There Was a Country: A Memoir

by Chinua Achebe

  Source: “Biafra: Come on Down and Get Killed,” Time, March 21, 1969.

  27. Interview with anonymous American relief pilot.

  OGBUNIGWE

  28. During his last wartime speech Biafran head of state Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu summarized many of the technological feats of the Biafran state:

  In three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years, . . . [w]e built bombs, rockets, and we designed and built our own refinery and our own delivery systems and guided them far. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles.

  The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports, maintained them under heavy bombardment. . . . We spoke to the world through a telecommunications system engineered by local ingenuity.

  In three years, we had broken the technological barrier, became the most advanced Black people on earth.

  Source: Excerpt from last wartime speech of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, head of Biafran state; Emma Okocha, “Odumegwu Ojukwu—The Last Campaign of the Biafran General,” Vanguard, February 15, 2010.

  29. E. O. Arene, The “Biafran” Scientists: The Development of an African Indigenous Technology (Lagos, Nigeria: Arnet Ventures, 1997); Bayo Onanuga, People in the News, 1900–1999: A Survey of Nigerians of the 20th Century (Lagos, Nigeria: Independent Communications Ltd., 2000); pay special attention to entry on Ezekwe; Michael Robson, “Douglas A/B-26 Invader/Biafran Invaders”; www/vectaris.net/id307.html.

  30. Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about Biafra (London: Collins and Harvill Press, 2006).

  BIAFRAN TANKS

  31. Morrow, “Chinua Achebe, An Interview,” Conjunctions.

  32. I hope I am not misunderstood: No nation is truly independent; clearly not. You can manage certain things, but you do rely on others, and it’s a good thing the whole world should be linked in interdependence. As human beings you can be independent, but as members of society you are related to your fellows. In the same way, nations can manage certain affairs on their own and yet be linked to others.

  33. After the war many of the scientists who developed the aforementioned devices were absorbed by the federal government into the Projects Development Institute (PRODA) and the Scientific Equipment Development Institute (SEDI-E), both in Enugu. The institutes were initially fairly successful under the expert leadership of talented scientists such as Gordian Ezekwe, but they suffered from poor federal investment and support, and have, like so many other institutions in Nigeria, fallen into disrepair. See: www.proda-ng.org/index.html.

  A TIGER JOINS THE ARMY

  34. Theresa Emenike, “Welcome to Amaigbo”; www.amaigbo.plus.com/files/amaigbo2.html.

  35. Adeyinka Makinde, Dick Tiger: The Life & Times of a Boxing Immortal (Tarentum, PA: Word Association Publishers, 2005); www.boxrec.com/media/index.php/Dick_Tiger.

  36. Adeyinka Makinde, Dick Tiger: The Cyber Boxing Zone Encyclopedia—Lineal Champion; www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/tiger-d.htm.

  37. Robert M. Lipsyte recalls how it happened:

  We wrote the letter. . . . “I am hereby returning the M.B.E. because every time I look at it I think of millions of men, women, and children who died and are still dying in Biafra because of the arms and ammunition the British government is sending to Nigeria and its continued moral support of this genocidal war against the people of Biafra.”

  Source: Robert M. Lipsyte, “Pride of the Tiger,” in Jeff Silverman, ed., The Greatest Boxing Stories Ever Told: Thirty-Six Incredible Tales from the Ring (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2004), p. 299.

  FREEDOM FIGHTERS

  38. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe, p. 136.

  39. In the years before and directly after the Chinese Communist Party’s ascension to power in 1949, the relationship between the civilian populace and the People’s Liberation Army remained supportive, appreciative, and mutually beneficial. Mao Zedong compared the army to a fish and the people to the water which is its element: The army exists immersed within the populace, and without the support and affection of the people, the army cannot succeed. During the early years of the Communist era, the People’s Army did indeed enjoy the support of the civilian populace.

  The PLA was a tool employed by the Communist Party, which implemented egalitarian policies such as division of land and shattered the exploitative system of feudal land tenure, providing a unifying ideology behind which peasants and soldiers alike might rally. It was an army built of volunteers, so peasants did not fear conscription for themselves or their sons when the army was near. Because the PLA was a successful army, and representative of the inspirational ideology of the Communist Party, it became a matter of pride to be a soldier or to have a family member enlist. The People’s Army was a volunteer army, a force of men fighting for their political beliefs, their future livelihood, and their newly claimed land.

  Source: People’s Liberation Army; www.people.ucsc.edu/~myrtreia/essays/PLA.html.

  40. Zdenek confirms this: “The behind-the-lines guerrilla forays were led by hand-picked members of the Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters (BOFF). . . . The recruits were young [and] had been screened for character and high motivation.”

  Source: Zdenek . The Nigerian War, 1967–1970: History of the War: Selected Bibliography and Documents (Bonn, Germany: Bernard & Graefe, 1971), p. 141.

  Traveling on Behalf of Biafra

  1. Introduction of the francophone literary movement known as La Négritude; www.French.about.com/library/bl-negritude.htm.

  2. Ibid. Heather Carlberg, “Negritude. Political Discourse—Theories of Colonialism and Postcolonialism”; www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/negritude/html.

  3.La Négritude; www.French.about.com/library/bl-negritude.htm.

  4. Based on events I witnessed and some I was told about; also see www.oikoumene.org//.

  5. “Another Try at Biafra Talks,” Miami News, May 27, 1968.

  6. Local St. Simons, Georgia, lore. Also extensively documented in history books.

  REFUGEE MOTHER AND CHILD (A MOTHER IN A REFUGEE CAMP)

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

  Life in Biafra

  1. Sara S. Berry, George A. Elbert, Norman Thomas Uphoff; reply by Stanley Diamond. “Letters: An Exchange on Biafra,” New York Review of Books, April 23, 1970.

  2. The material from the following section is adapted from “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,” Transition, pp. 31–38.

  3. Resurgence 2, iss. 11 (1970); see also the editorial, “In the Curve of Africa, Fear, Relief, Surrender,” St. Petersburg Times, January 13, 1970.

  The Abagana Ambush

  1. “Smash Biafra” was a term used widely during the war.

  Sources: “On September 3, Nigeria was preparing an air, sea and land offensive in a drive to smash Biafra”: Ms. Kalindi Phillip on behalf of African Recorder 6 (New Delhi: Asian Recorder & Publication, 1967); also see The Spectator, vol. 244 (London: F. C. Westley: Literary Collections, 1980): “In public the British Labour government claimed that it armed Nigeria to forestall the Russians; in secret a junior British minister wrote to the Nigerians ordering them to purchase Russian siege artillery in order to smash the Biafran army.”

  2. Norman Tobias, “A-I Skyraider-Acre, Siege of, 1799,” The International Military Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1992); Colin Legum and John Drysdale, Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents, Vol. 2 (Oxford, UK: Africa Research Ltd., 1970).

  AIR RAID

  1. Chinua Achebe, Beware Soul Brother, African Writers Series (London: Heinemann, 1972).

  The Citadel Press

  1. Ernest Emenyonu, ed., Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Ache
be (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003).

  2. Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,” Transition, pp. 31–38.

  Staying Alive

  1. Chinua Achebe and Dubem Okafor, eds., Don’t Let Him Die: An Anthology of Memorial Poems for Christopher Okigbo (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978).

  2. Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,” Transition.

  3. In a story by Tony Edike on June 29, 2009, in the Nigerian Vanguard, we are informed:

  About 183 different types of unexploded explosives recovered from nine states affected by the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War were yesterday detonated by the Ministry of Defense, 39 years after the war ended.

  Two of the bombs dropped during the war were recovered from the residence of a renowned author, Chinua Achebe, according to the experts.

  The exercise, which took place at Onyeama Hills on Enugu-Onitsha Expressway and witnessed by the Minister of Defense, Dr. Shettima Mustafa, the Enugu State Deputy Governor, Sunday Onyebuchi, and members of the armed forces and representatives of the United Nations, was handled by a team of experts under the Humanitarian De-Mining project.

  4. Achebe and Okafor, Don’t Let Him Die.

  Death of the Poet: “Daddy, Don’t Let Him Die!”

  1. Achebe and Okafor, Don’t Let Him Die.

  2. Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,” Transition.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Achebe and Okafor, Don’t Let Him Die.

  MANGO SEEDLING

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

  Refugees

  1. Interview with Professor Christie Achebe, Brown University, Rhode Island, April 2010.

  2. A wild-game hunting enthusiast’s information guide provides this startling information about hunting bullets:

  The [VLD wild game bullet] penetrates up to 3 inches before it starts to expand. This delayed expansion results in a wound channel that is deep inside the vital area of any big game. After the bullet starts to expand it will shed 80% to 90% of its weight into the surrounding tissue, traveling as deep as 18 inches. This results in a massive wound cavity that creates the greatest possible amount of tissue damage and hemorrhaging within the [organs]. This massive and extensive wound cavity results in the animal dropping fast.

  Source: Long Range Store, Best of the West Productions; www.longrangestore.com/Berger_VLD_Hunting_Bullets_p/70100000.htm.

  3. A Time journalist who toured the children’s hospitals at Okporo and Emekuku had this to say:

  In villages that are nearly deserted, old men and women, along with sickly children, die quietly in their huts. At the missionary hospital in Emekuku, a mob of starving children gathers at the door. The hospital has room for only 100 of them: the strongest-looking children are taken in, and the least hopeful cases turned away. “This started out as an epidemic in March,” says a London-trained Biafran doctor, Aaron Ifekwunigwe. “Now it is a catastrophe.”

  Source: “A Bitter African Harvest,” Time.

  4. Dan Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987).

  5. Goetz, “Humanitarian Issues in the Biafra Conflict”; see also Caroline Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), pp. 615–16.

  WE LAUGHED AT HIM

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

  The Media War

  1. Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child.

  2. House of Lords official report, August 27, 1968.

  3. Hugh McCullum provides this perspective: “For the first time in history and just by accident, the mass media zeroed in on an African humanitarian disaster. New technology and a new generation of young, bright, media-savvy church people and NGOs made this possible.”

  Source: McCullum, “Biafra Was the Beginning.”

  Narrow Escapes

  1. In Social History of Rape, Paul Tabori confirms this abomination:

  A young British doctor who worked in the pediatric hospital told the reporter: “The soldiers on duty in the area of the pediatric hospital at Okporo were such monsters that I never let the nurses go anywhere without an escort. Especially the white ones. . . . Two Biafran nurses who would only give their names as Theresa and Caroline said they were raped several times.”

  Source: Paul Tabori, Social History of Rape (London: New English Library, 1971).

  2. “Elephant Grass: Common Name: Napier grass, Uganda grass; Genus: Pennistum; Species: purpureum; Parts Used: leaves for animal fodder. . . . In the savannas of Africa it grows along lake beds and rivers where the soil is rich. Local farmers cut the grass for their animals, carrying it home in huge piles on their backs or on carts.”

  Source: www.blueplanetbiomes.org/elephant_grass.htm.

  VULTURES

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

  Part 3

  The Fight to the Finish

  1. Captain Steve Lewis, “Che Guevara and Guerrilla Warfare: Training for Today’s Nonlinear Battlefields,” Military Review (September–October 2001), p. 101 Also, interview of retired Nigerian and Biafran Army officers © Achebe Foundation 2008-2011; See also the military theory, theorists, and strategy Web page of the Air War College. This is the intellectual and leadership center of the American air force. http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-thry.htm.

  The Economic Blockade and Starvation

  1. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. Biafra: Selected Speeches and Random Thoughts of C. Odumegwu Ojukwu (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).

  2. Metz, Nigeria; Forsyth, The Biafra Story; de St. Jorre, The Nigerian Civil War; Akpan, The Struggle for Secession 1966–1970; Amadi, Sunset in Biafra; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, p. 14; Ademoyega, Why We Struck; Effiong, Nigeria and Biafra.

  3. Seymour M. Hersh, The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (New York: Summit Books, 1983), p. 136.

  4. “Negotiators who have been meeting for four weeks in Addis Ababa made marked progress in clearing the logjam holding up large-scale relief. Meeting with Emperor Haile Selassie, moderator of the talks, they agreed to create both air and land corridors for shipments of food to Biafra’s starving civilians.”

  Source: “Nigeria: Biafra’s Two Wars,” Time, August 30, 1968.

  5. Writing for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ series, New Issues, Professor Nathaniel H. Goetz of Pepperdine University succinctly captures the complexity of the standoff:

  Politically, the possibility of a land corridor seemed impossible. One of the many disagreements between the warring parties was simple, yet it illustrates both the mistrust and complexity of what was occurring: Ojukwu forbade the necessary food to reach the country through a neutral corridor for fear Nigerian troops would poison it. . . . On June 5, an ICRC DC-7 aircraft was shot down by the Federal air force over Biafra, killing the three aid workers onboard. Because of this incident, serious disputes over the conduct of relief operations arose and the airlift was again suspended.

  Source: Goetz, “Humanitarian Issues in the Biafra Conflict.”

  The Silence of the United Nations

  1. Hammarskjöld was “a Renaissance man,” reportedly with interests as varied as banking, economics, literature—he loved the work of Emily Dickinson and Hermann Hesse—politics, Christian theology, fine art, linguistics, gymnastics, outdoor sports such as skiing.

  Source: “Dag Hammarskjöld—Biography”; Nobelprize.org, December 14, 2011; www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1961/hammarskjold-bio.html.

  2. Metz, Nigeria.

  3. Edward Newman, Ramesh Thakur, and John Triman, in their benchmark study for the United Nations, Multilateralism Under Challenge: Power, International Order, and Structural
Change (New York: United Nations University Press, 2006), suggest that the UN’s response to humanitarian disasters prior to 1970 was “undeveloped” at best:

  Surprising as it may now seem the United Nations system was very slow to manifest any broad responsibility for disaster response. . . .

  The United Nations system was not utilized to manage a systemic and multilateral response to a broad range of humanitarian disasters until about 1970. In the well-publicized Nigerian-Biafran conflict (1967–1970), the major relief players trying to get aid to civilians in secessionist Biafra were the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and its Red Cross partners, and Joint Church Aid, a faith-based private consortium. While other relief actors like the French Red Cross acted independently, no UN organ or agency was a major player in that drama.

  After Biafra . . . the General Assembly created the UN Disaster Relief Office. By 1992 this office morphed into the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs.

  4. The New York Times article read in part:

  The Nigerian Federal Government readies [another] “final offensive” in war with Biafra; Government spokesman says East must be subdued by end of February or growing international aid will make Federal victory impossible.

  Source: Alfred Friendly Jr., “Nigerians Are Preparing for Another ‘Final’ Offensive; War With Biafra, 19 Months Old, Still Bogged Down; Mood in Once-Cocky Lagos Turns Glum as Foe Revives,” New York Times, February 5, 1969.

  5. Jeffrey D. Blum, “Who Cares About Biafra Anyway?” Harvard Crimson, February 25, 1969.

  6. Special to the New York Times, “Biafrans Warned of Enemy’s ‘Desperate Effort’; Ojukwu Asserts That British May Lose Holdings,” February 12, 1969.