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We Are Ndi Igbo, Not Biafrans, A Political Name Has Served Its Purpose
By Tochukwu Ezeoke
There is a difference between who we are and what we once called ourselves for survival. For Ndi Igbo, that distinction is no longer academic; it is a matter of identity, security, and destiny.
Today, I argue a simple but uncomfortable truth:
Join our WhatsApp ChannelWe are Ndi Igbo, not Biafrans.
“Biafra” was a political necessity in a tragic era; it has served its historical purpose.
To insist on this is not to betray our dead, nor to trivialize the horrors of the civil war. It is to defend the deeper, older, and more enduring identity that predates both Nigeria and Biafra: Igbo.
An Ancient People, Ndi gboo: Igbo Before Nigeria, Before Biafra.
Long before the word “Nigeria” appeared in any British document, the Igbo people already formed a distinct civilization in the Lower Niger region. Archaeological discoveries at Igbo-Ukwu (in today’s Anambra State) reveal a complex society flourishing as early as the 9th–11th centuries CE, with advanced bronze casting, long-distance trade, glass bead technology, ritual artistry and sophisticated burial practices.
Pottery from Nsukka and Afikpo dated to as far back as 3000–2500 BC suggests even earlier cultural continuity in what we now call Igboland.
Politically, the Igbo developed a predominantly republican system: decentralized, village-based, and governed by councils of elders and age grades, with spiritual but limited political authority vested in institutions such as Nri and Arochukwu.
When the Portuguese first encountered our people in the 15th century, they did not bring our identity; they merely struggled to spell it—writing Eboe, Heebo, Ibo—but always in reference to a people who already knew themselves as Igbo.
In other words:
• The name Igbo is indigenous, rooted in language and culture.
• It predates colonization, the Atlantic slave trade, and the Nigerian state.
• It expresses a civilization, not a political accident.
This is who we are at our deepest level: Ndi Igbo.
Biafra: From European Maps to Wartime Necessity
Now consider Biafra.
The word does not originate from our shrines, proverbs, or oral traditions. It first appears in European maps between the 15th and 19th centuries as Biafar, Biafara, Biafra, and Biafares. These maps used “BiafaraBiafra” to describe a region of the West African coast – areas of present-day West Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the eastern Niger Delta, not exclusively Igboland.
The coastal indentation there became known as the Bight of Biafra, later renamed the Bight of Bonny. It was a major zone of the transatlantic slave trade, exporting Igbo, EfikIbibio, Ijaw, Bamileke and other peoples into bondage.
So historically:
• Biafra was a geographical term, coined and used by Europeans.
• It was multi-ethnic, referring to various coastal and hinterland groups.
• It was never the indigenous, exclusive name of the Igbo people.
Fast forward to the 1960s. After independence, Nigeria unravelled through coups, counter-coups, and horrific anti-Igbo pogroms in the North between 1966–1967. Easterners – mostly Igbo but including other ethnic groups – faced systematic violence and displacement. When political negotiations failed, the leadership of Eastern Nigeria declared an independent state on 30 May 1967.
They chose to call it “The Republic of Biafra”.
Why not “Republic of Igbo”? Because the region was not purely Igbo; it included Ibibio, Efik, Ijaw, and others. A neutral, historical coastal name—already appearing on maps as the Bight of Biafra—offered an umbrella identity under which all Easterners could unite in the face of perceived annihilation.
Thus:
Biafra, as a political name, was a wartime necessity, not an ethnic origin.
When the war ended in 1970, the federal policy of “No victor, no vanquished” formally abolished Biafra, but the emotional weight of the name remained, especially among those who lost family, property, and homeland.
That emotional memory is understandable.
But emotion must not be allowed to overwrite history.
The Dangerous Confusion of Names
What has happened in recent years is deeply troubling:
• A geographical label (Biafra)
• Reused as a wartime political project
• Has now begun to compete with, and even overshadow, the much older ethnic identity of “Igbo.”
This confusion is not harmless. Under the banner and rhetoric of “Biafra” today, we see:
• Enforcement of illegal sit-at-home orders that paralyze Igbo markets and small businesses.
• Arson against vehicles, shops, and public infrastructure in Igbo towns.
• Kidnapping and extortion of Igbo traders, professionals, and travellers.
• Assassination and intimidation of traditional rulers, political figures, and ordinary residents.
These acts are not primarily happening in Abuja or Kaduna.
They are happening in Ala Igbo – in our own homeland.
And they are being carried out, in many cases, by Igbo youths against fellow Ndi Igbo, wrapped in the flag and rhetoric of a political name that was never our ethnic identity to begin with.
This is the bitter irony of our time:
In the name of Biafra, Igbo people are now being terrorized in Igboland.
Biafra Has Served Its Purpose
To say that Biafra was a political necessity is to acknowledge the conditions that birthed it:
• Unchecked pogroms.
• Failed negotiations (e.g., Aburi).
• A regional consensus that the East could no longer guarantee its safety within the federation at that time.
In that moment, the name “Biafra” helped to mobilize, to organize, and to draw global attention to a humanitarian catastrophe.
But we must be honest:
• The war ended in 1970.
• The state of Biafra ceased to exist in law and in fact.
• The conditions of the 1960s are not identical to today.
A name that arose as an emergency political strategy cannot indefinitely substitute for a civilizational identity that precedes it by millennia.
The political necessity has served its historic purpose.
What remains forever is Igbo.
The Igbo Identity: Our Real Source of Power
All the achievements that make Ndi Igbo respected across the world – our entrepreneurship, scholarship, resilience, and creativity – came not from the name “Biafra” but from Igbo culture and identity.
It was Igbo society that produced:
• The complex metallurgy and art of Igbo-Ukwu.
• The republican village democracies that puzzled colonial administrators.
• The intellectual and political giants of the 20th century, from Nnamdi Azikiwe to Chinua Achebe.
• The Ohanaeze Ndigbo, emerging in 1978 as an umbrella group to advocate for Igbo interests in a post-war Nigeria.
Our underlying strength has always come from Ndi Igbo – our communal ethos, our emphasis on education and trade, our adaptability, our refusal to be broken by disaster.
To allow a later, externally-derived, and now heavily politicized name to overshadow this deeper identity is to weaken ourselves.
Crime in the Name of Biafra Is a Crime Against Ndi Igbo
We must confront a hard moral fact:
Any crime committed in the name of Biafra today is a crime committed against the Igbo nation.
When a trader is kidnapped on the Enugu–Onitsha road and the kidnappers shout Biafra slogans, the victim is usually Igbo.
When a child cannot go to school because of a “sit-at-home,” that child is Igbo.
When investors decide the South-East is “too unstable” and take their projects elsewhere, it is our youths who remain unemployed.
This is not liberation; it is slow-motion self-destruction.
No serious liberation struggle is built on strangling its own people, burning their livelihoods, or subjecting them to perpetual fear. Political grievances, however legitimate, do not justify the internal colonization of our homeland by armed non-state actors who answer to no community authority and respect no traditional institution.
We Must Name Ourselves Correctly
Ndi Igbo are not powerless. We have a voice, elders, institutions, and a global diaspora. We must use them to re-assert a simple hierarchy of identity:
1. First and always: we are Ndi Igbo.
2. “Biafra” was a historical political project, not our ethnic DNA.
3. Any movement that harms Igboland in the name of Biafra has lost moral legitimacy.
We honour our war dead not by allowing their memory to be abused, but by protecting the living Igbo nation they would have wanted to see flourish.
We can – and should – continue to discuss restructuring, equity, fairness, and justice in Nigeria. Those arguments remain valid. But we must do so as Ndi Igbo, with clarity, strategic thinking, and moral consistency.
A Call to Ndi Igbo Everywhere
This is not a call to forget. It is a call to remember properly.
Remember that:
• Our oldest name is Igbo, not Biafra.
• Our deepest strength lies in our culture, not in armed posturing.
• Our future depends on education, enterprise, and unity – not fear, extortion, and violence.
We must say, collectively and without stammer:
Not in our name.
Not on our land.
Not against our people.
The political label has done what history allowed it to do.
Its time as our primary banner has passed.
What remains is the enduring civilization that stood before it and will stand after it:
We are Ndi Igbo, and that is more than enough.
