There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

The March to Independence

1. I have written extensively about the influence of Azikiwe on my life (see Zik’s kitchen in The Education of a British-Protected Child) and that of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.

2. Eminent sons and daughters such as Dr. Akanu Ibiam, a Hope Waddell Training School and Kings College, Lagos, graduate who went on to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and qualified as a medical doctor in 1935. Another major figure of the time and Azikiwe contemporary was the educator Alvan Ikoku, who was a deeply religious and studious man, and another Hope Waddell alumnus. Ikoku would provide a steady source of advice for Azikiwe during periods of political tumult.

Azikiwe also worked closely with a number of associates and lifelong friends, one of whom was Adeniran Ogunsanya (Ogunsanya was the son of the Odofin of Ikorodu). Ogunsanya, later the first attorney general and commissioner for justice in Lagos state, was a graduate of Madariola Private School in Ikorodu, one of the earliest preparatory schools in Nigeria. That school boasted among its alumni Yoruba titans such as Professor Bolaji Idowu and the vivacious Theophilus Owolabi Shobowale (T. O. S.) Benson, another early Azikiwe associate. Benson later became the first deputy mayor of the city of Lagos and Nigeria’s first federal minister of information, culture, and broadcasting.

There were others still, such as Eyo Ita from Calabar, a Columbia University graduate, who would become a deputy national president of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in the 1950s and the leader of the Eastern government in 1951. Mbonu Ojike, who was also educated in the United States, A. A. Nwafor Orizu, who would become Nigeria’s first president of the Senate, Michael Okpara, the premier of Eastern Nigeria, the entertaining and vivacious K. O. Mbadiwe, and the indescribable and stunning Margaret Ekpo were all early Azikiwe associates. Alongside these eminent achievers could be found the stalwarts of the Zikist Movement, a youth branch of the NCNC.

Sources: Helen Chapin Metz, ed., Nigeria: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office for the Library of Congress, 1991); K. A. B. Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe (London: Penguin African Series, 1965); Nnamdi Azikiwe, My Odyssey (London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 1971); Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Chudi Uwazurike, Nwagwu, Cletus N., The Man Called Zik of New Africa: Portrait of Nigeria’s Pan-African Statesman (New York: Triatlantic Books, 1996).

3. It is important to note that Nigeria by the 1940s had an educated class of people in the large urban centers of Lagos, Ibadan, Ogbomosho, Onitsha, Port Harcourt, and Enugu, and in a few places in Northern Nigeria, such as Kano and Kaduna. Some families could boast of two generations of college-educated members. There was to be a certain amount of tension between these competing camps, if you like, as time went on. Azikiwe was a gifted and savvy politician and well aware of this possible friction, and he made great gestures to reach out to many of the prominent individuals of the day. Many of his acquaintances were nonpoliticians.

Nigeria was particularly fortunate to have a very strong legal system. Some of the legal luminaries included Azikiwe’s contemporary Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, who by the late 1950s had become the chief justice of the federation of Nigeria. Ademola was a Cambridge University law graduate and the son of Sir Ladapo Ademola, the Alake (paramount ruler) of Egbaland, in the Western Region of Nigeria. Other major names of the time included Justice C. D. Onyeama, the first Nigerian justice at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and Sir Louis Mbanefo. Mbanefo would rise to become a Supreme Court justice in 1952 and, after the Nigerian-Biafra War broke out, would serve as the chief justice of Biafra and ambassador plenipotentiary. Sir Louis would also play an important role in peace talks and, with Major General Philip Effiong, make the final decision to end the war in 1970, after General Odumegwu Ojukwu had fled the nation for Ivory Coast.

Sources: Author’s recollections of the time and Metz, ed., Nigeria; Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe; Azikiwe, My Odyssey; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Uwazurike and Nwagwu, The Man Called Zik of New Africa.

4. Chief Anthony Enahoro recalls of this period: “In those days, a nationalist newspaper was a monitor of wrongdoings by the colonial government of the day, and the newspaper was an advocate and promoter of the termination of colonial rule. Our newspapers were advocates of democracy and social advancement.” Interview Number 21 by Pini Jason, January 2006 © Achebe Foundation.

The Cradle of Nigerian Nationalism

1. Metz, Nigeria.

2. Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emerging African Nation (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004); Metz, Nigeria.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid. Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Nigeria Youth League Movement: A Resumé of Programme (Service Press, 1940); Richard L. Sklar and Whitaker Jr., C. S., “Nigeria,” in James S. Coleman and Carl G. Rosberg, eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: African Studies Center/University of California Press, 1964), p. 597; Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe; Azikiwe, My Odyssey.

The NPTA (Nigerian Produce Traders’ Association) was an advocacy group based in Western Nigeria that had been especially effective in protecting and improving the commercial interests of small traders and cocoa farmers in the Western Region.

5. Metz, Nigeria; Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties; Obafemi Awolowo, Awo: The Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1960); Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Sklar and Whitaker Jr., “Nigeria,” in Coleman Jr. and Rosberg, Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa.

6. An honorific title that means “war leader or head of the bodyguards,” depending on the Hausa expert one encounters.

7. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties; Metz, Nigeria; Falola and Heaton, A History of Nigeria; Nigeria Youth League Movement; Sklar and Whitaker Jr., “Nigeria”; Jones-Quartey, A Life of Azikiwe; Azikiwe, My Odyssey.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

Post-Independence Nigeria

1. When Osei Boateng of the New African, in a November 2008 cover story titled “Nigeria: Squalid End to Empire,” meticulously outlined how colonial “Britain rigged Nigeria’s independence elections so that its compliant friends in the North would win power, dominate the country, and serve British interests after independence” (emphasis added) it only confirmed what most of us already suspected:

“As long as the Federal Government [of Nigeria] remains d

ependent, our strategic requirements are constitutionally secure,” one of the documents says. “In the Westminster model, Parliament is the matrix of the Executive. When this model is exported to dependent territories, we are forced in the transitional stages to modify it in the interests of strong and stable government. This we do by rigging the parliament through official majorities, a restricted franchise and so forth,” another document reveals. “In the last resort, we must make sure that the government of Nigeria is strong, even if possibly undemocratic or unjust,” says yet another document.

It is to the credit of British intellectuals and institutions that the documents showcasing this electoral swindle are now available. Series A, Volume 4 of the British Documents on the End of Empire Project (BDEEP), published by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, provides a bounty of startling revelations.

Sources: Robin Ramsay, Politics & Paranoia (Geat Britain: Picnic Publishing, 2008), p. 258; Johannes Harnischfeger, Democratization and Islamic Law: The Sharia Conflict in Nigeria (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2008), p. 63, fn. 90.

The Decline

1. Chinua Achebe, “The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer.” Excerpted from Wilfred Cartey and Kilson, Martin, The Africa Reader (New York: Random House, 1970).