The Igbo as a Blessing to Nigeria by Reno Omokri

7 years ago

The Igbo as a Blessing to Nigeria by Reno Omokri

This is an article written by Reno Omokri. Please read on..
On the 15th of August 1945, the axis nations fighting in the Pacific theater defeated imperial Japan and two weeks later, Japan formally surrendered to allied forces led by the U.S. General, Douglas McArthur, who formally accepted the signed articles of surrender.
But though the U.S. defeated Japan, they never decimated Japan's great technological and industrial complex. They were visionary enough to distinguish these from Japan's military industrial complex, which they scrapped.
Realizing that Japan was decades ahead of the West in many technologies, the allied powers, led by the US, allowed those industries to remain as a going concern and took the unique step of enacting legislation and policies to enable them flourish.

What they did in Japan, they also did in Europe. In Europe, the US, acting unilaterally, even went a step further by introducing the Marshall Plan through which America sent financial and other types of aid to help Europe (and especially Germany) recover from the ravages of the Second World War.

The point of the allied and American actions in Japan and Europe is that technological advancement belongs to the human race and should not be allowed to suffer because of a quarrel or war amongst humans.

This lesson was thoroughly established in 642 AD when the Library of Alexandria was burnt to the ground during the Muslim conquest of Egypt.

It has been argued that that act set the world several centuries back in technological advancement and has become something to watch out for during the prosecution of a war.

A war is a quarrel between or amongst people that is settled by means of violence. It is not a quarrel between or amongst technology, so civilized nations have pursued the policy of fighting wars while preserving technology.

Gone should be the days of the scorched earth policy which is why despite the bestiality of the apartheid regime, President Nelson Mandela did not do a Mugabe, but rather left intact White owned farms, industry and universities and only insisted that they be opened to Blacks and other races.

This brings me to Nigeria. I would like to state a fact that will be argued against, but still a fact that even those who would argue against it know to be true.

The Igbo (or Ibo) ethnic nationality of Nigeria are the most technologically advanced Black race on planet earth, bar none!

This is a fact. A fact that was proven to be true for 30 months while they were landlocked in their constantly shrinking enclave known as Biafra.

Cut off from the rest of the world, the ingenuity of the Igbo came to the fore during the civil war as they constructed the Uli airstrip and when that airstrip was bombed, they repaired it in record time and under the most trying circumstances. They would go on to repair Uli not once and not twice.

The Igbos refined petrol from a variety of non fossil fuels, including from but not limited to palm products (from which they also produced diesel) and manufactured surface to air missiles which they also adapted to surface to surface missiles (the Ogbunigwe).

They converted commercial planes to fighter jets and weaponized them. That was no mean feat in 1967.

In fact, when in 2012, the Nigerian Army rolled out the igirigi and promoted it as the first indigenous armored personnel carrier, they were wrong. I am not a Biafran. I am proudly Nigerian. And beyond that, I am a proud dark skinned Black African yet I make bold to say that the igirigi is not the first indigenous APC.

In fact, the first indigenous armored personnel carrier in Black Africa is the Red Devil, built by the Igbos during the Nigerian Civil War.

The Nigerian Civil War ended in January 1970 and the Nigerian Army unveiled the igirigi in July of 2012. If they had converted the Red Devil to their own use, they would probably be talking about a greater feat in the year 2012.

My question is what happened in the intervening 42 years betwe