There Was a Country: A Memoir

by Chinua Achebe

  7. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe, quoting from Chinua Achebe, “A Letter [on Stanley Diamond],” in C. W. Gailey, ed., Dialectical Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Stanley Diamond, Vol. 1 (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1992), p. 134.

  8. John W. Young, The Labour Governments 1964–70, Vol. 2: International Policy (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2009); Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo, Nigeria: The Challenge of Biafra (London: R. Collings, 1972); Ruby Bell-Gam and Uru Iyam, David, Nigeria, vol. 100 of World Bibliographical Series (Oxford: Clio Press, 1999); P. J. Odu, The Future That Vanished (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Corporation, 2009), p. 168.

  9. “Britain: Loss of Touch?” Time.

  10. Speaking to journalists in Umuahia, Ojukwu

  suggested that the feasible way to bring Nigeria to the bargaining table was “diplomatic victory whereby Nigeria would be faced with the specter of isolation.” Was Wilson the man to bring off such a diplomatic victory? Replied Ojukwu: “I do sincerely hope that this trip is no gimmick and that he is genuinely out for peace. It is true that his previous actions do not justify this hope. Yet for the sake of Nigeria, Biafra, Africa and Britain, one can only hope.”

  Source: “Nigeria: Twin Stalemates,” Time, April 4, 1969.

  Azikiwe Withdraws Support for Biafra

  1. African-American Institute, Africa Report (1969).

  2. Chinua Achebe Foundation interview: Dr. Okechukwu Ikejiani, March 6, 2005.

  The Recapture of Owerri

  1. Madiebo reports that Colonel Ogbugo Kalu achieved this surprising feat in three phases—by galvanizing the Fifty-second Brigade under Colonel Chris Ugokwe, the Third Brigade of the Fourteenth Division under Lambert Iheanacho, and the Sixty-eighth Battalion under Major Ikeji—and then surrounding the complacent troops of the Nigerian army while preventing reinforcements from reaching the Nigerians.

  Source: Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, pp. 301–10.

  2. During a visit to the United States in 2003, Colonel Achuzia described how he earned the nickname “Air Raid”:

  I never knew I was called “Air Raid.” It was when Chief Ngbada of Abakiliki and others called me to come over to their region which was also mine (I was born in Abakiliki) to help repel the invading feds that a drama unfolded that made me know I was called Air Raid. In Abakiliki, I spent three days in a fierce battle to repel the feds from reaching Uwana—the home of Akanu Ibiam. It was brisk and very successful. On my way back, and approaching a military check point, I heard shouts of Air Raid, Air Raid everywhere. Market women were running into the bush. People were taking cover left right and center. As a war commander, I got down from my vehicle to take a look at where the plane was coming from. It was then that my orderly told me that people were running because of me. That I was also known as “Air Raid.” I immediately asked that the rumor should be dispelled immediately and people should go about their normal business. It was a sobering experience for me.

  Source: Godson Ofoaro, “Ngige and Achuzia came to town,” Nigeriaworld, November 10, 2003; nigeriaworld.com.

  Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, one of Nigeria’s prized journalists, interviewed the former Biafran war leader in 2005 and discovered an Achuzia, then seventy years old, who was far from his austere reputation, amiable and reflective:

  Achuzia had assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze Ndigbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, and by this time had developed a reputation for his frankness in public statements, and the passion with which he canvassed the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests.

  Ejinkeonye found the retired colonel astutely unrepentant for his role in the Nigeria-Biafra war, even while he espoused his strong belief in a “one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions.”

  Achuzia’s perspective on the quality of the Nigerian army and why the war was fought is both instructive and alarming:

  How can there be unity in an army that is packaged on what you call federal character (Nigerian version of Equal Opportunity)? People don’t join the army because they see it as a vocation; most of the people in the army are surrogates of certain people who put them there for their nefarious purposes. When we have a proper, well-oriented country, we will put together an army that will be for the protection and the defense of the people against external aggression. . . . The Igbo fought when the pogrom started, and they were being killed and pushed out of the federation. So, to ensure that they stayed in the federation, they had to fight or else, it would have meant being dispossessed of their land. So where were we expected to run to when the hostilities started—to Cameroon? So these were the reasons. Again, you must try to differentiate the reasons for the Civil War from the reasons why Nigeria had a coup, and some people carried out “Operation Wetie,” and the civil strife the country has experienced since the 1950s.

  Source: Chinua Achebe Foundation interviews: Colonel Joseph Achuzia in conversation with Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, November 28, 2005.

  3. Interviews with anonymous retired Biafran soldiers.

  Biafra Takes an Oil Rig: “The Kwale Incident”

  1. “Eni is an outgrowth of Agip (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), an oil and gas company set up by the fascist Italian government in the 1920s.” “Eni,” Encyclopdia Britannica Online, April 8, 2009.

  2. “Biafra: Reprieve for Eighteen,” Time, June 13, 1969; Anthony Hamilton Millard Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook, Volume 2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); Ben Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra (Enugu, Anambra State, Nigeria: Benlie Publishers, 1989); Indian Journal of International Law 14, iss. 1–15, 15, iss. 4.

  3. Interview with anonymous former Biafran intellectual.

  4. “Biafra: Reprieve for Eighteen,” Time.

  5. Ibid. Also Kirk-Greene, Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria; Gbulie, The Fall of Biafra; Indian Journal of International Law.

  6. Gabonese and Ivorian diplomats made this real possibility clear to Ojukwu. Also see the following: West Africa, iss. 2718–43 (London: West Africa Publishing, 1969), p. 661; Africa Bureau, Africa Digest 16 (London: Africa Publications Trust, 1969), p. 72.

  7. “Pope Paul VI met Federal Nigerian and Biafran representatives separately during his visit to Kampala early in August. A Vatican spokesman said that the Pope had raised the possibility of negotiations to resolve the conflict.”

  Source: Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. General Council, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Report on World Affairs 50, iss. 3 (1968).

  8.The Daily Register (Red Bank), August 1, 1969; see also Africa Research Bureau 6 (London: Africa Research, 1969).

  9. Robert D. Schulzinger, A Companion to American Foreign Relations, volume 24 of Blackwell Companions to American History, Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006); Auberon Waugh and Suzanne Cronjé, Biafra: Britain’s Shame (London: Joseph, 1969); Peter Schwab, Biafra (New York: Facts on File, 1971), digitized by the University of Michigan Press, September 16, 2008.

  10. Russell Warren Howe and Sarah Hays Trott, The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America’s Foreign Policy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977); Christian Chukwunedu Aguolu, Biafra: Its Case for Independence (self-published, 1969); Hersh, The Price of Power.

  11. Kari A. Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

  12. Ibid.

  13.West Africa magazine, iss. 2718–43 (1968, 1969).

  1970 and The Fall

  1. Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011), p. 205; Henry Robinson Luce, Time 100, iss. 14–26 (New York: Time, 197
2); Blaine Harden, “2 Decades Later, Biafra Remains Lonely Precedent,” Washington Post, June, 27, 1988.

  2. Chinua Achebe Foundation interviews, Number 15: General Yakubu Gowon, October 2005, ©The Chinua Achebe Foundation.

  3. Mort Rosenblum, “Gowon Assails International Relief Agencies: Biafran Crisis Builds Up,” Observer-Reporter (Washington County, PA), Associated Press, January 14, 1970; “Lagos Spurns Promises of Aid,” The Montreal Gazette, Reuters, January 15, 1970; Jean Strouse, Newsweek 75, iss. 1–8; United Press International, “Nigeria Eases Relief Ban: Million Biafrans Near Starvation,” Palm Beach Daily News, January 15, 1970; Nancy L. Hoepli, ed., West Africa Today 42, iss. 6 (1971).

  According to Carl Ferdinand and Howard Henry, “Three days after thousands of Biafran soldiers surrendered, Nigeria’s leader, General Yakubu Gowon, assailed the international relief agencies coordinated through Joint Church Aid (JCA) and said: ‘Let them keep their blood money.’”

  Source: Christianity Today 14, iss. 1–13; vols. 1-13 (Chicago: American Theological Library Association, 1969).

  4. Ibid.

  5. Dirk Kruijt and Kees Koonings, eds., Political Armies: The Military and Nation Building in the Age of Democracy (London, New York: Zed Books, 2002).

  6. Various estimates place the number killed at over two million people.

  The Question of Genocide

  1. “Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century”; www.users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm. The following sources provide death tolls for the Biafran war: Compton’s Encyclopedia: 1,500,000 starved; Charles Lewis Taylor, The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (WHPSI): 1,993,900 deaths by political violence, 1966–70; George Childs Kohn, Dictionary 0f Wars: nearly 2,000,000; William Eckhardt in World Military and Social Expenditues, 1987–88 by Ruth Leger Sivard: 1,000,000 civilians + 1,000,000 military = 2,000,000; Dan Smith, The State of War and Peace Atlas: 2,000,000; Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations: 3,000,000.

  2. Robert Leventhal, “Responses to the Holocaust: A Hypermedia Sourcebook for the Humanities,” Department of German, University of Virginia, 1995; www2.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/genocide.html.

  Another undeniable authority, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, reminds us:

  On December 9, 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust and in no small part due to the tireless efforts of [a Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael] Lemkin, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This convention establishes “genocide” as an international crime, which signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish.” It defines genocide as:

  “[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

  (a)Killing members of the group;

  (b)Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

  (c)Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

  (d)Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

  (e)Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

  Source: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?moduleId-10007043.

  The Arguments

  1. The American Jewish Congress suggests that compounding this overwhelming evidence, according to the Biafrans, is:

  The Federal government has refused to discuss peace . . . unless and until Biafran leaders renounce their proclamation of secession. Biafrans have refused this demand because they believe they can gain their aims through conventional or guerrilla warfare, and also because they are convinced that Nigerian military commanders intend to perpetuate genocide against the Ibos [sic] people.

  Source: Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, The Biafra War: Nigeria and the Aftermath (Lampeter, Ceredigion, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). As quoted in “The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1999),” October 1999.

  4. Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1973, Volume 1 (New York: Chelsea House, 1983).

  7. Ibid.

  8. Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11.Biafra, BBC documentary (1995).

  12. Ibid.

  The Case Against the Nigerian Government

  1. Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations.

  2. With just the right kind of inflection bound to mesmerize his admirers, Gowon played that role to the hilt, quoting Lincoln in speech after speech and talking about “binding up the nation’s wounds.”

  Source: Luce, “General Gowon.”

  3.

  Nigerian leader Allison Ayida produced his viewpoint on starving children . . . : “Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it on the rebels.”

  Source: Forsyth, The Biafra Story.

  Also see: Thierry Hentsch, Face au blocus: histoire de l’intervention du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge dans le conflit du Nigéria, 1967–1970 (Geneva: Droz, 1973); Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra Revisited; Ojukwu, Biafra.

  4. Stanley Diamond’s extensive reporting from Biafra around this time has preserved his observations for posterity:

  Direct reports from the former Biafran enclave (East Central State) indicate the following:

  1)No systematic distribution of food and relief supplies is taking place; indeed no adequate effort is being made. This was already evident by the end of January, 1970. On the 24th the London Observer had reported that only eighty food distribution centers remained in the enclave; before the surrender there had been 3,000. . . .

  2)Biafran currency has not been converted, nor is it accepted as legal tender. This works a particular hardship on the majority of impoverished peasants who must buy seed yams for the current growing season. A new cycle of hunger and dependency seems to have begun.

  3)The more than 60,000 federal troops are billeted in secondary schools and private homes throughout the former Biafran enclave. Most if not all secondary schools are so occupied, prolonging the educational crisis.

  4)Foreign correspondents are barred from Eastern Nigeria. Dispatches filed from Lagos on the situation in former Biafra are confused and contradictory.

  The general policy seems to be one of attrition and isolation of the Ibo-speaking [sic] peoples in particular, with the promise of reward being held out for certain minority groups.

  In the notes to his reply, Diamond quotes from K. W. J. Post’s article, “Is There a Case to Be Made for Biafra?” International Affairs 44 no. 1 (January 1968), pp. 26–39:

  Post states further that with the failure of Biafran secession, “a restoration of the old spoils system is certainly on the cards. Similarly the northern leaders may emerge again, heading an axis of the six new states [in the north]; the old NPC [Northern Peoples’ Congress] was always something of a coalition of local interests and there is no reason why this should not emerge again under some of the old leaders, probably those from Kano and Bornu.”

  Diamond further quotes in his notes from Dr. E. C. Schwartzenbach, Swiss Review of Africa (February 1968):

  The [Nigerian] war aim and solution of the entire problem was to discriminate against the Ibos [sic] in the future in their own interest. Such discrimination would include above all the detachment of those oil-rich territories in the Eastern Region which were not inhabited by them at the beginning of the colonial period, on the
lines of the projected twelve-state plan. In addition, the Ibos’ movement would be restricted, to prevent their renewed penetration into the other parts of the country. Leaving them any access to the sea, the Commissioner declared, was quite out of the question.

  He also cites in the notes an unpublished “memorandum on the background, cause, and consequences of the Nigerian civil war issued in November 1968 by more than sixty British subjects, including Sir Robert Stapledon, the last British governor of the Eastern Region (1959–60)”:

  Each medal has its reverse. But, whatever the verdict, there can be no conceivable justification for what happened to the Ibos [sic] in the North in 1966. No objective consideration of their case can avoid the fact that, as rational and sentient human beings, they were made to feel themselves rejected by the most brutal possible means from the North and from Nigeria as a whole. The irony for Biafra was to be that, having seen her people driven out by the rest of Nigeria and hunted back to their homeland, she found Nigeria at war with her to preserve the integrity of a Federation where her people could no longer live.

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

  5. “The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1969),” October 1999; Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, p. 45–46; Jane Guyer and LaRay Denzer, Vision and Policy in Nigerian Economics: The Legacy of Pius Okigbo. West African Studies (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 2005).

  6. Ibid.

  7. Guyer and Denzer, Vision and Policy in Nigerian Economics.

  8. “Twin Stalemates,” Time.

  9. This school of thought is exemplified by the well-regarded scholar Martin Meredith, who believes: “The aftermath of the war was notable for its compassion and mercy, and the way in which the memories of Biafra soon faded.”

  Source: Meredith, The Fate of Africa, p. 205.

  Gowon, expectedly, gives himself high marks for the role of his government following the conflict: