation like Nigeria will not have discontent within its fragments for another one, two, three centuries. There will always be people who have been left behind who will find their voice sometimes and confront the nation with its faults.

The United States is one of the oldest and most mature democracies in the world today but it is rarely at peace within itself. America's tensile strength is constantly being tested by its internal contradictions and the racial and gender injustice on which its foundations were laid; the spurious self-evident truth that "all men are equal" while it cheapens the lives of others. For Nigeria, if it were not Radio Biafra, it will be Radio Chibok or Radio Ilaje or some other ethnic minority in Nigeria that considers itself "marginalised" or maltreated by Nigeria.

Today, the Igbo are a loud disgruntled voice but they are by no means the only one. From the shores of Delta State to rural Borno State, Nigeria has trampled on many people and discounted their lives leaving in its wake, accrued anger and simmering tension. In that context, there is no way Radio Biafra will not have listeners. Indeed, Buhari should "listen," and there is a lot that has been said - enough to fill his ears - long before Radio Biafra made its first broadcast.