‘Biafra of the mind’: MASSOB and the mobilization of history

Abstract

This article examines the circumstances of the emergence of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) in a period of political liberalization and considerable uncertainty as the armed forces began to prepare to relinquish their grip on power in 1999. It tracks MASSOB from its inception, shortly after a civilian government took office following controversial elections, through the imprisonment of its founding leader Ralph Uwazurike in 2005, precisely when the government, under pressure, convened a national conference to address the grievances of the various ethnic groups, to the present, even as members reassess their strategies in the face of the apparent reluctance of a significant section of the Igbo political elite to buy into a new secession project. Confronted with the task of discharging the burden of civil war memory, the young men of MASSOB sought to mobilize history, ethnicity and a parlous economic present to press their claims on an electoral authoritarian regime founded on an ethnic logic. In so doing, they threatened to derail Nigeria's democratization process. Countervailing forces, including civic actors in the Igbo heartland itself, intervened, powerfully illustrating the case that democratization is indeed a long-drawn-out and open-ended process. Properly nurtured, it could progress to the crucial consolidation stage in multi-ethnic states. Even so, the fact that MASSOB's project is presently struggling does not in any way detract from the validity of the grievances that gave birth to the ethnic militia in the first place.