400 ex-Biafra army die out of hunger!

Reports have it that about 400 inmates of the Oji-River Ex-Biafra Settlement near Enugu have died following frustration, hunger and starvation borne.

The Nigeria, Biafra war was fought between 1966 and 1970, and many wounded and homeless soldiers from the Biafran side were resettled in Oji River. (Picture shows protagonists of the Nigeria civil war, Ojukwu and Yakubu Gowon, the Nigeria military head of state, as well as Biafran and Nigerian flags)

What is scaring, however, is that the inmates have linked the mass death of their colleagues to neglect by the former Biafra Leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (Ikemba Nnewi).

The disabled war veterans accuse Ojukwu of not having visited them at the Oji-River Camp where they have been quarantined since 1970 the war ended.

Spokesman of the inmate, Joseph Akani, relayed the pathetic conditions of the inmates to officials of the ‘Humanitarian Demining Team’ from the Ministry of Defence, Abuja who visited them at the Oji-River Camp recently. The demining team, led by Commodore Essien Ekpiken (Rtd), was on a tour to detonate mines across states of Nigeria.

Akani said it was sad that their former leader, Ojukwu, had not deemed it fit to visit them at the camp almost 40 years after the war, pointing out that they had been living on charity.

Pathetically, the disabled Biafra soldiers who were about 697 when they came to settle at the camp are presently less than 100, as the others had miserably died for lack of food and care.

Although KlinReports has not heard Ojukwu’s side of this story, it is very, very unfortunate, if it is true, that he has not visited these handicapped soldiers of his in the past 40 years.

The rehabilitation of these disabled veterans ought to have been uppermost in Ojukwu’s mind.

KlinReports, therefore, calls on the Ikemba to quickly prevail on the Federal Government of Nigeria to, as much as possible, rehabilitate these disabled veterans. Though the ex-Biafra warlord is gradually ageing, nearing 80, he still has the ability to improve the lots of these men who lost everything to fight on his side during the internecine war.