There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

The movement toward a declaration of independence was very clear and sharp, because it was a result of a particular group of Nigerian citizens from the Eastern Region attempting to protect themselves from the great violence that had been organized and executed by arms of the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. There was a strong sense that Nigeria was no longer habitable for the Igbo and many other peoples from Eastern Nigeria.

That epiphany made us realize that Nigeria “did not belong we,” as Liberians would put it. “This country belong we” was the popular pidgin English mantra from their liberation struggle. That was not the case for Igbo people and many others from Eastern Nigeria. Nigeria did not belong to us. It was now clear to many of us that we, the Nigerian people, were not what we had thought we were. The Nigeria that meant so much to all of us was not reciprocating the affection we had for it. The country had not embraced us, the Igbo people and other Easterners, as full-fledged members of the Nigerian family. That was the predicament that the Igbo and many peoples from Eastern Nigeria found themselves in, and one that informed Ojukwu’s decisions, I believe, on the eve of civil war.

The first part of May 1967 saw the visit of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to Enugu, the capital of the Eastern Region. It was led by Chief Awolowo and billed as a last-minute effort at peace and as an attempt to encourage Ojukwu and Eastern leaders to attend peace talks at a venue suitable to the Easterners. Despite providing a friendly reception, many Igbo leaders referred to the visit disdainfully as the “chop, chop, talk, talk, commission.” A majority of Easterners by this time had grown contemptuous of Gowon’s federal government for its failure to bring the culprits of the mass murders in the North to justice, and they saw this as the latest in a series of insincere overtures. Senior Igbo military officers were also openly voicing their concern that Gowon was an illegitimate leader, because he was not the most senior officer in the chain of military command, and so had no right to be head of state.

There were a number of distinguished and well-meaning Nigerians on the National Reconciliation Commission, but they were meeting with leaders of an emotionally and psychologically exhausted and disillusioned Igbo people. Many of these same Igbo leaders had been at the vanguard of independence struggles, and after years of spearheading the “one Nigeria” mantra, had very little to show for it. Clearly the situation had become untenable.8

On May 24, 1967, in the midst of this chaos, my wife went into labor. I sent my close friend, the poet Christopher Okigbo, to the hospital she had been admitted to to find out when the birth would take place, and then to call me at home, where I had briefly returned to rest and take a shower. In characteristic Okigbo fashion, he waited for the delivery, went to the nursery to see the baby, and then drove back to convey the news to me that my wife had delivered our third child, Chidi—“There is a God”—and that the way his baby locks were arranged, he looked like he had had a haircut and was ready to go to school! The baby’s arrival was a great joy, but I couldn’t but feel a certain amount of apprehension for this infant, indeed for all of us, as the prospect of civil war cast a dark shadow over our lives.

GENERATION GAP

A son’s arrival

is the crescent moon

too new too soon to lodge

the man’s returning. His

feast of reincarnation

must await the moon’s

ripening at the naming

ceremony of his

grandson.1

The Nightmare Begins

May the twenty-sixth saw an emergency meeting of Ojukwu’s special Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders in Enugu. The consensus was building across his cabinet that secession was the only viable path. “On May 27, the Consultative Assembly mandated Colonel Ojukwu to declare, at the earliest practicable date, Eastern Nigeria a free sovereign and independent state by the name and title of the Republic of Biafra.”1

It is crucial to note that the decision of an entire people, the Igbo people, to leave Nigeria, did not come from Ojukwu alone but was informed by the desires of the people and mandated by a body that contained some of the most distinguished Nigerians in history: Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s, former governor-general and first ceremonial president; Dr. Michael I. Okpara and Sir Francis Ibiam, former premier and governor of Eastern Nigeria, respectively; and Supreme Court justice Sir Louis Mbanefo. Others included: the educator Dr. Alvan Ikoku; first republic minister Mr. K. O. Mbadiwe; as well as Mr. N. U. Akpan; Mr. Joseph Echeruo; Ekukinam-Bassey; Chief Samuel Mbakwe; Chief Jerome Udoji; and Chief Margaret Ekpo.

In a speech to the nation on May 27, 1967, Gowon responded to Ojukwu’s “assault on Nigeria’s unity and blatant revenue appropriation,” as the federal government saw it, by calling a state of emergency and dividing the nation into twelve states.2

The official position from the federal government was that the creation of new states was an important move to foster unity and stability in Nigeria. Many suspect a more Machiavellian scheme at work here.3 Gowon, understanding inter-ethnic rivalry, suspected that dividing the East into four states, landlocking the Igbos into the East Central State and isolating the oil-producing areas of Nigeria outside Igbo land, would weaken secessionist sentiments in the region and empow

er minority groups that lived in oil-producing regions to stand up to what they had already dreaded for years—the prospects of Igbo domination.4

On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu, citing a variety of malevolent acts directed at the mainly Igbo Easterners—such as the pogrom that claimed over thirty thousand lives; the federal government’s failure to ensure the safety of Easterners in the presence of organized genocide; and the direct incrimination of the government in the murders of its own citizens—proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria, with the full backing of the Eastern House Constituent Assembly.5 By taking this action Ojukwu had committed us to full-blown war. Nigeria would never be the same again.

The Nigeria-Biafra War

To fully comprehend some of the competing positions during the Nigeria-Biafra War, it may be useful to begin with an examination of the local and international response to Biafra.

THE BIAFRAN POSITION

Beginning with the January 15, 1966, coup d’état, through the countercoup (staged mainly by Northern Nigerian officers, who murdered 185 Igbo officers1) and the massacre of thirty thousand Igbos and Easterners in pogroms that started in May 1966 and occurred over four months—the events of those months left millions of other future Biafrans and me feeling terrified. As we fled “home” to Eastern Nigeria to escape all manner of atrocities that were being inflicted upon us and our families in different parts of Nigeria, we saw ourselves as victims. When we noticed that the federal government of Nigeria did not respond to our call to end the pogroms, we concluded that a government that failed to safeguard the lives of its citizens has no claim to their allegiance and must be ready to accept that the victims deserve the right to seek their safety in other ways—including secession.

THE NIGERIAN ARGUMENT

Nigeria’s position on Biafra, as I understand it, was hinged on the premise that if Biafra was allowed to secede then a number of other ethnic nationalities within Nigeria would follow suit.2 The Nigerian government, therefore, had to block Biafra’s secession to prevent the dissolution of Nigeria.3

THE ROLE OF THE ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN UNITY

The Organization of African Unity (OAU) attempted to facilitate a number of “peace meetings” throughout the conflict. The umbrella body of sovereign African nations lacked credibility in this effort, in my opinion, as it harbored a strong One Nigeria bias from the very beginning of the war. The OAU’s initial attempts to bring about peace talks—with meetings slated for Kampala, the capital of Uganda, in May 1968, and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (at the OAU headquarters), in July 1968—were ineffectual, and quickly disintegrated into fiascos of confusion.4