FORMER president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has called on Biafran agitators to embrace peace and dialogue instead of beating war drums pointing out that the experience of the Nigerian Civil War is not something that should not be repeated.  

Over the last two months, agitators campaigning for the recreation of the defunct republic of Biafra have been organising demonstrations up and down Igboland, calling for secession and the release of Radio Biafra director Nnamdi Kanu. Chief Obasanjo, who was an army commander during the civil war, has appealed to them that what the nation needs right now is better communication and not to go on another conflict.

Chief Obasanjo said: “Our differences could only be addressed when issues are discussed instead of going to war. We do not need another civil war as we have fought one before and I was part of it.”

Speaking at the unveiling of a banquet hall in his name built by Dr Eke Agbai, the executive vice president of the Centre for Policy and Foreign Engagement in Abiriba, Abia State, Chief Obasanjo warned that war was a bad thing. He added that Nigeria's numerous ethnic groups need to talk to one another more rather than engage in confrontation.

 “I saw with my eyes, I heard with my ears and I smelled with my nose. What we need is better communication and I am here to communicate with you,” Chief Obasanjo added.

Over recent weeks, the spate of demonstration by Igbo separatist groups has centred on an issue that had again exposed deep and longstanding ethnic fault lines in Nigeria. A previous unilateral declaration of an independent Republic of Biafra in 1967 led to a brutal civil war that left more than 1m dead in nearly three years of fighting.