There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
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8. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook: Nigeria, the 1966 Coups, Civil War, and Gowon’s Government; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.
9. See Appendix for details of the speech.
10. Achebe Foundation interviews: Nigerian soldiers from the former Mid-Western Region. © Achebe Foundation, 2008.
11. Ibid. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; The Library of Congress Country Studies; CIA World Factbook.
12. “Victor Banjo’s Third Force [was] a movement opposed to both Gowon’s Federal Military Government and Ojukwu’s separatist regime in Biafra, ‘which thinks in terms of a common denominator for the people.’”
Source: Holger G. Ehling, ed., No Condition Is Permanent: Nigerian Writing and the Struggle for Democracy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), p. 51.
13. Achebe Foundation interviews: Biafran and Nigerian soldiers. © Achebe Foundation.
14. Interview with Odumegwu Ojukwu in New Nigerian, July 21, 1982.
15. Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970 (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980); Wole Soyinka, The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka (London: Africa Book Centre, 1972) ; David A. Ejoor, Reminiscences (Lagos, Nigeria: Malthouse Press, 1989); Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.
Gowon Regroups
1. Anthony Clayton, Frontiers Men: Warfare in Africa Since 1950 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 94.
2. Ibid.
3. Michael Leapman of The Independent, in a brilliant article on the subject, provides great illumination of the British reaction to the Mid-West offensive:
[T]he Biafrans scored a military success (their only one, as it turned out) when they marched into the Mid-West Region and occupied Benin. This provoked a rethink in Whitehall. The Commonwealth Office set out five choices. A and B involved maintaining or increasing arms to Nigeria, C was to stop all supplies, D to promote a peace initiative and E a combination of the last two. Thomas wrote to Wilson [the prime minister], holidaying in the Scillies, recommending Option E. That view might have prevailed had not Sir David Hunt, British ambassador in Lagos and a keen advocate of the Federal cause, flown to Britain and persuaded the government to continue providing arms.
Soon the war turned in Gowon’s favor and in November the flexible Thomas wrote to Wilson again, proposing this time that arms supplies be stepped up: “It seems to me that British interests would now be served by a quick Federal victory.”
Source: Leapman, “British Interests, Nigerian Tragedy,” The Independent, on cabinet papers that recall the starving children of the Biafran war.
4. Interview with retired Nigerian army officer who prefers to remain anonymous.
5. Nigerian Radio news broadcasts monitored from Enugu. There has been no credible corroboration of these claims that I found.
The Asaba Massacre
1. Ibid. One year later Muhammed’s forces would invade Onitsha, where he lay siege to the largest market in West Africa. During the “Otuocha market massacre,” as it came to be known, over five hundred innocent women and children visiting or working in the market were killed.
2. Interviews with Nigerian and Biafran army officials.
3. Monsignor Georges Rocheau (sent down on a fact-finding mission by His Holiness the Pope), April 5, 1968, as reported in Le Monde (the French evening newspaper) and Forsyth, The Biafra Story, p. 210.
4. Austin Ogwuda, “Gowon faults setting up of Oputa Panel,” Vanguard, December 9, 2002.
5. General Haruna, who was under cross-examination by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo (a pan-Igbo group) counsel, Chief Anthony Mogbo, senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN), said whatever action he or his troops took during the war was motivated by a sense of duty to protect the unity of the country.
Source: Ogwuda, “Gowon faults setting up of Oputa Panel.”
Biafran Repercussions
1. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia: Requiem Biafra.
2. Ibid.
Blood, Blood Everywhere
1. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 94.