There Was a Country: A Memoir

by Chinua Achebe

  There are some scholars who believe that the Igbo turned to Emeka Ojukwu by virtue of the fact that he was the governor of the Eastern Region of Nigeria at the time of the crisis—the “man in power” theory. Others have gone as far as to suggest that the war would have been prevented if there was a leader other than Ojukwu in place. The first statement will be debated for generations. As for the second, I believe that following the pogroms, or rather, the ethnic cleansing in the North that occurred over the four months starting in May 1966, which was compounded by the involvement, even connivance, of the federal government in those evil and dastardly acts, secession from Nigeria and the war that followed became an inevitability.

  To be sure, there were a number that harbored alternative points of view. One of those people was the distinguished diplomat Raph Uwechue, who served as Biafra’s envoy to Paris up until 1968, and then later as Nigeria’s ambassador to Mali. Uwechue published a well-known personal memoir called Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War: Facing the Future in 1969, in which he unleashed a scathing criticism of Ojukwu and the leadership he provided for Biafra:

  In Biafra two wars were fought simultaneously. The first was for the survival of the Ibos [sic] as a race. The second was for the survival of Ojukwu’s leadership. Ojukwu’s error, which proved fatal for millions of Ibos [sic], was that he put the latter first.22

  Many who share Uwechue’s point of view cite as an example Ojukwu’s refusal to accept $600,000 from the British for relief supplies; they see this as evidence of a beleaguered albeit committed adversary who made ideological rather than practical or pragmatic decisions. Uwechue’s conclusions about the Biafran people are, however, far more controversial, in my opinion:

  The Biafran masses, enslaved by an extremely efficient propaganda network and cowed by the iron grip of a ruthless military machine, had neither the facts nor the liberty to form an independent opinion. The case of the elite was different. . . . Those who had access to the facts knew that the time had come to seek a realistic way to end the war. . . . In private they expressed this view but proved too cowardly to take a stand and tell Ojukwu the truth.23

  The late Senator Francis Ellah, a close friend of mine who helped set up the Biafran mission in London, and then served Biafra in several capacities, provides much more of a middle-ground analysis. He does, however, come down on the side of the many who believed that the Biafrans, not just the Nigerians, missed a number of opportunities to compromise and end the war earlier than they did:

  I think the circumstances that led to Biafra were very unique; I remember that when I heard news of the secession on the radio I almost broke down . . . the causes were quite traumatic. I think once secession had been declared, the efforts made to fight the war were staggering. We were highly impressed by the solidarity shown by the Eastern Region. Then we had a cause we were fighting for.

  I think that around March 1968, when we were in a position to achieve a confederation, we should have accepted the chance or opportunity. When we were insisting that Biafran sovereignty was not negotiable, as the government thought at the time, we ought to have considered the tragedy of the situation, because this country would have been much better if we had a confederation of four to six states, other than what we have now. Around the time of the Kampala talks there were definite signs that a confederation could be achieved. The Biafran side was adamant on the fact of sovereignty being nonnegotiable.24

  THE FIRST SHOT

  That lone rifle-shot anonymous

  in the dark striding chest-high

  through a nervous suburb at the break

  of our season of thunders will yet

  steep its flight and lodge

  more firmly than the greater noises

  ahead in the forehead of memory.1

  The Biafran Invasion of the Mid-West

  The Nigeria-Biafra War began soon after Emeka Ojukwu’s proclamation of secession. Gowon decided to first use the federal army’s First Command in what he termed a “police action,”1 in an attempt to “restore federal government authority in Lagos and the break-away Eastern region.” The move to capture the Biafran border towns of Ogoja and Nsukka proved to be a declaration of war. Following this, in July 1967, Nigerian troops attempted to cross the Niger Bridge into Biafra. The Biafran army was able to halt its advance and disperse them.2

  That Biafran response became an advance, leading to the taking of a large swath of the Mid-Western Region in a surprise maneuver that the Nigerian federal troops had not anticipated. Ojukwu explained his ambitious plan this way:

  Our motive was not territorial ambition or the desire of conquest. We went into the Midwest (later declared the Republic of Benin) purely in an effort to seize the serpent by the head; every other activity in that Republic was subordinated to that single aim. We were going to Lagos to seize the villain Gowon, and we took necessary military precautions.3

  Despite the euphoric verbal heroics espoused by Ojukwu, John de St. Jorre, the well-regarded reporter for The Observer, provided a far more subdued picture of Biafran army readiness and organization:

  The Biafrans “stormed” through the Mid-West not in the usual massive impedimenta of modern warfare but in a bizarre collection of private cars, “mammy” wagons, cattle and vegetable trucks. The command vehicle was a Peugeot 404 estate car. The whole operation was not carried out by an “army” or even a “brigade” . . . but by at most 1,000 men, the majority poorly trained and armed, and many wearing civilian clothes because they had not been issued with uniforms.4

  In the days preceding the Biafran invasion I was informed by friends and relatives who lived in the Mid-West Region5 that the air there was rife with rumors of an impending federal takeover to provide it with strategic and logistical access to Eastern Nigeria if war broke out. The leading political and traditional leaders of the Mid-West had made it clear to Gowon that they wanted no part of a civil war and that the region would be neutral in the event of any hostilities. There were several reasons for this position. Apart from a desire for peace during a precarious period, the leaders of that part of Nigeria recognized that their citizens were of a multiethnic background, including a sizable Igbo population.

  The Biafrans utilized this knowledge in mapping out their strategy. The leaders of the offensive related their reasons for occupying the Mid-West as one “organized to prevent the Federal Government from ‘forcing Mid Westerners to enlist to fight against their own people,’ thus undermining the mediatory role which the Mid-West had been playing.” Indeed, some scholars speculate that Governor David Ejoor, the military governor of the Mid-West, was informed of Ojukwu’s intention to invade and that both men could have very well met to discuss the implications of such an action.6

  Brigadier Victor Banjo was one of the masterminds7 of this successful Biafran offensive. Ojukwu had released Banjo, a Nigerian soldier who had allegedly taken part in the January 15 coup d’état and was detained in Ikot Ekpene Prison. Banjo had been found guilty of treason by the Nigerian federal government despite his insistence of innocence. He decided to stay on Biafran soil after secession rather than return and face court-martial. Ojukwu got tactical, strategic, and political mileage from having Banjo in Biafra, and he enjoyed the prospect of having a Nigerian soldier fight for him. Against protests in certain Biafran military quarters, Ojukwu brought Victor Banjo into the statehouse at Enugu as one of his close military confidants and advisers. Victor Banjo, it was widely known, was not in favor of Ojukwu’s secessionist aspirations but favored a solution to Nigeria’s problems that would result in the “deamalgamation” of the country back into Southern and Northern Nigeria.8

  In the late evening of August 14, 1967, soon after the Biafrans invaded the Mid-Western Region, Brigadier Banjo spoke to Mid-Westerners and Nigerians over the airwaves from Benin. Hundreds of thousands of listeners across the nation tuned in, expecting a detailed ex
planation for the invasion and a description of the long-term plans of the Biafran army. Some of the questions running through my mind and the minds of many Nigerians across the nation included the following: Who exactly was behind this invasion? Was this a temporary occupation? What was the long-term plan? What would be the reaction of Gowon and the Nigerian federal forces?

  Banjo’s address was a disappointment. It sounded to me far more like a lament of the breakup of Nigeria than a speech coming from “a Biafran military leader” or an explanation for the invasion of Nigerian territory or Biafran secession.

  Banjo dedicated the first half of his message to what sounded like an overview of Nigeria’s political and military history and his own travails within that establishment. In the second half of the speech he finally got around to explaining to his listeners that the Biafran invasion was “not a conquest . . . or an invasion” but an exercise designed to “enable the people of the Mid-West to see the Nigerian problem in its proper perspective.” Banjo appealed to all civil servants to return to work the very next day and assured them of their safety. In a veiled threat, he warned those who failed to comply that they would lose their jobs.9

  Closely following Banjo’s speech was the promulgation by the Biafrans of a new decree that established what would be known as the Republic of Benin (the area occupied by Biafran forces in the Mid-Western Region) and the appointment of Major Albert Nwazu Okonkwo as its military administrator. Okonkwo’s administration, we were told, would supersede the previous government of the military governor, David Ejoor, who had been appointed by the Nigerian head of state.

  Major Okonkwo found his brief, some might say draconian, rule—he imposed martial law, curfews, and limited accessibility—punctuated by insurrections and burdened by the assaults of organized underground resistance groups. Many Mid-Westerners passed along to me accounts of their conflicting feelings after the Biafran offensive: “We, on the one hand, were being told by the Biafran propaganda machinery that we were being liberated from tyranny, but on the other [we were] feeling like an occupied military zone under martial law.”10

  There was also growing discontent among the Biafran soldiers who were only there on military assignment but increasingly found themselves targets of local hostility. There were reports of Biafran troops seeking medical treatment for food poisoning suffered at the hands of cooks who had been recruited from the surrounding “occupied areas.” The Biafran soldiers were under siege from several fronts.11

  According to civil war lore, Ojukwu was livid upon learning about the contents of Banjo’s speech to Mid-Westerners following Biafra’s takeover because it did not “sufficiently demonstrate solidarity with his own secessionist aspirations to leave Nigeria.”12 Ojukwu apparently also had been told that Banjo was complicit in a plot that enabled David Ejoor—the erstwhile military governor of the Mid-Western Region—to escape from the clutches of the Biafran forces. This made it possible, the allegations continued, for Ejoor to meet with the federal government in Lagos and provide the Nigerian head of state with critical military and tactical information about the Biafran offensive. It was also alleged that Banjo failed on purpose to continue the surprise offensive as planned beyond Ore in the Mid-West to Nigeria’s administrative capital, Lagos, and largest commercial city, Ibadan, after direct contact with agents of the federal government and Yoruba leaders.13 Banjo’s detractors, who never trusted him in the first place, had by this time successfully labeled him a traitor and an enemy of the state of Biafra.

  In 1982, Ojukwu provided a glimpse of his disappointment about the role that Banjo played in the Mid-West offensive: “The stop in Benin was the beginning of the error. . . . My plan for that operation was that by half past five in the morning, the Biafran troops would be in the peripheries of Lagos.”14

  A counterpoint can be obtained from the Nigerian general Olusegun Obasanjo’s memoir My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970. In it Obasanjo creates some doubts as to whether or not Victor Banjo intentionally refused to proceed farther to Ibadan and Lagos as directed: “A renowned social critic . . . and [I] discussed Banjo’s request for me to grant him unhindered access to Ibadan and Lagos at any price. Both the request and the price were turned down.”

  So did Banjo, without Ojukwu’s consent, make a tactical decision not to proceed beyond Ore after the military intelligence available to him demonstrated that it could be a suicide mission? Was Victor Banjo a traitor or a misunderstood hero? I think posterity will debate this question for a long time, because Banjo was subsequently executed by Ojukwu and did not leave written documents to prove or disprove his innocence.15

  Gowon Regroups

  Following the Biafran invasion of the Mid-West, Gowon reorganized his war strategy. He placed some of his best military personnel in three key roles as part of his agenda to “crush the Biafrans.” Mohammed Shuwa was commander in charge of the First Division of the federal army. His orders were to advance from Northern Nigeria with his troops to take the Biafran towns of Nsukka and Ogoja.1 Colonel Murtala Muhammed, in charge of Division Two, had marching orders to retake Benin and the other parts of the Mid-West occupied by the Biafran army, and then cross the River Niger into Onitsha. Finally, Division Three of the Nigerian army, led by Benjamin Adekunle (aka “the black scorpion”), would commandeer a southern offensive.2 Three months later the Nigerian forces, now more organized and “armed to the teeth” with British weapons, had staged a successful counteroffensive. The Biafrans were now in full retreat.3

  The Nigerian army pushed back the Biafrans and arrived at the outskirts of “the Republic of Benin” in September 1967, led by Murtala Muhammed. His Second Infantry Division mounted a resurgent attack from two fronts���defending their advance and pushing forward in a classic “Greek army offensive.”4 The retreating Biafran forces, according to several accounts, allegedly beat up a number of Mid-Westerners who they believed had served as saboteurs. Nigerian radio reports claimed that the Biafrans shot a number of innocent civilians as they fled the advancing federal forces.5 As disturbing as these allegations are, I have found no credible corroboration of them.

  The Asaba Massacre

  The federal forces were soon able to snatch Benin from Biafran military hands and advance quickly toward the River Niger, arriving in Asaba in early October 1967. There are multiple versions of what transpired in Asaba. The version I heard amounted to this: Murtala Muhammed—chief commander (GOC) Division Two—and his lieutenants, including Colonel Ibrahim Haruna, felt humiliated by the Biafran Mid-Western offensive. Armed with direct orders to retake the occupied areas at all costs, this division rounded up and shot as many defenseless Igbo men and boys as they could find. Some reports place the death toll at five hundred, others as high as one thousand.1

  The Asaba Massacre, as it would be known, was only one of many such postpogrom atrocities committed by Nigerian soldiers during the war. It became a particular abomination for Asaba residents, as many of those killed were titled Igbo chiefs and common folk alike, and their bodies were disposed of with reckless abandon in mass graves, without regard to the wishes of the families of the victims or the town’s ancient traditions.2

  His Holiness Pope Paul VI, having received no commitments from either the Nigerians or the Biafrans for a cease-fire, sent his emissary, the well-regarded Monsignor Georges Rocheau, to Nigeria on a fact-finding mission. The horrified Roman Catholic priest spoke to the French newspaper Le Monde following the visit, recounting what he witnessed:

  There has been genocide, for example on the occasion of the 1966 massacres. . . . Two areas have suffered badly [from the fighting]. Firstly the region between the towns of Benin and Asaba where only widows and orphans remain, Federal troops having for unknown reasons massacred all the men.3

  General Gowon broke his silence thirty-five years later on this matter and apologized for this atrocity to the Igbos in Asaba:

 
It came to me as a shock when I came to know about the unfortunate happenings that happened to the sons and daughters . . . of [Asaba] domain. I felt very touched and honestly I referred to [the killings] and ask for forgiveness being the one who was in charge at that time. Certainly, it is not something that I would have approved of in whatsoever. I was made ignorant of it, I think until it appeared in the papers. A young man wrote a book at that time.4

  Testifying at the Justice Oputa Panel (a Nigerian version of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission), Major General Ibrahim Haruna, belligerent and unremorseful as ever, proclaimed:

  As the commanding officer and leader of the troops that massacred 500 men in Asaba, I have no apology for those massacred in Asaba, Owerri, and Ameke-Item. I acted as a soldier maintaining the peace and unity of Nigeria. . . . If General Yakubu Gowon apologized, he did it in his own capacity. As for me I have no apology.5

  Murtala Muhammed advanced quickly following the abomination in Asaba to cross the Niger River Bridge to Onitsha. Muhammed’s federal troops sustained many casualties in that guerrilla warfare, and from sniper attacks by Achuzia’s Biafran troops, and they failed to take the market town in the first attempt.

  Biafran Repercussions

  The exhausted, fleeing Biafran soldiers crossed the River Niger and arrived in Enugu, Biafra’s capital. Their actions had unanticipated consequences. Ojukwu, nursing the wounds of, as he saw it, a “self-inflicted defeat,” summarily court-martialed the leaders of the exercise. The accused men—Brigadier Victor Banjo, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Sam Agbamuche, and Major Phillip Alale—were found guilty of planning a coup d’état to overthrown Ojukwu’s regime, a treasonable felony punishable by death. All four men were executed on September 25, 1967.1