ABUJA (Sundiata Post) – Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar will be chairman at the launch of the seminal book, ‘We are all Biafrans’, a collection of essays written over a three-year period on the national question in Nigeria by a renowned journalist, author and blogger, Mr. Chido Onumah.
The launching will take place on Tuesday at the Shehu Musa Yar’ Adua Centre, Abuja.
Onumah in this book contends that most, if not all, of the problems of Nigeria today are located in the way the country is structured. As he did in his previous books, he makes an eminently logical case for an urgent socio-political restructuring of Nigeria by way of genuine federalism, in order to ward off a looming catastrophe that could endanger our collective wellbeing.
He argues that the country needs to engage episodic political convulsions that threaten its very foundation, including Biafra, June 12, Boko Haram, the “National Question”, citizenship rights and militancy.
He raises fundamental questions such as, what is Nigeria and who is a Nigerian? If Nigeria is a federal republic, what constitutes or should constitute the federating units? He posits that the different manifestations of Biafra may well be a metaphor as all ethnic groups in Nigeria are victims of the terrible misrule of the past decades and thus desire a change in their material conditions of existence.
According to Onumah, the book is meant to advance the debate on the options available to Nigeria as we struggle to improve our lives and make our country more stable and secure through the way we respond to the many challenges that confront us.