A firm figure is available for the total cost of military aid from Britain to Nigeria during the course of the financial year 1965–6. It was stated by Mr Arthur Bottomley to the Commons on 2 March 1966 to be £68,000.* Yet on 12 June 1968 the Foreign Secretary Mr Michael Stewart told the House: ‘It would at any rate have been wrong at the outset of the secession for us to have cut off supplies completely from the Federal Government. … At that time supplies from this country accounted for seventy-five per cent of Nigeria’s supplies of arms from all sources.’† Earlier in the same debate Stewart had said that right up to the accession of power of General Gowon in Lagos, Nigeria ‘was heavily dependent on us … in all her defence arrangements’.‡
Actually Nigeria’s main defence purchase in 1966 was a frigate from Holland, and her embryo air force was being trained by West Germans on Dorniers. Mr Stewart’s percentage becomes even more weird when it is recalled that Nigeria took delivery in May 1967 of a reported fifty French Panhard armoured cars. If the purchases of the frigate, the aeroplanes and the fifty Panhards are to be counted as part of the twenty-five per cent bought from sources other than Britain, then Britain’s seventy-five per cent must have been a massive quantity of weaponry; yet Gowon’s complete conviction that he could finish Biafra in a few days must make it extremely unlikely that he had placed such enormous orders. Of course, these alleged figures refer to the state of affairs pre-war.
On 22 July 1968 Mr George Thomson told the House that Britain’s percentage of Nigerian weapons purchases by that time, after twelve months of war, represented only fifteen per cent of the total.§ This figure is misleading. It refers to value only; by that time Nigeria had got very expensive jet fighters and bombers from Soviet Russia, along with Soviet technicians to maintain them and Egyptian pilots to fly them, later replaced by East Germans. Nor does the figure indicate whether it refers to weapons that came from the British Isles, or whether the arms from the Rhine Army stocks at Antwerp were included. Nor does it indicate whether the money referred to was the face value of the weapons or the down payment made.
Even if what Mr Thomson said was true, he was contradicted by his own colleagues. Lord Shepherd had said six months earlier that Britain was supplying Nigeria with ‘pretty well all its military equipment’, while the indefatigable High Commissioner Sir David Hunt told an audience in Kaduna on 22 January 1968 that ‘the bulk of the weapons in the hands of the Federal forces have come from Britain’.*
And so it went on and on. The ‘traditional supplier’ argument was quoted over and over again, although it had long been shown quite clearly that Britain was not the traditional supplier, and that the quantities involved would have been expended within a few hours if they had been at pre-war levels. The ‘maintenance of existing supplies’ both of type and quantity was an untruth.
That was the first excuse. The second was that Britain was obliged to support the government of a friendly country. This was another misrepresentation. There was no moral or legal obligation to supply weapons to anyone in time of war, and there never is. It is habitual for any country, when deciding whether to sell weapons of war to a country at war, to decide two things first; is it in full agreement with the policies of the asking country which led that country into the position where it required weapons of war; secondly, is it completely satisfied as to the uses to which these weapons, if supplied, can reasonably be expected to be put?
On both counts the question of supplying Nigeria with arms to prosecute a war against the Biafrans must give anyone cause for misgivings. The background to the Nigeria–Biafra war has been described in previous chapters. Within a few weeks of the outbreak of that war the behaviour of the Nigerian infantry in the Midwest, amply witnessed, had indicated that any weapons supplied were likely to be used unhesitatingly on civilians.
Moreover, it is not unusual for the more scrupulous countries to refuse to sell weapons of war, even those necessary for defence purposes in time of peace, to a country of whose internal p
olicies the supplier disapproves. Thus when Britain under a Conservative Government was on the point of selling warships to Spain, Mr Harold Wilson leapt to his feet with the cry ‘No frigates for Fascists’, and as his election was in the offing the Spaniards cancelled the deal.
Later, the Labour Government placed an embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. While few like apartheid, not even the Labour Party stalwarts suggested that warships and Buccaneer bombers could be used against rioting Africans. The argument was, and it was sincerely felt, that by supplying arms to a country one sustains and strengthens that country’s régime in power, even in time of peace; and that if one dislikes that regime, and the things it does on the domestic front, one should not strengthen it. The only logical conclusions from the continuing sale by the Wilson Government of arms to Nigeria is that this Government does approve of the things the Gowon régime practises. These are described from eyewitness reports in a later chapter.
The third excuse was that if Britain had not sold the arms to Nigeria, then someone else would have done so. On the practical plane this is not probable. One by one the cash-and-carry suppliers of arms to Nigeria opted out as they and their peoples came to understand the use to which the arms were being put. One by one Czechoslovakia, Holland, Italy and Belgium decided not to supply any more. Belgium rushed through a special law banning even the fulfilment of tail-end orders. The idea that the Russians would automatically supply all that Britain failed to supply could have been knocked to pieces by any expert on weaponry. The Soviets use different weapon calibres on all types of arms from those used by Britain and NATO. Usually the Soviet calibres are one millimetre bigger than NATO sizes, so that their forces can use Western captured ammunition, while NATO forces cannot use Warsaw Pact ammunition. For this reason Soviet ammunition could not have been supplied to Nigeria for use in NATO weaponry. A change of ammunition would have meant an entire switchover of all weaponry for an army of 80,000 men, a prohibitively expensive task. In fact, faced with the prospect of being reduced like the Biafrans to dealing on the black market for arms, there is a probability that Nigeria, in the event of a British withdrawal, would have been obliged to go to the peace table with meaningful proposals. By the time Britain and Russia had become the two sole suppliers a chance had been established that an agreement between the pair of them could have been the basis for the all-round arms ban to which Colonel Ojukwu had agreed in advance. But it was not even tried, perhaps because it was never intended to be an argument, but simply an excuse for the gullible.
As regards the moral implications of the excuse, the Earl of Cork and Orrery, speaking in the Lords on 27 August 1968, said:
It is the same as saying that if somebody is going to supply the arms in any case, why not we? But unless you are going to insist that the purpose for which they are going to be used contains no evil – and I do not see how you can say that – then this is an argument that no honourable Government can use, for it is the classic self-justification of the black marketeer, the looter, the drug pedlar … a burst of 9 mm bullets in an African stomach is an evil thing any way you reckon it, and if we send those bullets from England knowing that they may be so used, then that particular share in the general evil is ours, and that share is neither diminished nor magnified by a hair’s breadth by the likelihood that if we did not send those bullets they would be sent by somebody else.*
The fourth and last excuse given for the supplies was that not to supply arms would destroy Britain’s influence with Lagos. This excuse was not brought into play until the debate in the Commons on 12 June 1968, but was used increasingly thereafter. It was as threadbare as its three predecessors. During that debate Mr Stewart assured the House that if any final assault on the Ibo heartland were launched by the Nigerian Army, or if there were any ‘unnecessary deaths’, then in either case Britain would be forced to ‘more than reconsider her policy’.
The pledges were meaningless. The influence Britain was supposed to have achieved through supplying arms was either never used or, more probably, never existed. In any event the Gowon régime has not deviated one iota from its policy totally to crush Biafra and her people, and no serious British attempt appears to have been made to persuade them to change their course.
On 23 August 1968 a final assault on the Ibo heartland was duly launched on all fronts and with overwhelming force. From the Imo River basin came foreigners’ eyewitness reports of the wanton slaying of thousands of Ibo villagers in pursuance of Colonel Adekunle’s shoot-anything-that-moves orders. There was no ‘reconsideration’ of policy. A supine Commons was offered yet another disdainful snub by a government that by this time had seemingly come to the view that Lords and Commons only existed to be deceived.
This was the situation as regards the arms traffic as it existed up to the debate of 27 August 1968. The debate changed things to a certain point, inasmuch as it was on that day that the Wilson Government finally threw aside what remained of its mask of concern and revealed what had in fact been its true policy all along.
But even by that date it had become clear that the British Government had no intention whatever of discouraging the war policy of the Gowon regime. The consequences of this policy had by the end of December 1968 become so serious that in terms of human lives, whatever the examination of history may reveal to have been the offence of the Nigerian regime, the British Government must now stand as equally co-responsible in a state of total complicity.
Arms shipments were only one of the ways in which the British Government showed its unalloyed support for the Gowon regime. As a sideline the offices of the Government became a powerful public-relations organization for Nigeria. Foreign diplomats were given the most biased briefings, and many believed them to be factually accurate and impartially composed. Correspondents were daily briefed to the Nigerian point of view, and selected untruths were sedulously implanted. Inspired leaks of such myths as the ‘massive French aid’ to Biafra were slipped to pressmen who had shown themselves to be suitably unlikely to check the facts independently.
Members of Parliament and other notables who wished to go down to Biafra and see for themselves were discouraged, while those wishing to go to Nigeria were given every assistance. In bars and clubs, committee rooms and cocktail parties the ‘Lagos line’ was enthusiastically pushed, and on orders. No effort was spared to explain the Nigerian case as being the solely valid one, and to denigrate the Biafran version in every possible way, character assassination not excluded. The campaign was not without effect. Quite a lot of influential but (on this topic) uninformed people were persuaded to accept the Lagos propaganda at its face value, to seek to inquire no further into the background to the affair, and themselves to propagate what they possibly believed to be true.
In terms of technical assistance offered to the Nigerians the British Government was neither less accommodating nor more candid than over the question of arms. Though repeated denials were issued that any British military personnel were fighting for the Nigerians, it soon became known that British technical personnel were attached to the Nigerian Government ‘for training purposes’. It may be that these men were not serving in HM Forces at the time of their attachment, having previously retired from active service, but the hiring of these men under contract was done with the full knowledge and approval of the British Government. While the attachment of ex-army or exnavy experts to foreign and Commonwealth governments for training purposes in time of peace is standard practice, it is habitual to review the arrangements in time of war.
It is known, and no attempt at denial has been made, that former Royal Navy officers are and have been consistently directing the blockading operations of the Nigerian Navy. They act with the full support of the British Government. It is the blockade which has resulted in the widespread starvation of Biafra, causing an estimated one million deaths from famine in the twelve months of 1968. The blockade is total, but need not have been. A selective blockade to exclude neutrally inspected shiploads of relief foods for young children would have served Nigeria’s military aims just as well. However, the total blockade and its resultant famine are not being used as an unavoidable by-product of war but as a deliberate weapon against civilians.
Sir David Hunt, among many statements that confirm his total and unquestioning support for the cause of the Gowon regime, and his undisguised personal hostility towards Biafra and her leader, has admitted that since the start of the war ‘the close relations between the British and Nigerian Army and Navy have been maintained and strengthened’.*
Despite this the chief support that the Wilson Government has brought to Gowon has been in the political and diplomatic field. At the time of Biafra’s self-declared independence, there were three options open to Britain. One was to recognize the new state; this in fact would have meant formalizing the de facto partition that had existed since 1 August 1966 when Gowon took the lead of a group of partially successful army mutineers and Ojukwu refused to acknowledge his sovereignty. But as a policy it was not considered, and there is no reason to attach blame for that.
The second option was to announce and stick by an attitude of neutrality in thought, word and deed. This would not at the time have antagonized either party to the forthcoming conflict, because Ojukwu would have accepted the impartiality as honest (in the event he did try to cling to the myth of Britain’s announced neutrality for as long as he could because he wanted to believe it) and because Gowon was confident of a quick victory.
The third option was to announce and adopt total moral, political and military support for Gowon. Here again, Ojukwu would have regretted the decision but have known that at least Britain was sailing under her true colours.
What the Wilson Government did was to adopt the last option and announce the second. In doing so and maintaining the fable for a year, it made a fool of the British Parliament and people, and several other governments, notably those of Canada, the United States and the Scandinavian countries, who later became sufficiently concerned to wish to see peace brought about through the offices of a mutually acceptable and impartial mediator.
It is still difficult to discern the precise reasons for the British Government’s decision of total support for Lagos. The background to the conflict must have been known; in the most pro-Federal sense the whys and wherefores of the affair indicated that morally it was very much six of one and half a dozen of the other; civil wars are notably confused, bloody and seldom soluble by military means.
The reasons given later were varied and none stand
s up to objective assessment. One was that Britain must under all circumstances support a Commonwealth government faced with a revolt, rebellion or secession. This is not true. Britain has every right to consider every case on its merits. Even at the time South Africa was a member of the Commonwealth, it is unlikely Britain would have supported the South African Government in any way at all if that Government had been faced with a revolt by the Bantu population after having condoned a racial massacre in which 30,000 Bantu had died.