There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

3. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe, p. 140.

4. Author’s recollection of events.

The Biafran State

1. “Republic of Biafra,” The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2008. Encyclopedia.com, April 2, 2010; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; www.worldstatesmen.org/Nigeria.htm; Metz, Nigeria.

2. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis; Biafra @ a glance, www.kwenu.com/biafra/biafra.htm; Biafra Foundation, http://biafra.cwis.org/pdf/BiafraNewsAgency23.pdf, p. 6; Metz, Nigeria.

3. Johnston Akunna Kalu Njoku, Enyi Biafra: Regimental Drill, Duty Songs, and Cadences from Biafra (Glassboro, NJ: Goldline & Jacobs Publishers, 2009).

4. Europa Publications, Regional Surveys of the World 2004 Set: Africa South of the Sahara 2004 (London: Routledge, 2004).

5. Information from Professor Obiora Udechukwu.

THE BIAFRAN FLAG

6. Robert A. Hill et al. (eds.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. X: Africa for the Africans, 1923–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 43; Vincent Bakpetu Thompson, Africa and Unity: The Evolution of Pan-Africanism (New York: Longman Publishing Group, 1977).

THE BIAFRAN NATIONAL ANTHEM

7. Njoku, Enyi Biafra.

8. John Albert Lynn writes in The Bayonets of the Republic about the importance of songs in the establishment of new states and posits that songs were engaged during the French Revolution for the purposes of “indoctrination and as a medium of political education.” Lynn further reports that nations often turn to songs to stir the spirit of patriotism and evoke emotions of nationhood and dreams of prosperity and liberty: “[Songs] improve the public spirit,” the French revolutionaries understood, “exciting the courage of the defenders of the Patric.”

Source: John Albert Lynn, The Bayonets of the Republic: Motivation and Tactics in the Army of Revolutionary France, 1791–94 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).

9. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Origins of the Nigerian Civil War (Apapa, Nigeria: Nigerian National Press, 1969).

10. William Peterson, Ethnicity Counts (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997).

11. Jean Sibelius (December 8, 1865–September 20, 1957); Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; http://www.nationalanthems.info/bia.txt; http://www.sibelius.fi/english/elamankaari/index.htm; Biafra @ a glance: http://www.kwenu.com/biafra/biafra.htin.

12. Alex Duval Smith, “Emeka Ojukwu: Soldier who led his people into the war of Biafran independence,” The Independent, December 13, 2011.

13. In The Origins of the Civil War, Nnamdi Azikiwe reports, “The music of Sibelius, ‘Be Still My Soul,’ was appropriated, and my ode to ‘Onitsha Ado N’Idu: Land of the Rising Sun’ was plagiarized and adapted to suit the secessionists.”

14. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; http://www.nationalanthiems.info/bia.txt; http://www.sibelius.ri/english/elamankaari/index.htm; Biafra at a glance.

15. Ibid.

THE MILITARY

16. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 93.

17.Biafra, BBC documentary (1995).

18. Clayton, Frontiers Men, p. 93; Biafra, BBC documentary (1995).

19. We are told that Henry A. Wharton and Ron Archer were two American pilots who were particularly effective in flying relief supplies and ammunitions into Biafra. Their expert knowledge of the West African terrain made it possible for them to evade Nigerian military radar and still land on Uli airstrip undetected. It was said that Mr. Wharton, in particular, had become such a success and asset to the Biafrans that the military government of Nigeria had placed a huge bounty on his head.

One of the most legendary expatriate pilots of the conflict, Rolf Steiner, worked seamlessly with Biafra’s Fourth Commando Division. Military lore held that Steiner was not paid for these exploits but required only free food and board. This endeared him deeply to Ojukwu, who not only heaped military favors on Steiner but made him a Biafran citizen. Steiner, a veteran French legionnaire of both the Vietnam and Algerian conflicts, provided Biafra much needed military reconnaissance as well as tactical, technical, and strategic guidance.

Taffy Williams, a controversial South African of Welsh descent, was called a “professional soldier of fortune.” It was said he came to the aid of the Biafrans as a result of what he felt was the injustice of the pogroms. “Taffy Williams, who looked something like Peter O’Toole from Lawrence of Arabia, gregarious for a clandestine fighter,” was much admired by the Biafrans and decorated with the honorary title of major of the People’s Army.

Sources: Achebe Foundation interviews: Nigerian and former Biafran soldiers © Achebe Foundation, 2008; Peter Schwab, ed., Biafra (New York: Facts on File, 1971); Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; “World: Nigeria’s Civil War: Hate, Hunger and the Will to Survive,” Time, August 23, 1968; Rolf Steiner, The Last Adventurer (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978).

20. Operation Biafran Babies. The Swedish military aviation page; www.canit.se/~griffon/aviation/text/biafra.htm.