THE YORUBAS DON'T WANT THE IGBOS TO BREAKAWAY FROM NIGERIA

 By Elder Babatunde Biodun

THE YORUBAS DON'T WANT THE IGBOS TO BREAKAWAY FROM NIGERIA. Here are the reasons: Written by Chief Babatunde Abiodun.

The truth is that we Yoruba people don't want Igbo people to leave Nigeria. This is the truth most of my people will not tell you. We need the Ịgbo people, yet we are afraid of their ingenuity.

A lot has happened to the Igbo people. They were kị́lled during the war. Their properties were taken. They were removed from their government jobs. Their houses, churches, markets and even farm lands were bombed, yet they are standing.

Who would have believed that Ịgbo properties were seized in Lagos in 1967, and in 4 decades later, they have virtually bought the entire Lagos, and the only thing we could do is start destroying their properties in the name of building in the wrong places. And I ask, are we not the ones who sold those places to them? Where were the government when they erected one block?

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Tom Biggar: The Ojukwu Half-Brother Who Served Biafra In Silence

Source: The Nsibidi Collective.

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When the story of Biafra is told, one name stands above the rest, and that name is Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Head of State of the Biafran Republic during the Nigerian Civil War. His leadership defined the political and military direction of Biafra between 1967 and 1970.

However, historical records also show that he was not the only member of his family connected to the Biafran cause.

Ojukwu was the son of Sir Louis Ojukwu, one of the wealthiest  businessmen of his era. Sir Louis had children from different relationships, and among them was Tom Biggar, Ojukwu’s half-brother. They shared the same father but had different mothers. Tom Biggar’s mother was Scottish, which accounts for his surname.

During the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970), Tom Biggar served Biafra in a medical capacity. He was a trained doctor and worked within the Biafran system, contributing to the treatment of wounded soldiers and civilians at a time when medical supplies were scarce and conditions were extremely harsh.

Unlike his half-brother, Tom Biggar did not occupy a political office or military command position. His contribution was professional rather than strategic. As a result, his name did not become prominent in public discourse or post-war political narratives.

The involvement of Tom Biggar adds depth to the understanding of the Ojukwu family during the Biafran period. While one brother led the Biafran Republic at the highest level, another served within the same cause through medical service.

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Why Awolowo picked an Igbo man as running mate in 1979 presidential election

By Rasheed Audu, 19th October, 2025

Credit: Ethnic African Stories

Chief Obafemi Awolowo's running mate in Nigeria's 1979 presidential elections was Chief Philip
Umeadi, an Igbo man from Anambra State.

Umeadi was a senior lawyer and politician from the old Anambra State, and his pairing with Awolowo (a Yoruba leader) was seen as an attempt to foster Yoruba–Igbo political cooperation under the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN).

In an interview with Vanguard in 2010, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, who was 35 when he became the Director of Organisation of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), narrated how Awolowo settled for Umeadi. Read it below:

"Did you know that Papa Awolowo contacted some of his trusted friends in the North, requesting that one of them should come and be his running-mate but they turned him down? They rejected, especially those from the Hausa-Fulani clan.

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The economy of the former Eastern Region was planned from ground up by the US consulting firm Arthur D. Little

The economy of the former Eastern Region was planned from ground up by the US consulting firm Arthur D. Little

Dr. Azikiwe brought them and they worked with M I Okpara at first, then with Sam Otti and later Eluwa who headed the Civil Service and later with Sir Louis Phillip Odumegwu Ojukwu who at the time was the Chairman of the Eastern Nigerian Development Corporation (ENDC) and also the Chairman of the Eastern Nigeria Commodities Board (ENCB)

Louis Phillip  Odumegwu Ojukwu also sat as Chairman of 15 multinational companies at the time - John Holt, PZ, Michelin, Costain, Thomas Wyatt, Guinness, GB Ollivant etc

He was so rich that he single handedly funded the establishment of the Lagos Stock Exchange but refused to list his company there for fear of losing control

His photo still hangs proudly on the floor of that exchange as its first chairman

Arthur D Little also worked with a coterie of young Eastern Nigerian economists at the time - Pius Okigbo (PhD Northwestern), Ukwu I. Ukwu (PhD Cambridge), Chukwu Sunday Okongwu (PhD Harvard). These young men in their early twenties worked with Arthur D Little to plan our economy from scratch

I know this because Ukwu I Ukwu taught me at Nsukka and I also worked in Dr Chu SP Okongwu's economic planning firm right during and after grad school in Nigeria.

Arthur D. Little recommended the setting up of a university in the East to produce key skills needed to drive economic growth as most of those skills were not being taught in Ibadan at the time

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"CHI" IN IGBO THOUGHT AND CULTURE

Written by Rev. Fr. Francis Anekwe Oborji, Pontifical Urban University, Vatican City (Rome)
Email: anekwe.oborji@gmail.com

Monday, July 10, 2023

Our concern in this short write-up is to articulate, briefly, the true meaning and significance of the concept, "CHI" among the Igbo in the context of the concept of the "Person" in African thought and culture as articulated in Igbo, African scholarship in recent years.

The Problem:

The pre-theoretical concern about the concept of the person in philosophical and theological discourse challenges us to give a unique and coherent response to the following questions: What is the person? What does it mean for a person to be the same persistent entity through time (or in a moment of time)? How many distinct ontological entities constitute a person? What relationship, if there is, exists between the subjective experiences of an individual first-person and our perspective third-person? What is the influence of our culture and society on our system of thought and interpretation of reality and 'non-regular causation' of things in the universe? What kind of relationship exists between the thinker and his cultural and religious context? What is the influence of this cultural context on our philosophical and theological thoughts?

The African scholars, especially, philosophers and theologians, including the Igbo scholars, take seriously the challenge of giving an adequate response to these questions in the African, Igbo context and perspective. This is why in the African, Igbo context, unlike that of the West, plausible answers to an application, are usually informed by plausible answers to other questions.

Therefore, to appreciate the rich meaning and significance of Igbo concept of "Chi" in the context of the concept of person in African thought and culture, I would like to explore the way in which the Igbo, African theory of the universe and of the ontological reality has provided us with the integrated responses to the question under consideration. And how we must build these answers on it. My approach, partly descriptive and partly imaginative, should be familiar; I adopted it by the tradition of the first African scholars, from their reaction as well as their appreciation of the pioneering work of Placide Tempels, La Philosophie Bantoue, published in 1945.

The foundation of the problem that we are treating derives from the famous proposition of Aristotle, "man is a rational animal." This definition of man as a rational animal did not apply, then to the (African) man or woman. The expression of Descartes "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore, I exist), was inspired and built on Aristotelian tradition. Therefore, Descartes, like so many other authors of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, did not see the African people as having the ability to think on the ontological level. The authors such as Hegel, Kant, Heidegger, and so forth, never assigned the ability to think at the philosophical and metaphysical level to the African man (or woman) mind.

Therefore, the Igbo, African philosophy today is responding to this historical legacy of the so-called classical philosophy and of the Enlightenment-Era in their comparison with Africa. African authors, including Igbo scholars, have already made good progress in this regard. Thanks to them, today no one has any more doubts about the capacity of Africans to think at philosophical-metaphysical level. In many countries, African philosophy and African Christian theology are studied today at university level.

"Chi" and Igbo (African) Concept of Person

In the first place, the person is a fundamental entity of reality. Therefore, its concept or meaning does not only belong to a people, because other peoples have their concepts of the person. So, what does the African (Igbo) originality of person consist of? To borrow from the words of Charles Nyamiti (a Tanzania theologian), the African (Igbo) originality of a concept such as the "person", goes beyond the normal accentuation of the term to assume a cultural coloring. In Africa, and in Igbo society, in particular, the person as such, is a concrete reality defined in its ontological humanity, existentiality and community. Therefore, the African Igbo philosophy speaks of three constituents of the person.