ColumnsNigeriaOpinionIgbos and Folly of Biafra (Part 3)

Gowon welcomed people who had expert advice; Ojukwu shunned them

Prior to the unsuccessful Enugu peace meeting between Ojukwu and Awolowo, Col. Gowon had been showering honors on Awolowo. For instance, when Awolowo first arrived at the Lagos Airport from Enugu, upon his release from the Calabar Prison in early August 1966, Gowon welcomed him with an honor guard.

In the days following the May 1967 meeting in Enugu, after it became clear that Ojukwu was bent on secession, Awolowo accepted Gowon’s appointments as Vice Chairman of the Executive Council, Commissioner for Finance, and de facto Prime Minister, which had been Awolowo’s lifelong ambition. What did Ojukwu have to offer? Moreover one should not ignore the fact that although very protective of his Yoruba people Awolowo was a Nigerian nationalist at heart, perhaps not as much as Zik, but no less than say, Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, or even Major Chukwuemeka Kaduna Nzeogwu. In sum, Ojukwu compounded his early failings by excluding Okpara and other bigshot politicians from the meeting with Awolowo, preferring instead to use a team of people lacking any background in national politics.

I make bold to assert that most Yorubas (Action Group supporters), who had been allied with the Igbo-led NCNC in the UPGA alliance, could have sided with the East against the North, if the political chess game had been played differently by Ojukwu.

But even well before this juncture, Ojukwu needed to have brought more experienced people around him, like Gowon was doing. He was right there watching as Gowon gathered very experienced people from all over Nigeria around him, including Easterners, no less. Gowon would then make one tactical move after another, and all Ojukwu could do was react.

Ojukwu had signed a warrant for the release of Obafemi Awolowo from the prison in Calabar soon after he became the military governor of the Eastern Region, but for months did not act on it. Then Gowon issued an order for the release of Awolowo, even though he was not in any position to carry it out since Ojukwu was in total control of the East. But Ojukwu was then obliged to release Awolowo since he didn’t want to be seen to be keeping the Yoruba hero in jail. However Awolowo was grateful to both men.

Gowon would meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury and assure Britain’s top clergyman he is a Christian, not a Muslim, and would protect all Christians, including Igbos. He would suddenly create twelve states, basically diminishing Ojukwu’s position, as Ojukwu became the military governor of the East Central State, just one of the three new states that comprised the former Eastern Region. Gowon would suddenly change the Nigerian currency in February 1968, with just a two-week notice, basically wiping out Biafra’s cash holdings. A slapdash collection of largely untrained Nigerian troops, with the grand name of 3rd Marine Commandos, led by Lt. Col. Benjamin Adekunle, would depart to the Biafran coast aboard the Nigerian troop ship NNS Lokoja accompanied by the frigate, NNS Nigeria. It took them a week to reach Bonny Island and seize the undefended Shell-BP oil terminal, guaranteeing that for the rest of the conflict Nigeria could ship Biafra’s crude oil abroad and collect all the revenues.

In his memoir, Col. Adekunle said he was stunned to find no Biafran soldier on Bonny Island when he and his troops arrived there. You might question whether Ojukwu ever considered that Biafra could be blockaded and what he would need to do to prevent that from happening. In truth Ojukwu feared a blockade could happen but was woefully unable to prevent it.

The Calamitous Midwest Invasion

The Yorubas and their foremost leader Obafemi Awolowo had declared they wanted Yorubaland kept out of the fighting. Awolowo had earlier demanded once freed from prison that Gowon should send all Northern soldiers away from the West. Gowon ignored the demand, but it was for this reason that the Nigerian Army invaded Biafra from the Nsukka and Ogoja areas. Col. Njoku told my dad, his family friend, that if he had led the Midwest Invasion, he would not have wasted any time in Benin like Col. Victor Banjo did. He said he would have ordered the troops to head straight on to Ijebu Ode overnight and be on their way to Lagos by early morning. He said he would have expected the first battles to take place in Lagos.

As it was, an officer from my local government area in Imo State, Ngor-Okpala, Major Festus Akagha, after an unnecessary wait in Benin defied the traitorous Banjo and pushed forward towards Ore with troops of the Biafran 12th Battalion. Col. Mike Ivenso and his 13th Battalion overran Auchi and Agenebode and went on to capture Okene with the intention of cutting off the Nigerian soldiers that were at Nsukka and heading to Enugu. The 18th Battalion commanded by Major Humphrey Chukwuka had swung south seizing Sapele, Ughelli and Warri.

Contrary to the expectations in Enugu, Col. Banjo had another agenda entirely, one quite different from the one approved by Ojukwu. Instead of pressing forward with the offensive, he was instead secretly working on a conspiracy with Yoruba officers in Ibadan and Lagos to get rid of Gowon; this, after deceiving Gowon they were on his side. Meanwhile Banjo was collecting money and supplies from Benin City and also collecting from Enugu. But very treacherously he was not sending the supplies to the warfronts. While doing his shenanigans to discombobulate Ojukwu and delay the operation, Banjo ordered his battalions at Ore, Okene and Warri to stand still and not advance any further.

The delay by Banjo gave time for Lt. Col. Murtala Mohammed and Major Ibrahim Taiwo to cobble up the new 10th and 11th Battalions of the Nigerian Army and race forward to challenge Major Akagha and his men at Ore. The first confrontations were disastrous for the Nigerian Army as the Biafran soldiers almost wiped them out in a series of ambushes. But then the Biafrans ran out of ammunition, as Col. Banjo had denied them any reinforcements or re-supplies. So, the Biafran soldiers scattered, and it was an open road from Ore to Benin for Murtala Mohammed and the Nigerian Army. Major Akagha, visiting my dad not long after, said he trekked in the bush for two weeks to get from Ore back to Asaba and Biafra.

This recurring question about strategy. U.S. soldiers are trained to trek scores of miles carrying their gear that can weigh more than 50 pounds per man. Those of us who were of age in May 1982 during the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina read about Lt. Col. Herbert Jones, and how the Royal Marines and the Paras did a 90-km (50-mile) three-day trek across the Falklands, carrying their kit that each weighed 36 kg (80 pounds). Could select Biafran troops have avoided Yorubaland entirely, trekked in the bush by the Atlantic coastline, before the outbreak of hostilities in July 1967, making their way from Port Harcourt to Warri to Ondo to Epe, divide up so that one group headed to Victoria Island and Lagos Island, and one group headed to Ikorodu and on to Ikeja?

If General Ojukwu had been committed to strategic planning, the Biafrans had the chance to cripple the Nigerian Navy and forestall any sea blockade. In his memoir Col. Benjamin Adekunle recounted how Igbo naval officers took away critical parts from the engines of the Nigerian warships as they were departing to the East. Igbo sailors and engineers were the people operating those ships. But new parts could be bought, and mercenaries could and were hired to operate the  warships for Nigeria. But imagine if those Igbo engineers and sailors had placed time-delayed explosives in the engine rooms of those Nigerian naval vessels and sunk them. The Nigerian Navy would have been destroyed even before war broke out. It is not easy to get new ships, they take time to construct, unless a country gifts you one, which would have been unlikely at the time. But there would have been no blockade of Biafra, and the ports in Port Harcourt and Calabar would have been open to receive imports.

It wasn’t as if the Biafran leadership was entirely bereft of thinking about such subterfuge and sabotage. Igbo operatives did detonate bombs on Moloney Street, in Ikoyi, targeting the Police Headquarters, for example. Another group hijacked a Nigeria Airways Fokker 27 passenger plane during a flight that originated from Benin and was bound for Lagos, and successfully diverted it to Enugu. The four hijackers were airline Capt. Ibikare Allwell-Brown, along with Onuora Nwanya, Sam Inyagha, and Mark Odu.

Ojukwu thought he knew it all; that he had everything covered. Wrong. He believed he didn’t need all the bright Igbo, Efik, Ibibio, Anang, Ijaw, even Yoruba and Midwestern, political, military, administrative talent, available to him. He believed his boast: “No power in Black Africa can subdue us.” And: “…they [Nigerians] will be surprised by what they are going to get.” After a few days of initial successes in the Obudu battlefield it turned out this was mere bombast. Well, one can say that Ojukwu held on to his dream till the bitter end in the first week of January 1970. One can also say that the dream had long become a nightmare.

I take this opportunity to commemorate Col. Timothy Onwuatuegwu, whose end came during the fog of Biafra’s collapse. He was my dad’s war colleague; and I pray God forgives him for some of his actions during the January 1966 coup. He was a valiant Biafran officer, and commanded the “S” Division in the Owerri-Port Harcourt Axis. Ojukwu failed to take him out of the country as Biafra collapsed in 1970, well-knowing the role Tim Onwuatuegwu had played in the January 1966 coup. My parents said the colonel was killed at the border as he was attempting to escape into Cameroon. Biafra’s Army commander Gen. Alexander Madiebo said he believed that Ojukwu did not like Onwuatuegwu. I dare to add, much as he didn’t like or trust Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu either.

I also commemorate Lt. Col. Henry Igboba, native of Ibouzo (Ibusa), in today’s Delta State, my dad’s beloved schoolmate at St. Patrick’s College, Calabar, who was killed in Benin by Nigerian soldiers while under house arrest because he refused to join Col. Victor Banjo to betray Biafra.

In the same vein, I commemorate those courageous Biafran army officers and soldiers who at the end shot themselves, committed suicide, rather than bear the defeat of Biafra. Similarly I commemorate the thousands of young Biafran men and boys who lost their lives or were maimed fighting in the war. Some may say they wasted their lives and limbs in a needless and winless war, that’s not how I see it. They fought for a just cause, and their service and sacrifices will never be in vain, will never be forgotten. I add here that I also applaud the actions of those few Yoruba officers who during the war did what they could to save the lives of innocent Biafran civilians, unlike officers from other tribes, including Christian officers from the Middle Belt and from today’s Akwa Ibom State, and non-Igbo officers from today’s Edo and Delta states..

I also commemorate Prof. Kalu Ezera, one of my father’s best friends, former Member of Parliament, a professor of Political Science at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who was a top-ranking Biafran diplomat. Native of Ohafia in today’s Abia State, he too was killed in the fog following the collapse of Biafra, shot at a checkpoint by a Nigerian Army captain from Kabba in Kogi State, as he was traveling back to Nsukka to resume duties. Gowon did order a court martial and that officer was executed.

The Struggle for Peace (Almost Zero Support for Biafra in Africa)

After telegraphing it for months, Ojukwu finally declared secession on May 30, 1967, without fully considering the likely fallout of such a momentous move. Virtually all of Africa came against him and our people. Most African countries are a patchwork of tribes, and as much as most of those African presidents deplored the atrocities committed against innocent Igbos by the Hausa, Fulani, Kanuri  and other northerners in Nigeria, they hated even more, the idea of some tribes in their own countries breaking away because of one grouse or another.

The European ex-colonial powers for their part did not like the idea of their former colonies breaking up into smaller units. Britain did not like the North seceding and neither did they like the East seceding.

The French did not go the whole hog in arming Biafra because they were afraid that the British could retaliate by instigating insurrections and secessionist tendencies in some of their own French ex-colonies. There was a large Yoruba minority in Dahomey (today’s Republic of Benin) who might like secession. There were also thousands of English-speaking people in Western Cameroon who would like the idea of secession. Not to forget the situation in Chad where the President, François Tombalbaye, a Christian southerner, was running a brazenly repressive government and was facing strident calls for secession by Muslims in the North and Central regions. In nearby Niger there was a large population of Hausas in the South, making up to 50 percent of the entire population of the country, and who might like the idea of secession. Besides, France’s oil-rich North African former colonies supported Nigerian unity.

About 2006 or 2007, I bought a book at the bookstore of the Presidential Hotel in Port Harcourt. It was Gen. Philip Effiong’s memoir titled: “My Biafra Odyssey.” One point he made in his book was that maybe things would have turned out differently if we had not said we were fighting for secession. He added that when Gowon created the three states out of the Eastern Region, Ojukwu could have responded by creating three states and given them his own military governors, while remaining at the top.

The whole idea intrigued me at the time and I took it further in my mind. There was nothing stopping Ojukwu from pushing his then well-known position that he did not recognize Gowon’s takeover after the July 29, 1966 Northern soldiers’ revenge-coup massacre. He could have doubled down on his insistence that the military hierarchy status quo ante be maintained despite the successful coup by soldiers from the North. He could have instead declared that he would fight to restore order to the institution of the Nigerian Army and to quickly restore civilian rule. These were the same sentiments he had loudly expressed right after the counter-coup of July 29, 1966, when Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe found himself unable to take up Ojukwu’s appeal to take over the armed forces, with Supreme Commander Gen. J. T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi abducted in Ibadan and presumed dead.

The battle lines would then have been drawn, pitting his side of Nigerians versus Gowon and Gowon’s side of Nigerians. Most of Africa would have been sympathetic to Ojukwu’s side after all those massacres. Zik’s lobbying of his network of friends across the leaderships of North, East and West Africa would have been vastly more successful in providing support. Those leaders at the time would not have sided with Gowon and the savages, especially the Christian presidents among them.

Most countries of the West—U.S., U.K., Germany, Italy, France, indeed all of NATO, with the exception perhaps of Turkey, would have sided with the eloquent Oxford graduate. The much-vaunted highly effective Biafran propaganda machine [run by Geneva-based PR firm Marcpress] could have instead been used to help Ojukwu’s side in the tussle with Gowon’s side. At worst for any of these countries they would have remained neutral.

♦ Hector-Roosevelt Udunna Ukegbu, is a graduate of the University of Lagos, where he was a student leader; he also graduated from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York; St. Gregory’s College, Ikoyi, Lagos, and the Owerri Grammar School, Imerienwe.

Read “Igbos and Folly of Biafra (Part 1) ” >>
Read “Igbos and Folly of Biafra (Part 2) ” >>

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EDITOR’S NOTE:
■ This is an Op-ed article. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of WAP. WAP does not endorse nor support views, opinions or conclusions drawn in opinion articles, and we are not responsible or liable for any content composition, accuracy or quality within the article or for any damage or loss to be caused by and in connection to it.
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