There Was a Country: A Memoir

by Chinua Achebe

5. Information from former classmates in Ibadan and Umuahia and their family members.

  6. It was generally believed that both Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu of the Eastern Region (Biafra) and Lieutenant Colonel David Ejoor of the Mid-Western Region met secretly on several occasions to discuss the crisis before and even after the declaration of Biafra. In a recent interview, Ejoor (now a retired major general) admitted that all of these actions were taken “to prevent battle on Benin soil and to protect everybody’s interest, including the Igbo-speaking citizens [of the Region], even though [he] primarily supported the Federal Government.”

  Source: S. E. Orobator, “The Biafran Crisis and the Midwest,” African Affairs 86, no. 344 (July 1987), pp. 367–83; African Affairs is published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society.

  7. Others included Ojukwu, General Philip Effiong, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Major Sam Agbamuche, Major Phillip Alale, and Major Okonkwo.

  8. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook: Nigeria, the 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon’s Government; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.

  9. See Appendix for details of the speech.

  10. Achebe Foundation interviews: Nigerian soldiers from the former Mid-Western Region. © Achebe Foundation, 2008.

  11. Ibid. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook.

  12. “Victor Banjo’s Third Force [was] a movement opposed to both Gowon’s Federal Military Government and Ojukwu’s separatist regime in Biafra, ‘which thinks in terms of a common denominator for the people.’”

  Source: Holger G. Ehling, ed., No Condition Is Permanent: Nigerian Writing and the Struggle for Democracy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), p. 51.

  13. Achebe Foundation interviews: Biafran and Nigerian soldiers. © Achebe Foundation.

  14. Interview with Odumegwu Ojukwu in New Nigerian, July 21, 1982.

  15. Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980); Wole Soyinka, The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka (London: Africa Book Centre, 1972) ; David A. Ejoor, Reminiscences (Lagos, Nigeria: Malthouse Press, 1989); Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.

  Gowon Regroups

  1. Anthony Clayton, Frontiers Men: Warfare in Africa Since 1950 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 94.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Michael Leapman of The Independent, in a brilliant article on the subject, provides great illumination of the British reaction to the Mid-West offensive:

  [T]he Biafrans scored a military success (their only one, as it turned out) when they marched into the Mid-West Region and occupied Benin. This provoked a rethink in Whitehall. The Commonwealth Office set out five choices. A and B involved maintaining or increasing arms to Nigeria, C was to stop all supplies, D to promote a peace initiative and E a combination of the last two. Thomas wrote to Wilson [the prime minister], holidaying in the Scillies, recommending Option E. That view might have prevailed had not Sir David Hunt, British ambassador in Lagos and a keen advocate of the Federal cause, flown to Britain and persuaded the government to continue providing arms.

  Soon the war turned in Gowon’s favor and in November the flexible Thomas wrote to Wilson again, proposing this time that arms supplies be stepped up: “It seems to me that British interests would now be served by a quick Federal victory.”

  Source: Leapman, “British Interests, Nigerian Tragedy,” The Independent, on cabinet papers that recall the starving children of the Biafran war.

  4. Interview with retired Nigerian army officer who prefers to remain anonymous.

  5. Nigerian Radio news broadcasts monitored from Enugu. There has been no credible corroboration of these claims that I found.

  The Asaba Massacre

  1. Ibid. One year later Muhammed’s forces would invade Onitsha, where he lay siege to the largest market in West Africa. During the “Otuocha market massacre,” as it came to be known, over five hundred innocent women and children visiting or working in the market were killed.

  2. Interviews with Nigerian and Biafran army officials.

  3. Monsignor Georges Rocheau (sent down on a fact-finding mission by His Holiness the Pope), April 5, 1968, as reported in Le Monde (the French evening newspaper) and Forsyth, The Biafra Story, p. 210.

  4. Austin Ogwuda, “Gowon faults setting up of Oputa Panel,” Vanguard, December 9, 2002.

  5. General Haruna, who was under cross-examination by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo (a pan-Igbo group) counsel, Chief Anthony Mogbo, senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said whatever action he or his troops took during the war was motivated by a sense of duty to protect the unity of the country.

  Source: Ogwuda, “Gowon faults setting up of Oputa Panel.”

  Biafran Repercussions

  1. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia: Requiem Biafra.

  2. Ibid.

  Blood, Blood Everywhere

  1. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 94.

  The Calabar Massacre

  1.

  Rev. David T. Craig, writing in the Presbyterian Record of December 1967 (Scotland), gave more revelation of Nigerian acts of genocide under the caption of “Operation Calabar”: “A group of Efik people (the local inhabitants) brought two young men in civilian dress to the soldiers. The young lads looked like secondary school students. With the Northern soldiers was an Efik-speaking soldier. It was his duty to question prisoners in the Efik language. His job was to see if any spoke Efik with an Ibo [sic] accent. These two young lads did. The soldiers took aim and they were shot on the spot.” (Emphasis in original.)

  Source: “The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1999): A Call for Reparations and Appropriate Restitution, A Petition to the Human Rights Violations Investigating Committee, by Oha-na-Eze (The Apex Organization of the Entire Igbo People of Nigeria) for and on Behalf of the Entire Ndi Igbo, October 1999,” http://magazine.biafranigeriaworld.com/oha-na-eze/october-1999-human-civil-rights-petition.html.

  2. The quote is from Alfred Friendly Jr., “Pressure Rising in Nigeria to End Civil War as Military Standoff Continues,” New York Times, January 14, 1968; see also, M. S. Armoni, The Minority of One, Vol. 10 (1968); Forsyth, The Biafra Story.

  3. The Times (London), August 2, 1968.

  4. Ibid.

  5. “The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1999), October 1999.”

  6. The American Jewish Congress reports:

  Some Nigerian commanders, notably Colonel Benjamin Atakunle [sic], maintain that the denial of food to Biafran-held areas and to Ibo [sic] people in Federally-controlled areas, is a legitimate and necessary strategy. As Colonel Atakunle [sic] himself told a Dutch newspaper: “I want to see no Red Cross, no Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no Pope, no missionary, and no UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Ibo [sic] having even one piece to eat before their capitulation.

  Source: Quoted in Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968, from the London Economist, August 24, 1968, as cited in the Village Voice, October 17, 1968.

  7. Thirty-four years later, in a Nigerian Guardian newspaper article published on July 25, 2004, with the caption “I Did Not Dislike Igbos, But I Had A War to Win,” Adekunle provides his perspective on his duties as a soldier for the federal forces:

  Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle has finally dispelled the notion that he is a hater of the Igbo. “I don’t dislike Igbos. But I learned one word from the British and that
is “sorry.” I did not want this war. I did not start this war—Ojukwu did. But I want to win this war. So I must kill Igbos. Sorry!”

  He is referring to the 30-month Nigerian Civil War that lasted between 1967 and 1970. This explanation is contained in the book, “The Nigeria-Biafra War Letters: A Soldier’s Story (Vol. 1),” an explosive account of his role in the war. Brigadier Adekunle was the Commander of the “Third Marine Commando,” the dreaded force that operated in controversial circumstances during the war.

  Source: www.igbofocus.co.uk/html/biafra_news.html#I-did-not.

  8. Achebe, Transition, pp. 31–38.

  9. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 94.

  10. Hugh McCullum reports:

  By this time, it appeared as if the Igbo people had lost all their cities including the oil centre of Port Harcourt and the capital, Enugu. Soon 5 million people were squeezed into a tiny oval-shaped enclave of 2,000 sq km around the market town of Umuahia, the new capital . . . touting his now infamous ‘final offensive,’ [underestimating the Biafrans] “Gowon boasted that war would be over in two weeks. The war in fact turned into a bloody and bitter one . . .” painfully stretching out over a 30 month period.

  Source: Hugh McCullum. “Biafra Was the Beginning.” AfricaFiles, no. 8 (May 27, 2004) © AfricaFiles; www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=5549.

  11. African-American Institute, Africa Report 14 (1969).

  12. Solange Chaput-Rolland, The Second Conquest: Reflections II (Montreal: Chateau Books, 1970); Peter Schwab, Biafra, Interim History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008).

  13. Newspaper clippings; radio broadcasts monitored in Biafra; travelogues seen during diplomatic trips.

  BIAFRA, 1969

  1. Chinua Achebe, Collected Poems (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).

  The Republic of Biafra

  THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATION OF A NEW NATION

  1. Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Dictionary © Random House, Inc. 2012. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/republic?s=t.

  2. For the full text of the Ahiara Declaration, please visit: http://www.biafraland.com/Ahiara_declaration_1969.htm.

  3. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe, p. 140.

  4. Author’s recollection of events.

  The Biafran State

  1. “Republic of Biafra,” The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2008. Encyclopedia.com, April 2, 2010; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; www.worldstatesmen.org/Nigeria.htm; Metz, Nigeria.

  2. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis; Biafra @ a glance, www.kwenu.com/biafra/biafra.htm; Biafra Foundation, http://biafra.cwis.org/pdf/BiafraNewsAgency23.pdf, p. 6; Metz, Nigeria.

  3. Johnston Akunna Kalu Njoku, Enyi Biafra: Regimental Drill, Duty Songs, and Cadences from Biafra (Glassboro, NJ: Goldline & Jacobs Publishers, 2009).

  4. Europa Publications, Regional Surveys of the World 2004 Set: Africa South of the Sahara 2004 (London: Routledge, 2004).

  5. Information from Professor Obiora Udechukwu.

  THE BIAFRAN FLAG

  6. Robert A. Hill et al. (eds.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. X: Africa for the Africans, 1923–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 43; Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan-Africanism (New York: Longman Publishing Group, 1977).

  THE BIAFRAN NATIONAL ANTHEM

  7. Njoku, Enyi Biafra.

  8. John Albert Lynn writes in The Bayonets of the Republic about the importance of songs in the establishment of new states and posits that songs were engaged during the French Revolution for the purposes of “indoctrination and as a medium of political education.” Lynn further reports that nations often turn to songs to stir the spirit of patriotism and evoke emotions of nationhood and dreams of prosperity and liberty: “[Songs] improve the public spirit,” the French revolutionaries understood, “exciting the courage of the defenders of the Patric.”

  Source: John Albert Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

  9. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Origins of the Nigerian Civil War (Apapa, Nigeria: Nigerian National Press, 1969).

  10. William Peterson, Ethnicity Counts (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997).

  11. Jean Sibelius (December 8, 1865–September 20, 1957); Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; http://www.nationalanthems.info/bia.txt; http://www.sibelius.fi/english/elamankaari/index.htm; Biafra @ a glance: http://www.kwenu.com/biafra/biafra.htin.

  12. Alex Duval Smith, “Emeka Ojukwu: Soldier who led his people into the war of Biafran independence,” The Independent, December 13, 2011.

  13. In The Origins of the Civil War, Nnamdi Azikiwe reports, “The music of Sibelius, ‘Be Still My Soul,’ was appropriated, and my ode to ‘Onitsha Ado N’Idu: Land of the Rising Sun’ was plagiarized and adapted to suit the secessionists.”

  14. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; http://www.nationalanthiems.info/bia.txt; http://www.sibelius.ri/english/elamankaari/index.htm; Biafra at a glance.

  15. Ibid.

  THE MILITARY

  16. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 93.

  17.Biafra, BBC documentary (1995).

  18. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 93; Biafra, BBC documentary (1995).

  19. We are told that Henry A. Wharton and Ron Archer were two American pilots who were particularly effective in flying relief supplies and ammunitions into Biafra. Their expert knowledge of the West African terrain made it possible for them to evade Nigerian military radar and still land on Uli airstrip undetected. It was said that Mr. Wharton, in particular, had become such a success and asset to the Biafrans that the military government of Nigeria had placed a huge bounty on his head.

  One of the most legendary expatriate pilots of the conflict, Rolf Steiner, worked seamlessly with Biafra’s Fourth Commando Division. Military lore held that Steiner was not paid for these exploits but required only free food and board. This endeared him deeply to Ojukwu, who not only heaped military favors on Steiner but made him a Biafran citizen. Steiner, a veteran French legionnaire of both the Vietnam and Algerian conflicts, provided Biafra much needed military reconnaissance as well as tactical, technical, and strategic guidance.

  Taffy Williams, a controversial South African of Welsh descent, was called a “professional soldier of fortune.” It was said he came to the aid of the Biafrans as a result of what he felt was the injustice of the pogroms. “Taffy Williams, who looked something like Peter O’Toole from Lawrence of Arabia, gregarious for a clandestine fighter,” was much admired by the Biafrans and decorated with the honorary title of major of the People’s Army.

  Sources: Achebe Foundation interviews: Nigerian and former Biafran soldiers © Achebe Foundation, 2008; Peter Schwab, ed., Biafra (New York: Facts on File, 1971); Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; “World: Nigeria’s Civil War: Hate, Hunger and the Will to Survive,” Time, August 23, 1968; Rolf Steiner, The Last Adventurer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978).

  20. Operation Biafran Babies. The Swedish military aviation page; www.canit.se/~griffon/aviation/text/biafra.htm.

  21. A Time magazine reporter wrote an article published in 1969, during the war, describing the encounter:

  Last week, as the Biafran rebellion against Nigeria neared its second anniversary, Von Rosen and his flyers attacked the Nigerian airport at Benin, reported damage to one MIG and several civilian planes sitting on the groun
d. That raid and two earlier forays, which damaged British- and Russian-made Nigerian planes at Enugu and Port Harcourt, eased the pressure on Biafra’s landing strip at Uli. With no Nigerian bombers overhead for a change, transports were shuttling in.

  Source: “Biafra: How to Build an Instant Air Force,” Time, June 6, 1969.

  22. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, p. 100.

  23.

  After he returned home from Biafra last year, Von Rosen continued to worry about the underdog. . . . The plight of the Biafrans rekindled his sympathies for the outgunned and inspired an improbable, wildly romantic scheme: to marshal pilots and planes and create an instant air force for the planeless Biafrans. . . . [Von Rosen] approached Malmö Flygindustri, builders of the MFI-9B, and received permission to take up one of the trainers for familiarization flights. He searched quietly for pilots and demanded, with reason, that they be experienced. . . .

  The Biafran government put up $60,000 for the purchase of five secondhand MFl-9Bs in a third-party transaction handled through a Zurich bank. Biafran Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu appointed Von Rosen an air force colonel and approved an additional $140,000 for refitting the planes in friendly Gabon and for the pilots’ salaries. Finally Von Rosen told his wife, Gunvor, of his plans—up to a point. “He told me he was going to Biafra,” Countess von Rosen said, . . . “but he didn’t say he would be bombing MIGs.”

  Source: “Biafra: How to Build an Instant Air Force,” Time, June 6, 1969, the pogram-war-starvation.blogspot.com/2007/12/biafra-how-to-build-an-instant-air-force.html.

  24. Pfister, Apartheid, South Africa, and African States, pp. 52–53.

  25. McCullum, “Biafra Was the Beginning,” AfricaFiles.

  26. We have the following amazing description of what landing at Uli was like from a 1969 story in Time:

  As they near ground level, crews must maneuver in darkness for all but the final 30 seconds before touchdown. The runway is really only a section of the road between Uli and Mgbidi that has been widened to 75 feet. “That’s a nice wide road,” comments one flyer, “but a damned narrow runway.” Airplanes’ wheels have no more than a 20-ft. margin on either side. Wingtips brush treetops, and to avoid running out of runway, pilots reverse their propellers and “stand” on their brakes. Not infrequently, an incoming pilot discovers that the control tower has blithely sent a plane out above or below him.