There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Philip Ume-Ezeoke was the controller of education programming at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation. We were both from the Eastern Region and got on rather well. He and I decided together that the time had come for us to travel back to the East. Relatives were sending messages from there begging their loved ones in Lagos to return. There were a number of people like us who did not really want to see this come about . . . did not believe this was happening. Ume-Ezeoke came to my house and suggested we go in a two-car convoy back to Eastern Nigeria. We agreed on a time that we would leave Lagos the following morning.

I got to Ume-Ezeoke’s house the next morning very early, exactly at the agreed-upon time, but no one was there. He was already gone. Unfortunately, Philip Ume-Ezeoke is no longer alive. If he were, it would be interesting to know what happened. In any case, I set out on my own, wondering what would come up at any point. The highway was full of police roadblocks along the way. I was stopped once or twice and had to show my papers—what Nigerians call my “particulars.”

—

I was one of the last to flee Lagos. I simply could not bring myself to accept that I could no longer live in my nation’s capital, although the facts clearly said so. My feeling toward Nigeria was one of profound disappointment. Not only because mobs were hunting down and killing innocent civilians in many parts, especially in the North, but because the federal government sat by and let it happen.

The problems of the Nigerian federation were well-known, but I somehow had felt that perhaps this was part of a nation’s maturation, and that given time we would solve our problems. Then, suddenly, this incredible, horrific experience happened—not just to a few people but to millions, together. I could not escape the impact of this trauma happening to millions of people at the same time. Suddenly I realized that the only valid basis for existence is one that gives security to you and your people. It is as simple as that.5

When I finally got to Benin City, which is located roughly halfway from Lagos to Igbo land in the Mid-West Region, there was a distinct atmospheric change. The fact that the Mid-West was a neighbor of the East meant that at this point there were Mid-Western Igbo policemen. It is important to recall that during this period in Nigerian history the Igbos had large numbers in the police force but not in the army, where their numbers were concentrated in the officer corps. Crowds of policemen recognized me when I got to Benin City and cheered, saying, “Oga, thank you!,” and let me through to continue my journey without incident to Onitsha Bridge, and over the Niger River to the East.

It is pertinent to note that within the military there had been for at least half a decade preceding the coup a great sense of alienation from and disillusionment with the political class in Nigeria. They shared that feeling with a growing number of ordinary Nigerians, and clearly with the writers and intellectuals. The political class, oblivious of the growing disenchantment permeating literally every strata of Nigerian society, was consumed with individual and ethnic pursuits, and with the accumulation of material and other resources. Corruption was widespread, and those in power were “using every means at their disposal, including bribery, intimidation, and blackmail, to cling to power.”6

Many within the military leadership were increasingly concerned that they were being asked to step in and set things right politically. In the first six years of its post-independence existence Nigeria found itself calling on the armed forces to quell two Tiv riots in the Middle Belt, crush the 1964 general strike, and reestablish order following regional elections in the Western Region in 1965. In hindsight, it seems as though President Azikiwe may have been aware of the sand shifting beneath the feet of the political class, and he tried to gain the support of the military brass during the constitutional crisis following the 1964 federal general election. The failure of Azikiwe’s attempt perhaps should have been the first sign to many of us that trouble lay ahead for our young nation.7

BENIN ROAD

Speed is violence

Power is violence

Weight violence

The butterfly seeks safety in lightness

In weightless, undulating flight

But at a crossroads where mottled light

From old trees falls on a brash new highway

Our separate errands collide

I come power-packed for two

And the gentle butterfly offers

Itself in bright yellow sacrifice

Upon my hard silicon shield.1

A History of Ethnic Tension and Resentment

I have written in my small book entitled The Trouble with Nigeria that Nigerians will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo. The origin of the national resentment of the Igbo is as old as Nigeria and quite as complicated. But it can be summarized thus: The Igbo culture, being receptive to change, individualistic, and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials for advancement in Nigerian colonial society. Unlike the Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind of creature, fearing no god or man, was custom-made to grasp the opportunities, such as they were, of the white man’s dispensations. And the Igbo did so with both hands. Although the Yoruba had a huge historical and geographical head start, the Igbo wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy in the twenty years between 1930 and 1950.1

Had the Igbo been a minor ethnic group of a few hundred thousand their menace might have been easily and quietly contained. But their members ran in the millions. As in J. P. Clark’s fine image of “ants filing out of the wood,” the Igbo moved out of their forest home, scattered, and virtually seized the floor.2

Paul Anber explains:

With unparalleled rapidity, the Igbos advanced fastest in the shortest period of time of all Nigeria’s ethnic groups. Like the Jews, to whom they have frequently been likened, they progressed despite being a minority in the country, filling the ranks of the nation’s educated, prosperous upper classes. . . . It was not long before the educational and economic progress of the Igbos led to their becoming the major source of administrators, managers, technicians, and civil servants for the country, occupying senior positions out of proportion to their numbers. Particularly with respect to the Federal public

service and the government statutory corporations, this led to accusations of an Igbo monopoly of essential services to the exclusion of other ethnic groups.

The rise of the Igbo in Nigerian affairs was due to the self-confidence engendered by their open society and their belief that one man is as good as another, that no condition is permanent. It was not due, as non-Igbo observers have imagined, to tribal mutual aid societies. The Igbo Town Union that has often been written about was in reality an extension of the Igbo individualistic ethic. The Igbo towns competed among themselves for certain kinds of social achievement, like the building of schools, churches, markets, post offices, pipe-borne water projects, roads, etc. They did not concern themselves with pan-Igbo unity nor were they geared to securing an advantage over non-Igbo Nigerians. The Igbo have no compelling traditional loyalty beyond town or village.3

There were a number of other factors that spurred the Igbos to educational, economic, and political success. The population density in Igbo land created a “land hunger”—a pressure on their low-fertility, laterite-laden soil for cultivation, housing, and other purposes, factors that led ultimately to migration to other parts of the nation: “In Northern Nigeria there were less than 3,000 Igbos in 1921; by 1931 the number had risen to nearly 12,000 and by 1952 to over 130,000.”4

The coastal branches of the Yoruba nation had some of the earliest contact with the European missionaries and explorers as a consequence of their proximity to the shoreline and their own dedication to learning. They led the entire nation in educational attainment from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. By the time the Church Mission Society and a number of Roman Catholic orders had crossed the Niger River and entered Igbo land, there had been an explosion in the numbers of young Igbo students enrolled in school. The increase was so exponential in such a short time that within three short decades the Igbos had closed the gap and quickly moved ahead as the group with the highest literacy rate, the highest standard of living, and the greatest proportion of citizens with postsecondary education in Nigeria. The Igbo, for the most part (at least until recently), respected the education that the colonizers had brought with them. There was not only individual interest in the white man’s knowledge, but family, community, and regional interest. It would not surprise an observer that the “Igbos absorbed western education as readily as they responded to urbanization.”5