Fruitless Peace Negotiations. The End of Biafra. Today—Which Way Forward?
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war — Ernest Hemingway
On September 7, 1968, as renowned Biafran diplomat Raph Uwechue recounts, some anxious senior Igbos held a meeting in the Algerian capital Algiers where an OAU summit which would tackle the imbroglio of the Nigerian civil war was to be held in a few days. The group included Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr. Michael Okpara and Dr. Kenneth Dike, the erstwhile Rector of the University College, Ibadan and, with them, the considerably younger Mr. Uwechue. They sent a message to Ojukwu back in Biafra “that since Africa was sympathetic to the Ibo cause, but at the same time opposed to secession, he should use the opportunity of the Algiers meeting to seek OAU guarantees for a confederal arrangement such as was agreed in Aburi [Ghana].”
Mr. Uwechue added that “Gen. Ojukwu not only rejected the advice outright but asked some of us to recant or resign. Dr. Azikiwe left for Paris in disgust and went to London in voluntary exile.” The bilingual Mr. Uwechue, the latter-day Ohaneze ndi Igbo President-General, native of Ogwashi-Ukwu in today’s Delta State, resigned his post that December as the head of the Biafran diplomatic mission in France. Shortly thereafter he wrote that when they began Biafra, it was all about saving Igbo and Eastern lives. Now, Ojukwu was giving absolute priority to saving the country Biafra and his leadership, not saving the lives of Biafrans and ending the immense suffering and misery.
Every day has added death and suffering – needlessly sacrificed to personal obstinacy in the face of OAU condemnation.
Right from the beginning, almost all the African nations were dead set against the Biafran secession from Nigeria, and the OAU Charter specifically stated that unity in each member state should be upheld. So, 40 out of the 44 (or 33 out of the 37, depending on the counting) African nations sided with the Nigerian federal government headed by General Gowon. Support for this position was clearly expressed by the East African Standard newspaper of September 3, 1968:
“Recognizing Ibo concern, nonetheless it should be reiterated that Biafra took the initiative in secession, though the OAU specifically supports unity. Even if any hope of success existed in the beginning, none is left, and for Col. Ojukwu to continue resistance when the ring is closing is reminiscent of Hitler in his Berlin bunker. Sacrifice of life and the prolongation of suffering are reasons more potent than any OAU resolution per se for accusing him of useless and callous disregard for his people. Biafra has lost the war and the terms for a cease-fire should have been accepted months ago. Every day has added death and suffering – needlessly sacrificed to personal obstinacy in the face of OAU condemnation.”
Well, the Kenyan newspaper was a little hasty in counting Biafra out. The valiant Biafrans still had some fight left in them, and in the New Year reversed some of their losses, even though the trend of the war still pointed to eventual defeat.
General Philip Effiong wrote in his memoir that every time they [the Biafrans] scored a major military victory, he thought that was the time to make peace with Gowon. But Ojukwu wouldn’t agree, even if it was clear to them they would lose in the end. But if they made peace then, Gen. Effiong argued, they could do it with dignity and get something reasonable in return. But Ojukwu wouldn’t have it that way. He was a dictator, said General Effiong in an interview published in the April 1970 edition of the old DRUM magazine. If one agrees with Effiong’s reasoning, the stunning recapture of Owerri by Biafran troops in April 1969 was the last chance.
A last-ditch peace settlement was attempted on April 17, 1969, when the OAU Consultative Mission on Nigeria held its last meeting in Monrovia, Liberia. Present were Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie, President Ahmadu Ahidjo of Cameroon, Mr. I. K. W. Hartley of Ghana, and Mr. Diallo Telli, the Secretary-General of the OAU. At the end of three days, no progress was made towards a peace agreement. The Mission’s communiqué asked that “the two parties of the Civil War accept, in the supreme interest of Africa, a united Nigeria, which ensures all forms of security to all citizens.”
The 6th Assembly of Heads of State of the OAU which opened in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on September 6, 1969 again took up the intractable Nigerian-Biafran civil war. It was the last OAU initiative on a settlement of the Nigerian conflict. The OAU presidents voted once more for the unity of Nigeria, the four African countries which had recognized Biafra—Ivory Coast, Gabon, Tanzania and Zambia—only abstained. The leaders passed a resolution that called on the two warring sides to agree to a ceasefire and hold negotiations that would maintain Nigeria’s unity.
There was a high incidence of soldiers going AWOL, and some were inflicting wounds on themselves so as to get away from the frontlines.
After their Owerri debacle in late April 1969, the Nigerian 3rd Marine Commando Division was in flux. Morale was low, a high number of the officers and rank and file wanted their commander, Col. Benjamin Adekunle, removed. There was a high incidence of soldiers going AWOL, and some were inflicting wounds on themselves so as to get away from the frontlines. Gowon was frustrated, and the civilian Nigerian populace had become disenchanted with the seemingly never-ending war. Meanwhile Biafrans fighting from Aba and from the liberated Owerri had linked up at Igritta, a mere 15 miles to Port Harcourt. [My 27-year older cousin Christopher, three years earlier a student at the Federal School of Science, Onikan, Lagos, was a company commander right there at Igritta.]
Gowon himself was tired and wanted the war to end. He even declared at one point that he wanted peace without pre-conditions. All he wanted was for Ojukwu to announce the end of secession, so he Gowon could get something out of it. He said once the end of secession was announced, “everything will be negotiable.”
By the first week of December 1969, even though Biafran soldiers were better armed than they had ever been, they had lost the will to fight on. Simply, they were tired, and they could no longer continue fighting on empty stomachs. They simply folded. Suddenly. The rout began with the sudden total collapse of Brigadier Anthony Eze’s 12th Division in the Azumini sector.
With the new American president Mr. Richard Nixon warning British Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson at the beginning of summer 1969 that the genocide and suffering and war had to end or his government would recognize Biafra, Harold Wilson personally took control of the fighting from Gowon. He sent his own British Army officers to take over control of the floundering 3rd Marine Commando Division, identified as the Nigerian Army’s most capable fighting unit in the damning report written for him on the inept Nigerian Army by the British military attaché in Lagos, Col. Robert Scott.
Obasanjo was from the engineering corps, he wasn’t an infantry officer, and as of then had absolutely no experience commanding large numbers of infantry troops in war.
The British military officers came to Port Harcourt in the summer of 1969 and took over the planning and execution of Nigeria’s final military offensive. A picture taken by the famous photojournalist of the Daily Times Peter Obe exists, where the two British officers are sitting on a table, working on a military map, while Lt. Col. Olu Obasanjo, with a rifle slung on his shoulder, along with another Nigerian Army officer, are standing behind them. Obasanjo has always taken credit for planning and executing that offensive code-named “Operation Tailwind,” and his claim has been corroborated by others such as the later general Alabi-Isama. But that is false; which should not be surprising. After all Obasanjo was from the engineering corps, he wasn’t an infantry officer, and as of then had absolutely no experience commanding large numbers of infantry troops in war.
Harold Wilson flooded the 3rd Marine Commandos with new weapons, Russia brought in new multiple warhead (multiple barrel) artillery batteries which when fired set off explosions that would last minutes, driving the fear of God into the ragtag but incredibly brave Biafran soldiers. The British Army officers’ plan was simple. With aerial and land reconnaissance, they pinpointed the exact locations of the Biafran troops around Igritta who were threatening Port Harcourt. They then carried out a flanking maneuver, a seven-mile cutoff of the Biafran troops. Went seven miles behind the Biafrans. The Biafran troops who escaped, came out as stragglers. Meanwhile, there were no longer any functional Biafran Army units capable of challenging the 3rd Marine Commandos as they began their offensive from November 1969. Very significantly, they changed their traditional tactics of “advance and hold territory” to “advance and keep moving.”
Dr. Azikiwe had abandoned the Biafran cause a year earlier and gone into exile in London. Well, within four months of that failed last peace meeting in Addis Ababa, Biafra had collapsed. Ojukwu fled with his family, along with a few other people, leaving the Igbos and other Biafrans to sort themselves out with the rampaging victorious Nigerian soldiers. Igbo females bore the brunt of the rampage. Nigerian soldiers fanned out In the villages and cities of the former Biafra and seized Igbo wives and their daughters and turned them into sex slaves.
Gen. Effiong was very aggrieved and alarmed and eventually went to warn Col. Obasanjo and advised him to send a message to Gowon to expect Igbos to resume fighting if Nigerian soldiers were not immediately withdrawn to the urban areas and the rapes stopped. It was not an idle threat. Thousands of Biafran soldiers had left the frontlines in the last weeks of fighting and gone home and hidden their rifles in their backyards. Indeed my father had recruited scores of regular Biafran Army officers along with BOFF guerilla commanders, right after the war ended, and there were enough ex-Biafran soldiers with weapons and ammunition for them to commence an effective guerrilla war.
Unbeknownst to his family members, my father, Nnanna Ukegbu, refused to give up the fight after the war officially ended. Within weeks, he disappeared from home. He told me years later that he traveled to Lagos, then to Badagry, and made his way into Benin Republic (then called Dahomey), obtained their passport with the help of his friends, and found his way to Europe. He visited a number of European cities, including London and Paris, to meet with European communist and socialist parties, aiming to obtain military assistance for a fresh guerrilla war. He also traveled to the Irish Republic to spend a few days with the man he took like a senior brother, Dr. Michael Okpara, who had been Premier of the old Eastern Region. Dr. Okpara was in Dublin doing a refresher program in medicine in the university, and they had to share the single bed in his tiny flat.
Dr. Okpara repeated to my dad what the European communists had told him and others. Dr. Okpara said: “The French told us a few months before the end of the war that they will provide no further help, that we should make peace with Gowon’s government.”
Similarly the communists had just declined to help my dad with materiél for further fighting. Those French leftists actually supported Biafra more than is generally known. Indeed it was the frequent strikes by the communists and socialists against the government of Gen. Charles de Gaulle over labor matters in France coupled with their strong support for Biafra that had pushed de Gaulle to give the little assistance he gave to the Biafran cause.
Which way to go, Igbos?
Igbo grievances are numerous. And various Nigerian governments since 1970 have willfully ignored these issues, and indeed let them fester, which is why today we have the emergence of such separatist groups as MASSOB and IPOB.
Let’s be very clear. MASSOB and IPOB are not terrorist organizations as the Nigerian government and its captive Judiciary have proclaimed. These are young men and women who bear no arms and who attack no one. They should be able to exercise their fundamental human rights and their rights under the extant Nigerian constitution to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom to organize peaceful assembly. No sane person can expect these Igbo youths to stay and keep quiet while their people are openly neglected, discriminated against, marginalized, oppressed and, to rub salt into injury, the Nigerian governments using their own [Igbo] wealth to perpetrate these injustices. IPOB is a legitimate political pressure group, which has garnered worldwide acknowledgment. That being said, the problem for Igbos is and has always been: what is the best way to go about righting the wrongs done to them?
Today, the Igbos find themselves at a crossroads again. Where do they go, in which direction? Restructuring? An Igbo President in 2023? Revival of Biafra?
Getting to the core, the question that needs to be answered is: Where do Igbos go now for counsel and leadership on these existential matters?
Right after the civil war in 1970 and all through the military dictatorships that followed, the North made sure that they sidelined and cast into the political and socio-economic wilderness all Igbo intellectuals, especially those who played roles during the war.
As Mr. Umaru Dikko, President Shehu Shagari’s Minister of Transport, taunted Mr. Moshood Abiola in 1983 when Abiola announced he was going to challenge President Shagari for their party’s nomination: “We made you. We can also make your driver a millionaire [a billionaire in today’s naira].
In the case of the Igbos, those Northern military dictators economically empowered literally Igbo drivers so they could lord it over their betters. This is the type of people who are now known as “useful idiots.” My father called them PIMPs — “Post-Independence Mercenary Politicians!”
This time around why don’t we let some respected, credible, patriotic, tested, experienced Igbos be the ones that get together quietly, dispassionately, without noise, and without fanfare, chart a course for the Igbo people?
Why don’t we for a change keep away from the rabble rousers and the demagogues? This time around why don’t we let some respected, credible, patriotic, tested, experienced Igbos be the ones that get together quietly, dispassionately, without noise, and without fanfare, chart a course for the Igbo people?
Have you heard of Admiral Ndubuisi Kanu, Dr. Ezekiel Izuogu, Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, Prof. Alphonsus B.C. Nwosu, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, Prof. Barth Nnaji, even the old warhorse Mbazulike Amaechi? Do you know that John Nwodo, Jr., has been in politics all his life? His father Hon. John Nwodo was a minister of the Eastern Region in Dr. Michael Okpara’s cabinet. Nwodo Jr. won the presidency of the Students Union at the University of Ibadan in 1974, an unheard of feat before then and after. That position in the early post-war era was a monopoly of Yorubas. And being a university student leader between 1970 and 1978 used to carry a lot of weight because student unions at the universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, aided by fearless lawyers, especially Mr. Kanmi Ishola Osobu, mounted the only effective opposition to the military dictators of the time.
This was years before John Nwodo, Jr. became a federal minister in the Shagari government. So, add to the list Ohaneze President-General John Nnia Nwodo. These older men could bring in to join them younger men and women of proven ability and Igbo patriotism.
♦ 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.
Also, you may read:
“Igbos and Folly of Biafra (Part 1) ” >>
“Igbos and Folly of Biafra (Part 2) ” >>
“Igbos and Folly of Biafra (Part 3) ” >>
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■ 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.
