There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

The charges of Jihad have also been denied by British officials who assert that more than half the members of the Federal Government are Christian, while only 1,000 of the 60–70,000 Federal soldiers are Muslim Hausas from the North. (House of Commons Debate, cited earlier.)2

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, professor of history and politics and an expert on genocide, reminds us that supporters of the Biafran position point not only to the histrionic pronouncements of the leaders of the Nigerian army—often dismissed as typical outrageous wartime rhetoric—but to an actual series of atrocities, real crimes against humanity, that occurred on the battlefield and as a result of the policies of the federal government of Nigeria.

The International Committee in the Investigation of Crimes of Genocide carried out exhaustive investigation of the evidence, interviewing 1082 people representing all the actors in the dispute (the two sides of the civil war and international collaborators). After a thorough painstaking research, the Commission concludes, through its Investigator (Dr. Mensah of Ghana): “Finally I am of the opinion that in many of the cases cited to me hatred of the Biafrans (mainly Igbos) and a wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor.” [Emphasis in original.]3

In his well-researched book The Brutality of Nations, Dan Jacobs uncovers a provocative paragraph from an editorial in the Washington Post of July 2, 1969:

One word now describes the policy of the Nigerian military government towards secessionist Biafra: genocide. It is ugly and extreme but it is the only word which fits Nigeria’s decision to stop the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other relief agencies, from flying food to Biafra.4

Jacobs also reveals the lamentations of Pope Paul VI over the Nigeria-Biafra War:

The war seems to be reaching its conclusion, with the terror of possible reprisals and massacres against defenseless people worn out by deprivations, by hunger and by the loss of all they possess. The news this morning is very alarming. . . . One fear torments public opinion. The fear that the victory of arms may carry with it the killing of numberless people. There are those who actually fear a kind of genocide.5

The distinguished American historian, social critic, and political insider Arthur M. Schlesinger provides this contribution on the dire situation in Biafra:

The terrible tragedy of the people of Biafra has now assumed catastrophic dimensions. Starvation is daily claiming the lives of an estimated 6,000 Igbo tribesmen, most of them children. If adequate food is not delivered to the people in the immediate future hundreds of thousands of human beings will die of hunger.6

In what is likely to be the most compelling statement of the era from an American president, Schlesinger provides this powerful extract from Richard Nixon’s campaign speech on September 10, 1968:

Until now efforts to relieve the Biafran people have been thwarted by the desire of the central government of Nigeria to pursue total and unconditional victory and by the fear of the Ibo [sic] people that surrender means wholesale atrocities and genocide. But genocide is what is taking place right now—and starvation is the grim reaper. This is not the time to stand on ceremony, or to ‘go through channels’ or to observe the diplomatic niceties. The destruction of an entire people is an immoral objective even in the most moral of wars. It can never be justified; it can never be condoned.7

Two distinguished Canadian diplomats, Mr. Andrew Brevin and Mr. David MacDonald (members of the Canadian Parliament), “reported that genocide is in fact taking place [and] one of them stated that ‘anybody who says there is no evidence of genocide is either in the pay of Britain or being a deliberate fool,’” following a visit to the war-torn region.8 New York Times journalist Lloyd Garrison, who covered the conflict, submitted harrowing accounts of genocidal activity on the part of the Nigerian troops: “The record shows that in Federal advances . . . thousands of Igbo male civilians were sought out and slaughtered.”9

Supporters of the Nigerian federal government position maintain that a war was being waged and the premise of all wars is for one side to emerge as the victor. Overly ambitious actors may have “taken actions unbecoming of international conventions of human rights, but these things happen everywhere.” This same group often cites findings from groups (sanctioned by the Nigerian federal government) that sent observers to the country during the crisis that there “was no clear intent on behalf of the Nigerian troops to wipe out the Igbo people, . . . pointing out that over 30,000 Igbos still lived in Lagos, and half a million in the Mid-West.”10

The British government, wary of the morally bankrupt position that Harold Wilson had toed from the onset of the conflict, sought to explain away their reckless military adventure in Africa. There were real excesses to account for: If the diabolical disregard for human life seen during the war was not due to the Northern military elite’s jihadist or genocidal obsession, then why were there more small arms used on Biafran soil than during the entire five-year period of World War II?11 Why were there one hundred thousand casualties on the much larger Nigerian side compared with more than two million—mainly children—Biafrans killed? The government of Harold Wilson proffered what it called a “legitimate strategy” excuse in which it postulates that the indisputable excesses seen during the war were due to the Nigerian military’s “excellence”—clearly making it the strongest candidate for an all-time foot-in-the-mouth prize.12

The Case Against the Nigerian Government

It is important to point out that most Nigerians were against the war and abhorred the senseless violence that ensued as a result of the conflict. Gowon???s wartime cabinet, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Obafemi Awolowo and Anthony Enahoro and superpermanent secretaries like Allison Akene Ayida among others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement credited to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate:

All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.1

It is my impression that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition for power, for himself in particular and for the advancement of his Yoruba people in general. And let it be said that there is, on the surface, at least, nothing wrong with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbos at the time as the obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose—the Nigeria-Biafra War—his ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his enemies significantly through starvation—eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future generations.

If Gowon was the “Nigerian Abraham Lincoln,”2 as Lord Wilson would have us believe, why did he not put a stop to such an evil policy, or at least temper it, particularly when there was international outcry? Setting aside for the moment the fact that Gowon as head of state bears the final responsibility of his subordinates, and that Awolowo has been much maligned by many an intellectual for this unfortunate policy and his statements, why, I wonder, would other “thinkers,” such as Ayida and Enahoro, not question such a policy but advance it?3

The federal government’s actions soon after the war could be seen not as conciliatory but as outright hostile.4 After the conflict ended

the same hard-liners in the Federal government of Nigeria cast Igbos in the role of treasonable felons and wreckers of the nation and got the regime to adopt a banking policy which nullified any bank account which had been operated during the war by the Biafrans. A flat sum of twenty pounds was approved for each Ig

bo depositor of the Nigerian currency, regardless of the amount of deposit.5

If there was ever a measure put in place to stunt, or even obliterate, the economy of a people, this was it.

After that outrageous charade, the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria sought to devastate the resilient and emerging Eastern commercial sector even further by banning the importation of secondhand clothing and stockfish—two trade items that they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba, and Nnewi needed to reemerge. Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.

The Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1974, also known as the Indigenization Decree, was ostensibly pushed through by the leaders of the federal government in order to force foreign holders of majority shares of companies operating in Nigeria to hand over the preponderance of stocks, bonds, and shares to local Nigerian business interests. The move was sold to the public as some sort of “pro-African liberation strategy” to empower Nigerian businesses and shareholders.

The chicanery of the entire scheme of course was quite evident. Having stripped a third of the Nigerian population of the means to acquire capital, the leaders of the government of Nigeria knew that the former Biafrans, by and large, would not have the financial muscle to participate in this plot.6 The end result, they hoped, would be a permanent shifting of the balance of economic power away from the East to other constituencies.7 Consequently, very few Igbos participated, and many of the jobs and positions in most of the sectors of the economy previously occupied by Easterners went to those from other parts of the country.

Ironically, and to the consternation of Lord Wilson and the British cabinet in England, the Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1974 also meant that the British/Dutch conglomerate Royal Dutch/Shell BP and other holdings valued at $720 million at the time, would have to share ownership of oil investments with the federal government—the very development Wilson was trying to avoid by backing Gowon in the first place.8

For those who would defend Gowon’s cabinet, suggesting that at times of war measures of all kinds are taken to ensure victory, I will counter by stating that the Geneva Conventions were instituted after the Holocaust to make sure that human rights are still protected in times of conflict.

There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s actions after the war were magnanimous and laudable.9 There are tons of treatises that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbo were not and continue not to be reintegrated into Nigeria, one of the main reasons for the country’s continued backwardness, in my estimation.10

Borrowing a large leaf from the American Marshal Plan that followed World War II and resulted in the reconstruction of Europe, the federal government of Nigeria launched an elaborate scheme highlighted by three Rs—for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, and Reconciliation. The only difference is that, unlike the Americans who actually carried out all three prongs of the strategy, Nigeria’s federal government did not. The administrator of East Central state, Mr. Ukpabi Asika, announced that Eastern Nigeria required close to half a billion pounds to complete the reconstruction effort. None of us recall that he received anything close to a fraction of the request.