There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

That lone rifle-shot anonymous

in the dark striding chest-high

through a nervous suburb at the break

of our season of thunders will yet

steep its flight and lodge

more firmly than the greater noises

ahead in the forehead of memory.1

The Biafran Invasion of the Mid-West

The Nigeria-Biafra War began soon after Emeka Ojukwu’s proclamation of secession. Gowon decided to first use the federal army’s First Command in what he termed a “police action,”1 in an attempt to “restore federal government authority in Lagos and the break-away Eastern region.” The move to capture the Biafran border towns of Ogoja and Nsukka proved to be a declaration of war. Following this, in July 1967, Nigerian troops attempted to cross the Niger Bridge into Biafra. The Biafran army was able to halt its advance and disperse them.2

That Biafran response became an advance, leading to the taking of a large swath of the Mid-Western Region in a surprise maneuver that the Nigerian federal troops had not anticipated. Ojukwu explained his ambitious plan this way:

Our motive was not territorial ambition or the desire of conquest. We went into the Midwest (later declared the Republic of Benin) purely in an effort to seize the serpent by the head; every other activity in that Republic was subordinated to that single aim. We were going to Lagos to seize the villain Gowon, and we took necessary military precautions.3

Despite the euphoric verbal heroics espoused by Ojukwu, John de St. Jorre, the well-regarded reporter for The Observer, provided a far more subdued picture of Biafran army readiness and organization:

The Biafrans “stormed” through the Mid-West not in the usual massive impedimenta of modern warfare but in a bizarre collection of private cars, “mammy” wagons, cattle and vegetable trucks. The command vehicle was a Peugeot 404 estate car. The whole operation was not carried out by an “army” or even a “brigade” . . . but by at most 1,000 men, the majority poorly trained and armed, and many wearing civilian clothes because they had not been issued with uniforms.4

In the days preceding the Biafran invasion I was informed by friends and relatives who lived in the Mid-West Region5 that the air there was rife with rumors of an impending federal takeover to provide it with strategic and logistical access to Eastern Nigeria if war broke out. The leading political and traditional leaders of the Mid-West had made it clear to Gowon that they wanted no part of a civil war and that the region would be neutral in the event of any hostilities. There were several reasons for this position. Apart from a desire for peace during a precarious period, the leaders of that part of Nigeria recognized that their citizens were of a multiethnic background, including a sizable Igbo population.

The Biafrans utilized this knowledge in mapping out their strategy. The leaders of the offensive related their reasons for occupying the Mid-West as one “organized to prevent the Federal Government from ‘forcing Mid Westerners to enlist to fight against their own people,’ thus undermining the mediatory role which the Mid-West had been playing.” Indeed, some scholars speculate that Governor David Ejoor, the military governor of the Mid-West, was informed of Ojukwu’s intention to invade and that both men could have very well met to discuss the implications of such an action.6

Brigadier Victor Banjo was one of the masterminds7 of this successful Biafran offensive. Ojukwu had released Banjo, a Nigerian soldier who had allegedly taken part in the January 15 coup d’état and was detained in Ikot Ekpene Prison. Banjo had been found guilty of treason by the Nigerian federal government despite his insistence of innocence. He decided to stay on Biafran soil after secession rather than return and face court-martial. Ojukwu got tactical, strategic, and political mileage from having Banjo in Biafra, and he enjoyed the prospect of having a Nigerian soldier fight for him. Against protests in certain Biafran military quarters, Ojukwu brought Victor Banjo into the statehouse at Enugu as one of his close military confidants and advisers. Victor Banjo, it was widely known, was not in favor of Ojukwu’s secessionist aspirations but favored a solution to Nigeria’s problems that would result in the “deamalgamation” of the country back into Southern and Northern Nigeria.8

In the late evening of August 14, 1967, soon after the Biafrans invaded the Mid-Western Region, Brigadier Banjo spoke to Mid-Westerners and Nigerians over the airwaves from Benin. Hundreds of thousands of listeners across the nation tuned in, expecting a detailed ex

planation for the invasion and a description of the long-term plans of the Biafran army. Some of the questions running through my mind and the minds of many Nigerians across the nation included the following: Who exactly was behind this invasion? Was this a temporary occupation? What was the long-term plan? What would be the reaction of Gowon and the Nigerian federal forces?

Banjo’s address was a disappointment. It sounded to me far more like a lament of the breakup of Nigeria than a speech coming from “a Biafran military leader” or an explanation for the invasion of Nigerian territory or Biafran secession.

Banjo dedicated the first half of his message to what sounded like an overview of Nigeria’s political and military history and his own travails within that establishment. In the second half of the speech he finally got around to explaining to his listeners that the Biafran invasion was “not a conquest . . . or an invasion” but an exercise designed to “enable the people of the Mid-West to see the Nigerian problem in its proper perspective.” Banjo appealed to all civil servants to return to work the very next day and assured them of their safety. In a veiled threat, he warned those who failed to comply that they would lose their jobs.9

Closely following Banjo’s speech was the promulgation by the Biafrans of a new decree that established what would be known as the Republic of Benin (the area occupied by Biafran forces in the Mid-Western Region) and the appointment of Major Albert Nwazu Okonkwo as its military administrator. Okonkwo’s administration, we were told, would supersede the previous government of the military governor, David Ejoor, who had been appointed by the Nigerian head of state.

Major Okonkwo found his brief, some might say draconian, rule—he imposed martial law, curfews, and limited accessibility—punctuated by insurrections and burdened by the assaults of organized underground resistance groups. Many Mid-Westerners passed along to me accounts of their conflicting feelings after the Biafran offensive: “We, on the one hand, were being told by the Biafran propaganda machinery that we were being liberated from tyranny, but on the other [we were] feeling like an occupied military zone under martial law.”10

There was also growing discontent among the Biafran soldiers who were only there on military assignment but increasingly found themselves targets of local hostility. There were reports of Biafran troops seeking medical treatment for food poisoning suffered at the hands of cooks who had been recruited from the surrounding “occupied areas.” The Biafran soldiers were under siege from several fronts.11

According to civil war lore, Ojukwu was livid upon learning about the contents of Banjo’s speech to Mid-Westerners following Biafra’s takeover because it did not “sufficiently demonstrate solidarity with his own secessionist aspirations to leave Nigeria.”12 Ojukwu apparently also had been told that Banjo was complicit in a plot that enabled David Ejoor—the erstwhile military governor of the Mid-Western Region—to escape from the clutches of the Biafran forces. This made it possible, the allegations continued, for Ejoor to meet with the federal government in Lagos and provide the Nigerian head of state with critical military and tactical information about the Biafran offensive. It was also alleged that Banjo failed on purpose to continue the surprise offensive as planned beyond Ore in the Mid-West to Nigeria’s administrative capital, Lagos, and largest commercial city, Ibadan, after direct contact with agents of the federal government and Yoruba leaders.13 Banjo’s detractors, who never trusted him in the first place, had by this time successfully labeled him a traitor and an enemy of the state of Biafra.

In 1982, Ojukwu provided a glimpse of his disappointment about the role that Banjo played in the Mid-West offensive: “The stop in Benin was the beginning of the error. . . . My plan for that operation was that by half past five in the morning, the Biafran troops would be in the peripheries of Lagos.”14

A counterpoint can be obtained from the Nigerian general Olusegun Obasanjo’s memoir My Command: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970. In it Obasanjo creates some doubts as to whether or not Victor Banjo intentionally refused to proceed farther to Ibadan and Lagos as directed: “A renowned social critic . . . and [I] discussed Banjo’s request for me to grant him unhindered access to Ibadan and Lagos at any price. Both the request and the price were turned down.”

So did Banjo, without Ojukwu’s consent, make a tactical decision not to proceed beyond Ore after the military intelligence available to him demonstrated that it could be a suicide mission? Was Victor Banjo a traitor or a misunderstood hero? I think posterity will debate this question for a long time, because Banjo was subsequently executed by Ojukwu and did not leave written documents to prove or disprove his innocence.15

Gowon Regroups

Following the Biafran invasion of the Mid-West, Gowon reorganized his war strategy. He placed some of his best military personnel in three key roles as part of his agenda to “crush the Biafrans.” Mohammed Shuwa was commander in charge of the First Division of the federal army. His orders were to advance from Northern Nigeria with his troops to take the Biafran towns of Nsukka and Ogoja.1 Colonel Murtala Muhammed, in charge of Division Two, had marching orders to retake Benin and the other parts of the Mid-West occupied by the Biafran army, and then cross the River Niger into Onitsha. Finally, Division Three of the Nigerian army, led by Benjamin Adekunle (aka “the black scorpion”), would commandeer a southern offensive.2 Three months later the Nigerian forces, now more organized and “armed to the teeth” with British weapons, had staged a successful counteroffensive. The Biafrans were now in full retreat.3

The Nigerian army pushed back the Biafrans and arrived at the outskirts of “the Republic of Benin” in September 1967, led by Murtala Muhammed. His Second Infantry Division mounted a resurgent attack from two fronts???defending their advance and pushing forward in a classic “Greek army offensive.”4 The retreating Biafran forces, according to several accounts, allegedly beat up a number of Mid-Westerners who they believed had served as saboteurs. Nigerian radio reports claimed that the Biafrans shot a number of innocent civilians as they fled the advancing federal forces.5 As disturbing as these allegations are, I have found no credible corroboration of them.