Civil War Massacre: Asaba People Urged To Eschew Hatred

Asaba  natives have been enjoined to eschew hatred and to forgive the grave wrong done to them during the Nigerian civil war.
The call was made by Alban Ofili-Okonkwo, Chairman, Asaba Seven October Memorial Group  (The Taskforce), during this year’s commemoration of the 1967 massacre, at which more than 700 unarmed indigenes of Asaba were killed; a sordid episode that signposts one of the most tragic chapters of the Nigerian civil war
Ofili-Okonkwo observed that the  people of Asaba have “carried our blood-splattered Akwa Ocha for half a century, mindful that children of victims have not only inter-married with the children of the accused, but have given birth to children of their own who bear Asaba blood in every sense”.
According to him, two generations have passed and the decision of the Asaba community, “to rinse our Akwa Ocha in the waters of the Niger after 50 years does not dissolve the crimes, cannot quench the engines of the Nigerian or international legal system, nor does it relieve those whose job it is to secure justice from the responsibility of so doing”.