Planned to coincide with the worldwide celebration of the month of May as Igbo Heritage Month, the protest march was organized by the International Coalition of Igbo Organizations (ICIO) in conjunction with the Igbo Canadian Community Association of Toronto (ICCAT) and the Biafra Liberation Movement (BLM). The protest attracted ndi Igbo and Biafrans from all walks of life, many of whom drove more than 500 kilometers from Toronto and parts of the United States to Ottawa, the seat of the Canadian government.

The organizations staged the action to alert Canadians and the international community to the carefully orchestrated campaign by the Olusegun Obasanjo regime to kill the Igbo Language and its speakers in a four-stage process that includes the following:

1. dropping the Igbo Language, an important African language, from the list of official languages for conducting official business in Nigeria to hasten the demise of the language and its speakers 2. excluding religion and ethnicity from the upcoming 2005 census in order to hide the numerical superiority of the largely Christian Igbo people

3. counting the millions of native Igbo speakers living in every village, city, and state throughout Nigeria as non-Igbo speakers and, by so doing, beefing up the populations of the non-Igbo tribes in Nigeria to the detriment of the Igbo Nation
4. slapping the status of a minority language on the Igbo Language to justify Olusegun Obasanjo’s ill-conceived plan to delist Igbo as an official language of business in Nigeria and eventually bring about the demise of the Igbo people

The protest march began at the intersection of Catherine and O’Connor streets in downtown Ottawa. From there, the protesters matched along McLeod and Metcalfe streets before arriving at their destination -- the Nigerian High Commission on 295 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, Canada

As soon as the protesters, all of whom carried colourful placards with slogans in English and French languages, arrived at the High Commission, their spectacular presence sent a wave of panic across the entire High Commission and temporarily grounded all diplomatic businesses. And from the outside, the demonstrators watched the employees of the High Commission peering at them from the windows of the three-story building.

At the High Commission, the protesters distributed flyers that outlined some of their grievances against the Nigerian government to hundreds of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists who were generally sympathetic to their cause. In addition, many motorists blew their horns loudly in front of the High Commission as a gesture of solidarity with the Igbo demonstrators.

Shortly after the arrival of the demonstrators at the High Commission, Ambassador Olufemi Oyewale George sent his white driver on a reconnaissance mission to surveil the grounds outside the High Commission and find out what the demonstration was about.

The driver walked casually out of the building, turned right, and pretended as if he was one of the passers-by going about their daily businesses in Ottawa. But as soon as he was given a flyer by one of the demonstrators standing on the sidewalk, he turned 180 degrees and went back inside the High Commission with the flyer.

At about 12h40, two other Nigerian-looking officials of the High Commission emerged from the building on another reconnaissance patrol and fact-finding mission. They walked towards one of the demonstrators who immediately gave each of them a flyer outlining some of the main grievances that necessitated the demonstration.

Like the High Commissioner’s white driver, the Nigerian-looking officials turned 180 degrees after receiving the flyers and walked in the opposite direction towards a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) cruiser parked close to the High Commission. Moments later, the consular officials and the RCMP officer inside the cruiser approached the demonstrators with a request from Ambassador Olufemi Oyewale George, who wanted to talk to the demonstrators inside the High Commission and requested that they send two or three representatives to talk with him inside his office.

After deliberating on the request for a few seconds, the demonstrators flatly rejected the High Commissioner’s invitation. “If the High Commissioner is interested in talking to us,” the demonstrators told the consular emissaries, “he should come out of his ivory mansion and see us on the street.” “And if he thinks that he is tortoise, the prince of wisdom that can lure us into a diplomatic trap,” quipped another demonstrator in reference to an Igbo proverb, “he should remember that we are the bush that protects him from predators.”

After arguing unsuccessfully that the High Commissioner would be more comfortable talking to the demonstrators inside his office than on the street, the consular negotiators said that they just wanted it to be on record that Ambassador Olufemi Oyewale George wanted to talk to the demonstrators in his office and they refused. For their part, the demonstrators that included this reporter reiterated, for the record, that they, too, were disposed to receive the High Commissioner on the street and hear what he had to say. “One thing we are not prepared to do,” they added, “is to meet with Ambassador Olufemi Oyewale George inside the High Commission, on his own terms.”

At that point, the consular officials went back inside the High Commission, the RCMP officer charged with the responsibility for keeping an eye on the demonstrators returned to his cruiser, and the demonstrators continued their march for several hours.

In the end, the president of the Igbo Canadian Community Association of Toronto thanked the protesters for making the demonstration a phenomenal success and declared the groups’ mission of the day accomplished. The demonstrators then patted each other on the back for a job well done before the elated participants from Toronto left Ottawa to prepare for the next demonstration.