The Biafra Story

by Frederick Forsyth

  I now come to the most difficult but most important part of this statement. I am doing it conscious of the great disappointment and heartbreak it will cause all true and sincere lovers of Nigeria and of Nigerian unity, both at home and abroad, especially our brothers in the Commonwealth. As a result of the recent events and of the previous similar ones, I have come to strongly believe that we cannot honestly and sincerely continue in this wise, as the basis for trust and confidence in our unitary system of Government has been unable to stand the test of time. I have already remarked on the issue in question. Suffice it to say that putting all considerations to the test, political, economic as well as social, the basis for unity is not there, or is so badly rocked, not only once but many times. I therefore feel that we should review the issue of our national standing and see if we can help stop the country from drifting away into utter destruction.*

  The last sentence but one does not finish. After a phrase like ‘so badly rocked, not only once but many times’ one would expect the word ‘that’ followed by an announcement of the consequences of the rocking. Moreover, it is nonsensical to suggest that the peroration of stopping the country from drifting to destruction would be likely to cause disappointment and heartbreak to all true lovers of Nigeria. In fact, before editing, the speech was to have announced the North’s secession.

  Had it done so, there seems little doubt that the West, Midwest and East would soon have reached a suitable modus vivendi, and shortly afterwards North and South could have entered into a Confederacy of autonomous states or at the least a Common Services Organization that would have put all the erstwhile economic benefits within the reach of all parties while avoiding the powder keg of the racial incompatibility of North and South.

  By this time Gowon had either named himself or had been named Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and Head of the National Military Government of Nigeria. In the East Colonel Ojukwu had no hesitation in refuting Gowon’s right to either title. It is of vital importance in understanding why Biafra exists today to realize that after 1 August 1966, Nigeria did not have one legitimate government and one rebel regime, but two separate de facto governments ruling different parts of the country.

  The July coup was radically different from the January coup in one other respect, as had become clear by 1 August. In the first coup the mutineers did not achieve power, but ended up in prison. In the second they took over the control at the Federal Government and in two Regions. The third Region recognized the new régime later. The fourth Region never did, nor was it obliged to in law.

  That was why the coup failed. Its objects were to extract revenge (which it did) and then to secede (which it did not). Having opted to change the second objective into a take-over of all power, the coup leaders were then obliged to presume acquiescence by the two unaffected Regions. When they did not get it from the larger of these two, Nigeria was effectively divided into two parts.

  But the British Commonwealth Office had got what it wanted, and recognition followed. In October, appealing to the Northerners to stop killing the Easterners in their midst, Gowon was able to use the argument that ‘You all know that since the end of July God in His power has entrusted the responsibility of this great country of ours, Nigeria, into the hands of another Northerner… .’

  THE QUESTION OF LEGITIMACY

  One of the main bases of the Nigerian and British Government case against Biafra is that its Government is illegitimate while that of Colonel Gowon remains the sole legitimate government inside the country. But legal experts exist, by no means all Biafrans, who maintain that in law both regimes have a case.

  That of the present Nigerian Military Government is based on its effective control of the capital and three of the former Regions, a rule extending over seventy per cent of the population. The diplomatic world has an obsession with capitals, and control of the capital city counts for much. Had Lagos been in the Eastern Region and had Gowon taken over the three outlying Regions while Colonel Ojukwu kept the Eastern Region and the capital, possibly the diplomatic advantage would have swung the other way.

  Colonel Ojukwu’s claim that it is the Gowon Government rather than he that is in a state of rebellion and therefore illegitimate is based on the continuance of lawful authority in the Eastern Region after July 1966. Earlier General Ironsi had been appointed to his post as Supreme Commander and head of the Supreme Military Council by almost the entire existing Cabinet of Ministers. Had this cabinet sat after the death of Premier Balewa (at that time it was presumed he had only been kidnapped) under the chairmanship of an Ibo minister, it might have been later said that the appointment had been ‘fixed’. But the chairmanship was taken by Alhaji Dipcharima, a Hausa, and senior ranking minister of the Northern People’s Congress party.

  Nor did General Ironsi bring undue pressure to bear on the politicians. He told them, quite realistically as it turned out, that he was unable to guarantee the loyalty of the army to the rule of law unless the army took over. With Nzeogwu marching south and many garrisons seething with unrest, this was no exaggeration. General Ironsi’s appointment may therefore be judged to have been legitimate in law. It was he who appointed Colonel Ojukwu to govern the Eastern Region, which was a legitimate appointment.

  For Colonel Ojukwu the only man who was entitled to the post of successor to General Ironsi was the next-ranking senior officer, Brigadier Ogundipe. If Ogundipe were not nominated, a plenary meeting of the Supreme Military Council would have had to name a successor. This did not happen. Colonel Gowon either named himself to the post, or he was named by the mutineers in the first three days after 29 July. Among these there was only one member of the Council, Colonel Hassan Usman Katsina, Governor of the North. Even the later meeting of the Council that confirmed Gowon in the post was not plenary, since it was held under conditions that made it impossible for Colonel Ojukwu to attend with more than a tiny chance of getting out alive.

  Only in the East did government continue uninterrupted and undisturbed by the events of July 1966. The train of legitimate appointment remained unbroken. For the Biafrans their break from Nigeria in May 1967 was, in view of the treatment accorded to the Region and its citizens, legitimate in international law, and this claim is not without its international supporters.

  * The evidence for the incidents at Ibadan and Ikeja barracks is in the Military Archives, National Defence HQ, Umuahia, Biafra.

  * Schwarz, op. cit., p. 211.

  CHAPTER 5

  Two Colonels

  The two men who now held effective power in the two so far unreconciled parts of Nigeria were utterly different. Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon was thirty-two, the son of a Methodist minister and mission-trained evangelist from one of the smallest tribes in the North, the Sho Sho. He came from near the town of Bauchi. In early youth he too had had a mission-school training, and later went to a grammar school. At the age of nineteen he joined the army, and was lucky to be sent soon after for officer training first at Eaton Hall, then Sandhurst. He returned to Nigeria to take up the career of a normal infantry officer, and later attended more courses in England, notably at Hythe and Warminster. On his return again he became the first Nigerian Adjutant and later served like General Ironsi in the Nigerian contingent in the Congo. During the January coup he had been on yet another course in England, this time at the Joint Services Staff College.

  In appearance too he was utterly different from his fellow officer across the Niger. He is small, dapper and handsome, always beautifully groomed and with a dazzling, boyish smile. But probably in nothing are the two leaders as different as in their characters. Those who knew Gowon well, and who served with him, have described him as a mild, meek man who would not hurt a fly – personally. But they also describe him as having a strong streak of vanity and a strain of spite behind the instant charm which has endeared him to so many foreigners since he came to power. In political terms the greatest reproach made by the Biafrans of moderate views is that he is weak and vacillating when confro
nted by the necessity to make firm decisions, a man easily swayed by stronger and more forceful spirits, cowed by a bullying, hectoring approach, and certainly no match for many of the army officers who led the July coup or the shrewd civil servants who saw in his régime a path to power within the country.

  For the Biafrans Gowon has never been the real ruler of Nigeria, but an internationally acceptable front-man, smooth with visiting correspondents and journalists, charming with diplomats, endearing on television.

  Gowon’s weakness of character became noticeable shortly after he took power. One of his first acts was to order a stop to the killing of Eastern officers and men of the Nigerian Army. However, as has been shown, the killing went on with little check until late in the month of August. Two years later he apparently had no more control over his armed forces. Time and again he swore to correspondents and diplomats that he had ordered his air force to stop bombing civilian centres in Biafra; but the rocketing, bombing and strafing of markets, churches and hospitals continued relentlessly.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu is an entirely different person. He was born thirty-five years ago at Zungeru, a small town in the Northern Region where his father was staying on a short visit. The father, Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, who died in September 1966 with a knighthood and several million pounds in the bank, started life as a small businessman from Nnewi in the Eastern Region. He built up a nationwide road haulage business, had the foresight to sell out for a high price when the railways were coming into their own, and put his assets into property and high finance. Everything Sir Louis touched turned to gold. He invested in building land in Lagos at a time when prices were low; by the time he died the tracts of marshy ground on Victoria Island, Lagos City, were being snapped up at fancy prices as Victoria Island was earmarked for the new diplomatic and residential suburb of the expanding capital.

  The story of his second, but favourite son, can hardly be described as a rags-to-riches tale. The family dwelling where the young Emeka Ojukwu played before going to school was a luxurious mansion. Like most wealthy businessmen, Sir Louis kept open house and his mansion was a meeting place for all the moneyed elite of the prosperous colony. In 1940 the young Ojukwu entered the Catholic Mission Grammar School, but soon moved to King’s College, the smart private academy modelled closely on the lines of one of Britain’s public schools. Here he remained until he was thirteen, when his father sent him to Epsom College, set amid the rolling green hills of Surrey. He recalled later that his first impression of Britain was a sense of being completely lost ‘amid this sea of white faces’. The isolation of a small African boy in such a totally strange environment caused the first moulding of the character that was to follow. Driven in on himself he developed a private philosophy of total self-reliance, an unyielding internal sufficiency that requires no external support from others. Despite frequent clashes with established authority in the form of his housemaster, he did reasonably well, played a good game of Rugby and set a new junior discus record which still holds.

  He left at the age of eighteen and moved to Lincoln College, Oxford. It was here he had his first clash of will with his father, and won. Sir Louis was very much the Victorian father, a strongwilled head of the family who expected to have to brook little opposition to his wishes on the part of his offspring. In his second son he seemed to recognize something of himself, and he was probably right. Sir Louis wanted his son to study law, but after the statutory one year Emeka Ojukwu changed to Modern History which interested him much more. He still played Rugby, and almost got a Blue, and obtained a degree without excessive exertion. His three years at Oxford were the happiest of his life; he was coming up to twenty-one years of age, strong and goodlooking, wealthy and carefree.

  When he returned to Nigeria he was noticeable in Lagos, he remarks now, ‘only for the impeccable cut of my English suits’. Then came the second clash with his father. The obvious thing would have been for Ojukwu to go into any one of the prosperous business concerns owned by his father, or one of his father’s friends, where promotion would be automatic and work minimal. It says much for his independence that he sought a job where he could do something on his own without the too influential pall of the Ojukwu name hanging over him. He opted for the civil service and asked to be sent to the Northern Region, hoping thus to escape his name and paternity.

  But the built-in regionalism of the civil service prevented it. The North was for the Northerners and the young Ojukwu was sent instead to the East. Having his son enter the civil service in a humble grade was a blow to Sir Louis, but he put up with it. Going to the East was a blow to Ojukwu. He had hoped to escape his father’s name, influence and prestige. Instead he found it everywhere. Sir Louis was the local boy who had made good, his name was magic, and the new Assistant Divisional Officer soon realized that whatever his performance his annual reports were bound to be glowing. No superior would dare send in a bad report on the son of Sir Louis. This was the last thing the young man wanted.

  In an attempt to prove himself, he threw himself into the work with a vengeance, choosing to get out of town as much as possible and help in building roads, ditches, culverts among the peasantry. Ironically it was a vital apprenticeship for his present position, and one on which he draws constantly. In those two years the favoured young man from Lagos learned to know his own people, the Ibo, at the level of the common man, to understand their problems, hopes and fears. Most important of all he is tolerant of their weaknesses and makes allowances for their failings, something that is often beyond the understanding of his other Western-educated colleagues and fellow officers. It is this bond with the people, a deep and two-way communication, that today provides the basis of his leadership of the Biafran people, and which still baffles his foreign opponents who wish he had been the victim of a coup long ago. The people know his understanding of them and their customs, and reply with an abiding loyalty to him.

  But after two years in the civil service, working among Ibos and non-Ibos in the East, he decided to leave and join the army. The reason is an ironic one for the man now accused by some of ‘breaking up the Federation’. He was such a convinced Federalist that the narrow confines of regionalism that strait-jacketed the civil service got on his nerves. In the army he saw an institution where tribe, race and standing at birth counted for nothing. It was also a framework in which he could lose the cloying prestige of the Ojukwu name and earn his promotion on his own merits.

  He was immediately sent for officer training at Eaton Hall, Chester, and emerged as a second lieutenant. (He is sometimes wrongly referred to as having been at Sandhurst.) After further courses at Hythe and Warminster, he returned home and got his first posting – to the Fifth Battalion based at Kano in Northern Nigeria. Two years later he was promoted Captain and sent to Army Headquarters at Ikeja Barracks, Lagos. This was in 1960, independence year.

  For the wealthy bachelor officer of Nigeria’s darling army, life was very pleasant. In 1961 he was sent to the West African Frontier Force training school at Teshie in nearby Ghana as a lecturer in tactics and military law. Top of the class in tactics was Lieutenant Murtela Mohammed.

  Later that year Captain Ojukwu returned to the Fifth Battalion at Kano, but was soon promoted Major and sent to the First Brigade Headquarters at Kaduna. The same year he served at Luluabourg, Kasai Province, Congo, with the Third Brigade of the United Nations peace-keeping force during the Katangese secession. From here he was selected for further military training and in 1962 attended the Joint Services Staff College in England. In January 1963 he was made a Lieutenant-Colonel and as such became the first indigenous Quartermaster General of the Nigerian Army.

  It was while in this position that he took the decision and gained the experience that was later to enable him to give the lie to British Government claims that arms shipments from London to Lagos were only a part of ‘traditional supplies’. While in office he operated a policy of ‘buy the best at the price from whatever the source’. Und
er this policy most of the old arms contracts with British firms were cancelled, and fresh ones placed with more price-competitive manufacturers in Holland, Belgium, Italy, West Germany and Israel. By the time the present war broke out the Nigerian Army remained dependent on Britain for the supply of ceremonial dress uniforms and armoured cars only.

  A year later he went back to the Fifth Battalion, this time as Commanding Officer. It was while he was at Kano during 1965 that the young Major Nzeogwu at Kaduna was plotting the January 1966 coup. No one has ever bothered to suggest that Colonel Ojukwu was party to, or knew about, this coup. The plotters left him strictly alone. For one thing he was regarded as too much an ‘establishment’ figure; more important, however, was that it was known that his legalistic turn of mind would make the idea of rebellion against legally constituted authority repugnant to him.

  When the coup of January 1966 exploded he was one of the few who did not lose his head. Gathering the Provincial Administrator and the Emir of Kano together in conclave he urged them both to join with him in keeping Kano and its province free from disturbance and bloodshed. They were successful; there was no rioting in Kano. Within hours he was on the telephone to General Ironsi pledging his support and that of the Fifth to the loyal side.

  A few days later, when Ironsi needed an Eastern Region officer to become Military Governor of the East, he called on Colonel Ojukwu to take the job.