By Moses Okezie-Okafor

If history has taught anything to nations and peoples who have suffered collective trauma, it is that when their aspirations for progress pair with strategic vision, they can remix their trauma into power and turn defeat into destiny. I can think of no better modern example of this than China and her incredible recovery from the experience known to every Chinese as the Century of Humiliation.

The Century of Humiliation refers to the period in Chinese history spanning 1839 to 1949 – one hundred years of external subjugation during which the East Asian nation endured conquest, internal collapse, and national disgrace. The term, now firmly immortalized and repurposed for national motivation, became pivotal to their growth and present stature as an elite global superpower.

The old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing was destroyed in October 1860 by invading British and French troops during the Second Opium War, after British High Commissioner Lord Elgin ordered its burning in retaliation for European deaths at the hands of Qing forces. The ruins of this imperial complex is preserved in the heart of China’s capital as a haunting symbol of the nation’s Century of Humiliation.

According to the BBC, today the site is just ‘…piles of scorched masonry, lakes with overgrown plants, lawns with a few stones scattered where many buildings once stood.’ Officially, the Chinese maintain these ruins not merely as historical remnants, but as a permanent reminder to themselves of the pain of subjugation and the enduring resolve never to be humiliated again. They have even managed to immortalize it as a UNESCO world heritage site.

As a Nigerian and an Igbo man, and one actively engaged in efforts toward national and regional cooperation and integration, I am convinced that fifty-five years after the Nigeria Civil War ended, memories of the devastation should be motivating us to accelerate healing and recovery as well as growth and development. This is where the Chinese response to a similar fate holds lessons for us.

At a time when internal crises threaten to derail decades of painstaking, but mostly individualized, progress from the damage of the civil war, Ndigbo must choose wisely: either to be trapped by historical grievance – deploying the current IRA-style bloody agitations that further destroy our land – or to transcend it through smart endeavor, the way the Chinese have.

Luckily for our post-war generations, those who actually fought the war learned lessons enough from it – from the leader and generalissimo of the Biafran Armies himself, Dim Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, to every veteran who sallied forth in any direction outside Igboland after it ended unsure of the kind of reception awaiting them. In so doing they deployed a roadmap for us that remains as compelling today as it was half a century ago.

Every Gen X (born 1965-1980) has firsthand knowledge of how our parents, initially battered, shattered and scattered by the unnatural brutality of those three years of war, actively sought cooperation and integration within Nigeria once the war ended, and pursued it with such purpose and vigour that Ndigbo became, as of today, the ethnic nationality with the highest per capita wealth distribution in Nigeria.

My late father, Mazi Anamezie Okafor (Nw’agu n’Efe-Efe), went from having never lived outside Eastern Nigeria before the war to migrating North soon after hostilities ceased – leaving my mother and his young children behind at Ukpor. He ventured from Kogi to Sokoto before finally settling in Suleja, where he built a modest but adequate life for us.

By the time he died in 2021, he had fully passed the baton to us. He, who was barely twenty-three when he donned the Biafran colours, returned from that war still younger than many of the agitators now ruining An’Igbo in the name of Biafra – and yet he relearn Ed, after the war, what it meant to act with full agency for the benefit of his posterity.

The mandate of every Igbo alive today is to continue forging new frontiers of transformation and power – within Nigeria and beyond. As I have always argued, Biafra’s best chance of emerging lies in becoming an unstoppable ideological force that burns like fire in our spirits – and manifests as motivation in our development. Until it permeates and drives uncommon technological advancement in our region, it will never have the chance to become a physical geopolity.

This is where the experiences and responses of the Chinese to an identical moment in their history can serve as trail markers and guideposts for us. The Chinese Century of Humiliation was a deep national wound, beginning with the First Opium War (1839-1842), when British imperial forces imposed unequal treaties on Qing China, forcing open ports and ceding Hong Kong. It continued through the Second Opium War, the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions, the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895), and the carving up of Chinese territory into spheres of foreign influence by Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan.

By 1949, after nearly fifty years of hostile occupation, China was economically broken, militarily weak, politically fragmented, and internationally marginalized. Yet the Communist Party of China – under Mao Zedong and later Deng Xiaoping – rechanneled this collective trauma into a strategy of national rejuvenation. Deploying the Four Modernizations (1978) – targeting agriculture, industry, defence and science and technology – they ushered in comprehensive reforms and rebuilt China’s capacity for self-sufficiency and global competitiveness.

The Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (1980) transformed a sleepy fishing village into a manufacturing and technology powerhouse, establishing a model of export-driven growth that propelled China onto the world stage. The Belt and Road Initiative (2013) sought to create global infrastructure and trade networks, asserting China’s leadership in the international order.

The Made in China 2025 plan (2015) was explicitly designed to push China up the value chain in advanced manufacturing, robotics, biotechnology, and new energy technologies – ending reliance on foreign innovations. By the time 2025 rolled along and President Trump attempted to reassert U.S. global trade dominance with crippling tariffs, especially on China, the world discovered that China had become the world’s factory – and could call America’s bluff.

What happened was that China internalized its humiliations, strategically retooled, and emerged not merely as a survivor of the Century of Humiliation, but as a shaper of global destiny. The parallels with the Igbo experience after the Biafran War (1967–1970) are unmistakable. Most importantly, there is a lesson for Ndigbo in the Chinese response that can lead from ruin to renewal.

In the wake of surrender, Igbo citizens faced policies like the ’20 Pounds Repatriation’ cap on reclaimed bank accounts and were systematically excluded from many early post-war development programmes – if not deliberately, then certainly because they lacked the capital to compete. Yet, over fifty years, we have rebuilt our lives from the ashes with extraordinary tenacity, reviving trade, education, and entrepreneurial leadership across Nigeria and many parts of the world.

However, in the last half-decade, rising separatist agitations have increasingly turned inward – degenerating into violence, criminality, and internecine bloodletting across the South East. Ironically, this is happening at a time when regionalism and decentralization within Nigeria are advancing – through policies such as the establishment of state policing frameworks and regional economic cooperation pacts.

The Chinese model is one of strategic investment in self-determination. China’s renaissance was not predicated on anger or perpetual protest. It was built on deliberate human capital development through investment in universities, technical institutes and international scholarships.

China simultaneously executed fearsome infrastructural modernization – prioritizing high-speed railways, ports, manufacturing zones, and energy independence. It even achieved the most seemingly impossible deed of them all – global market integration – by making itself a central node in the world’s supply chains rather than remaining a peripheral player clinging to historical grievance.

This raises the specter that an Igboland once marginalized from the post-war indigenisation and nationalization wealth transfer now risks isolation and exclusion again – this time through self-sabotage and internal fragmentation. If China responded to subjugation by building Shenzhen, Hangzhou, and Shanghai into economic fortresses, why should Igboland respond to marginalization by turning Onitsha, Aba, and Enugu into pariah cities for trade, commerce, and development?

For Ndigbo, the priority must be similar. We must transform Awka, Umuahia, Abakaliki, Enugu, and Owerri into capitals of forward-thinking governance – while concurrently building Onitsha and Nnewi, Aba and Abriba, Abakaliki and Afikpo, Nsukka and Enugu, as well as Owerri and Mbaise, into hubs of production and innovation.

These lofty dreams will require massive investment in technical education, research, and entrepreneurship – a tough call, no doubt, but do we have a choice? Once again, we must leverage our diaspora not only for remittances but for technology transfer, global investment, and policy influence.

Fortunately, being Nigerians gives us access to every part of the biggest market on the African continent, as of right. Igbo traders already control critical segments of Nigeria’s domestic economy. Imagine what is possible if this prowess is elevated into structured industrialization, financial innovation and globalized entrepreneurship – preferably by refining and expanding the Igbo Apprenticeship System (IAS) into a revised Igbo Entrepreneurship System (IES).

Even better, imagine an Igboland where the unmatched wealth of its people – earned through decades of trade, enterprise and global enterprise – is not just hoarded or displayed, but harnessed as a deliberate instrument of socio-political capital. Just as the Jews of medieval Europe transformed their dispersed communities into a tightly woven financial network that underwrote kingdoms and shaped empires, so too can we as Ndigbo convert our immense monetary assets into a continental force.

From Aba to Atlanta, Nnewi to New York, nobody yet disputes that the Igbo are everywhere – industrious, wealthy and, above all, networked. If even a fraction of that wealth were pooled and directed strategically, we could build political institutions, not just in our South East enclave but wherever we are found.

We will be so formidable we can cement interpeople friendships, influence political power – and therefore policymaking – and underwrite leadership at all levels that protects and projects Igbo interests across Nigeria and Africa. This is not a dream of exclusion or dominance, but of leverage – economic power as a foundation for cultural affirmation, policy influence and regional transformation.

Imagine Igbo-owned development banks funding infrastructure in the South East, tech hubs backed by diaspora capital, and policy think tanks shaping national discourse. When money moves in unity with vision, it becomes power. And when power aligns with purpose, it becomes legacy. Ndigbo already have the money. What remains is to activate the network and awaken the will to shape not just markets, but history.

We can expand our trade and commerce globally without seeking to occupy other regions and peoples politically. Despite the assurances of the Nigerian Constitution, all Nigerians – Ndigbo included – are deeply attached to their political and territorial independence and will fight to the death to defend it. Fortunately, cooperation and integration as envisaged under Nigerian law can happen without any compulsion to meddle in other people’s culture and politics.

On the other hand, everyone welcomes commerce and industry and is pleased to do business with anyone who guarantees mutual benefit. The goal, of course, is not to abandon our history or the deep cuts we have been dealt – but to own it and strategically deploy it to construct a vastly improved future for ourselves and our posterity. Our trauma must birth our triumph – or the labours of our heroes past would have been in vain.

The takeaway is that the world is not static. Nations that master their history shape their future; those that obsess over grievance merely prolong their defeat. History does not favor the bitter – it favors the builders.

China turned a century of humiliation into the fuel for its modern global power. Ndigbo can and must do the same. Not through anger, violence, or endless lamentation – but through excellence, innovation, and a firm resolution to build cities, industries and institutions that no federation, no matter how flawed, can afford to ignore.

Instead of a conclusion, let me end with an opulent vision – one that I pray becomes a magnificent obsession, some day, for Ndigbo. The time has come for the five South Eastern states to stop competing as isolated entities and begin cooperating as a unified engine of regional advancement. Each state, with its unique strength, holds immense promise. However, as long as they act apart, that promise remains fragmented.

The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Together, these states can form a formidable bloc capable of attracting global investment, negotiating national relevance, and delivering prosperity at scale. I propose the creation of a tightly coordinated, development-focused regional partnership modeled loosely after the UAE, but with even more focus on shared economic infrastructure, unified policy direction and regional brand building.

I would call it The South East Economic Region (SEER) – with a central investment board, joint development zones, harmonized tax incentives, a regional rail spine and shared innovation hubs. SEER can leapfrog fragmentation and position the South East as a singular destination for industrialisation, tech innovation, agro-processing, and high-value services. Our people already operate as one in the marketplace. It is time our governments followed suit in the corridors of planning, policy and prosperity.

Ndigbo, the blueprint is clear – the God of Heaven has prospered us - let us, His servants, arise and build.

Moses Okezie-Okafor is a lawyer, policy strategist and doctoral researcher in Peace and Conflict Studies. He writes on governance, education and leadership reform, with a focus on building systems that work for all – especially the underserved.