The Nigerian Civil War will take the centre stage of the national discourse on Monday as Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, among other eminent Nigerians, will examine the Nigerian state 50 years after the Biafran War.

Tagged ‘Never Again Conference: Nigerian Civil War 50 years After’, the summit is billed to situate the Nigerian state against the 30-month civil war that left in its wake a sharply divided nation with mutual suspicion, hatred and resentment across racial and regional lines.

“This is aside from an estimated one million victims who were reportedly killed during the war.”

The conference which is a brainchild of pan-Igbo socio-cultural organisation, Ndigbo, Lagos and Nzuko Umunna, according to Dr Raymond Obieri, is a sequel to the highly successful ‘Handshake Across the Niger’ which celebrated the unique and many shared but often ignored common attributes and mutual interests between Nigeria’s racial groups as epitomised by the age-long peaceful coexistence and robust relationships.

“The Never Again Conference is aimed to promote nation building, forgiveness, healing, reintegration, stability, and national cohesion. We also want to use the occasion to call for national reflection and encourage building bridges among ethnic groups in Nigeria.”

Also the Coordinator of Nzuko Umunna, Mr Joseph Odumuko, said the lecture was being organised to underscore the lessons learnt from the civil war in Nigeria.

Odumako said, “It is against this backdrop that Nzuko Umunna and Ndigbo Lagos are organising the lecture to mark the 50 years post-civil war remembrance and underscore the lessons learned.

“Nzuko Umunna is a pan Igbo socio-cultural group comprising Igbo professionals both at home and in the Diaspora. The summit is billed to hold in Lagos on January 13, 2020 at the MUSON Centre, Lagos.

“Buoyed by regional competition rather than cooperation among other subterranean factors, mutual suspicion has persisted among Nigeria’s racial groups for about 50 years now. Most politicians have eagerly exploited these national fault lines to their political advantage.”

According to him, the development has been fuelled by a seeming lack of political will towards a robust and focused interrogation of the civil war, its causes, and hard lessons.