Charles Oputa, former PMAN President and self-styled ‘Area Father’ popularly known as Charly Boy has spoken about the persistent Biafra strugle.
He is a man who fights on the side of the common man without fear or favour. Love him or hate him, one thing is that, you can never ignore this indefatigable entertainment personality, especially when he is charged on an issue.
‘Area Father’ lashed out at his Igbo brothers agitating for the State of Biafra, saying they are not students of history.
He berated them for forgetting so fast the pains and anguish the Igbos suffered during the last civil war in Nigeria.
“Now people are shouting Biafra but I say they don’t know what they are talking about. Experience is the best teacher and those of us that experienced Biafran war first hand know this is a foolish venture. During the war, my village was like the war theartre and I saw people dying per second all around me. There was death everywhere. If you have been seeing gory pictures of Syria, how death visits from everywhere, it was the exact way Biafra was during the war. Believe me, bullets didn’t even kill us as much as hunger. You can imagine, you and your friends would be playing and all of a sudden there would be air raid. As you were running helter-skelter to take cover you would see some people’s heads being blown off their bodies. Such sights have never left me. I was about 17 years old then and now somebody is shouting ‘Biafra’. No.
Continuing, he said, “If the people shouting for Biafra are serious they should go back to the South-east to develop the region. It is just not right going to another man’s land to develop it while leaving your own to lie fallow. After we must have developed the South-east, then we can be shouting Biafra. Biafra is a thing of the mind. Is it in this hunger you expect people to fight? How do you want to do that?,”
