There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
8. Nzeogwu was moved to Aba’s prison. Of his coconspirator: Major Ifeajuna was transferred to Uyo’s prison; Majors Adewale Ademoyega and Tim Onwuatuegwu to Enugu’s prison; Captain Gbulie to Abakaliki’s prison; and Major I. H. Chukwuka and Captain Nwobosi were both transferred to Owerri’s prison.
Sources: Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Luckham, The Nigerian Military; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Ademoyega, Why We Struck; and Omoigui, “Military Rebellion of 15th January 1966.”
9. The most bizarre story is the one that says the riots were provoked by a brand of bread named Nzeogwu that had a picture depicting him as St. George the crusader slaying a dragon drawn in the likeness of the Sardauna of Sokoto.
Countercoup and Assassination
1. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, p. 43; Luckham, The Nigerian Military.
2. Ibid.
3. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p, 62; Luckham, The Nigerian Military; interviews with retired Nigerian soldiers; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis.
6. Here are some chilling statistics: Of the 206 individuals murdered during this countercoup (almost ten times as many as during the January 15 coup), 185 were from the East, 19 were from the Mid-Western Region, and 6 from the Western Region. Not a single person from the North lost their life during this blood fest.
Source: Luckham, The Nigerian Military.
7. Achebe, “The Duty and Involvement of the African Writer”; Also Chinua Achebe, The Education of a British-Protected Child (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2009).
The Pogroms
1. Chinua Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,” Transition, pp. 31–38.
2. The hysteria would be heightened by a most sensational news item of that time: A four-engine propeller plane, “a Royal Air Burundi DC-4M Argonaut, flown by . . . Henry Wharton/Heinrich Wartski, crashlanded at Garoua, in Cameroun [sic], while carrying a load of arms from Rotterdam.” Henry A. Wharton, a German-American, was arrested. The newspapers alleged that the load of arms was en route to Biafra.
Sources: Tom Cooper, “Civil War in Nigeria (Biafra) 1967–70,” Western & Northern African Database, November 13, 2003; Metz, Nigeria.
PENALTY OF GODHEAD
1. Chinua Achebe, Collected Poems (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).
The Aburi Accord
1. Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War, p. 92; Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis; Joe O. G. Achuzia, Requiem Biafra (Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1986); Metz, Nigeria.
2. Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon—the Nigerian head of state—Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu—governor of the Eastern Region—Lieutenant Colonel David Ejoor, Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Katsina, Commodore J. E. A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Selem, Mr. T. Omo-Bare.
3. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Metz, Nigeria.
4. Ibid. Also J. Isawa Elaigwu, Gowon—The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman (Ibadan, Nigeria: West Books Publisher, 1986).
5. Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Achuzia, Requiem Biafra; Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis; Metz, Nigeria.
6. Ibid.
7. Odumegwu Ojukwu. Encyclopedia Britannica; retrieved July 20, 2005, using Encyclopedia Britannica Premium Service; interviews with former Nigerian and Biafran soldiers, diplomats, and government officials, Achebe Foundation. T. C. McCaskie, “Nigeria,” Africa South of the Sahara 1998 (London: Europa, 1997); Harold Nelson, Nigeria: A Country Study (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982); Nwankwo and Ifejika, Biafra; Schabowska and Himmelstrand, Africa Reports on the Nigerian Crisis; Metz, Nigeria; Audrey Smock, Ibo Politics: The Role of Ethnic Unions in Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Madiebo, The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.
8. Ibid.
GENERATION GAP
1. Chinua Achebe, Collected
Poems (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).