There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Dike resigned as vice chancellor of Ibadan in December 1966 and returned to Eastern Nigeria, where he served as vice chancellor of the University of Biafra for a brief period. When the war broke out Dike was appointed by Ojukwu to be a roving ambassador for Biafra. He and other roving ambassadors4 traveled extensively throughout the world, speaking on behalf of the secessionist republic. Dike was particularly effective in this role, and his appearances attracted vigorous media attention. I remember reading several articles in the Washington Post following his appearance at the National Press Club. One article in particular, called “Biafra Explains Its Case” and published on April 13, 1969, was especially influential.

Before our time, Dike had already established an international reputation for academic excellence as a historian. He taught at Harvard University after the war as the first Mellon Professor of African History. In 1978, at the dawn of Nigeria’s Second Republic, this towering international academic returned to Nigeria to help set up the Anambra State University of Technology (ASUTECH). It is a disservice to this wonderful man, to his achievements and contribution to Nigeria’s development, that he died in 1983 from a blood infection that would not have been difficult to cure had he stayed in the United States!5

Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike also supported the Biafran cause and served the Biafran people in several bureaucratic positions. Later, through prolific literary output, Ike took a well-deserved place at the vanguard of the continent’s leading novelists.

The literary harvest from Africa today owes a great debt to female African intellectual forerunners. These griots, orators, and later writers played an indispensable role in recording, molding, and transmitting the African story. By boldly mixing numerous African and Western literary traditions in a cauldron, seasoning them with local color, and spicing their tales with the complexity of the human condition, modern women wordsmiths have deepened our understanding of our world. Florence Nwanzuruahu Nwapa (Flora Nwapa) belongs to this important school of African female literary progenitors.

Five years before the war, in 1962, Flora Nwapa informed me that she was working on a manuscript to be called Efuru. After some editorial work, Efuru was published in 1966, on the eve of the war, to great fanfare. It was a monumental event, as it was, as far as I could tell, the first novel published by a Nigerian woman. It was also important because it was a book ahead of its time, with an assuredly feminist plot and perspective.6

Around the same period, as providence would have it, Alan Hill, the publishing executive at Heinemann Publishers in England, asked me to become the first editor of the African Writers Series. Alan and I, with James Currey and a few others, developed a vision of gathering much of Africa’s literary talent under this series rubric in order to showcase the best of postcolonial African literature. We had a fascinating beginning, and ended up publishing Christopher Okigbo from Nigeria, Ayi Kwei Armah from Ghana, al-Tayyib Salih from Sudan, from Kenya, Bessie Head from Botswana, Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, along with several other major African writers.7

Flora Nwapa aided the Biafran war effort in various capacities, and after the conflict was over continued her service to her people in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the Ministry of Lands, Survey and Urban Development, and the Ministry of Establishment. She is remembered for her bold efforts at reconstructing many institutions that had been destroyed during the Nigeria-Biafra War.8

It is important to point out that a number of writers were neutral and quietly, as far as I could tell, apolitical during the conflict between Nigeria and Biafra. They did not align themselves with or provide overt support to either belligerent during the war. One such individual was Amos Tutuola, who was a talented writer. His most famous novels, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, published in 1946, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, in 1954, explore Yoruba traditions and folklore. He received a great deal of criticism from Nigerian literary critics for his use of “broken or Pidgin English.” Luckily for all of us, Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet and writer, was enthralled by Tutuola’s “bewitching literary prose” and wrote glowing reviews that helped Tutuola’s work attain international acclaim. I still believe that Tutuola’s critics in Nigeria missed the point. The beauty of his tales was fantastical expression of a form of an indigenous Yoruba, therefore African, magical realism. It is important to note that his books came out several decades before the brilliant Gabriel García Márquez published his own masterpieces of Latin American literature, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I first met Mabel Segun (nee Aig-Imoukhuede), another prominent literary figure, who was in the second set of students admitted to University College, Ibadan, around 1949. She was a bright and energetic student from Sabongida Ora in Edo State. I was the editor of the university paper, the University Herald, and when it came time to appoint a deputy editor and advertisement manager, she was a natural choice. In 1965, African University Press, a

formidable outfit at the time, published her children’s book, My Father’s Daughter.

Bolanle Awe, Dr. Tai Solarin, S. J. Cookey, Gabriel Okara, Ola Rotimi, Ade Ajayi, and Emmanuel Obiechina were other towering figures of that era who I admired.

The Life and Work of Christopher Okigbo

I have written and been quoted elsewhere as saying that Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo was the finest Nigerian poet of his generation, but I believe that as his work becomes better and more widely known in the world, he will also be recognized as one of the most remarkable anywhere in our time. For while other poets wrote good poems, Okigbo conjured up for us an amazing, haunting, poetic firmament of a wild and violent beauty.1 Forty years later I still stand by that assessment.

Christopher and I kept in touch after we graduated from Government College, Umuahia, and our friendship grew during our time at University College, Ibadan. He studied the classics and took classes in Latin—a subject that was not available at Government College, Umuahia. A rumor I heard at the time was that a teacher at Yaba Higher College who had been Pius Okigbo’s teacher (Christopher’s senior brother), Professor E. A. Cadle, had wanted Pius to study classics, but Pius did not want to, and instead traveled to America to study economics at Northwestern University. Pius later became arguably the continent’s leading thinker in that field. By the time Christopher got to University College, Ibadan, Professor Cadle was now a professor of the classics and later dean of the Faculty of Arts. He persuaded Christopher to take a major in the classics. Christopher did, although he had a myriad of other interests. He was involved in all aspects of campus life and had a very active social calendar. He was a member of every cultural, literary, intellectual and political organization, club, and association. He and I were founding members of the notable Mbari Club, which was led by Ulli Beier, our professor. Okigbo was also the editor in chief of the University Weekly, the campus newspaper.

His legendary creative work was first noted at Umuahia, where the teachers encouraged this budding talent. Later, at the University College, Ibadan, he published a number of poems in Horn, the university magazine edited by J. P. Clark. He also published his work in Wole Soyinka’s Black Orpheus and Transition, and then produced a number of critically acclaimed poetry collections, including the groundbreaking classics Heavens Gate and Labyrinths.2

After graduation, his reputation as a talented intellectual spread like a savannah bush fire. He was highly sought after. He rapidly ran up a list of jobs that read like a manual of careers: civil servant, businessman, teacher, librarian, publisher, industrialist, and soldier. I am told that Chike Momah, a professional librarian, was somewhat scandalized when Okigbo announced that he was going to Nsukka to be interviewed for a position in the library of the new university. Reminded that he knew nothing about librarianship, Okigbo blithely replied that he had bought a book on the subject, which he intended to read during the four-hundred-mile journey to the interview. And he got the job!3

Christopher could not enter or leave a room unremarked, yet he was not extravagant in manner or appearance. There was something about him not easy to define, a certain inevitability of drama and event. There was a day, back when my family still lived in Lagos, when my wife, Christie, overheard some people talking quite early in the morning on our patio. Startled and a bit frightened, she wondered what was going on. A few minutes later she smelled the aroma of food, and at this point her curiousity was piqued. “What was the cook doing so early in the morning?” she thought out loud. She put on her robe and went to find out. It turned out that it was Christopher Okigbo. There he was sitting on the kitchen table with the food that the cook had prepared for him, munching away. He had arrived very early in the morning, went to the “boys’ quarters,” and woke up the cook, described what he wanted him to cook, and said, “Don’t tell them anything.” That was quintessential Okigbo.

Christopher’s vibrancy and heightened sense of life touched everyone he came into contact with. It is not surprising, therefore, that the young poet Kevin Echeruo should have celebrated him as an Ogbanje—one of those mysterious, elusive, and highly talented beings who hurry to leave the world and to come again. Equally profound was the fact that Pol Ndu, who died in a road disaster he had predicted every gory detail of in a poem five years earlier, proclaimed Christopher a seer.4

Christopher never took antimalarial drugs, because he rather enjoyed the cozy, delirious fever he had when malaria got him down, about once a year. He relished challenges, and the more unusual or difficult, the better it made him feel. Although he turned his hand to many things, he never did anything badly or half-heartedly.5

—

The experiences of the Igbo community from the pogroms onward had different effects on different people. There were a multitude of reactions—anger, loathing, sorrow, concern, depression, etc. These sentiments in Christopher’s case somehow transformed into a very strong pro-Biafra feeling. He had no doubt at all in his mind about Biafra and the need for the country to be a free and separate nation. That strong stance was something new for Christopher.

The intensity of Christopher’s dedication to the Biafran cause was so deep that I remember hearing him get into a raucous debate with his elder brother Pius.6 Apparently the cause of the flare-up of emotions was a discussion about Biafran sovereignty and its importance for the Easterners, particularly the Igbo, to create a state of their own and secede from the federal republic of Nigeria. Pius Okigbo was not, at least initially, very strong in his support of the idea of separation. This position outraged the much younger Christopher, who rebuked Pius by saying: “Don’t let what happened to Ironsi repeat itself,” implying that Pius, in his determination to preserve One Nigeria, should be careful not to be destroyed by Nigeria like Ironsi was during the time he was trying to appease extremists. Pius was so shocked by the rebuke that he turned to me, raised his hands in disbelief, and said, “Uncle Chris!”7 in a sarcastic tone. Pius Okigbo was a very senior economist and part of the diplomatic corps representing Nigeria in several capacities, so he was a bit wary about what was going on in the East, and in Nigeria as a whole, and rightfully so. Later, as the atrocities against the Igbos in particular intensified, Pius Okigbo’s position solidified squarely on Biafra’s side. At that point the pressure of war was being felt. Now unbeknownst to us, Christopher had joined the army. Whereas I did not find the army particularly exciting or interesting, for whatever reason Okigbo was enthralled by the military. He would keep you up at night telling stories of what Nzeogwu and the other officers said.8

When Okigbo decided to join the army he went to great lengths to conceal his intention from me, for fear, no doubt, that I might attempt to dissuade him. I probably would have tried. He made up an elaborate story about an imminent and secret mission he was asked to undertake to Europe that put me totally off the scent. But to make absolutely certain, he borrowed my traveling bag and left his brown briefcase with me. When I saw him again two weeks later he was a major, by special commission, in the Biafran army, though I never saw him in uniform.9

The Major Nigerian Actors in the Conflict: Ojukwu and Gowon

A number of individuals played key roles during the Nigeria-Biafra War.1 The principal actors in 1967, however, were both young Sandhurst-trained soldiers—Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was thirty-three, and Yakubu Gowon, who was thirty-two. One was from a highly privileged background and the other was the so-called darling of the British establishment.2

THE ARISTOCRAT

General Chukwuemeka (Emeka) Odumegwu Ojukwu was born on November 4, 1933, in Zungeru, in Northern Nigeria, to Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu and Grace Oyibonanu. The senior Ojukwu was already a legendary figure while I was growing up in Eastern Nigeria, known far and wide for his great wealth and success in business. Indeed, by midcentury Sir Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu had established himself as one of West Africa’s leading entrepreneurs, with business interests spanning several sectors of the Nigerian and West African economies—agriculture, mining, transportation, and banking.

Sir Louis Ojukwu at some time or other sat on the boards of a number of the largest corporations of the time—Shell BP, United Africa Company (UAC), Nigerian Coal Corporation, and African Continental Bank. For his services to the empire, Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II during her official visit to Enugu in 1956.

It was in this privileged environment that General Emeka Ojukwu was raised. Like a number of other children of privilege, Ojukwu was educated at one of the leading secondary schools in the nation, King’s College, Lagos. Later he was sent to Epsom College, England, and then on to Lincoln College—University of Oxford.3

When Emeka Ojukwu returned to Nigeria after his studies in England, he spent a short time “finding himself.” Against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to attend law school and join the family business in some capacity, the young Ojukwu decided to first work in the Eastern Nigeria civil service as an assistant district officer (ADO). Then, in a move likely designed to enrage his father even further, the young Ojukwu joined the colonial armed forces known as the Queen’s Own Nigeria Regiment. Emeka Ojukwu’s decision caused quite a sensation at the time, because most educated Nigerians, particularly those of privileged birth like him, sought jobs in the business, academic, or civil service sectors, but not in the army. The Nigerian army did have educated officers, but they were few in number.