BIAFRA AND THE PROPHETIC DYNAMICS OF FREEDOM
The quest for the freedom of Biafra has progressively gained a penetrating reality of thrust and revitalization. This article-series pursues a systematic explication of the fundamental principles of prophecy identifiable in the current campaign for the restoration of Biafra. Otherwise, my interest is to explore various elements that represent this whole new dynamism towards the restoration of Biafra as a prophetic masterpiece. We need to begin with an adequate conceptual clarification of what I mean by “prophetic” which is why this exploration is properly set within the Scriptural context of Jewish historicity. By “prophetic” I mean the nature and the historical process of development and realization, in time, of God’s own promise to his people. Biafrans like the Israelites, as the legitimate people of Chukwuokikeabiama, have a special place in the heart of God. This is evident in the distinctive names we give to our Children. God wants to restore us now as he restored Israel. The prophetic movement of Israel began with the prophet Elijah approximately 830 BC. He was followed by his successor, Elisha – the only instance in the Old Testament of the designation of a person as a prophet-successor. Prophecy stretches from roughly 800years to approximately 500years before Christ.
My main curiosity is therefore in the collective predominant perception of prophecy within a relatively dense historical worldview of Israel. What is it about the restoration of the State of Israel that we Biafrans can identify with in our current struggle for freedom? And my answer to that is: Prophecy! Israel, as a geopolitical and geographical reality, is unequivocally a child of prophecy, otherwise of divine destiny. As a student of Scriptural theology one thing I continue to find absolutely mind-blowing is the tremendous impact of the whole prophetic movement of Israel on its historical, socio-political and cultural identity. The phenomenon of prophecy is constitutive of the bulk of Israel’s metanarrative (history). There is a profound and irreducible reality of confidence in the inevitability of the fulfilment of the promises of Yahweh that is distinctive of the Jewish people.
This keeps in harmony their monotheistic faith and social responsibility as a direct consequence of that covenant. This dynamics gives Israel a distinctive, fundamental perspective through which it mirrors itself in relation to Yahweh and to the rest of the world. Freedom would remain elusive to us until we recognize that Biafra is a prophecy whose fulfillment is imminent and inevitable. To give up hope, at any time, is to choose to perish in exile!It is important for us to develop a Scripture-based context, of historical, social, theological and ideological nature, by which Biafrans might begin to appreciate the prophetic dynamics of our freedom. God is about to do a great thing in our life: the restoration of Biafra. How prophetic! Therefore my approach in this “prophecy-series” would be pretty much, pedagogical and interpretative; one that offers a resplendent insight into our own reality by tapping us into the ideological world of prophets. It is a comparative analysis of the charismatic phenomenon of prophecy in both Israel and Biafra. We need to grasp, across an extensive spectrum of prophecies about Israel, the prophetic character of our collective optimism and persistent sacrifice of many people, in the past and in the now, for the restoration of Biafra.
Like Israelites, Biafrans are heavily persecuted in the British-made exilic “Babylon”, called Nigeria. There has been a historically incontrovertible evidence of a persistent attempt towards a systemic destruction and alienation of the entire Biafran race orchestrated by the British. We share the same genocide experience with Israel although not on the same degree of intensity. Our land is on siege and our basic natural resources violently taken away from us. Our people are scattered across the entire earth, desperately in search of a promising life across the Mediterranean Sea. Many of them perish on the way – a quintessential experience of exile! Many of us are in various prisons (zoological cages) across Nigeria, excruciatingly tortured and extra-legally killed.
We are continuously victimized, hunted down and crushed by the force of arms by a government that was elected to protect us. Each time we ask for freedom to life and self-determination as a people we get massacre in return. The feeling of abandonment and of being rejected and unloved is tangible among us. The worst is that a lot of Biafrans are not getting it as to why they need to be liberated. They seem to prefer a perpetual slavery under pharaoh-Buhari. They refuse to wake up to the reality that God has an awesome plan for them outside the land of exile. Their experience of a few false prophets of Biafra in the past has contributed to their apparent lack of enthusiasm for the holy land of Biafra. So they rebel at their Moses (Kanu): “You want to bring us out into the desert and abandon us. It is better to be slave to Pharaoh-Buhari (in Nigeria) forever than to die in the desert” (Ex 14:12). But little do they realize their greatness and potential as a people!
Certainly, fear and doubt have been instilled in many Biafrans over many years as a consequence of the war. Not surprisingly, some just think the promise land is a dream that
can never be actualized. They have lost absolute trust in Chukwuokikeabiama and have given themselves over to a foreign god in a foreign land. In that state of absolute defencelessness, we can only hope that our help comes from Chukwuokikeabiama who made heaven and earth! Biafra is a prophetic course sanctioned by God; and this is why the more we are persecuted the more our determination to go home intensifies in the midst of all that. Never shall we sing the Chukwuabiama’s song in the land of our enemy! It is important to realize that we are already constructing the new Biafra (new Jerusalem) and, like Israel, all what goes on now will definitely constitute our metanarrative –our founding history as a people.
It is reasonable to believe that Biafra is the way God is restoring humanity to himself. Therefore, we must go beyond our immediate need of Biafra to actually develop a perception of it that is continentally inclusive. In Biafra Africa is being restored. The sun rises and the continent comes to a re-birth that will see it flourish in an unprecedented way through the grace of God’s Kingdom on earth – Biafra. An emergence of a free Biafra, in the final analysis, signals the ultimate liberation of the entire continent of Africa from the shackles of the modern-day slavery. On the basis of its advantageous position before Chukwuokikeabiama Biafra constitutes the light through which humanity would rediscover its worship of true God, a worship that is necessarily imbedded in and effectively realized through the living consciousness of its prophetic existence. God bless Biafra!!!
By Ekene Obiakor
Melbourne VIC, Australia
The quest for the freedom of Biafra has progressively gained a penetrating reality of thrust and revitalization. This article-series pursues a systematic explication of the fundamental principles of prophecy identifiable in the current campaign for the restoration of Biafra. Otherwise, my interest is to explore various elements that represent this whole new dynamism towards the restoration of Biafra as a prophetic masterpiece. We need to begin with an adequate conceptual clarification of what I mean by “prophetic” which is why this exploration is properly set within the Scriptural context of Jewish historicity. By “prophetic” I mean the nature and the historical process of development and realization, in time, of God’s own promise to his people. Biafrans like the Israelites, as the legitimate people of Chukwuokikeabiama, have a special place in the heart of God. This is evident in the distinctive names we give to our Children. God wants to restore us now as he restored Israel. The prophetic movement of Israel began with the prophet Elijah approximately 830 BC. He was followed by his successor, Elisha – the only instance in the Old Testament of the designation of a person as a prophet-successor. Prophecy stretches from roughly 800years to approximately 500years before Christ. My main curiosity is therefore in the collective predominant perception of prophecy within a relatively dense historical worldview of Israel. What is it about the restoration of the State of Israel that we Biafrans can identify with in our current struggle for freedom? And my answer to that is: Prophecy! Israel, as a geopolitical and geographical reality, is unequivocally a child of prophecy, otherwise of divine destiny. As a student of Scriptural theology one thing I continue to find absolutely mind-blowing is the tremendous impact of the whole prophetic movement of Israel on its historical, socio-political and cultural identity. The phenomenon of prophecy is constitutive of the bulk of Israel’s metanarrative (history). There is a profound and irreducible reality of confidence in the inevitability of the fulfilment of the promises of Yahweh that is distinctive of the Jewish people.
This keeps in harmony their monotheistic faith and social responsibility as a direct consequence of that covenant. This dynamics gives Israel a distinctive, fundamental perspective through which it mirrors itself in relation to Yahweh and to the rest of the world. Freedom would remain elusive to us until we recognize that Biafra is a prophecy whose fulfillment is imminent and inevitable. To give up hope, at any time, is to choose to perish in exile!It is important for us to develop a Scripture-based context, of historical, social, theological and ideological nature, by which Biafrans might begin to appreciate the prophetic dynamics of our freedom. God is about to do a great thing in our life: the restoration of Biafra. How prophetic! Therefore my approach in this “prophecy-series” would be pretty much, pedagogical and interpretative; one that offers a resplendent insight into our own reality by tapping us into the ideological world of prophets. It is a comparative analysis of the charismatic phenomenon of prophecy in both Israel and Biafra. We need to grasp, across an extensive spectrum of prophecies about Israel, the prophetic character of our collective optimism and persistent sacrifice of many people, in the past and in the now, for the restoration of Biafra.
Like Israelites, Biafrans are heavily persecuted in the British-made exilic “Babylon”, called Nigeria. There has been a historically incontrovertible evidence of a persistent attempt towards a systemic destruction and alienation of the entire Biafran race orchestrated by the British. We share the same genocide experience with Israel although not on the same degree of intensity. Our land is on siege and our basic natural resources violently taken away from us. Our people are scattered across the entire earth, desperately in search of a promising life across the Mediterranean Sea. Many of them perish on the way – a quintessential experience of exile! Many of us are in various prisons (zoological cages) across Nigeria, excruciatingly tortured and extra-legally killed.
We are continuously victimized, hunted down and crushed by the force of arms by a government that was elected to protect us. Each time we ask for freedom to life and self-determination as a people we get massacre in return. The feeling of abandonment and of being rejected and unloved is tangible among us. The worst is that a lot of Biafrans are not getting it as to why they need to be liberated. They seem to prefer a perpetual slavery under pharaoh-Buhari. They refuse to wake up to the reality that God has an awesome plan for them outside the land of exile. Their experience of a few false prophets of Biafra in the past has contributed to their apparent lack of enthusiasm for the holy land of Biafra. So they rebel at their Moses (Kanu): “You want to bring us out into the desert and abandon us. It is better to be slave to Pharaoh-Buhari (in Nigeria) forever than to die in the desert” (Ex 14:12). But little do they realize their greatness and potential as a people!
Certainly, fear and doubt have been instilled in many Biafrans over many years as a consequence of the war. Not surprisingly, some just think the promise land is a dream that
can never be actualized. They have lost absolute trust in Chukwuokikeabiama and have given themselves over to a foreign god in a foreign land. In that state of absolute defencelessness, we can only hope that our help comes from Chukwuokikeabiama who made heaven and earth! Biafra is a prophetic course sanctioned by God; and this is why the more we are persecuted the more our determination to go home intensifies in the midst of all that. Never shall we sing the Chukwuabiama’s song in the land of our enemy! It is important to realize that we are already constructing the new Biafra (new Jerusalem) and, like Israel, all what goes on now will definitely constitute our metanarrative –our founding history as a people.
It is reasonable to believe that Biafra is the way God is restoring humanity to himself. Therefore, we must go beyond our immediate need of Biafra to actually develop a perception of it that is continentally inclusive. In Biafra Africa is being restored. The sun rises and the continent comes to a re-birth that will see it flourish in an unprecedented way through the grace of God’s Kingdom on earth – Biafra. An emergence of a free Biafra, in the final analysis, signals the ultimate liberation of the entire continent of Africa from the shackles of the modern-day slavery. On the basis of its advantageous position before Chukwuokikeabiama Biafra constitutes the light through which humanity would rediscover its worship of true God, a worship that is necessarily imbedded in and effectively realized through the living consciousness of its prophetic existence. God bless Biafra!!!
By Ekene Obiakor
Melbourne VIC, Australia
God bless you my beloved Ekene! And God bless Great Biafra!
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