The Biafra Nations Youth League (BNYL) has stated that the Biafran war would have been averted if the Federal Government had complied with the Aburi Accord.

It blamed the inability of the former Head of State, Gen Yakubu Gowon, to implement the Aburi agreement and his refusal to stop the killing of Easterners as a remote cause of the war.

Addressing newsmen on Tuesday, in Ikot Ekpene, Akwa Ibom State, Chief Press Secretary of BNYL, Richard Odung, accused Western elites of misleading Gowon.

“The westerners contributed immensely to the war. It would have been averted but they misled Gowon to reject what he accepted before Kwame Nkrumah and other world observers. I think that war wouldn’t have occurred if the Aburi was implemented,” he said.

He said that “some people of the Niger Delta who were used as instrument to frustrate the Government of the East are today clamouring for what was agreed in Aburi.”

Odung was reacting to the 50 years anniversary of the Biafran war which claimed the lives of 1.2 million Nigerians.

He debunked claims that the first coup resulted to the war. His words: “I don’t believe it was because of the first coup, yes an Igboman from Delta State was the leader of the coup but there are some other persons in the North and West that were part of that coup as history recorded.

“Even as that, the Easterners controlled the Nigerian Army as at then, and they were not happy with the way the Prime Minister was going about his appointments and policy making without consulting the ceremonial President, Nnamdi Azikiwe.”

He recalled the Kano riot in 1956 during the constitutional conference, the BNYL Spokesman said that the killing of Easterners did not start immediately after the first coup.

He advised the Buhari government not to repeat the mistakes of Gowon by thinking that the use of force will end the demands for a sovereign state of Biafra.

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