THE POGROM, WAR & STARVATION

Revisiting The Asaba Massacres

2009-10-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

By Obi Nwakanma, Vanguard

My attempt this week is to bring some attention to the subject of the Asaba massacres, one of the haunting ghosts of Nigeria’s last civil war. I pay particular tribute to Emma Okocha – Onye Amuma Cable – author of Blood on the Niger, the chilling account of the Asaba massacres of October 7, 1967.

More than any other individual, Okocha has pursued the Asaba story with the temerity of a survivor, and the hardnosed instincts of a well-trained journalist. He has brought attention to the great evil that Nigerians love to forget: the attempt at selective annihilation of a people through acts of terrible war crimes.

Asaba has become Okocha’s life work; an obsession. He says it is to bring closure, and give final rest to those who perished that day in Asaba. But I suspect something much deeper and personal. Of course it is up close and personal for Emma Okocha. He is from Asaba; he survived the massacres; but his entire family perished.

The Igbo name their children, “Echezona/Echezola”- never forget, and “Odoemene/Ozoemena”- May this never happen again. These are names in recoil from harsh memory.

These I think are the profound sentiments that propel Okocha’s pursuit to reopen the case of the Asaba mass killings, compel the official acknowledgement of war crimes by the Nigerian government, and force a visible war memorial in honour of the dead of October 1967 – the “Asaba Memorial.”

Happily, Emma Okocha’s work is drawing attention to one of modern Africa’s darkest war crimes. Last week, the University of Southern Florida, Tampa, convened the Asaba Memorial symposium to reopen the issue, and unveil “the long-buried tragedy” led by the anthropologists Elizabeth Bird and Erin Kimmerle and Fraser Ottanelli, chairman of the department of history, in collaboration with the USF Libraries Holocaust and Genocide Studies Centre.

They have also recruited a Tampa Police homicide detective Charles Massucci to gather documents, record oral histories and to examine mass graves and recover evidence of the Asaba genocide.

Let me briefly place the Asaba tragedy in context for those who may either have forgotten, or who may not know about it, especially many contemporary Nigerians who may have been born after the war, and who ought to know the many evils that haunt Nigeria.

In May 1967, Eastern Nigeria declared secession from the old federation of Nigeria and declared itself the republic of Biafra. Eastern Nigerian secession naturally culminated in the Nigerian political crisis leading to the January 15, 1966 coup led by Emma Ifeajuna that overthrew the government of the first republic, and the July 29, 1966, led by Murtala Muhammed, and directed by Yakubu Gowon who subsequently took over as military head of state.

The July coup spiraled into the selective annihilation of all Igbo military officers and snowballed into a pogrom of the Igbo.

The Aburi agreements reached to stem the slide collapsed, and the Gowon administration in Lagos peremptorily dissolved the regions and created the twelve states on May 27, 1967, thus subverting as the government in the East saw it, the fundamental authority and rights of the regional governments, and complicating the East’s capacity to offer security to its people who had fled to it.

Odumegwu-Ojukwu, military governor of the Eastern region, on advise from the Eastern Nigerian Consultative Assembly declared secession, and announced the independent republic of Biafra three days later, on May 30, 1967.

The stage was set for an epic conflict. The government in Lagos declared war and attacked Biafra on July 6, fighting from Ogoja and Nsukka. By September, the Biafran capital was threatened.

That September, however, Biafra launched its own attack, a diversionary and tactical move through the Midwest; brilliant in conception, but poor in execution.

Brigadier Victor Banjo, leading the “Liberation Army” from Onitsha, made a lightning move into Benin City and was close to taking Lagos and Ibadan, in what then seemed a cake walk, when he suddenly lost the will to fight.

Old Biafra intelligence sources hint that Banjo had been told in unmistakable terms, in his meeting with the deputy British high commissioner in Benin, that the Brits might be forced to provide logistical support to Gowon from the sea, and attack Lagos with its special forces already nearby, off the coasts.

The prospects of the Brits bombing Lagos and turning “Yorubaland” into a bloody battle field forced Banjo to stymie the Liberation Army in Benin City, and order a hasty withdrawal. It also allowed the federal troops led by Murtala Muhammed to reorganize and retake the Midwest. Asaba was doomed from that moment.

The massacre of Igbo civilians began from Benin City with the arrival of the federal forces. Folks in Benin went house by house identifying and killing their Igbo neighbours. Murtala’s Army already war drunk thus arrived Asaba with bloodlust.

The account of what happened in Asaba is well documented in Emma Okocha’s Blood on the Niger. It is also the subject of my poem, The Horsemen, an elegy to that era.

But to put it quite simply, the troops under Murtala Muhammed and the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, both of whom also ironically met death on the same day in 1976, supervised the killing of the adult males of Asaba.

They had ordered them to dance at the town square, separated the men from the women, and killed them.

Ironically, one of those killed was Sydney Asiodu, a potential Olympic medalist and undergraduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His brother, Philip Asiodu was then a super permanent secretary in Gowon’s administration in Lagos.

Even then, Asaba was only one of the places where the Nigerian military committed war crimes of such horrendous magnitude during that war, and have sought to cover it up and even erase them.

Many of those who have strutted about as Nigeria’s military heroes indeed ought to be brought to account for their war crimes.

It is the legacy of impunity that continues to haunt Nigeria, and continues to breed the kind of viciousness that would lead to the mindless destruction of people be it at Umuechem, Odi or Gboko because no one yet has been brought to account for such horrendous acts.

The Asaba memorial will be an important first step towards full disclosure and possible restitution.

Death of a Missionary Priest, Father Aengus Finucane

2009-10-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

Written by John O'Shaughnessy, Limerick Post

FATHER Aengus Finucane, the former Chief Executive of the Third World charity Concern, and a native of Limerick, where he was made a Freeman of the City, has died, aged 77. He died in the Spiritan Fathers’ nursing home in Kimmage after a short illness. The late Fr Finucane is survived by two sisters and three brothers.

He was a product of Limerick CBS and later studied Philosophy, and was ordained a Holy Ghost priest in 1958.

The Nigerian civil war four decades ago catapulted him into emergency aid.

As a Spiritan missionary in Biafra, a region that was trying to breakaway from Nigeria, he was confronted with famine.

He joined parishioners in braving bombing raids to unload relief cargoes at a local airstrip.

Supporters of Fr Finucane and his fellow missionaries raised almost €4m and sent four shiploads of humanitarian aid. They founded Africa Concern.

Minister of State for Overseas Development, Peter Power, expressed deep regret at the death of Fr Aengus Finucane.

He said:

“As a fellow Limerick man, I would like to pay particular tribute to Fr Aengus Finucane, who always retained a great interest in the cultural and sporting life of the city, although he was often thousands of miles away.

“He was a marvellous ambassador for the city and this was recognised by the University of Limerick, who conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Laws. His passing will be much mourned in Limerick.

“He had been a tireless force for good across the globe for more than four decades. As a founder member of Concern, Fr Finucane harnessed his great energy, commitment and kindness to effect real improvements in the lives of the poor and those devastated by war and disaster.

“From Biafra in the late 1960s to Bangladesh in the 1970s and Rwanda more recently, Fr Finucane brought relief and hope to millions of people whose lives were blighted by poverty and injustice.

“More than three decades after he worked in Bangladesh, locals recently remembered him as a “giant of a man”, who not only provided food and clean water, but established training centres for women and schools for children. He provided material help, but also brought them hope and the opportunity to build their own lives.

“This is Fr Finucane’s legacy and we in Ireland, along with millions of people across the world, owe him a debt of gratitude. We extend our sympathies to his brother, Fr Jack, his family and his many friends and colleagues across the world”.

Concern’s current CEO Tom Arnold described Fr Finucane as one of the greatest men of his generation who used his gifts for the welfare of the world’s poorest people.

‘He had an absolute commitment to the poorest of the poor: his work with Concern saved countless lives and improved the lives of many millions of people”.

An Taoiseach Brian Cowen, described Fr Aengus as a great humanitarian and his life’s work was to help alleviate the suffering of the poorest of the poor.

“He has made a truly impressive contribution to improving the quality of life of people in the Third World and his courageous efforts saved a huge number of lives”.

President of the University of Limerick, Professor Don Barry, paid the following tribute: “Father Finucane worked tirelessly in the service of the world’s most disadvantaged peoples.

“His passing will leave a void that is as immeasurable as the number of lives touched by his contributions.

“He was champion for the poor, an advocate for the downtrodden and risked his life working in many of the world’s worst war zones. Father Finucane was an inspirational figure who never despaired in the face of new challenges. We would like to offer our condolences to Father Finucane’s family at this very sad time”.

Co-founder of photographic agency Press 22, Liam Burke spoke fondly of Father Finucane, “He was one of the most remarkable men I ever met. He inspired everyone who met him”.

Mr Burke, who first met Fr Finucane in 1989, said they recently watched the All-Ireland final together, “He was in great spirits, although he was a bit disappointed that Tipperary lost. He was always a great supporter of Limerick GAA”.

Although Father Finucane travelled to many nations carrying out humanitarian work, Mr Burke, who had travelled abroad with him in a professional capacity, said he had a soft spot for one country. “One of his favourite countries was Bangladesh, he spent many years there and always took any opportunity he had to go back”.

Liam described Father Finucane as a proud Limerickman, “He was very very proud of Limerick and he always defended it against its critics”.

Biafran Retrospect: Umu-Igbo Express Gratitude to a Man Who Saved Them

2009-09-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

By Rev. Father Tobe Nnamani

Dr George Hussler and Rev Father Tobe Nnamani

Gabon 1970: A gift given to Dr Hussler by the Biafran children at "Village KM 11"

Rev. Dr. Hussler and Chief Joseph Mmeh

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”

- Cicero-

Preamble

In April 1968, the survival of the nascent Republic of Biafra was hanging on the balance. After the fall of Enugu in September 1967, Biafran major cities continued to fall one after the other into the hands of the enemy. Consequently, what was left of the Biafran Secretariat consisted of a mobile van moved from one corner to the other. While major world powers watched with folded arms, debating on the proper interpretation and application of the principles of territorial sovereignty and non-intervention in the OAU Charter, the Federal soldiers continued their ferocious onslaught on the defenseless Biafran population. They rampaged, pounded, bombed and shelled villages and towns including hospitals and schools with reckless abandon. The level of death-toll and human misery shocked the conscience of the international community. And, as Biafran borders continued to shrink by the day, the population density jumped from its pre-war level of 500 persons per square kilometer to 2,000. In spite of all these seemingly insurmountable odds, the Biafrans were determined to defend themselves to the last man or so it seemed. However, as a result of the total and suffocating blockade by land, sea and air, the resultant crushing effect of hunger and disease threatened to snuff life out of the fledging republic and its traumatized citizens. It was in the midst of this excruciating situation that the Christian Churches all over the world including Jewish Synagogues in America launched one of the greatest relief assistance in the history of humanitarian intervention.

One man who played a leading role in this timely intervention was Rev. Fr. Dr. Georg Hüssler, former President of Caritas International. This kind-hearted man of God celebrated his 88th Birthday on July 7, 2009. Prior to this date, the Co-ordinator of Nzuko Umuigbo World-Wide Inc., Chief Joe Mmeh did an effective networking; he sent out emails to many Umuigbo both home and abroad requesting them to send a congratulatory birthday message and _expression of gratitude to a man who gave them food when they were starving to death and thereby saved them from total annihilation. For, according to the Roman Poet Cicero, “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but, the parent of all others;” it is also an attitude that leads to beatitude. The response to this appeal was over-whelming as post-cards and emails poured into Dr. Hüssler’s letter and email boxes in waves. The content of this parent of all virtues was laden with emotions as many of those who sent them recounted the agony they or their parents and relatives went through and how they might not have seen the light of day without his timely intervention. To crown this out-pouring of gratitude and give it a somewhat personal touch, Chief Mmeh and the author paid a courtesy call on Father Hüssler on July 23, 2009 in his home in Freiburg/Breisgau, south-west Germany . The Octogenarian - still relatively strong, came to the door to meet us. After exchanging pleasantries, he took us down the memory lane and recounted with passion and astonishing picturesque details how Caritas (Relief Organisation founded in May 1946 in Germany) in tandem with other relief agencies and good-spirited individuals airlifted thousands of tons of relief materials to Uli Airstrip. The following is a sketch of the tit-bits from the meeting.

Who is Rev. Fr. Dr. Georg Hüssler?

Father Georg Hüssler was born on July 7, 1921 in Einöd , Saarland , Germany and grew up in Elsass. He was a medical student when World War II broke out; he enlisted into the Germany army and worked as a Sanitary Inspector. When the war ended, he proceeded to Rome where he studied Theology and was ordained priest in 1951. After his doctoral studies, he became an Assistant to the then President of German Caritas with Headquarters in Freiburg . He rose through the ranks to become the Secretary-General and later the President of German Caritas, a post he held for 22 years from 1969 to 1991.In between the time , he was also appoint President of Caritas International. Dr. Hüssler was decorated with three Honours by the three tiers of government in Germany , namely; the local government of his city Freiburg , the State government of Baden-Württemberg and the Federal Republic of Germany. Dr. Hüssler was interested in both aspects of the Catholic Social Teaching. On the practical side, he distinguished himself in the excellent way he managed the affairs of Caritas in the whole world bringing relief and succor to thousands of people ravaged by war and natural disasters. On the theoretical level, he authored five insightful books among which are Caritas and Pastoral Work (1985), Life in the 20th Century (1998) and Humanity as Spirituality (2006). He has retired from active service and lives a quiet life in Freiburg

The saving Role of Relief Agencies in Biafra:TheJoint Church Aid (JCA)

It is pertinent to get a glimpse of the complex and dangerous circumstances in which the relief agencies operated. In fact, all the contentious elements in complex humanitarian emergencies interplayed in the Biafran war such as the possibility of exploiting existing differences within the civil society; the issue of disputed legitimacy of host authorities; high prevalence of hunger and disease; keen and probing journalistic interest; the likelihood of manipulating relief for military and diplomatic advantages and apparent division among the international relief agencies. While all these complex issues were being discussed in high and low quarters, the estimated monthly death-toll in Biafra was put at 750,000.

The first major huddle was the non-agreement of Biafran and Nigerian governments on the route through which relief aid should be supplied. While Nigeria wanted relief to pass through Lagos , Biafra on the other hand saw it as suicidal to let their food pass through enemy hands. When Obilagu Airstrip came as a compromise, the federal troops captured it within a few weeks and Uli was now the only outlet through which relief came to Biafra . The Nigerian government strongly opposed it and refused to guarantee safety of flights landing at Uli. The Red Cross was the first to airlift food in August 1968 but was compelled to stop after one of its planes was shot down by the Nigerian government killing the entire crew.

At this juncture, the JCA which was made up of 37 international Church bodies from 28countries picked up the gauntlet. It defied the federal governments order and began one of the most efficient and effective relief Airlifts in the history of humanitarian intervention. Fr. Hüssler told us that this was the first time relief agencies charted their own planes to supply relief materials. He recounted how he and Father Tony Byrne the Deputy Director of JCA with representatives from the Churches went to France to purchase four planes. According to Fr. Hussler, “initially, we hired one experienced Pilot, Frank Wharton (an American of Latvian descent) who was later joined by Gustav von Rosen another pilot from Sweden among others.” Von Rosen brought four of his own planes and flew relief aids into Biafra free of charge. However, as the Nigerian government was vehemently against this life-line, Uli Airstrip which was only 8,000 foot was bombarded day and night but after each bombardment, it was quickly repaired to received the next flights. In the end, JCA airlifted about 60,000 tons of assorted relief materials in 5,300 flights. The Red Cross, before its short-lived assistance, ferried 41,000 tons of food and medical equipment in 4,000 flights. There were also significant contributions by other smaller relief agencies. The entire relief action mounted by JCA gulped the sum of about $116 million dollars and another $250 million dollars was invested in it by American private interests. This wonderful work of mercy was accomplished but not without heavy human loses on the part of the helpers. Thus, by the end of 1969, 27 pilots had lost their lives with 10 planes short down by the Nigerian Air Force.

JCA’s assistance was not limited to sending food to Biafra ; it also came in some other significant ways. For example, when in January 1968, the Nigeria government changed its currency, Biafra became literally bankcrupt. Even though it printed its own currency, the purchasing power of the Biafran money worth little or nothing. The relief agencies exchanged the Biafran pounds at the rate of $2.80. In this regard, Fr. Hüssler made a handsome donation in cash even after the war had ended. According to him “unknown to me, on January 15, 1970, when I flew to Lagos to meet Gowon, the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war was announced that day. Now, the Biafrans were left with no money since the Biafran Currency had become worthless. I had 100,000 Deutsche Mark in my bag which I changed into Nigerian Currency, chartered a Taxi and drove down to Onitsha where the money was handed over the Church through the then Archbishop Arinze, who took it with two hands and expressed his gratitude.”

The relief planes did not lift relief materials alone. “We discovered that the planes were flying empty back to Europe, so we quickly loaded children and the sick into the planes and flew them to safety in Europe and some African countries such as Gabon , Sao- Tomé etc.” Fr. Hüssler personally took two children from Okporo in Orlu to Europe - Roseline and Moses. Roseline had a hole in her head while Moses had a broken jaw. Unfortunately, Roseline did not survive but Moses is still alive today. Dr. Hüssler related to us that one of the things that touched him during those turbulent days was the magnanimity shown to 3,000 Biafran children by late Oma Bongo of Gabon . He gave the JCA a very large expanse of land where an English school was built. Bongo personally gathered about 56 competent personnel from different countries to give the children sound education. Another 1,000 children were also airlifted to Sao-Tomé – a Portuguese Island perching on the Atlantic Ocean . Fr. Hüssler also told us that he was delighted by the way Gowon spontaneously gave permission for the children airlifted to Gabon to come back to Nigeria .

Conclusion

This was how we spent the two and half hours with him and his former secretary –Frau Engesser, when he was Caritas President . It was indeed a pleasant company. As Dr. Hüssler re-lived this intense experience, tears of joy rolled down his chicks and he ended by saying in German Language “also, das war doch eine schöne Arbeit und ich bin Gott dankbar” – that was indeed a nice work and I thank God for that. We were very glad that we met him in person. There are still a lot of other people out there who played decisive roles during those 30 months of horror and degradation. One such person is John Doyle – a Holy Ghost Father who is now over 80 years old and lives in Reutershügelweg4, D-18069, Rostock , Germany . It would be good for Umuigbo who live in this area to pay him a visit and, on behalf of all Biafrans in general and, Ndiigbo in particular, personally express our heart-felt gratitude to him. Finally, we wish Father Hüssler a happy Birth-day, more healthy days ahead and God’s choicest blessings.

(Rev. Fr. Dr. Tobe Nnamani, MSP, is a priest of the Missionaries of St. Paul. He studied in Germany and Belgium and now teaches at the National Missionary Seminary of St. Paul, Abuja . Contact:ecomat23@yahoo.co.uk, GSM: +234-80-36-37-88-03).

Florida Autumn Retreat: Asaba, Kingdom on the Niger, Unites to Bury Her Dead

2009-09-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

BY Emma Okocha, The Vanguard,

Forwarded by Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

“On the grant of the Charter to the company in July 10, 1886, the man to whom Goldie turned to as Chief Justice was Sir James Marshall. The headquarters was at Asaba.’’ — Oluwole, T. S. Elias, Makers of Nigerian Law, Lagos 1963. Also See Gills Geography, Text in use up to 1912, it was clearly stated that Asaba was the capital of Southern Nigeria.

“The greatest single massacre occurred in the Ibo town of Asaba where 700 Ibo male were lined up and shot’’ — London Observer, January 21, 1968.

“There has been genocide, for example on the occasion of the 1966 massacres…. Two areas have suffered badly …Firstly, the region between Benin and Asaba where only widows and orphans remain. Federal troops having for unknown reasons massacred all the men. Accordingly to eyewitnesses of that massacre the Nigeria commander ordered the execution of every Ibo male over the age of ten years’’ — Monsignor Georges [sent down on a fact -finding mission by His Holiness The Pope,] Le Monde, April 5, 1968.

“In every Sport, SBA, other wise called the Hurricane, brought into the game three elements; speed, strength and his own unique style of playing the game, once he mastered the techniques. Despite his star status, and unequaled achievements, he was unassuming. Nobody who was his contemporary at Igbobi College, Lagos, who knew Sydney Asiodu can fail to end up feeling that in him the civil war, took not just somebody, but a great leader of men.’’ — Dele Sobowale, Impressionistic Columnist, Vanguard, and Editor In Chief, The Igbobian, lamenting the wanton waste of young men and the senseless killing of the Nigerian decorated Olympian, Sydney Asiodu on the day of the Asaba Massacre.

“The Western Ibos became the most vulnerable Nigerians… required ten positive acts of loyalty to one of the rest of the nation to prove themselves human beings. Ever since the Midwest invasion, they had been hounded, killed and considered greater security risk than the real Igbos themselves’’ — Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, The Man Died.

“In the spirit of Christian reconciliation accept my apologies on behalf of the Federal Military Government on the activities of the soldiers in Asaba during the Nigerian Civil war. I’m sorry for what happened especially to those who lost families…. I hope Asaba people will accept this apology even if it is belated….” — General Yakubu Gowon, Apology To Asaba, Nigeria Prays, The Guardian, September 21, 2001.

THERE were families like the Chukwurahs of Umuaji, who at the end of the mayhem had fifteen dead. Another Chukwurah family from the different village of Umunaje, that is the quarters of the late, renowned Nigerian Constitutional lawyer, Olisa Chukwurah, SAN, counted their relations’ dead bodies, watching the horrible footage on the Western Nigeria Television.

Pa Chukwurah and all his sons, including Eddy, the handsome engineer who had just returned from England, his first son who was a veteran of the West African Force, were not spared as the soldiers painted the household with blood.

Others like the Ezeadeife family of Ugbomanta, did not fare better. They were simply wiped out! University of Ife undergraduate brothers, Akazua Oyana and Uwaegbunam Oyana were shot, wounded, and when the illiterate soldiers figured out that they were undergraduates, they furiously before their pleading mother, buried the bleeding brothers alive.

There were the pathetic cases of victims whose death caused revolution and sympathies even from their butchers. Until their death some twenty years after, the Omoko parents never recovered from the traumatic loss of their only son, Barrister Richard Omoko. Their constant mourning and inconsolable hopelessness eventually led to their deaths.

The mother of another only born, Chukwumah killed at Ogbeosowah was for many years in a state disbelief, refusing to acknowledge the fact that her only and innocent son had gone. When she eventually summoned courage to accept his passage she ran amock and since has been roaming the streets like a mad woman.

Indeed, Barrister Omoko’s death was so pathetic and more saddening when the parents learnt that they could not find his body.

The parents had continued to pray and hoped that he had escaped to Biafra. Unable to bear the personal guilt anymore, the Omoko parents were accosted one morning, by the same soldiers that dispatched their son into the River Niger. They confessed their murder of their son and presented the shocked parents with the Barrister’s golden watch, which they had forcefully taken from him before shooting him into the Niger.

They were countless professionals, medical doctors, like Dr. Eugene Akwule, and his brothers, educationists, like irreplaceable E.C. Philips MBE. top civil servants like my uncle, the late Vincent Iweze, former territorial Controller, P&T, Northern Nigeria. This man who had a red line with the mighty Sardauna was murdered with my father and his sons, to the chagrin of the commanders when the deed was over.

The big men in town on October 7, 1967, were not spared. On the other hand, Asaba was almost spared as the richest black man of that era stepped out to buy the town away from trouble. Michael Ugo who was the pioneer business mogul that owned the Ike Chukwuka Transport Lines that preceded the Ojukwu group or the Ekene Dili Transport Lines, also owned the Nigeria Airmails and was the first African to establish the Export /Import business at Apapa.

His real estate empire was so vast, that any young man who came down to Lagos and had no place to shelter him, Chief Ugo would provide him with a place under the sun. He offered the soldiers some millions of pounds. There was initial agreement to save the town from mostly Northern officers who were negotiating in Hausa with Ugo.

Suddenly, this time from predominantly officers of Niger Delta origin a master list of prominent Asaba indigenes were circulated. These red-eyed officers burnt the Mercedes car with the cash and came for him. Before he left for the killing ground he asked for his friend Ogbueshi Leo Okogwu. He was aware that this famous father of Nneka Mariam Babangida had prepared the Community’s Welcome Address.

They had planned to give the victorious Nigerian soldiers the traditional Asaba welcome reverie the latter would never forget. After all, Ugo had unlimited resources, started as the Army’s Paymaster General and he Leo Okogwu is very well known in the north, had worked all his life in the region and was their peerless in law.

His fourth wife is a northerner and she had adapted very well in Asaba and could speak the sexy Ibo dialect like Queen Elizabeth could speak the Queens English.

Nigeria: Ali Mazrui's Diagnosis and Prescriptions

2009-09-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

By Ali Mazrui

Ali Mazrui, Africa's most famous political scientist, dissects the history of Nigeria to make comparative statements. Professor Ali Mazrui is the Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies and The Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities, State University of New York at Binghamton. He is the author of over twenty five books, including Towards A Pax Africana. He was author and narrator of the acclaimed nine-part television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage. He is also a senior scholar in African Studies at the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, the A. D. White Professor-At-Large Emeritus at Cornell University, the Albert Luthuli Professor-At-Large, University of Jos, Nigeria,and Chair, Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, Washington, D. C. USA.

The Path to Nigeria Greatness: Between Exceptionalism and Typicality

The cohesion of the United States as one country rests on the roles of two personalities - George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Paradoxically, the survival of Nigeria as one country also rests on two personalities ’ Lord Lugard and General Yakubu Gowon. George Washington was a rebel against British rule, but laid the foundation of post-colonial American unification. Lord Lugard was a representative of the British colonial order, but served the destiny of amalgamating Northern and Southern Nigeria into one country in 1914. This event launched Mega-Nigeria, an enlargement of political scale.

When George Washington's achievement was threatened by separatism and secession in the 1860s, Abraham Lincoln came to the rescue and saved the Union. When Lord Lugard's amalgamation of North South was threatened by separatism and secession in the 1960s, Yakubu Gowon came to the rescue and helped to save the Union and to preserve Mega-Nigeria.

>From World War 1 To The Biafra War The year 2004 has marked the 90th anniversary of the amalgamation of Northern Nigeria with Southern. In 1914 Lord Lugard, the British Administrator, had unified what could have been two separate countries each destined to have at least 50 million people by the end of the 20th century. It is an open question which of the two halves of the country would finally have retained Nigeria as its name.

But because Lugard amalgamated the two haves into one entity, Nigeria developed into a country of 120 million people by the beginning of this new millennium.

It is a surprise of historic proportions that the amalgamation has survived these ninety years. It has survived the vagaries of differentiated colonial policies when the North was governed differently from the South.

Nigeria's amalgamation has survived Northern separatism after World War II when Northern Nigeria wanted to attain independence as a separate country form the South. Kwame Nkrumah, the Ghanaian Leader, described Northern separatism at that time as a form of "Pakistanism" ’Äì’Äì with the goal of religiously inspired partition. Yakubu Gowon was at the time a mere child and a Christian and was not involved in Muslim separatism.

Nigeria's amalgamation survived Eastern separatism in the first decade of independence when the Eastern region attempted to invent Biafra and helped to unleash a civil war from 1967 to 1970. On this occasion, Yakubu Gowon was called upon to play his supreme historical role ’Äì’Äì the role of saving the Union of a singular Mega-Nigeria.

As Governor-General of Nigeria during the period of World War 1, Lord Lugard has contradictory effects on the future of Nigeria's unity. Lugard was the architect of Nigeria's national amalgamation, but his policies were detrimental of Nigeria's national integration. Amalgamation broadened the national boundaries and merged north and south into one country. National integration was supposed to be the process by which ethnic and religious division would be softened or ameliorated as the people acquired a sense of shared citizenship and national consciousness.

Lord Lugard virtually invented the British policy of Indirect Rule in Africa, which attempted to govern Africans through their own "native authorities". Indirect rule was particularly successful in Nigeria, leaving the Emirates of the north especially strong. As a colonial policy which respected indigenous institutions, Indirect Rule was more humane than the assimilation policies pursued by France and Portugal. But by helping to preserve indigenous cultures and native institutions, Indirect Rule also helped to sustain "tribal identities" in Nigeria, and thus made national integration more difficult. It might, therefore, be said that while Lord Lugard was a hero of national amalgamation, he was inadvertently an adversary of national integration.

At independence amalgamation had given Nigeria an ethnically mixed single national army. But inadequate national integration had made ethnic consciousness a little too strong within the armed forces. Amalgamation had made the Nigeria army strong enough to control both halves of the country, North and South. But ethnic divisions within the armed forces turned Nigeria's first military coup in January 1966 into an ethnic bloodbath (essentially in favour of the Igbo). The counter-coup which followed a few months later deepened the ethnic and regional divide. The country remained amalgamated, but not adequately integrated.

Onto this stressful national stage stepped young Yakubu Gowon, then in his early thirties. His twin tasks were first to prevent the break-up of Nigeria's amalgamation and, secondly, to try to promote greater national integration.

A major set-back to both ambitions was the anti-Igbo pogrom which broke out in northern Nigeria in October 1966, killing many people and triggering off large-scale migration of the Igbo back to the Eastern region. Igbo separatism entered a new phase. The break up of Nigeria's amalgamation was ominously on the horizon.

One solution was a looser federation, what was described as confederation at the Aburi meeting in Ghana between Yakubu Gowon and the Igbo leader, Colonel Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. Gowon failed to persuade Ojukwu to drop his secessionist aspirations. Ojukwu declared the separation of Baifra from Nigeria. Ojukwu hoped that the Yoruba of the Western region would join him and also secede, thus ending the egacy of 1914.

General Gowon made a shrewd and brilliant move. He abolished the old regions of Nigeria and divided the country into twelve new states. This help to diffuse fear of Northern domination among the Yoruba and other groups, and encouraged Eastern minorities to turn against Igbo leadership and pray for a Federal victory.

Weakening the original political regions of post-colonial Nigeria helped the cause of national integration. But what about saving the Union which had been created in 1914? General Gowon succeeded in keeping the Yoruba and other group within the Nigerian Federation. By July 1967 Gowon was ready to declare "police action" to stop the secession.

But Yakubu Gowon was constantly aware that saving the territorial integrity of Nigeria was useless without simultaneously pursuing the national integration of its people. He was emphatic about a "code of conduct" and sensitive rules of engagement. He insisted that the so-called Biafrans should not be called "enemies", but should be regarded as fellow Nigerians who needed to be won back into the national fold. He was a benign war leader who was against the so-called 'quick kill'. He could have made the illegal night-flying to Biafra dangerous for the aircraft. But for almost a year and a half he shut a blind eye to these night-flights of relief supplies to Biafra.

Yakubu Gowon had triumphed in saving the Union, but he still needed to promote greater national integration. His leadership helped to avert another anti-Igbo bloodbath in the wake of Biafra's defeat. He permitted mercy missions to be rushed to the former Biafra. Within a single year the agonies of widespread disease and starvation were reversed in the Eastern region.

On the tenth anniversary of Nigeria's independence he declared plans for new elections, a new constitution and a new populations census. He said military rule would be needed until 1976. He wanted time to consolidate civil reconstruction as part of the process of national integration. He later made the mistake of asking for even more time at a moment in history when the country was impatient or a return to civilian rule. His fellow solders, led by Murtala Muhammad, overthrew him in July 1975.

Like Abraham Lincoln, Yakubu Gowon has saved the Union of his country. Like Lincoln, Gowon's tenure of office was ended by force. But while Lincoln was assassinated, Yakubu Gowon went into exile for a least a decade.

Our main focus in this paper is, of course, Nigeria rather than the United States, but the hope to conclude with a discussion of whether Nigeria is a future African equivalent of the United States, and whether Yakubu Gowon is Africa's equivalent of Abraham Lincoln.

Between Exceptionalism and Typicality

There are indeed certain attributes which make Nigeria strikingly unique in Africa-setting it apart in configuration from all other African Countries. This aspect might be called Nigeria's exceptionalism. Many of those attributes are a consequence of the policies of Lord Lugard, on one side, and General Gowon, on the other.

There are other attributes, however, which make Nigeria a mirror of the African experience as a whole ’ making Nigeria a good illustration of what the whole of Africa is all about. This side of Nigeria might be called Nigeria's typicality. Some particular ups and-downs of the country may be typical of the entire continent. To understand Nigeria is to comprehend this dialectic between the exceptionalism of Nigeria in the African configuration and the typicality of Nigeria as a mirror of the continent.

The exceptionalism of Nigeria includes of course the huge size of its population in relation to its neighbours. It is by far the most populous country in Africa. This is a central aspect of the 1914 amalgamation. The next country in size on the African continent is Egypt ’and yet Egypt is only a little more than half of Nigeria's population.

When ECOWAS was formed in 1975 upon the initiative of Nigeria and Togo, its population comprised 150 million people in sixteen countries; more than half of that total population were Nigerians. The Gross National Product of ECOWAS in 1975 was $85 billion U.S. dollars ’ the bulk of that came from Nigeria. General Yakubu Gowon was a major architect of this ambitious African regional organisation. He was strengthened by the legacy of enlargement from 1914.

Nigeria's exceptionalism also includes the combination of immense human resources (youthful and potentially gifted population) with immense natural resources (led by oil and gas). In 1914 Lord Lugard knew about Nigeria's palm oil. Nigeria's other oil ’ petroleum, had yet to reveal itself.

Towards A Pax Nigerian

Almost from independence Nigeria's exceptionalism included a potential leadership role to hope keep the peace in West Africa a kind of Pax Nigeriana. For better or for worse, Nigeria''s regional rival in this peace-keeping role has not been another West African Country. It has in fact been France. It has been France, combined with Nigeria's own internal problems, which have prevented Pax Nigeriana from fulfilling its regional mission to the full.

Opinion is divided within France in this new millennium as to whether to continue Paris's historic role in Africa or whether to find a new mission for French destiny in the newly emerging countries of Eastern and Central Europe. If France is beginning to withdraw from African (as the devaluation of the C.F.A. franc portended) the so-called regional "vacuum" left behind is likely to be increasingly filled by Pax Nigeriana.

On the evidence so far, Pax Nigeriana ’ keeping the peace in West Africa under Nigeria's auspices ’ is better fulfilled when Nigeria is under military rule than when it is under the politicians. The most spectacular exercises in Pax Nigeriana occurred in the 1990s when Nigeria led the forces of ECOWAS (the ECOMOG troops) into Liberia first to restore peace and then to help re-start electoral democracy. The final result were elections in Liberia in 1997, which returned Charles Taylor to power for a while.

In 1998 Nigeria more unilaterally took on the army in Sierra Leone, which had overthrown the elected government of President Kaba. Nigeria reversed the military takeover and restored the constitutionally elected government. But what had made it possible for Nigeria to play this role of "Big Brother" in West Africa? Mega-Nigeria's enlargement of scale went straight back to the unification of 1914 and to the preservation of the Nigerian Union under the leadership of Yakubu Gowon.

For most of the 1990s Nigeria paradoxically became a force for democracy abroad but remained a dictatorship at home. Nigerian forces helped to restore relative freedom to the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone ’but the Nigeria forces were slow to extend freedom to the Nigerian people at home.

This does not mean that Nigeria should not have helped to re-democratize Liberia and Sierra Leone. General Sani Abacha's regional role was one of the positive aspects of Pax Nigeriana. But doing good abroad is no excuse for not doing better at home. Fortunately, there were indications that the military government after Abacha wanted an honorable way towards re-civilization. The last elections of the end of the 20th century brought a former soldier to head the new democracy’ General Olusegun Obasanjo.

It is arguable that one of the first exercises of Pax Nigeriana occurred in Tanzania in1964. Army mutinies in Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika had forced the three governments to invite British troops to return to East Africa and disarm their own mutinous solders.

President Julius K. Nyerere understandably disbanded the whole mutinous army once order was restored. But who was going to keep the peace in a Tanganyika without an army? Julius Nyerere called upon fraternal troops from Nigeria to fill the vacuum while Nyerere set about creating an alternate indigenous security force. It is arguable that the beginnings of Pax Nigeriana lie in a voluntary partnership between Nigeria and what later became Tanzania. Nigerians helped Tanzanians keep the peace in their own country in 1964. Ironically, this marked the 50th anniversary of the amalgamation of Nigeria into one country.

Nigerian Politics: Between The Sublime And The Theatrical

Perhaps it is also part of Nigeria's exceptionalism that it has not just one pivotal ethnic group in a national configuration but three. Uganda has one pivotal group ’ the Baganda. Kenya has in reality Two outstanding pivotal group- the Luo and Kikuyu. Senegal's outstanding pivotal group are the Wolof.

Is Nigeria exceptional in having three very large pivot ethnic groups, each with a dazzling record of achievement? Nigeria would not have had such a triad of vanguard ethnic groups if the 1914 amalgamation had not occurred, and if it had not been preserved by Yakubu Gowon''s government.

The Hausa are by far the largest linguistic group not only in Nigeria but in West Africa as a whole. Within Nigeria itself the Hausa also have a long record of skill of governance from precolonial days, right through colonialism until postcolonial days. The Yoruba have in many ways the most complex indigenous culture of them all. The Yoruba impact on global Africa and the rest of the Black world is less about the Yoruba language and more about the Yoruba religion and culture. Yoruba religious rites are to be witnessed in countries as diverse as Brazil, Jamaica, Haiti, Surinam, Nigeria, Dahomey (now Republic of Benin) and the United States.

The Igbo were the great technologists of Nigeria in the second half of the twentieth century. Their triumph in economic skills in Northern Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s contributed to their vulnerability as a people in 1966. During the Nigerian Civil war the Igbo's innovativeness also produced Africa's first locally made gun-vehicles.

During the Civil War the Igbo displayed levels of innovative daring unknown in post-colonial African History. The Igbo created rough-and-ready armed militarized vehicles as well as the beginnings of African's industrial revolution. This renaissance was aborted by the oil bonanza from the 1970s onwards.

During the Biafra War Nigeria was more internally innovative than externally prosperous. The Nigerian Civil War produced some of the high points of Nigeria's experience with technological innovation. The Nigerian oil bonanza after the 1973 OPEC price escalation created disincentives to Nigerian enterprise.

War had brought out both the best and the worst of Nigeria in human terms. But technologically the power of spilt blood in Nigeria produced greater innovation than the power of sprouting petroleum. The pain of Biafra was technologically more fruitful than the profit of OPEC. While Commander-in-chief Yakubu Gowon was mobilizing the Federal forces, Colonel Emeka Ojukwu was inspiring and motivating Igbo innovation.

Nigeria's exceptionalism in 1998 included the extraordinary phenomenon of five political parties choosing the same man as their Presidential candidate ’ Sani Abacha even when Abacha was not even A member of any of these parties. This was unprecedented any where in the world. At one level this showed political opportunism at its most glaring, and where in the world. At one level this showed political opportunism at its most glaring, and was not a credit to the complex size of Nigeria. But at another level this could have been a defensible constitutional experiment if it had been presented as such.

When Africa had one-party states (as in Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and the Ivory Coast), the real choice for voters involved elections to the legislature. The choice of the Head of State was never in doubt in those African on-party states. The legislative choice was between individual candidates within the same party.

What Nigeria might have evolved in 1998 was a system a little more pluralistic than the one-party state but a little less pluralistic than a system of full-blown electoral competition at all levels. At the presidential level, the people of Nigeria would have no more choice than the electorates of Africa's one-party states had before the 1990s. But at the level of legislative elections the people of Nigeria could choose between arties and not simply between individuals. At least theoretically the people of Nigeria would have had more choice in 1998 than the people of one-party Kenya had before 1992. However, the Nigerian voter was not impressed. And Abacha did not live long enough to be the Head of five political parties. Let us now shift from Nigeria's exceptionalism, its uniqueness, to Nigeria's typicality in the African context.

Ideologies: The Cultural And The Economic

Nigeria's typicality includes the fact that Nigerians are more strongly moved by socio-cultural ideologies than by socio-economic ideologies. Socio-cultural ideologies appeal to such cultural forces as ethnicity, religion, nationalism, race-consciousness and regional allegiance.

Socio-economic ideologies try to appeal to such economic interest at class, economic equity, trade union right and the like. Marxism, ujamaa and most other forms of socialism are socio-economic ideologies. Ethnicity, nationalism and regional allegiance are socio-cultural ideologies.

In Nigeria ’ as in most other parts of Africa ’ ethno-cultural ideologies are much stronger than ethno-economic ones. My favorite Nigerian example was Obafemi Awolowo's effort to move Nigeria a little to the left. When he looked to see who was following him, it was not the dispossessed of all ethnic groups Nigeria who followed; it was his fellow Yoruba of all social classes and levels of income.

My favorite Kenyan example was Oginga Odinga's modest attempt to move Kenyans a little to the left. When Oginga looked to see who was following him, once again it was not the dispossessed of Kenya of all ethnic groups. It was his fellow Luo of all social classes and levels of income.

Africa is a continent of surplus passion but deficit power. Nigerians as Africans feel strongly about many aspirations. In the controversial words of a very distinguished African philosopher president ’a king of philosopher king ’ Leopold Senghor of Senegal: "Emotion Is Black’ Reason Is Greek."

Nigeria is typical of Africans also because of the swings between tyranny (too much government) and anarchy (too little government). When under military rule, Nigeria leans towards tyranny (too much government), when under civilian administration, Nigeria leans towards anarchy (too little government).

In spite of the fact the country was at war from 1967 to 1970, military rule under Yakubu Gowon was more benign than military rule either before the Gowon regime or subsequent to it.

Nigeria's triple heritage is a convergence of indigenous African values, Islamic culture, and the impact of the West (both secular and Christian). In one sense, this convergence of the three legacies is part of Nigeria's typicality.

But Nigeria is exceptional in having those three civilizations (Africanity, Islam and the West) almost equal in power. Can we measure political development by the yardstick of declining scale of political violence? Let us try with Nigeria. The first two decades of Nigeria's independence were the age of regicide and primary violence. The killing of the King or Head Executive
as a trend as regicide. Of the eight supreme leaders of Nigeria in the first 20 years, four has been assassinated.

The eight supreme leaders were Azikwe, Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Ironsi, Gowon, Murtala, Obansanjo and Shagari. The 50% who were assassinated were of course Balewa, Ahmadu Bello, Ironsi and Murtala Muhammed. Regicide was at a 50% rate ’ a high rate indeed. Ahmadu Bellow was technically a regional leader but with immense federal and national power. In all, three Northern leaders were killed, as compared with one Southern.

The next 20 years of Nigeria's independence (1980 to the year 2000) were to be of militarism and constitutional experimentation. These were the last years of Shagari, those of Shagari, those of Buhari, those of Babangida and his immediate successors, and the emergence of Sani Abacha. The most promising experiment was the Babangida transition, which collapsed ignominiously with the aborted election of June 1993. The transition would apparently have bought M.K.O Abiola into power. It would have been a remarkable stage in the electoral amalgamation of the two halves of Nigeria. For the first time a Southern Muslim would have presided over Nigeria. Under Abacha the years of Militarism and constitutional experimentation could have continued, on the other hand, with a new concept of presidential recycling from military ruler to elected Head of State.

If Abacha had lived and run for the Presidency, he would have been partially following the precedent of Jerry Rawlings who captured power twice by the barrel of gun and later gained legitimacy through the ballot box and electoral process. But Abacha died in June 1998 before the scenario could be attempted in Nigeria. The experiment in North South amalgamation was inconclusive and was still subject to ups and downs.

Brazil Discourses -- Africa, the state, genocide and the Future

2009-07-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Text of 10 lectures on Africa delivered between 13 June and 10 July 2009 at the following universities in Brazil: Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Aracaju, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro and Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo. I wish to thank Alyxandra Gomes Nunes of the Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, for her excellent planning and coordination of the lecture tour and to Professors Paula Barreto, Eliane Veras Soares, Claudio Pereira, Antonio Mota, Walteir Silva, Hypolite Brice, Luiz Eduardo Oliveira, Marie Teresa Salgado, César Nunes, Fábio Akcelrud Durão, Jose Augusto Alburquerque and Jamie Ginzburg for their stimulating contributions and exchanges during the lively post-lecture question & discussion sessions and for creating the enabling environment in their various universities which made the tour such a resounding intellectual success. To you all, I say, “Obrigado. Tchau!” All notes and references are in the original – HE-E]

Arms, arming, armies and armed conflicts as well as a deleterious political economy characterise the tragedy of contemporary Africa. With 10 major ongoing-armed conflicts, including the genocide in Darfur being perpetrated by the Arab-led state in the Sudan, Africa has more wars raging on its territory than any other continent in the world. Since the end of the Second World War in 1945, more than 120 wars have been fought in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America/the Caribbean resulting in the death of 40 million people. This figure represents about 80 per cent of the total number of those killed during the Second World War. Of these 40 million fatalities, well over one-third or 15 million are Africans, killed in the genocidal murders and other so-called “internal-based” wars that have been fought across Africa since the 1960s – notably the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide executed by the Nigeria state and its allies, the foundational and most gruesome genocide in Africa to date where 3.1 million Igbo people were murdered, the 1996 Rwanda genocide, the ongoing Darfur genocide, and the wars in the Congos (Congo Democratic Republic, Republic of Congo), Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Senegal (southern Casamance province), Liberia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Guinea Bissau, southern Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire. Elsewhere, the war theatre fatalities of the period that complete the grisly tally of 15 million occurred in the following countries where Africans waged wars against occupying European conquest regimes: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Kenya and Angola. Presently, Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, the Congos, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, Angola, Central Africa Republic, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea are still ravaged by simmering conflict or the aftermath of one, and the spill-over consequences on contiguous states and regions have been devastating. The displacement of millions of people and the prevailing extensive food shortages and desperate famine conditions in west, central, east and southern Africa that affect 38 million people have indeed been exacerbated by these varied war and post-war situations.

In essence, the state in Africa that emerged on the morrow of the late 1950s/early 1960s’ “termination” of direct European conquest occupation of the continent demonstrates a glaring inability to fulfil its basic role. This state does not provide security and welfare nor does it enable the growth and _expression of society’s transformative capacities. It is virtually at war with its peoples, having murdered 15 million since 1966 as we have highlighted. The typical African state, 53 years after the so-called “restoration of independence”, is essentially a genocide-state.

Child Soldiers

Currently, Africa has the world's largest number of refugees displaced by wars – a total of 15 million or just short of one-half of the world's total of 38 million that includes the Middle East, South-West Asia and South-East Asia. As can be imagined, the effect of these wars on the African family and the community at large has been profoundly tragic – bereavement, separation, disorganisation, displacement. Life in a refugee camp that could be miles away from one's village, town, province, district or region in another part of the country (or even in a foreign land) with a missing mother or father or daughter or son, has taken a heavy toll on Africa's legendary family cohesiveness. The effect on children is particularly grave and the ever contentious questions increasingly posed in several intellectual circles on the survivability of the African family life in its present form can no longer be shrugged off. As casualties on the war front mount inexorably, the recruitment of children from refugee camps and elsewhere into the military intensifies. Africa has the highest concentration of child-soldiers (boys and girls) presently. Of the 120,000 children fighting in the world’s wars, 80,000 or two-thirds of the total are Africans – actively involved in the continent's major conflicts in the east, central and west regions.

Economies and Indebtedness

The economics of Africa's arms, arming and armed conflicts, as should be expected, have had a strangulating effect on the continent's resources. The variegated features of African militarisation and wars have been very costly, creating crippling indebtedness. These constitute US$170 billion or about a 40 per cent share of Africa's total so-called “external debt” that currently stands at US$350 billion. Africa's annual servicing of these “debts”, with ever spiralling interest rates on them, has ensured that the continent has been a net exporter of capital to overseas, mostly to the Western World, since 1981. During the period, Africa transferred the gargantuan amount of US$400 billion to the West – a sum which is in fact four times the size of the original US$100 billion principal of the continent's “debt” as it stood in 1980, and in excess of the present value of US$350 billion. The militarisation component of African “indebtedness” will surely continue to rise as more resources than ever before are allocated to this across the continent. In the era of the virtual collapse of the so-called African “nation-state”, it is not as ironical as it may seem that the only sector of the state's economic activity with the rest of the world that has retained an unrivalled dynamism is its arms, arming, genocide, conflict and war capability. Africa as a whole now spends 25 per cent of its GNP (Gross National Product) on militarisation and wars while it allocates a paltry 2.4 per cent of its GNP to education – despite the general collapse of the continent's educational infrastructure at all tiers – and 2.1 per cent of its GNP to health, despite the HIV/AIDs pandemic that afflicts millions of its people and other equally debilitating maladies. It should be stressed that this stated expenditure on militarisation is highly conservative as it does not account for the usual “military/security-oriented” funds that many a regime in Africa surreptitiously lodges in the budget of the Office of the President or those of the Ministry of Public Works or Ministry of Reconstruction and Planning or some other quaint-sounding government department of dubious tasks. Neither does this expenditure fully account for those that emanate from quasi-state operatives (for instance, the notorious Sudanese janjaweed) the non-state/anti-state insurgent organisations and their constituencies that sprout up here and there as this emergency deteriorates. In countries and regions with multi-sectoral sites of ongoing wars (Côte d'Ivoire/central West Africa, Chad, the Congos/Great Lakes, the Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria), quasi-state and non-state/anti-state insurgent groups now compete actively in Africa's arms build-up and proliferation. In effect, Africa's expenditure on militarisation and wars is closer to one-third of its GNP than the 20 per cent stated above. What is therefore certain is that until there is a dramatic de-escalation of this grim crisis, the ratio of both Africa's annual militarisation budgetary provision vis-à-vis the rest of the economy, and the share of this provision to the continent's overall “debt” budget, will continue to expand.

Fuelling Killing Fields

Besides South Africa and Egypt and the very limited arms production base in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Morocco, Africa does not, in the main, produce the array of weaponry that fuels the killing fields that stretch across the continent. The United States and Britain are Africa's principal suppliers of weapons and the impact of their roles here need highlighting. Both countries make up 70 per cent of Africa's total imports while Russia, France, China, Germany and Belgium account for 20 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent are made up of the so-called “illegal weapons”, most of which are imported from east and central Europe. If US arms sales and transfers to Egypt and Morocco could be ignored for now (transactions that are more related to the US's Middle-East strategic considerations than Africa itself), Britain is in fact the leading arms exporter to Africa. In 1999 alone, Britain sold US$80 million worth of arms to Africa which represented about one-third of all US sales to the continent (Egypt and Morocco excluded) in the entire 1990s decade. In this first decade of the new millennium, British military sales to Africa have leapt to an average of US$180 million per annum or about 80 per cent of US's total military exports to the region (Egypt and Morocco again excluded) in the previous decade.

British arms exporters were the leading beneficiaries of the billions of dollars that Nigeria, to use the example of the country in Africa that inaugurated the genocide state in 1966, spent on arms and other “state security-related” imports during the 16 years of the appalling military dictatorships of Generals Buhari, Babangida, Abacha and Abubakar. At the time, budgetary allocations to the Nigerian military and other paraphernalia of the juntas' repressive apparatus averaged US$2 billion per annum with Britain enjoying 60-70 per cent of all imports. The dictatorships were therefore fully equipped to pursue their notorious state of siege on the populations with such devastating consequences: a run-down economy, the murder of scores of political opponents, the detention of several others, the catastrophic military interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone which cost the country US$13 billion and thousands of casualties (never acknowledged officially by any of the latter three military regimes that were involved in the intervention nor indeed the so-called two “civilian” successor regimes), and the flight of tens of thousands of intellectuals and professionals into exile. Contrary to popular expectations across the country in 1999, the formal end of military rule did not reverse the underlying anti-democratic policy and manifestation of militarisation. The situation had not least been helped by the leadership of the new regime, headed by none other than Olusegun Obasanjo, an ex-military dictator himself who led a junta for three years in the 1970s and a genocidist commander during the Igbo genocide of 1966-1970. In an era when the rest of the world appeared completely exasperated in watching Africa forced to its knees by a cyclical retinue of colonels and generals wielding the cudgel of their brute usurpation of state power, Obasanjo had essentially followed in the footsteps of former military dictators in west and central Africa (Togolese General Eyadema, Ghanaian Flt-Lt Rawlings, Burkinabe Captain Campore and Central African Republic General Bokassa, for instance) to “civilianise” himself into state president. The outcome, his eight years in office, was a disaster in the country. Rather than slash the budget on militarisation, “Civilian” President Obasanjo increased it! When Obasanjo took over from the formal military regime in 1999, the junta's stated budgetary allocation to militarisation was US$2.2 billion. In Obasanjo's own first budget in 2000, he earmarked US$2.4 billion for militarisation/state brutalisation, an increase of almost 10 per cent from the previous year. In contrast, US$500 million was assigned to education while health care received US$150 million. The widespread human rights abuse and personal insecurity that were the hallmark of life in the country during formal military rule did not abate. Instead, the situation worsened markedly with the increased levels of state and quasi-state violence on principally Igbo people and the further strangulation of the economy of occupied Igboland.

In the eight years that Obasanjo was in power, 20,000 people in Nigeria were murdered by the state, quasi-state agencies and others. Eighty per cent of those murdered were Igbo. In all, Obasanjo had overseen one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in Nigeria. Transparency International branded Nigeria the “second most corrupt country” in the world. But the Obasanjo regime's more detailed and graphic indictment came from a January 2003 damning report on its financial life published by its own auditor general, noting gross irregularities: “over-invoicing, non-retirement of cash advances, lack of audit inspection, payments for jobs not done, double debiting, contract inflation, lack of receipts of back pay, flagrant violation of financial regulations, release of money without approving authority…” Thousands of employees, especially in public services, were owed salaries ranging from 12-18 months. Industrial enterprises operated at about 30 per cent capacity and acute shortages of petrol and petroleum products were the norm for a country that is the world's sixth largest exporter of petroleum oil! Several universities and other educational institutions of higher learning were strike-bound for long stretches during the academic year due to both staff and students' protests over lack of adequate state funding for education. Hospitals were also frequent sites of strike action by doctors, nurses and other medical staff protesting over the government's poor funding of healthcare. What Obasanjo has shown demonstrably in Nigeria is that rather than ease an already desperate situation, the “civilianisation” of ex-military dictators in the politics of their countries deepens the crisis of militarisation and brutalisation, with the predictable consequences on the welfare and aspirations of the people. The haemorrhage on the economy as the regime ploughs even more resources into the procurement of armaments to suppress recalcitrant/targeted population(s) intensifies. More armament requirement for these regimes is of course welcome news to Britain, Africa's chief weapon exporter, and the others contending for a slice of this scrumptious pie…

Britain's pervasive entrenchment in the very lucrative business of African militarisation and wars is equally evident in central and southern Africa. Despite its rhetoric of an “ethical foreign policy”, the British Labour party government that took office in 1997 was heavily involved in the Congo/Great Lakes war. Similar to the United States's intervention in this conflict, Britain had sold arms to both sides of the principal protagonists – Congo Democratic Republic itself, Rwanda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Burundi and Uganda. In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation at the height of the conflict in 2000, Charles Onyango-Obbo, the editor of the respected Ugandan independent newspaper, The Monitor, did not fail to stress the significance of the British role in the region:

Britain is supporting both sides – it just robs [it] of any moral authority and a lot of people rightly do despise the British government in this affair.

Despite this “ethical foreign policy”, British Prime Minister Blair at the time personally visited South Africa in 1999 to lobby successfully on behalf of the British arms industry for a substantial share in the massive US$6 billion arms build up planned then by the South African military. For South Africa, such an outlandish expenditure on militarisation was a shock to many observers concerned about the country's priorities. None of South Africa's neighbours posed (or poses) any threat to the country's security and no such threats were envisaged from elsewhere in the world in the foreseeable future. The post-conquest years of urgently required reconstruction of institutions, and the provision of services to ensure equitable inclusion and participation by all races and peoples in South African society, would surely have benefited immensely from the injection of US$6 billion rather than the government’s allocation of such a huge sum to the armaments of certain death.

For yet more thoughts on Britain’s “ethical foreign policy”, it is worth noting that this “orientation” was equally unsustainable in the light of the convoluted phases of the controversial British military intervention in the Sierra Leone wars during the 1990s, including the highly embarrassing “arms-to-Africa” affair. In this affair, well-placed British government officials connived with Sandline International, a British-based mercenary force, which was in combat operations in Sierra Leone to install a pro-British regime. British arms were also sent to contending combatant groups in the country, often in clear violations to stipulated United Nations arms embargo on Sierra Leone and the region. Finally, an “ethical foreign policy” did not in any way sway Britain's decision in its most scandalous participation in African militarisation to date when, in 2002, it sold a military air traffic control system to Tanzania (a country without a credible air force) for the price tag of US$42 million. Not even the usually reticent World Bank and the IMF restrained themselves from publicly criticising a deal that had been struck by London only after putting “unbearable” pressure on the Tanzanian government. As for the latter, it was an ignoble occasion at the time to watch senior state officials struggle pitiably to explain or rather rationalise how a country that had no obvious need for the expensive machinery that they had just purchased would hence slide into certain debt as a result.

Onyango-Obbo's observations on Britain could equally have been made, with the obvious substitutions, to also capture the nature of US foreign policy towards the scourge of African militarisation and wars as we show shortly, and indeed those of other countries such as Russia, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovakia. In the 1998-2000 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, one of Africa’s few but most costly inter-state conflicts, Russia and Bulgaria, for instance, sold expensive weapons’ systems (especially fighter aircraft, bombers, helicopter gun ships, tanks) to both African neighbours throughout their devastating confrontation. Thousands of Ethiopians and Eritreans were killed in the war and it is estimated that both sides spent about US$1 million per day throughout the duration of the arms build up and hostilities. Less than three years after the end of fighting, the two countries made a startling appeal to an outside world still bewildered over the sheer idiocy of their conflict: they urgently needed international support to feed 11 million of their citizens facing hunger and starvation. Nothing in this appeal indicated that the political leadership in either Addis Ababa or Asmara really cared for the welfare of its citizens when it drove thousands of them into war to face untimely deaths just a few years earlier. In so doing, these leaderships laid the very foundations of the deaths that presently stalk their lands through starvation.

As for the United States, it sold weapons totalling about US$230 million to Africa during the years 1990-1999. Significantly, about 50 per cent of these sales went directly to the countries steeped in the very fractured contours of the epicentre of the raging wars of the Congo/Great Lakes arc: Congo Democratic Republic, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Burundi, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The fact that some of these countries and their varying non-state insurgent forces' allies were in opposing military alliances during the conflict (necessitating using US weaponry against enemies similarly armed by the same supplier!), was of little consideration in Washington's arms transfer policy. Furthermore, Rwanda, which consistently maintained an intransigent position towards innumerable peace settlements at the time, received an additional US$75 million worth of “emergency aid” during the period, that hardly disguised the incorporated military/quasi-military components in it. Similarly, US arms sales and transfers to war-torn Sierra Leone and Liberia (and to contiguous states with interest in the wars such as Guinea and Mali) during the era did not in any way enhance the goals of conflict resolution. On the contrary, more arms were just being poured into a region already bursting at the seams with an unimaginable array of destructive arsenal…

“Legal” vs “Illegal”?

We should now focus briefly on Africa's so-called “illegal arms”. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Ukraine and Bulgaria make up the bulk of exporters of weapons to the continent's ever-expanding non-state insurgents, some of whose missions are anti-state (as the innumerable clusters in Somalia, for example, are) or are indeed pro-state (as the janjaweed, in the Sudan, for instance). These armaments, often made up of small and light arms (pistols, rifles, machine guns, grenades), are usually categorised as “illegal weapons” to highlight the juridical status of their destinations or recipients, but not their sources. There are about 500 million of such weapons circulating in the world and one-fifth of these or 100 million are used in Africa's wars, armed banditry and other escapades. To underscore the seriousness of the situation at stake, the deadly AK-47 assault rifle, for example, can be purchased as cheaply as six US dollars in a number of African countries. This is equivalent to the cost of a chicken or a bag of corn in many parts of the continent! Yet, thanks to the fragility of the African state with its underlying unpredictable upheavals, millions of items of weaponry that ultimately make up this “illegal” pool of categorisation do have their origins from the sources of the (African) “sovereign states”’ armouries initially supplied by the principal arms exporter powers cited earlier. In other words, an item of AK-47 rifle or a rocket launcher on the African scene that may have started its original classificatory placement as a “legal weapon” in some state armoury could, in a few weeks, or even much less time, transmogrify into an “illegal arm” label because it is now in the hands of some dissident or insurgent organisation opposed to the state or a pro-state militia murdering targeted individuals, groups or, especially, targeted constituent nations. The converse of this transmutable process is also the case.

It should therefore be stressed that whilst the dichotomy often placed between “legal arms” and “illegal arms” by some observers (in the African militarisation, genocide and war debate) has some analytical credit, its outcome on the ground, particularly in enabling us evaluate the comparative impact that the two categories ultimately pose on African social co-existence and security always comes as a shock! Contrary to the initial value judgement that most people would make between the “legality” of a particular commodity (in this case, arms) and its “illegality”, it is definitely no comfort at all when it is shown at the end of the exercise that the overwhelming majority of the 15 million killed in Africa's genocides and wars in the past 45 years were in fact slaughtered with the use of “legal” armaments, operated seemingly legally by the armed forces of the state and their allies. The examples of the Nigeria state in 1966-1970, the Rwandan central government in the 1990s and the current Arab regime in Khartoum are acutely illustrative of this cataclysmic sequence. In effect, whether “legal” or “illegal”, armaments in Africa, controlled overwhelmingly by the African state and its allies, are used to murder targeted African nations and populations domiciled within these states; the African states, since the Igbo genocide, have deployed armaments in their armouries to murder their peoples most brutally, massively and extensively. These states, starting from Nigeria, have murdered a ghastly total of 15 million Africans in a generation. They are still murdering without let up… They have devastated communities. They have disfigured and traumatised peoples’ lives and aspirations. In the hands of the typical African state, since the Igbo genocide, these armaments, even though classified “conventional”, are indeed weapons of mass destruction. Nothing else, but weapons of mass destruction… In Africa, the pistol, the rifle, the grenade, the rocket, the bazooka, the landmine, the helicopter gunship, the naval gunship, the fighter aircraft, the bomber, the tank – each and every one of these items, imported by and large from abroad, is a killer used primarily by the state to murder targeted peoples within its border. The African state should and must be stopped from murdering peoples within its frontiers. The rest of the world, especially from where weapons to these African states originate, day in, and day out, can no longer remain bystanders as this orgy of death is brazenly played out in Africa. Since the Igbo genocide, the African state has been destroying African lives; they are presently destroying African lives; they will continue to destroy African lives until stopped. The African state must surely be stopped from its pursuit of this pulverising mission of death.

“Failed States”? “Sub-Sahara Africa”?

It is perhaps difficult not to conclude from our portrait of the contemporary African state that its being is symptomatic or even indicative of that term that several scholars and political commentators increasingly employ in characterising most of Africa – the “failed state”. The concept “failed state” of course has a melodramatic import! It designates the outcome, penned in a professorial manner, of a project supposedly observed and assessed over time and space. In that case, the recipient or audience to which this outcome is conveyed is assumed to be well in tune with the progress or otherwise of the subject matter. The problem though is that the evaluative parameter of this enterprise of assessing and therefore concluding that this or that African state has “failed” is often not clear or certain. Or is it? Was Nigeria, for instance, a “failed state” during the course of May to September 1966 (that is just six years after its so-called “restoration” of independence after the British occupation) when it murdered 100,000 of its Igbo citizens in the first phase of the genocide that would over the subsequent three years cost the death of an additional 3 million Igbo people? Before Somalia became a state without a central government, which has now lasted for well over a decade, was it a failed state? Successive central governments in Kinshasa, Congo Democratic Republic, have for over 20 years hardly exercised effective authority over a quarter of the country’s territory which is twice the size of western Europe; is Congo Democratic Republic a “failed state”? A devastating war raged in south Sudan for about 20 years and a genocidal one is being waged on the people of Darfur (northwest of the country) by the Arab government in Khartoum currently; is the Sudan a “failed state”? All of Africa, since 1981, has been a net exporter of capital to the West – 85 per cent which accounts for the servicing of its so-called “debts”. In 1981, Africa recorded a net export capital export of US$5.3 billion to the West. In 1985, this figure increased to US$21.5 billion. Three years later, this net capital transfer was US$36 billion or US$100 million per day. In 1995, this figure jumped to US$100 billion and on the eve of the new millennium in 2000, Africa’s net capital transfer to the West hit the US$150 billion mark. As we indicated earlier, Africa has exported a total of US$400 billion in the past 30 years in this way – these are funds that should easily have provided a comprehensive health programme across the continent, the establishment of schools, colleges and skills’ training, the construction of an integrative communication network, and finally, the transformation of agriculture to abolish the scourge of malnutrition, hunger and starvation. Would this outlandish export of critical resources merit designating all of Africa as “failed states”?

It should be stressed that none of the figures referred to above includes the national accounting of the Arab states in north Africa – namely, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt – but the rest of the 48 countries on the continent which some commentators, especially the CNN, BBC, International Herald Tribune, Reuters, Associated Press, Fox News, Yahoo! News, the UN/allied agencies and some governments and academics in the West, increasingly categorise as “sub-Sahara Africa”, a term that requires some examination forthwith. Its users routinely invoke the reference to the Sahara Desert when writing, speaking about or broadcasting on Africa, especially when they wish to refer to Africa that excludes the five predominantly Arab states of north Africa just mentioned. Pointedly, they also exclude the Sudan, a north-central African state whose overwhelming territory is south of the Sahara from the “sub-Sahara” tagging because the regime in power describes the country as “Arab” despite its majority African population.

As we show now, the concept “sub-Sahara Africa” is absurd, misleading, if not a meaningless classificatory schema. Its use defies the science of the fundamentals of geography but prioritises hackneyed, stereotypical, racist labelling. It is not obvious, on the face of it, which of the four possible meanings of the prefix, “sub”, its users attach to its “sub-Sahara Africa” labelling. Is it “under” or “part of”/“partly”? Or, presumably, “partially”/“nearly” or even the very unlikely (hopefully!) application of “in the style of, but inferior to”, especially considering that there is an Arab people sandwiched between Morocco and Mauritania (northwest Africa) called Saharan?

The example of South Africa is apt here. Crucially, this is a reference underlined in the relevant literature of the era especially those emanating from West states, the United Nations (principally UNDP, FAO, UNCTAD, ILO), the World Bank and IMF, the so-called NGOs/“aid” groups, and some in academia who are variously responsible for initiating and sustaining the operationalisation of this dogma. Prior to the formal restoration of African majority government in 1994, South Africa was never designated “sub-Sahara Africa” by anyone in this portrait unlike the rest of the 13 African-led states in southern Africa. South Africa then was either termed “white South Africa” or the “South Africa sub-continent” (as in the “India sub-continent” usage, for instance) i.e. “almost”/“partially” a continent – quite clearly a usage of “admiration” or “compliment” employed by its subscribers to essentially project and valorise the perceived geo-strategic potentials or capabilities of the erstwhile European-minority occupying regime. But soon after the triumph of the African freedom movement there, South Africa became “sub-Sahara Africa” in the quickly adjusted schema of this representation! What suddenly happened to South Africa’s “geography” to be so differently classified?! Is it African liberation/rule that renders an African state “sub-Sahara”? Does this post-1994 West-inflected South Africa-changed classification make “sub-Sahara Africa” any more intelligible? Just as in the South Africa “sub-continent” example, the application of the “almost”/“partially” or indeed “part of”/“partly” meaning of prefix “sub-” to “Sahara Africa” focuses unambiguously on the following countries of Africa: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, each of which has 25-75 per cent of its territory (especially to the south) covered by the Sahara Desert. It also focuses on Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan, which variously have 25-75 per cent of their territories (to the north) covered by the same desert. In effect, these 10 states would make up sub-Sahara Africa.

Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the five Arab north Africa states do not, correctly, describe themselves as Africans even though they unquestionably habituate African geography, the African continent, since the Arab conquest and occupation of this north one-third of African territory in the 7th century CE. The West governments, press and the transnational bodies we referred to earlier (which are predominantly led by West personnel and interests) have consistently “conceded” to this Arab cultural insistence on racial identity. Presumably, this accounts for the West’s non-designation of its “sub-Sahara Africa” dogma to these states as well as the Sudan, whose successive Arab-minority regimes in the past 53 years have claimed, but incorrectly, that the Sudan “belongs” to the Arab World. On this subject, the West does no doubt know that what it has been engaged in, all along, is blatant sophistry and not science. This, however, conveniently suits its current propaganda packaging on Africa, which we shall be elaborating on shortly.

It would appear that we still don’t seem to be any closer at establishing, conclusively, what its users mean by “sub-Sahara Africa”. Could it, perhaps, just be a benign reference to all the countries “under” the Sahara, whatever their distances from this desert, to interrogate our final, fourth probability? Presently, there are 53 so-called “sovereign” states in Africa. If the five north Africa Arab states are said to be located “above” the Sahara, then 48 are positioned “under”. The latter would therefore include all the five countries mentioned above whose north frontiers incorporate the southern stretches of the desert (namely, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan), countries in central Africa (the Congos, Rwanda, Burundi, etc., etc), for instance, despite being 2000-2500 miles away, and even the southern African states situated 3000-3500 miles away! In fact, all these 48 countries, except the Sudan (alas, not included for the plausible reason already cited!), which is clearly “under” the Sahara and situated within the same latitudes as Mali, Niger and Chad (i.e., Between 10 and 20 degrees north of the equator), are all categorised by “sub-Sahara Africa” users as “sub-Sahara Africa”. To replicate this obvious farce of a classification elsewhere in the world, the following random exercise is not such an indistinct scenario for universal, everyday, referencing:

1. Australia hence becomes “sub-Great Sandy Australia” after the hot deserts that cover much of west and central Australia

2. East Russia, east of the Urals, becomes “sub-Siberia Asia”

3. China, Japan and Indonesia are reclassified “sub-Gobi Asia”

4. Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam become “sub-Himalaya Asia”

5. All of Europe is “sub-Arctic Europe”

6. Most of England, central and southern counties, is renamed “sub-Pennines Europe”

7. East/southeast France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia are “sub-Alps Europe”

8. The Americas become “sub-Arctic Americas”

9. All of South America south of the Amazon is proclaimed “sub-Amazon South America”; Chile could be “sub-Atacama South America”

10. Most of New Zealand’s South Island is renamed “sub-Southern Alps New Zealand”

11. Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama become “sub-Rocky North America”

12. The entire Caribbean becomes “sub-Appalachian Americas”

So, rather than some benign construct, “sub-Sahara Africa” is, in the end, an outlandish nomenclatural code that its users employ to depict an African-led “sovereign” state – anywhere in Africa, as distinct from an Arab-led one. It is the users’ non-inclusion of the Sudan in this grouping (despite its majority African population and geographical location) but its inclusion of South Africa only after the latter’s 1994 restoration of independence that gives the game away! More seriously to the point, “sub-Sahara Africa” is employed to create the stunning effect of a supposedly shrinking African geographical landmass in the popular imagination, coupled with the continent’s supposedly attendant geo-strategic global “irrelevance”. “Sub-Sahara Africa” is undoubtedly a racist geo-political signature in which its users aim repeatedly to present the imagery of the desolation, aridity, and hopelessness of a desert environment. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of 800 million Africans do not live anywhere close to the Sahara, nor are their lives so affected by the implied impact of the very loaded meaning that this dogma intends to convey. Except this increasingly pervasive use of “sub-Sahara Africa” is robustly challenged by rigorous African-centred scholarship and publicity work, its proponents will succeed eventually in substituting the name of the continent “Africa” with “sub-Sahara Africa” and the name of its peoples, “Africans”, with “sub-Sahara Africans” or worse still “sub-Saharans” in the realm of public memory and reckoning.

We should return and conclude on our reflections on the so-called “failed state” in Africa – scientifically understood and unambiguously expressed! Christopher Clapham has argued that the concept “failed state” is “one of those categories that is named after what it isn’t, rather than what it is”. He obviously has a point for a state that routinely wages wars on its population(s), does not provide basic services for its people, and immanently churns out successive leaderships that fleece the collective wealth can hardly merit such a description as the concept connotes in social science discourses. All we need to do is to reflect on the fact that crucial state functions such as the provision of security, rule of law, a rationalising but flexible structure of management, accountability and open and unfettered competition especially with respect to regime change have never existed in the African “nation state” in order to highlight the obvious flaw within this concept. Ultimately, the major limitation of the use of the “failed state” concept to assess the crisis in contemporary Africa is that it confers an unjustifiable rationality on an enterprise in which a spectrum of outcomes ranging from perhaps “very successful” to “failure” or “outright failure” is typecast; it is assumed that those who run the Africa state (Museveni, Obasanjo, Gnassingbé, Buhari, Yar’Adua, Idi Amin, Mengistu, Abacha, Mugabe, Mohammed, Abubakar, Eyadema, Banda, al-Bashier, Numeiri, Bokassa, Toure, Biya, Moi, Gowon, Taylor, Habre, Ahidjo, Babangida, Obote, Rawlings, Doe …) are aware of this test and its evaluative scruples and, like any rational participant, would want to succeed… If they do not do so well, at some instance, so goes the logic, they would try to improve on their previous score and, hopefully, do better… Success is always a possibility! On the contrary, there is limited indication on the ground that African state operatives in the past 40-50 years have approached statecraft as a challenge to succeed in transforming the lives of their peoples. “Success” is never a goal set along the trajectory of their mission. For the Obasanjos and Gowons, for instance, “statecraft” is a fiendish opportunity to murder as many millions of Igbo people as they can possibly achieve … Furthermore, it should be noted that given the evidently limited concerns on just “measuring” the scoreboard of performance, “failed states”’ discourses tend to overlook the much more expansive turbulence of underlying history.

So, rather than organisations that bring benefits to many of its people, the state in Africa has “evidently been a source of suffering”, to quote Christopher Clapham, again, an imagery consistent with Basil Davidson’s description of the impact of this state on the African humanity as a “curse”. Richard Dowden also uses a health metaphor in capturing the legacy of the African state when he notes, alluding to its genesis – a feature that we shall confront soon – “[this European]-scissors and paste job [has indeed caused Africa] much blood and tears”. For her own observation, Lyn Innes is in no doubt that the African state has created what she describes as a “deeply diseased [outcome]” on the continent. William Reno’s categorisation of Sierra Leone as a “shadow state” may appear more of an aesthetic judgement than pathological, but the psychosocial outcome of vivid alienation evident in the country in the 1990s as state and disparate insurgent military forces battled up and down the country as the state was in free fall was palpable.

Chester Crocker has observed, succinctly, that the fundamental problem with the nature of the African state that we have been discussing has been its lack of “legitimacy and authority to manage [its] affairs… As such, [this state has] always derived a major, if not dominant, share of [its] legitimacy from the international system rather than from domestic society”. It is this question of alienability that is at the crux of this grave crisis. T o live in the typical African “nation state” presently is to live in the most oppressively centralised state in the world that denies most peoples in constituent nations their fundamental human rights. This has been a debilitating legacy for most Africans since Europeans created this state during their occupation of the continent. It was, and still remains a conqueror’s and a conquest state, having clobbered together peoples of varying political, cultural, religious and ideational heritage with no identifiably-embracing organic transnational sensibility, save an ensemble or organisation to rationalise the exploitation of critical human and non-human resources for transfers to the West World and elsewhere.

It is precisely in this context that what P. Chabal and J-P. Daloz have ironically called the “political economy of disorder” actually works in Africa: it offers immense opportunities to those who control the instrument of the state but who clearly lack or do not subscribe to the domestic or internal legitimacy to work the system. This state was a boon to the European occupation project as was expected. It was the instrument to harness and enforce the African occupation in its entirety and maximise the expropriation of the spoils of conquest. The African take-over of this state in the 1950s/1960s, without any efforts to transform it into an African-centred ethos and enterprise, witnessed a new era of even greater disregard for domestic legitimacy with cataclysmic consequences – creating that “deeply diseased [outcome]” Innes has referred to: the slaughter of 15 million, colossal decapitalisation of the economy, degenerative poverty. It should never escape the attention of the observer that the flip side of the coin that tells the tale of Africa’s staggering capital transfers to the Western World, day in, day out, as we have just highlighted, is the emaciated, starving and dying African child, woman or man that has for long been the abiding image on television screens across the world. In effect, Franz Schurmann is right to note in his illuminating study on the subject that African leaderships who oversee the non-deconstructed state of the European conquest “are not traditional but rather a phenomenon of modernity. They are fighting for power in a Western-type state with its armies, police, bureaucracies [and] control over economic institutions”.

Pertinently, these leaderships have failed to incorporate into the state structures “inherited” in the aftermath of the European occupation pre-conquest African institutions of politics and governance aimed at maintaining a democratic, fully participatory process and government to respond to the needs and aspirations of individuals and constituent nations. The resulting imbalance in power relations so widely witnessed in Africa today between the state and its people, among constituent peoples, and between men and women have their roots in this systematic marginalisation of Africa’s traditional democratic legacy. Thus, structural alienation from the political process typifies the overall disposition of peoples in the African state. The overwhelming majority of the people are not involved in the process of their own governance and of course one obvious and serious consequence of this is the ease with which political differences and disagreements often deteriorate into major conflicts and wars. This is dictated largely by the unresolved nature and character of the state vis-à-vis the constituent nations. Evidently, the underlying structural basis of independence, or, more correctly, the restoration of independence in Africa has never really been defined. There is no rigorously worked-out agreement on the fundamental character and role of the “post-conquest state” by the constituent nations that make up the state. The broad sectors of African peoples are yet to be placed and involved centrally in the entire process of societal reconstruction and transformation. Not surprisingly, the nature of the state that emerged after the European conquest and occupation had, and still has limited organically shared values linking its peoples. Most African conflicts have therefore centred on the continuously thunderous demands made by desperately deprived and exploited nations and peoples in these states for the construction of decentralised and decentring alternative political structures and institutions which empower people at their locale. It is as a result of this unresolved historical factor of conquest that Africa remains a tinderbox, exploding uncontrollably from time to time, with the devastating consequences that the world has come to know in the past half of a century. Until there is a far-reaching restructuring of political and economic relations within the state to ensure inclusive participation by all nations and peoples, conflicts in Africa will remain endemic. Decentralisation and democratisation are essential in creating a sense of inclusiveness amongst African peoples, a crucial ingredient in overcoming the present causes of disempowerment, instability and underdevelopment. Only within these parameters of justice, equality, freedom, the cessation of violence and alienation can true peace occur.

Disarming Africa: Brazil, Africa Arms-Free Zone, Obama Legacy

Inevitably, Africa must resolve the contentious issues that fuel the current conflictual existence of most of its peoples before achieving urgently needed socio-economic transformation. This is a political question. The widespread feeling of alienation by most constituent peoples in a typical African “nation-state” is palpable enough. This state, in which African peoples were cobbled together in the past by the triumph of external conquest to serve the spoils of occupation, has been a monumental failure in the past 40-50 years of mismanagement by African leaderships. Africans urgently need a principled, unfettered, and unsentimental debate on the “inherited” state, with its ultra-centralising and utterly unviable ethos. It cannot lead to that transformation of a very rich continent that has been the expectation of millions of Africans across the world. The way out is for an extensive political and economic decentralisation which is essential in creating a sense of inclusiveness amongst peoples, a crucial ingredient in overcoming the present causes of disempowerment, instability and underdevelopment. It cannot be over-stressed that if people are not actively involved in the affairs of their society, issues of human and civil rights as well as civic responsibilities will be subverted, creating societies that are clearly not at peace with themselves.

Militarisation, including arms confrontation, is obviously not a viable option to resolve Africa's outstanding problems – especially those that affect constituent peoples in the current state. Arms should henceforth be removed from the African scene as the vehicle for the settlement of disputes. All Africa's problems, however complex and intractable they may appear presently, can and should be resolved through painstaking negotiation even if this seems or becomes protracted. As it was generally in pre-European/pre-Arab conquest times in most of Africa, there should be no limits or ultimatums placed on negotiations and conflict resolutions in Africa: the talking went on and on until some resolution was achieved… The mutual bombardment of ideas, not bullets and shells, was the driving impetus for the avoidance and overcoming of conflicts. Thus the genocide killing field or the battlefield or indeed the riot-field, whether it is Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Congo, the Sudan or Kenya should no longer be an option for the settlement of Africa's extant problems.

On this score, the ethos that governs the African journey of recovery is the commitment of all Africans and the demand that they need to make to the rest of the world to place a mandatory embargo on all arms sales and transfers to all of Africa, as well as a complete demilitarisation of the continent. Africa needs justice and peace for, and with itself, to enable it embark on the much-vaunted era of reconstruction. Britain, the world’s leading arms-delivery-state to Africa must now mothball its arms-delivery behemoth destined for Africa. The British public opinion and British-based human rights and charities such as the British Red Cross, Amnesty International, Oxfam and Christian Aid can no longer live comfortably with the seeming anomaly whereby the British ministry of defence approves to send weapons of death to Africa (whose sales enjoy cast-iron official guarantees for the British arms manufacturer readily provided by the British ministry of trade) and then respond to the inevitable devastating aftermath of the use of these weapons on the African scene by initiating radio and television campaigns to raise and send “relief aid” to the targeted African population(s). It is really no longer sufficient for the Amnesty Internationals and Oxfams of Britain to issue periodic condemnations of the misdemeanours and transgressions of the African state when they are silent over the crucial role that the very heart of the British political establishment at Whitehall (London), located just a few miles away from these organisations, plays in propping up the African genocide state. The Amnesty Internationals and Oxfams must be in the forefront of the campaign calling for a total, unconditional arms ban on Africa and the demilitarisation of the continent. This focus on British charity/human rights institutions’ relationship with their state and the latter’s arms shipment to Africa also applies to the US, France, Belgium, Canada and other countries in the West that export arms to Africa.

Thanks to Brazil’s current impressive scientific and technological advancement, which has, understandably, impacted on its arms manufacturing industry, this country is rapidly expanding its arms export capacity. As a result, Brazil is steadily climbing up the Africa arms-delivery-states’ ladder. But Brazil shouldn’t be on any of the rungs of this notorious ladder in the first place. Yet, on this very important subject of our times, Brazil can act as a beacon to the rest of the world by being the first country to descend from this ladder and walk away. If the indolent African regime is ever interested in Brazil’s exciting technological innovations, it should instead be presented with a catalogue of Brazilian-made tractors, harvesters, irrigation machinery … Brazil should immediately place a blanket arms embargo on all of Africa. Even arms being negotiated presently with any African state and those in the pipeline of delivery to the continent should be abandoned, withdrawn or blocked. Brazil has the enviable status as the country in the world outside Africa with the highest number of peoples of African descent in its population. It should not at the same time be sending weapons of death to Africa’s genocide states to murder Africans who live east of the Atlantic. Brazilian intellectuals and students have their work very much cut out on this in their dialogue with their state. Finally, US President Obama, his country’s first African-descent head of state, can be assured of a lasting legacy of his presidency by imposing a comprehensive US arms embargo on this continent of his fathers at the cusp of constructing new states of organic sensibilities – away from the terror of the genocide state. Obama should expand this initiative to involve other arms-exporters-to-Africa especially on such forums as the UN Security Council and the G-8. Arms ban to Africa should be internationally mandatory and enforceable.

On this, Africa’s challenge to the rest of the world couldn’t be clearer: those who live outside Africa but “care so much for Africa” should now scale down their multitudinous “aid-ventures for Africa” and turn their incredible talents to lobbying their respective states and other institutions in their countries and elsewhere to ban arms sales/transfers to Africa. This new focus for the world’s leading charities, away from the band-aid syndrome, will surely be more exciting, even less taxing, but definitely more rewarding for the ultimate outcome for Africa and the rest of the world alike. Africa seeks no resources from anyone, not even for one US dollar, to accomplish its current transformative mission to dismantle the genocide state. It is simply asking the world to completely seal off its vast armouries to deny access to the deadly claws of the Africa genocide state. For once, no one is asking anyone to raise money for Africa! Given the devastating impact of arms, arming, armies, genocide and other armed conflicts on Africa’s tragic history and the present, Africa, in 2009, projects an unwavering signpost for the world’s attention that proclaims: Africa Is An Arms-Free Zone. A demilitarised continent. No More Arms Sales Or Transfers To Africa.

Renaissance

The African genocide state has now run the course of its bloody trail in history. The greatest challenge facing Africans in the new millennium is to dismantle this state and create new state forms based on Africa’s critical re-engagement with its rich cultural heritage. This is to enable them to safeguard the lives of their people and embark on the vast topography of reconstruction of society after a depressing and devastating history. This task is a cardinal facet of the African renaissance or renewal. Africa’s alternative path of survival and reconstruction is clearly a path that emerges from the people re-connecting to the continent’s enduring cultural precepts and institutions emplaced in its ancient nations or in “real Africa”, as some scholars have aptly categorised them. It attaches a high priority to the resuscitation of the treasured position of the family in African community affairs and the full operation of the ethos and institutions of the dual-sex complementarity that has for centuries defined the central tenets of African social existence. These spheres of African life have come under sustained assaults and, in some fronts, have had considerable fractures during the course of the European occupation of the continent and the last 40-50 years of disastrous African overseeing-management. One such emergency zone of fracture has been the outrageous marginalisation of African women from participating actively in the key institutions of the state and society. This has been an historical setback for women who in the past controlled and exercised extensive rights and authority over their own affairs as well as those of the rest of society as has been demonstrated extensively in the writings and studies of novelists such as Flora Nwapa, Ama Ata Aidoo and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and scholars such as Kemene Okonjo, Adiele Afigbo, Ifi Amadiume, Nkiru Nzegwu and Okwuonicha Femi Nzegwu. The re-positioning of women in the shared complementary spaces of responsibility, power and authority must be at the epicentre of the reconfiguration of African fortunes in these new state forms of decentralisation.

Already, this alternative Africa, this reconstituted land of renewal, translated into decentralised, organically articulated new states, is being built amidst the chaos and brutality of a tragic epoch. As should be already obvious, this future of Africa discussed here is antithetical to Muammar Gaddafi’s current “Africa Unity” theatrical digressions, which, more seriously as I demonstrate in a 2007 essay, are indeed a cover for an ominous proto-islamic, neofeudal Africa-wide continental dynastic fiefdom modelled on Gaddafi’s own family firm and patronage formulations in Libya since 1969. This contraption will only reinforce and expand the stranglehold of the genocide state in Africa. Whilst the death machine that is the African state is undoubtedly ruthless, as we have shown, it has an immanent weakness which the people are presently exploiting across different regions of the continent to recast a new social existence. Thanks to the sheer size of the territorial space that it has to contend with in its existentialist quest to enforce its legendary brute power, and given its notorious inefficiency and stunted technological development, this pulverising state of death has not been able to exercise an all-embracing, omni-present Gestapo-like or Ba’athist party-like control of society. It does not have tentacles embedded all over the place. The ever-bubbling currents of enhanced globalisation with attendant flashes of instant communication, 24 hours a day, have further exposed the tenuousness of the foundation of its existence. The peoples have therefore exploited this weakness with aplomb. Africa is currently saturated with communities actively experimenting and exercising control of their immediate, surrounding societies by setting up a people-oriented security and a working justice system, developing infrastructure, building schools and hospitals and negotiating operating terms of relations with transnational companies or corporations or even the odd government or quasi-government organisation from overseas. The operationalising slogan that appears to underpin this exercise is the “Survival of Our Nation”. From Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Ghana, Benin and genocidist Nigeria in the west, through Cameroon and Gabon in the centre, to Uganda, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia to the east and to Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa in the south, a new Africa of constituent nations-based reconstruction is emerging to pursue the tasks of reconstruction as the genocidist/so-called “nation-state” collapses or retreats into insignificance. The well over 100,000 African intellectuals and professionals who have left Africa for overseas (particularly in the West) are playing a crucial role in this renewal. They are part of the 12 million-strong Africans who left the continent since 1980. These émigrés are now the most active source of Africa-directed investment presently. It is people-targeted and the results are astonishing. These African émigrés now dispatch billions of dollars per annum as well as lend their skill and time to Africa’s growth – investing directly in the development of the people as they literally take care of the feeding, clothing, housing, education, health care and other social needs of relatives and indeed the wider community, amongst a re-emerging/revivalist ethos of local initiative, local control, transparency and accountability. In 2003, according to the World Bank, African émigrés sent to Africa the impressive sum of US$200 billion – invested directly in their home communities. This is 40 times the sum of “Western aid” in real terms in the same year – i.e. when the pervasive “overheads” attendant to the latter are accounted for. It is interesting that the source of the information of the instrumental role of African émigrés in current external capital transfers to Africa comes from the World Bank. It is this same World Bank, which, in alliance with the International Monetary Fund and the string of kakistocratic African regimes in the past 30 years, contributed to the virtual destruction of the African economy in its so-called “structural adjustment programme” of the era. Contrary to the very partial, stunted imagery of the African situation of this period propagated with relish by predictable, stunningly uncritical pastiche of international media reporting on the continent, Africans, themselves, have, on the whole, taken central care of coping with the punishing aftermath of the socioeconomics of state collapse and terror, and in charting new pathways to construct organically-responsive states to subvert and replace the extant genocide state.

We cannot overstate the immeasurably favourable resource base that would support this goal of African renaissance. An overview is necessary to underscore the immense possibilities that exist. Africa has developed and continues to develop an advanced humanpower capability that will drive the transformation of the post-genocide state. Eighty per cent of Uganda’s arable land, some of the richest in Africa, remain uncultivated. Were Uganda to expand its current food production by just 50 per cent, not only would it be completely self-sufficient, but it would be able to feed all the countries contiguous to its territory without difficulty (the countries in question are Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan and the Congo Democratic Republic). The overall statistics of the African situation is even more revealing as with regards to the continent’s long-term endowment. Just a quarter of the potential arable land of Africa is being cultivated presently. Even here, an increasingly high proportion of the cultivated area is assigned to the so-called cash-crops (cocoa, coffee, tea, peanut, sisal, floral cultivation, etc.) for exports mainly to the West World at a time when there has been a virtual collapse, across the board, of the price of these crops in the West’s commodity markets. In the past 30 years, the average real price of these African products in the West has been about 20 per cent less than their worth during the 1960s-70s period which was soon after the restoration of independence. As for the remaining 75 per cent of Africa’s uncultivated land, this represents 66 per cent of the entire world’s potential. The world is aware of the array of strategic minerals such as cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold, industrial diamonds, iron ore, manganese, phosphates, titanium, uranium, petroleum oil found in the Sudan, Congo Democratic Republic, Namibia, South Africa, Angola, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and elsewhere on the continent. These countries are among Africa’s most wealthy and potentially some of the world’s wealthiest. However, what is not always or simultaneously associated with the wealth profiles of these countries is that they have vast acreage of rich farmlands with capacity to optimally support the food needs of generations of African peoples. In addition, the famous fish industry in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana for instance, Botswana’s rich cattle farms, west Africa’s yam and plantain belts extending from southern Cameroon to the Casamance province of Senegal, the continent’s rich rice production fields, etc., all highlight the potential Africa has for fully providing for all its food needs.

In effect, what the current African socioeconomic situation shows is extraordinarily reassuring, provided the acreage devoted to cultivation is expanded and expressly targeted to address Africa’s own internal consumption needs. Land used directed at agriculture for food output, as opposed to the calamitous waste of “cash crop” production for export, must become the focus of agricultural policy in the new Africa. It is an inexplicable tragedy that any African child, woman, or man could go without food in the light of the staggering endowment of resources on this continent. Africa constitutes a spacious, rich and arable landmass that can support its population, which is still one of the world’s least densely populated and distributed, into the indefinite future. There is only one condition, though, for the realisation of this goal: Africa must utilise these immense resources for the benefit of its own peoples within newly negotiated, radically decentralised political dispensations which must shed any resemblance to the genocide state. Thus, Africa’s pressing problem in the past 53 years has not been “poverty”, as it is often uncritically portrayed, but how to husband phenomenal resources, human and non-human, for the express benefit of the peoples at a time when the strategic goal for change is to dismantle the architecture of annihilation posed to African existence by its genocide states.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is a leading scholar of the Igbo genocide, 1966-1970. His books include Conflict and Intervention (Macmillan, 1990), Issues in Nigerian Politics Since the Fall of the Second Republic, 1984-1990 (Mellen, 1991), Africa 2001: The State, Human Rights and the People (IIAR, 1994), African Literature in Defence of History: An Essay on Chinua Achebe (African Renaissance, 2001), Biafra Revisited (African Renaissance, 2006) and Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (forthcoming, 2009).

Genocide by any other name

2009-05-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

Federal Nigerian troops walk along a road near Ikot Expene, Nigeria, with Biafran forces in this 1968 file photograph. On the roadside are two emaciated Nigerian boys. (Photograph: AP) By Percy Zvomuya

The first half-century of black Africa's independence was especially notorious for three reasons: coups, corrupt dictatorships and genocides.

Just seven years after Nigeria's independence in 1960, more than a million Igbos died of starvation or were slaughtered in the Biafran war in Nigeria; in the 1980s a million people died of starvation in Ethiopia as the government was busy buying weapons, and more than 20 000 Ndebele were slaughtered by the Zimbabwean army's Fifth Brigade.

In 1994, in just three months, a million Tutsis died in Rwanda at the hands of their Hutu compatriots and, more recently, up to four million Congolese people have died as an indirect result of 10 years of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And in the Sudanese provinces of Darfur, massacres have claimed up to 300 000 people, a conflict for which the country's president Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.

So many millions gone, deaths that could easily fill an encyclopedia, which is precisely the project that Abebe Zegeye, professor and chair of genocide and holocaust studies at Unisa, and Maurice Vambe, a professor at Unisa's English studies department, have undertaken. The two academics are writing the first African encyclopedia of genocide, a 600-page tome that is due to come out next year.

The pair's working definition of genocide is not the one the UN arrived at in 1948, which defines genocide as what happens when one ethnic group seeks to destroy another in part or in whole.

"While this definition provides a broad framework within which to understand mass murder, it has to be expanded to accommodate the peculiarities of present-day crimes related to mass murder in Africa." They argue that "genocide must be explained first in terms of the number of bodies that lie dead, but also most importantly, in terms of the conditions that result directly or indirectly [in] the death of masses of people".

Vambe said rogue governments now know that killing 100 people, for example, will ignite the interest of the international community, so what governments do instead is create conditions that make it impossible for people to live or learn.

"These conditions could be hunger, choleraor failure to go school. We shouldn't focus on the outcome, but on the process of consciously denying people their rights."

Using this definition, the two scholars argue that the lives lost in Operation Murambatsvina, the Zimbabwean government'sbrutal 2005 crackdown on inhabitants of informal settlements, and the electoral violence oflast year could be defined as genocide.

When communities are killed it's not only individual lives that are lost, language too is distorted as governments resort to obfuscation and Orwellian double-speak.

"The use of selective vocabulary to insulate acts of aggression and violence in 'officialese or diplomatic speak' can indeed encourage and escalate the violence," they say.

This explains why there has been confusion about what happened in the conflict in Biafra, routinely referred to as the Biafran War. "To describe it this way might imply that the people fighting one another were equals and all were armed. History tells us that this was not the case."

Vambe and Zegeye say that hundreds of thousands of Biafrans were massacred during the conflict, which was sparked by the region's desire to break away from the rest of Nigeria.

Their project is motivated by the realisation that, in mainstream history, what happened in Biafra is not defined as genocide. "Instead it was described [by the Nigerian government] as a preservation of national sovereignty -- a euphemism that every dictator in Africa is now using."

The appalling silence and inactivity of the British Left as Biafrans face death and starvation ...

2009-05-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

Peter Sedgwick on the grim meaning of ‘The Wilson Syndrome’

The people of Biafra once again face annihilation despite talk of resuming relief flights. Until last month, international charities had secured the passage of vital protein foods into the war area, and ended the famine in which more than a million people, of both sexes and all ages, died of hunger and deficiency diseases.

Now the famine is be to be repeated – especially since a number of spokesmen for the Federal Nigerian government have at last admitted that their policy is to use starvation as a weapon to subjugate Biafra.

The British government continues to support the Federal campaign, diplomatically and in the massive supply of arms. In the hospitals and mortuaries of Biafra, the causes of starvation and death are inscribed in the victims’ records officially ‘The Wilson Syndrome’.

Total surrender

The issues in the war are fairly simple. The demands of General Gowon’s Federal Nigerian government are for the total surrender of Biafra and the total re-organisation of the whole of Nigeria into 12 states one of which would be a truncated ‘Iboland’ without access to the sea.

The other Ibo areas would be carved up in different regions. The vital Port Harcourt (predominantly an Ibo town) and several Ibo-speaking oil areas would be outside ‘Iboland’.

Quite apart from the prospect of this dismemberment, the Eastern people do not trust their future within a Federal structure which in 1966 permitted several waves of massacre of their citizens in the backward North and which in 1967 refused to accept any financial responsibility for assistance to the two million Ibos who migrated back into the East after the massacre.

They do not trust a regime which imposed a total blockade on the Eastern region, when the latter, after the refusal of aid, switched its funds from Federal taxes to local relief, and which has demonstrated its concern for the population of Biafra(whom it claims to rule) by genocidal starvation and the repeated slaughter of whole townships by Northern units waging a fanatical Muslim ‘holy war’.

What are Biafra’s demands? Simply sovereignty and independence, with the borders of the new state to be determined by referendum among the peoples of disputed areas, with the re-settlement of any groups who wanted to live either inside or outside Biafra.

This latest operation would be no more difficult than the re-settlement that took place with, for example, the people displaced in Ghana’s Volta River Project, and is an effective answer to those who claim that Biafra is simply an expression of the desire of the Ibos to dominate their own non-Ibo minorities. (The Ojukwu regime is fairly confident that many of the minority peoples would choose Biafra, since many of them were also, as Easterners, on the receiving end of the massacres in 1966)

Virtually nobody, in fact, can be found who will defend the Federals’ war-aims. Nobody, that is, except the official ‘Nigerian Marxist-Leninists’ delegation to the international Communist Party conference in Moscow last month which declared, without any contradiction in the assembly, that ‘history and the example of the Soviet Union’ had proved the justice of the Federal/Military government’s 12-state programme and that Biafra had been set up by, among others, the Vatican and Mao Tse-tung.

There has been, on the other hand a marked lack of enthusiasm on the Left for taking up the Biafrans’ cause. Surely some compromise should be arrived at, or so it is hinted.

Illusory demands

Unfortunately, as in Vietnam, the demand for ‘negotiation’ is illusory. The Federal side demands surrender – it is the Biafrans who are calling for a cease-fire and talks. Even the recent attempts by a few high-ranking Biafrans to fish for a settlement on terms of less than full sovereignty have proved totally abortive. General Gowon wants his victory.

It is quite likely, in any case that any compromise offered by Biafran leaders would be repudiated by the populace. In the original decision to secede in May 1967, Ojukwu was pushed beyond the mandate he requested to ‘assert the autonomy of Eastern Nigeria without specifying either when or in what form this autonomy should finally be claimed’.

The Eastern ‘Consultative Assembly’, responding to the pressure of mass meetings in the localities instead mandated him urgently to declare the total secession of an independent Biafra. So much for the image of a Biafra created by the wilful ineptitude of the intransigent General Ojukwu.

Others on the Left allege that Biafra is in some way or other an imperialist puppet, the creature of South Africa, Portugal or France. If this were so, the recognition of Biafra by Tanzania and Zambia, who (especially the former) are vigorous opponents of white imperialism in Africa, would be very surprising.

And it is not so, Portugal supplies no arms or aid to Biafra (with the exception of permitting one of Biafra’s few air outlets to the outside world via Lisbon and Sao Tome). Rumours of South African mercenaries have subsided as such characters have failed to make any appearance in the actual course of the war – although we must not forget the vicious behaviour of the small group of Swedes who recently committed the unforgivable atrocity of destroying most of Nigeria’s Russian bombers by flying low over them with lightly-armed trainers (clear evidence of western neo-colonial influence).

Oil take-over

The role of France is obscure, though nobody suggested that de Gaulle’s diplomatic support for North Vietnam and the Arab world meant that Ho Chi Minh or Nasser had sold out to French imperialism.

There have been reports that French channels have been used for the sale of arms to Biafra. Even if these accounts were true, why the hell not? The Federal Nigerian government denies this incidentally, claiming that Biafra is being armed from China, no less.

Far from being a, neo-colonialist stooge, the Biafran government has taken over the oil fields in its territory, and is now the first African nation to refine its own oil.

Biafran guerrillas in the Mid-West are, operating successfully against Shell-BP’s pipelines in areas adjacent to Biafra (hence those captured oilmen), where the British oil, companies have been moving in behind the Nigerian army to extract new wealth. Britain gets 20 per cent of its oil from Nigeria and would like more, given the Arab situation; Shell-UK bases its growth prospects for the coming year almost entirely on its Nigerian activities.

Press outcry

This month, Shell-BP plans to open a new 60-mile pipeline in the Mid-West costing £17½ million. As Auberon Waugh pointed out in The Spectator (May 30) these pipelines are militarily indefensible, in a region where an effective Biafran guerrilla force has been ranging for the last six months with the support of the Mid-West people.

Possibly the recent outcry in certain British newspapers over Biafra’s plight may be prompted by the realisation that, ‘our oil’ is not, after all, safeguarded by the support given by Gowon.

Readers of the press may remember the prominence given to a Major-General H.T. Alexander, former Chief of Staff in Nkrumah’s Ghana, who visited the Federal-occupied areas as an ‘impartial observer’ and reported that no genocide was being committed. A man, clearly, of impeccable credentials.

Auberon Waugh, in the article cited above, revealed (1) that Major-General Alexander is managing director of London and Thames Haven Oil Wharves, which was deriving 75 per cent of its profits from Shell and (2) that Shell has now taken over London and Thames, loch, stock and General Alexander.

The Major-General has now been publicly encouraging the Nigerian government to take out Uli air-strip the only way in for relief aircraft to Biafra. No genocide of course, just let them starve to death. (As the commandant of Belsen, said at his trial: we didn’t kill all those Jews, it just so happened that conditions were very, very bad.)

On any other issue of course the Tory Spectator would not come out with this kind of exposure.

The silence and inactivity of the official and unofficial British Labour movement on Biafra has been appalling. The alliance of Brezhnev’s Russia and Shell-BP, of technological Harold and the feudal Emirs of North Nigeria would be monstrous enough even without its consequences and its consequences are imperialist mass-murder, the war of oil and blood.

Softened up

The protest movement in the West has been softened up for too long. Duties are no longer enough for it, it must have the excitement of loyalties. If Ojukwu were to exclaim – ‘Viva Che!’ and proclaim himself a Marxist; if Biafra were to invent yet another phoney brand of ‘African socialism’ and introduce a one-party (instead of a no-party) state, then of course, ‘solidarity campaigns’ would, sprout and Shell-Mex House would replace Grosvenor Square as the scene of demonstration and battle.

Some supporters of Biafra have in their enthusiasm tended to claim that Ojukwu’s regime represents some new wave of African radicalism. This is probably not so. A consistent anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist programme will need to be developed, in Biafra no less than in Nigeria, against the military, bureaucratic and native-business structure.

Cruel invasion

Paradoxically, it has been the very existence of illusions about the ‘socialism’ of many third world movements that has prevented the cruel invasion of foreign powers, of monopolist exploiters, and of an Islamic mediaeval Mafia on a scale which makes Vietnam look like a picnic.

The cause of Biafra is just. Its people are fighting a heroic war of courage and ingenuity against the gigantic weaponry of a feudal-imperial bloc.

And they are being killed off, the first million already, the next million probably soon to come. That should be enough surely to compel us to act.

A PROTEST AGAINST GENOCIDE: BIAFRA RALLY

2009-05-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Tanenbaum

STATEMENT BY RABBI MARC H. TANEN3AUM, NATIONAL DIRECTOR OF INTERRELIGIOUS
AFFAIRS, AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE; CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERRELIGIOUS
LIASION COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH EMERGENCY EFFORT
FOR BIAFRAN RELIEF, AND PRESIDENT OF THE INTERRELIGIOUS FOUNDATION
FOR COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

Today is the Jewish Sabbath. Traditionally the Sabbath is an
oasis in time for retreat from the turmoil of the world, for calm
reflection, meditation, and study. By superficial standards, a Jew,
and certainly a rabbi, should not be taking part in a public meeting
such as this on the Sabbath Day. However, from the deepest
perspectives of the humanism of the Jewish faith and the historic
experience of the Jewish people, I can do no other but lend my voice
and my presence on this Sabbath in sorrowful and bitter protest
against the bestiality that is taking place against innocent men,
women and children, victims of the civil war in Nigeria.

Rabbinic tradition affirms (Ketubah 19a), "There is nothing -
no religious law - that must not yield to the duty of saving life."
And the Sabbath itself must be set aside to save a life (Ketubah 5a)
... whether the person in need is a Jew or a Gentile (Ibid. 15b).
We are here to try to save the lives not of a single person,
but of tens of thousands of persons, before it is too late. The
world - nations, governments, whole peoples — have created an

artificial Sabbath about themselves, retreating to an indecent
calm, an obscene indifference to the plight of millions who are
being massacred and dying from hunger. We are here to cry out to
the world to set aside this Sabbath calm and end the morbid immoral
silence under whose cloak wholesale destruction of lives is taking
place.

On June 9, 1942, the village of Lidice was wiped off the face
of the earth, the entire male population of the village was
massacred. The women and children were carried off to be shot,
gassed, or to die from ill-treatment. Four of the Lidice women who
were about to give birth were taken to a maternity hospital in
Prague where their newly born infants were murdered. The Nazi
security police then burned down the village, dynamited the ruins,
and leveled it off.

Lidice is the most widely known example of Nazi savagery and
one of the longest remembered acts of barbarism in the civilized
world.

In the second half of the 20th century, Biafra is on its way
to becoming the Lidice of mankind.

Yesterday morning, I received a letter from a priest in Port
Harcourt, Rev. Fintan Kilbride, who described an hour-long bombing
of the town of Ihiala. "The first stick of bombs was dropped

immediately behind the Holy Ghost Seminary where Rev. J. McNulty
was feeding 300 starving children in the clinic. The first bomb
dropped only a short distance away and decapitated one of the
mission workers. The second which fell a little further away,
killed 12 people and injured 115 in front of their eyes. The
Russian Mig, piloted presumably by an Egyptian pilot, then circled
for a while before coming in for the kill again, this time on the
village market place which was crowded with shoppers. Twelve were
killed and 35 injured. The next target was the Holy Rosary
Hospital. It was struck three times before it was completely
destroyed. It was absolute carnage." --The letter concludes, :'In
the name of humanity something must be done to stop this savage
slaughter.."

Less than 25 years ago the Jewish People suffered a catastrophe
in the ruthless murder of six million men, women and children,
the import of which has permanently impaired our image of God,
man and the moral order. The most traumatic effect of all was the
feeling of abandonment, the agony of being surrounded by an ocean
of silence.

Out of that holocaust we, the Jewish People, have salvaged
one permanent lesson. There must never again be silence in the
face of atrocities and human suffering.
"Thou shalt not stand by idly the blood of thy brother,"
is the eleventh commandment of the Jewish People.

If we remain silent now in the face of what amounts to in fact
another attempted genocide, we will have given Hitler and Nazi
Germany their final victory.

What are we to do? There are two things we can and must do:
First, we must help stop the slaughter.

Second, we must help put an end to the cruel starvation.

Unless a cease-fire or truce is brought about, and the massacre
of innocents ends, all the humanitarian aid we send will in a short
time be poured into a cemetery called Biafra. I urge therefore that
our next rally take place not again before the United Nations, which
is apparently and tragically paralyzed from doing anything effective
to end the killing, but that we march on Washington, and in particular
on the State Department.

Our government has been engaged in a diplomatic bird dance,
feigning an impotence which is a lie. The culprits in the Nigerian
war effort are Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and Egypt, without
whose heavy military support and pilots this war could not rage on
for long. We need to march on the State Department and insist on
public answers to these questions:

Why is our government not protesting against Great Britain's
imperialist role in Nigeria? Is Britain, our great ally, going to
be allowedto continue to play the role of perfidious Albion in
bartering human lives for Biafran Oil?

Why does not our government make it clear to the Soviet Union
that we will not tolerate her continued feeding into Nigeria the
Migs and Ilyushin bombers, flown by Egyptian pilots, to exterminate
innocent peoples? Our president put the Soviet Union on public
notice when the Red armies marched into Czechoslovakia? Is the
Biafran tragedy any less demanding of our public outrage?

And finally we must ask what is the role of Ambassador Joseph
Palmer, the head of the African desk in the State Department, in
our strange neutrality in the face of genocide? Why is he dragging
his feet in response to pleas for American airlifts of food and
medicine to Biafra? Is the State Department repeating the same
cynical pattern of the 1940's of turning a deaf ear to cries to
help save human lives when it has the clear capacity to do
infinitely more than it is doing?

While we must march on Washington and turn the light of world
public opinion on the State Department and those responsible for
its ignominious policy of neutrality, we must not relax for a
moment our drives to raise monies to provide food, drugs and
medicines.

I wish to use this occasion to announce that the entire Jewish
community in the United States has organized an unprecedented
American Jewish Emergency Effort for Biafran Relief, following the
great leadership given by the Catholic Relief Services and Church
World Service, who have done more than any government or interRabbi

national relief bodies to bring succor and relief to the suffering
people of Nigeria. We have just raised $32,000 for Biafran
relief, and two days ago have committed checks to Catholic Relief
Services and to Church World Service and UNICEF which will make
possible the shipment of twenty flights of food amounting to 200
tons and one flight of medicines from Portugal to Biafra.

In the days and weeks ahead we will continue to work with you,
for the sake of the Biafran People, but also for the sake of our
own sanity and our belief in the worth of man.

Bodies stacked in street as genocide grips Biafra

2009-05-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

The Times Online Archives

May 12, 1968: Frederick Forsyth, at this time a freelance reporter, finds the breakaway region is now a charnel house

THE war raging between Nigeria and her breakaway eastern region of Biafra has just ended its 10th and bloodiest month. After 10 weeks in the bush with the Biafran army commandos, I have emerged sickened by the senseless violence that this war has wreaked upon a west African nation that could have been an example of harmonious progress to the whole of the continent.

The most disturbing aspect is that inside 10 months it has deteriorated steadily from a war in which the original motivation was the reincorporation of the breakaway east into Nigeria into a spectacle of racial hatred run amok.

General Yakubu Gowon, the head of the federal government, in unleashing a war that he thought could be ended within 48 hours, has let loose forces that white men do not understand and that the Nigerians cannot control.

The Lagos government, to judge from its public utterances, seems blandly unaware of just how far its own army is out of its control.

When one hears what Lagos says about the rehabilitation of the Ibos of Biafra, about non-discrimination, about equal job opportunity and so forth, and then one sees what is actually going on at the battle fronts and behind them, one must come to the conclusion that either Lagos is lying or it has lost control.

In six forays behind Nigerian lines, I was able to observe Nigerian-occupied Biafra. It is being turned into a charnel house of gutted hamlets and rotting corpses.

From the bush a timorous Ibo native emerges to explain what happened when “Hausa man come”. The descriptions tally so closely that they are almost standardised: the menfolk lined up against the wall of the biggest building and machinegunned, the women raped to the accompaniment of the all-too-ritualistic mutilations, the children spitted on machete knives.

Genocide is an ugly word and an even uglier reality. I do not use it lightly, but my judgment that it really could be the extermination of an entire race does not go unsupported.

The two papal delegates who visited both sides in the conflict submitted a report to the Pope which caused the latter to condemn the war for its “strong genocidal overtones”.

I spoke to nearly 100 Nigerian prisoners of war and, once their Ibo captors had been sent out of earshot, they spoke quite freely. All admitted that they had not volunteered but had been conscripted by no-nonsense recruiting sergeants on street corners and in market places. After a week’s training they were sent up to the front with a rifle and a pouch of ammunition. These new soldiers loot, rape, kill and torture.

At Onitsha, under siege from the federal troops, the 300-strong congregation of the Apostolic church decided to stay on while others fled and to pray for deliverance. The Second Division found them in the church, dragged them out, tied their hands behind their backs and executed them. Three hours later, entering Onitsha, I found the corpses stacked in the road.

It is the Biafrans’ firm belief, which seemed to be supported by a lot of evidence, that the great majority of the weapons in Nigerian hands are being supplied by the British. British government spokesmen, both in parliament and elsewhere, have been remarkably evasive about just what has been sent to Nigeria.

The Biafrans vigorously reject Britain’s claim that she is obliged to support Gowon’s war because he is the legal government of Nigeria. The Biafran leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, points out that Britain does not always feel obliged to arm military regimes, particularly when the use to which the weapons might be put is dubious in the extreme.

His attitude is, as usual, moderate compared with that of his more emotional countrymen. The hatred of Britain has steadily grown as 80,000 Biafrans, more than 65,000 of them civilians, have died. Now they believe that just about everything being thrown at them is of British origin – including bombs and rockets.

Time is running short, as the Biafrans are squeezed ever more tightly into the centre of the ring, with a vengeful Nigerian army seeking its pound of flesh for its own 35,000 casualties. Negotiation is one road; the other leads to the biggest bloodbath the Commonwealth has ever seen.

The Biafra secession was finally crushed in January 1970.

Comments:

it is quite unfortunate that the man that orchestrated the worst genocide in Africa General gowon was never tried for warcrime.Though out of realisation for peace as the best option for the Nigeria state to attain her full potential.It is very ridiculous for anyone especial other tribes from Nigeria

Joseph , Aberdeen, United Kingdom

My Ibo country people greetings from your Bini sister. I read the story and it puts the chill in my blood... of course I did not experience the war but I'm a firm believer that none should be exempt from justice. This was clearly genocide and those responsible should be tried. May God deliver us!

Stella, Norfolk, USA

Only uneducated Ibos would want a Biafrian nation. And I always pity their mentality(ies). Its time to think of a united and democratic Nigeria where there should be equality. Biafrian war was a political mistake in our history. Lets join hands together to make Nigeria a great and peaceful nation.

ighodaro eguaoje, Moscow., Russia.

Now we know who prolonged the war and told all those lies. Let anyone stand up today and say what Forshyte reported at Onitsha actually happened? Genocide was committed on the Eastern minorities. I know because i was a Biafran soilder. We Ibos need to apologise to the Eastern minoriyies.

Chima, Aba, Nigeria

Biafra is real and one day will come to pass .Nigeria is a failed state and will soon disintigrate. Forces that are against biafra resurgence will soon fizzle out and the sun will rise again. The powers that be in the whole world will be asleep when this will happen.

emeka, nnewi, biafra

I was about 9 years old during the Biafran/Nigerian civilwar. A nigerian captain called Gagara and his men raped women married and unmarried, took many young girls away from their parents. They killed all the Igbos they captured in Ibibio land, no prisoner of war was kept. We know the mass graves.

Nsima, Leoben, Austria

Despite evidence of genocide, no one has been charged by the War Crime Tribunal in Heig. Doesn't this make the UN an accomplice after a fact of genocide? Biafrans are still suffering in Nigeria. UN should redeem it s image by calling for a referandum in Biafra now!

sunday, Aba, Biafra,

Biafra was the first attempt at building true African nation and it was killed by forces intent in keeping the blackman backward.
As for the dramatis personae in this first African genocide, may God have mercy on their souls. As for the way forward, restore Biafra.

Davis, Nri, Nigeria

I call on all Igbos to rise up as one and seek the hand of law against Gowon and the British government.i wish to use this avenue to say categorically that any Igbo that ever stays in Britain should be looked upon as outcast.We should stay away from the british because they are evil,IGBOS BEWARE

UZOMA, VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Another immense tragedy made possible by British trade in weapons. Is oil worth the price? The British are obliged to say no.

Matthew, Bumpass, USA

All the men and women who killed the innocent Biafrans who were fighting for their right will suffer miserably and their children too.The Nigerian forces were really very inhuman.They killed,raped, committed all sorts of crime to their own people under the guise of war.its horrible.God bless biafra.

Dubem, Imo state, Biafra

Nyerere was Africa's true man of the people

2009-05-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

By James N. Kariuki

Afro-pessimists of the world once glorified Tanzania's Julius Kambarage Nyerere by musing that he should not have been born African. More sincere admirers saluted him simply as 'one of the planet's best and brightest'. When he died in 1999, practically the entire world, including the General Assembly of the UN, grieved a terrible loss. An American Afro-optimist simply lamented tearfully: I would have followed him anywhere!

To many, Nyerere was the pride of Africa. He was the embodiment of the finest to be found in a leader, not only in Tanzania and Africa, but also for the entire world. Yet, for all his atrocities, Uganda's Idi Amin is better known than this remarkable son of our continent. But Nyerere does have a hardcore following.

Some of the diehards were attracted by Nyerere's intellectual output. Others cite oratory skills and charisma as his 'talent' as a politician. Still others point to his brilliance in political organisation and mobilisation. But what made Nyerere truly exceptional were his stands on principles, his statesmanship.

A notable illustration is Nyerere's uncompromising opposition to racism in Southern Africa. During his Inaugural Address on Tanganyika's Independence Day on December 9, 1961, he devoted the largest segment of the speech on the racial woes of Southern Africa. It was then that he proclaimed to the world that, even though newly independent Tanganyika was too poor to send scientific rockets to the moon, it would send rockets of love to those in Southern Africa who were consigned to permanent humiliation for being born whom they were.

Tanzania under Nyerere was destined to send more than 'rockets of love' to Southern Africa. In the early days of independence, Nyerere personally became the ambassador-at-large in championing the cause of Black Southern Africans. In that capacity, he globetrotted the world, taking the matter of apartheid to international bodies and Western capitals. Concomitantly, Dar es Salaam became headquarters for OAU's Liberation Committee and home-away-from-home for countless refugees from Southern Africa.

One of the Nyerere's agonising decisions was the recognition of Biafra in 1968. When the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria opted to secede from federal Nigeria, they acted in a manner contrary to the principles of the OAU of protecting the colonial boundaries. Accordingly, Africa in general, including Tanzania, was in support of sustaining a united Nigeria.

However, the Igbos had endured much suffering within Nigeria. Indeed, there was the Northern Nigeria September-October 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom in which thousands of people were killed and massive numbers flocked back to Igboland in its wake. The Igbo were then convinced that they would be better off without Nigeria. Hence, the breakaway attempt of 1967.

As a core Pan-Africanist, Nyerere was inclined to support the principles of safeguarding the integrity of the colonial boundaries. This reasoning demanded of Tanzania to oppose the quest to establish Biafra. On the other hand, as a moral individual, Nyerere knew that the Igbos had suffered enough and saw little hope that their condition would improve within the Union of Nigeria.

The options were thus reduced to either supporting the territorial integrity of Nigeria, or upholding the sanctity of human life of Igbo. Given his human-centred philosophy, this was really no choice. Hence, the starling Tanzania's diplomatic recognition of breakaway Biafra in April 1968, an act tantamount to a declaration of war against Nigeria. In the end Biafra lost the war. But Nyerere had no regrets. Even his worst antagonists knew that his heart was in the right place.

Perhaps the most surprising of all his actions was Nyerere's invasion of Uganda in 1979 to topple the regime of Idi Amin. In Nyerere's views, Amin was guilty of many things but what was fundamentally unacceptable was Amin's disregard for human life within Uganda itself.

In February, the London-based magazine, New African, chose Kwame Nkrumah as the African man of the 20th Century. Perhaps that honour should have been shared with one Julius Kambarage Nyerere, a true man of the people. After all, he was one individual who would who would never compromise or be compromised on issues of right and wrong. He did Global Africa proud.

Afro-pessimists of the world once glorified Tanzania's Julius Kambarage Nyerere by musing that he should not have been born African. More sincere admirers saluted him simply as 'one of the planet's best and brightest'. When he died in 1999, practically the entire world, including the General Assembly of the UN, grieved a terrible loss. An American Afro-optimist simply lamented tearfully: I would have followed him anywhere!

James Kariuki is Head of the African Diaspora Unit at the Africa Institute of South Africa in Pretoria. He writes in his personal capacity.

No regrets for the Asaba massacre of Igbo -Haruna

2009-05-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

By Sufuyan Ojeifo & Lemmy Ughegbe, Vanguard

ABUJA — GENERAL Officer Commanding (GOC) Two Division of the Army during the civil war, Maj.-Gen. Ibrahim Haruna said yesterday that he had no regret for the Asaba massacre in which over 500 Igbo men were killed by his troops.

Testifying for the second day running for the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) at the Oputa panel sitting, Gen. Haruna also revealed that Nigeria’s late Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa had a foreknowledge of the 1966 coup that claimed his life.

He said the late Prime Minister even turned down an invitation from the British government to pass the night of January 14, 1966 at the British High Commission in Lagos to escape from the coup plotters.

Gen. Haruna who was under cross-examination by the Ohanaeze Ndigbo’s counsel, Chief Anthony Mogbo (SAN) said whatever action he or his troops took during the war was motivated by a sense of duty to protect the unity of the country.

"As the commanding officer and leader of the troops that massacred 500 men in Asaba, I have no apology for those massacred in Asaba, Owerri and Ameke-Item. I acted as a soldier maintaining the peace and unity of Nigeria," he declared.

"If Gen. Yakubu Gowon apologised, he did it in his own capacity. As for me I have no apology," explaining, however, that "it was as barbaric as the 1966 coup; it was as barbaric as the pogrom, if there was also any other atrocity, the Kano extrajudicial killing was as barbaric as that."

Gen. Haruna also recommended that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, Gen. Yakubu Gowon and Gen. Ibrahim Babangida be charged with failure to investigate the 1966 coup during their different terms as head of state.

"Charge Buhari, Gowon, Babangida for not investigating the 1966 coup on the grounds of dereliction of duty," he said.

On the 1966 coup, Gen. Haruna informed the panel that the late Alhaji Tafawa-Balewa, among other prominent Nigerians, had a foreknowledge of the coup.

He said the late Prime Minister actually turned down an invitation from the British government to pass the night at its High Commission in Lagos as he believed the mutineers would kill him.

Called by Mogbo (SAN) to explain the rationale behind ACF tagging the 1966 coup an "Igbo coup in spite of Alhaji Balewa, M.D. Yusuf, then a police officer, Col. Maimalari and many others of Northern extraction having prior knowledge of the coup, the star witness declined response.

He, however, disclosed that the North had planned a jihad on the day of the coup, insisting that the statement "Igbo, Igbo, Igbo, you are no longer part of Nigeria," credited to the former Prime Minister (Balewa) was a misinterpretation of the actual intent.

On the Gideon Akaluka incident of 1994, Gen. Haruna said that it was wrong to say that the Kano State Government never punished the killers of Mr. Gideon Akaluka, saying 20 unnamed persons were victims of extra-judicial killings which were supposed to be a deterrent.

But he said the killings were not ordered by the state government.

"My lord, I do not know who ordered the extra-judicial killing, nor where they were killed. All I know is that the Kano State Government, killed 20 people linked to the barbaric act," he said.

Gen. Haruna said, "I don’t know what you mean, 20 people were victims of the extra-judicial killing, but I don‘t know who ordered it, I have not said it is Kano State that ordered it."

Also testifying, the Plateau State branch of NBA Chairman and son of late Lt.-Col. Yakubu Pam, Barrister Yusuf Pam demanded a public apology from Col. Ben Gbulie for alleging that the house which his father built was a gift from the then Northern regional government.

"We were taught to forgive, but it is only normal for us to demand that such a statement that is patently false should be retracted by Gbulie. He should also apologise to us for this further damage to the memory of a patriotic officer who served the country well with his life."

Igbo soldiers plotted coup from independence day – Ejoor

2009-04-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

In a three-part thriller that is sure to send historians about the Nigerian Civil War back to library shelves, the Military Governor of the... defunct Midwest Region, Major General David Akpode Ejoor, says military coups in Nigeria began right from independence in 1960. In this interview with BIMBO OGUNNAIKE and AZEEZ FOLURUNSHO, he shredded several claims and set-positions about the country's past and future.

Firing from the hips, like a war veteran that he is, and in a no-holds-barred interview, Ejoor maintains that the political and military leaders of Igbo extraction had nursed the ambition of upturning the Nigerian political space because their leading light, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, emerged only as a nominal Governor-General while power resided in another geo-political zone. The concluding parts of the rare interview will be served you, dear readers, next Saturday and the week after. Excerpts:

You appear to be more of an enigma to Nigerians, most of whom know very little about you despite being an open-book; one about whom so much has been said and written. Who, really, are you, sir?

A woman called Uvwerhero gave birth to me. I was born in 1932. She put me in school and when I finished my school, she sent me to the Government College, Ugheli. When I finished college, I didn’t have money to continue to do the HSC or to enter the university. My school principal gave me a letter to the Comptroller of Customs in Warri. I didn’t know what was in the letter and so when the Comptroller read it, he said your principal said I should give you a job. He asked me: “When are you starting?” I said now. He said: “All right, come tomorrow”. That was how I started work in the Customs.

What year was that?

In 1953. After the first six months, one of my colleagues came from the college to say that they were looking for the people to join the army. I told him that I was already working but he gave me the form. Out of interest, I filled the form and by September 1953, they replied me and said that I should come to Enugu for examination to join the army. I didn’t know that day, I didn’t know Enugu. To tell the Comptroller of Customs that he should excuse me to go to Enugu for exam, I couldn’t do it. I had to resign and go to look for money because at that time any money they gave to me at the end of the month, I gave it to my elder brother to keep for me. I did not keep the money. When I wanted to resign, I didn’t have any money. so, I had to rush to him in school and told him that he should give me money; that I wanted to resign. He said. ‘you are playing with your certificate.’ He gave me money and I wen to the treasury, paid and dropped my letter to the Comptroller of Customs and I didn’t allow him to read it before I left. I just ran away from him because I knew he would not let me go. The following day, I asked my mother to get me some money and three days after, I found my way to Enugu to do the exam there.

How many of you sat for the examination that day?

We were six, but at the end of the day, we were asked to come for an interview in Lagos. I was the only one who passed from Enugu. We did the interview in Lagos and only four of us passed. The four of us were then sent to Ghana to do our initial training at the Regular Officers Training School. After six months, those of us who passed, about four, were selected to go to England to do the Officers Cadet Training.

When we got to England, we went to another selection board and it happened that two of us passed -- that is I and Victor Banjo, who worked with Ojukwu. So, Banjo and I went to England to do first, the Short Service Commission Course which lasted for six months. At the end of the six months, we were asked to go to Sandhurst for interview. At Sandhurst, we did almost three years course. We were commissioned in 1956 by the Queen, the present Queen, and then we came back to Nigeria. Some of us later went back to England for other military trainings.

When you were about joining the army, what was your parents’ attitude?

The immediate brother by my mother was killed by some people in 1951. So, as far as Army was concerned at that time, people would say when you join the Army, you were going to die. So, I couldn’t tell my mother that I wanted to join the army because she would never agree. I did all these, went to Accra for the training and after the training I now told her that I was going to England but it would be training in the army and she couldn’t say no then because I was the only boy left and the other two sisters were the only three left out of seven children which she had before.

Do you share the view that Biafra was a tragic mistake in Nigeria’s history?

First of all, let me tell you this, when the British were here, we were the last Nigerian officers to be commanded by the British soldiers. (He called for a picture hung on the wall of his sitting room to be brought down to show the first set of Nigerian military officers at that period).The senior person to me in Nigeria was Bassey, the second was Aguiyi Ironsi. The Igbos wanted to rule. Why they wanted to rule was that (Nnamdi) Azikiwe was the then Governor-General and more or less Head of State. The constitution did not give any power to Azikiwe. So, this annoyed the Igbo people and they used to say: “How can we run a constitution in which the Head of State cannot advise the government, the government cannot contact the Head of State for any advice?” So, the answer was well to take over since they were already leading and yet they had no control over the government. That was why the Igbo soldiers decided to organise a coup. But at that time, there were four major leading officers which included me, Yakubu Gowon, Bassey and Ojukwu. Igbo people relied on Ojukwu for the coup and they were able to convince the Yoruba. Ojukwu and Banjo now contacted me and Gowon for a coup. But we refused.

How many of you refused to participate in the planned coup then?

Gowon and I refused and they went on their own. But we then reported to that European officer, General Foster. I and Gowon reported to him that some people were trying to plan a coup. He called all of us -- the Nigerian Army officers -- and advised us not to organise any military coup. When Ojukwu’s father heard about this, he put a memo into House of Assembly that all Europeans should leave the army. It was that year that all the Europeans in the army were sent back to their country. Then, Ironsi, who was Number Two, took over the command of the army. While he was there, Ojukwu still had the coup plot in his mind. He told Ironsi that he should not allow Ejoor and Gowon to be in Army Headquarters, saying as long they remained in Army headquarters, they would not be able to execute the coup. So, Ironsi sent Gowon on a course in the United Kingdom but he left me alone. When Igbos were worrying him that Ejoor was still there, he told them that:

“This man from that small state, minority state? You can handle him, he cannot do anything. Go away, and leave me.” So, he left me. By December when Gowon came back, it was like a small war in Ironsi’s office. Some army officers told Ironsi that: “We told you to send these two people away, now Gowon has come back. What can we do now? Ironsi was embarrassed and after Gowon came back on the 20th and on the 23rd of that month, Ironsi now sent me away from Army headquarters to Enugu, saying: “He should be hidden there.” I went there and then they tried again but the one they tried was in January 1966 after I had left the Army headquarters. But at that time, they said whatever happened, Ejoor and Gowon must die. They threatened the person who was to organise a coup on behalf of the Igbos in Lagos side.

Who was that person?

Emmanuel Ifeajuna. The one in Kaduna, Nzeogwu. I think you know that one. Ifeajuna was holding a very big post in the Brigade then. He was a Chief of Staff to Maimalari. He sent a message that we had this meeting which would last a week; that I should come to Lagos. He was the one who booked me into Ikoyi Hotel in Room 17 and my number in the army was 17. It was a lucky number for me. I got to Lagos for the meeting and then the meeting started on Monday. Then on Thursday, I can't recall what happened in my hotel room. I just complained that I didn't like the room. They couldn’t change it on Thursday. It was on Friday, the last day of the meeting that I came back to the hotel by 4.30 pm. When I got to the hotel, they had changed my room because they knew that the following day, I would leave. I said all right. Because of the cocktail party which Maimalari organised for us, we could not come back on time. I left the cocktail party at about 11 p.m when we should have left at 8.00 pm.There was no need for us to come on time. Although he called it a cocktail party, it was like a buffet dinner. So, I ate to my satisfaction and when I got to the hotel, I didn’t go to the dining room to eat again; I just went straight to my bed and slept off. It was at three o'clock that night that the coup plotters came. They killed my colleague, the one commanding the Western Region, and after putting his body in the booth of the car, they rushed to my room, to Room 17, to kill me thinking that I was there. According to their story, they didn’t want me to see them. So, when they kicked the door open, they just sprayed the bed with bullets and then round before they switched on the light. When they switched on the light, nobody was there and they started saying to themselves, “he is gone, he is gone” and I was snoring downstairs. That was how, at least, I can tell that God saved me from the coup. Now, for Gowon.

Gowon had just come back on the 20th of December and he was posted to take over a battalion in Ikeja. He had not moved to his official house. He was staying in one of the Officers Mess accommodation. On that night, he did not come back to where he was staying because he went to see his prospective in-law. He did not come back in time, so when the coup plotters went there, they did not see him. They were now saying it is me and Gowon that would counter their coup and on the following day the news was that there was a coup. The following day, I was told that my colleague was killed and I went to his room and all what I saw was just blood. His body was not in the room and so I went to the person who was in charge, Brigadier Pam to come and take the blood sample and check. But when I got to that place, his wife told me that his husband was taken away in the middle of the night around 3.00 a.m. to a rendezvous where he was killed. Then, I rushed to
Maimalari's house who was then our commander where we had the cocktail party. When we got there, his soldiers just told me that Maimalari was killed in Ikoyi, Awolowo Road by the petrol station that night. I now told myself, 'how can I just rush to Enugu when I have heard this bad news.' So, I went to Ironsi’s house whether he could tell me anything before I went to Enugu. But when I got there, his soldiers said he left his house at 4.00 o'clock in the morning. What do I do? The head of the army, we could not find him. So, I said to myself, let me go to the Army unit, maybe I would get more information from them. I rushed to Ikeja Battalion and it was there, luckily, I saw his car in a car park. I sent my guard to check his office if there was anybody, and to ask if I should come in. And then I heard them all shouting: “Tell him to come. Tell him to come.” So, I went in. He opened the door for me and when I got in, I saw Ironsi sitting opposite the door pointing a gun at me, saying: “ David, are you with me or against me?” It was a surprise to him because he thought I was dead. So, I shouted back at him that “you are our father. Whatever it is, I am with you. What is it, anyway?” He said: “All right, sit down.” So, I sat down and he told me how the Prime Minister contacted him to say that he was being attacked with Okotie- Eboh and all that. He promised me he was going to get some help, but he couldn’t raise any help and that was why I had to go to the battalion itself, to get some soldiers under his command. He told me that he had to send Gowon out with soldiers to trace the coup plotters. I couldn’t see Gowon at that time. After I had told him the story, then he said he was going to the Police headquarters for a meeting where he was appointed Head of State. I told him I was going to Enugu to join my troops and also to join my wife and children. He just turned round to me and
said, “David, I cannot order you to Enugu now.” He did not want me to go to Enugu.

Why did he not want you to go to Enugu?

Probably, in their plan, I was to have been killed. I was not in their team. He said I should not go to Enugu and he left. I now concluded that Ironsi was part of the coup and that I could no longer rely on him because he was part of the coup plotters. I said to myself that my loyalty is to my country and I would not take any instruction from any officer anymore. I said if I went to Enugu by road, I would not arrive there. So, I went to the airport for an aircraft to take to Enugu. When I got to Enugu, everybody was shaking. The officer, my Second in Command, Major Gabriel Okonweze, told me that he was not expecting me. I asked him why he was not expecting me. He said he was given instruction to take over the command of the battalion, that I was not coming back. I said how did you get this information? Is it by radio, telephone or what? He said no and put his hand in his pocket and brought out a letter saying he should take over the command of the battalion. When I put the letter inside my pocket, he said no, that it was his letter and I said, “but I am still the commander.” I left the battalion and went to see Dr. Opara, the governor of Eastern Region, came back to the battalion and ordered that all soldiers that were deployed outside the battalion should be brought back to the barrack. I assembled them by 4.00 o'clock and addressed them. My second-in-command was telling me, “don’t tell them that anybody is dead. Don’t tell them anything?” I said I would tell them; these people were taken to unknown destinations, I will not say I saw any dead body, I saw blood. Yes, I cannot say so but if I do not mention it that way, when they get to know, you and I would be the first victim of Hausa soldiers. I told them what I knew and then we ran the battalion with peace. Then on the third day when Ironsi was made the Head of State, he withdrew me from Enugu and called me back to Lagos .

Why do you think he removed you from Enugu?

He removed me from Enugu because since I was still not dead, he could not trust me in Enugu. When I got to Lagos, he now said that I should be the Governor of the Mid- West.

Did he do that to compensate you?

More or less. But, you know that he had to behave in a way to show that he still liked me. Having removed me from Enugu, he brought me to Benin and that time, most of the officers in the Mid-West were from Anioma area, predominantly Igbo, because as it was, we were nine Lieutenant-Colonels in the Mid-West. I was the only Urhobo and the remaining eight were Anioma. Now that the person they wanted to kill was the governor, how was I to rule that place with satisfaction? I worked with them. I did not know that they were against me. I worked with them in the day time, but in the night, they worked against me. It wasn’t easy. God just preserved me because they did all sorts of things to see whether I could die.

When General Ironsi came on a visit to your region, 24 hours after he left your zone, he was kidnapped by some sections of the army along with the Governor of the Western Region where they were killed. What was in your mind when you heard the news?

The fact was this. He visited Western Region after leaving my place. The idea was that he did not want my killing to take place while he was there

Your own killing?

Yes. When he got to Ibadan , the counter-coup people, Brigadier Danjuma, waylaid him. It was there they waylaid him and killed him in Ibadan. When he was with Fajuyi, Fajuyi did not want them to take Ironsi away just like that. That was why they killed Fajuyi with Ironsi, not that they had anything against Fajuyi at that time. That was how I escaped death for the second time. As I am talking to you, I have looked at death, where there was nothing I could do, I was just waiting for death to come, for seven times. How many people have gone through that? Looking at death, not that I was told. The other ones that happened when I did not know is different, but the ones I saw, I know.

Are you saying the lack of trust and the in-fighting among the top generals at that time led to Nigeria’s civil war?

The civil war was straightforward. the Igbo wanted to take over the ruling of Nigeria. When all these cunny-cunny actions that people who were preventing them from organising a coup had not been killed, that is Gowon and I, the only thing left was to have a civil war. That was why there was a civil war and in the civil war, the first place Ojukwu attacked was the Mid-West. Now, I do not know that he was already in league with all the officers from Anioma area. When the Federal Government was suspecting them, most of them ran away to the East and joined Ojukwu in the Biafran army. At that time, Banjo himself, being a friend to Ojukwu because they joined the army the same day and commissioned, was suspected to be organising a coup. Ironsi had sent him, well not to prison but more or less arrested but sent to the East where he was detained in one of the prisons there. But being a friend to Ojukwu, Ojukwu released him and made him the Commander of the
Biafran troops. And he was the one who commanded the Biafran soldiers to come and attack Mid- West before moving to Lagos. The Igbo tried to rule Nigeria by force, what they cannot do through the ballot box; they tried it through coup. They tried the coup, it failed and now decided to do a civil war. It was a contract. That is the basic thing.

During this war, you said Ojukwu was coming from the East through your zone to Lagos. What were the things you put in place to checkmate him at that time?

As I told you, I did not know. It was just that morning that I heard firing in the State House where I was told that the Biafran Army was in the Mid- West. I could not believe that Banjo would be the person to kill me because he was the nearest person to me in the army. What happened was that when they got to Ikpoba Hills in Benin, the person that was sent by Ojukwu to kill me was ordered to take me dead or alive to Enugu was different because Banjo did not know about this. When they got to Ikpoba Hill, this officer from the Mid West, from Anioma, told Banjo he should give him time; let him go and find out where I was in Benin and take me to Enugu, dead or alive. The firing started at about 7.00 o'clock. I just managed to get the radio to tell Gowon that I was being attacked by the Biafran army. I took the weapon of the operator and ran down to the gate to join the soldiers who were firing and we started firing together. But after sometime, we ran out of
ammunition. What do we do? I knew that if they came in, they were coming for me to kill me. These soldiers who were defending me, why should I allow them to die? And then if I leave this place they would be killed, including my wife and children. Why should I allow any of these people to be killed? I said they had to kill me first so that other people would survive. I jumped down from where I was and walked towards where they were firing. I thought that that was the end. I didn’t know what was happening and then I found myself in a veranda in one of the houses not far from the State House. I decided to move my leg but I couldn’t move any part of my body. I looked up and I saw somebody holding my leg and my hand. He was kneeling down when I was thinking about other things. I did not know that somebody was holding me. I now asked him who are you? He said he was Chief Asemota. I thanked him and said I had to go now. He sad “no, you can’t go, they
are everywhere.” When he got up and started dragging me in, I asked him have you not seen any of the Biafran soldiers here? He answered that they were two in this veranda. It wasn’t long when they left that you came.These are the ones that would have killed you. I said: “My time has come; those who sent me here want me dead. My time has come. Let me go so that you or any of your family members will not die.” He said no. I argued and argued but he did not agree. So, I got up annoyed, to walk out. But before I could get to the door, he ran past me, he locked the door and threw the key out through the window. So, what do I do now? I could not break the door like that. Then I persuaded him that he should go and look for an Urhobo person around the area who could take me away from Benin. I waited for him and he found somebody from Urhobo who said he was coming. In the afternoon, in the night, we did not see him. So, I said he was not interested. The
following morning, around 7.00 o'clock, I heard a woman shouting: “There is war; you are going there if they kill you now, who will bury me?” That was what he was saying in Urhobo. I peeped through the window and I saw the woman running after the son, and returning into the compound I recognized him as one of the people with whom we grew up together.

What is the name of that person, sir?

John Ebuche. So, I opened the door and told him, “look, take your mother home,” and turned. He took his mother home.

A Generals’General

That Major General David Akpode Ejoor (rtd) parades an intimidating profile is an understatement. Commissioned in 1953 in the United Kingdom, he is a Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger (GCON) and an Officer of the Federal Republic (OFR). Ejoor also holds the prestigious Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS), UK; a Pass Staff College (PSC) and a honorary Doctor of Letters (LL. D), of the University of Benin (UNIBEN).

He was a member of the Supreme Military Council from 1966 to 1975, the first Military Governor of Mid-Western State between 1966 and 1967; Chief of Army Staff, from 1972 to 1975, when he retired.

His medals include the Congo, Independence, Republic, Defence Service, General Service and National Service. He is a Grand Commander of the Republic of Togo, and has received the Order of the two Niles-Ist Class Sudan, the Grand Officer O.N. Du Lion Senegal and Kt. Order of the Crown, Belgium. His chieftaincy titles include the Olorogun Oloho of Olomu, Okakuro-Egbe of Agbon, Okakuro of Ovu, Onotuku of Ebor and Orhuerakpo Ru Ughelli.

The first speech by Military Governor Lt. Col. David Ejoor after the death of Maj. Gen. J.T.U Aguiyi- Ironsi and the emergence of Lt. Col Yakubu Gowon as Head of State:

Barely one week ago, the people of the Mid-Western Group of Provinces had the honour and privilege to receive Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi as Head of the National Military Government and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The reception accorded him was such that he felt reassured of unflinching support for the National Military Government.

I was shocked to hear that within 24 hours of his departure from the Mid-West for a conference of traditional rulers at Ibadan, he and his host, Lt. Col. F.A. Fajuyi, Military Governor of the Western Group of Provinces, were kidnapped by a section of the Army and taken to an unknown destination.

It is gratifying however, that, despite these unfortunate and gruesome incidents, the people of the Mid-Western Group of Provinces have remained calm and have refrained from violent reactions. This is no doubt because they are noted to be generally peaceful and law abiding, especially in times of crisis. I trust that these qualities will be maintained, whatever the situation, and that law and order will continue to be preserved in this area. I personally intend to do everything in my power to see that the balance is maintained.

Although I am deeply touched by the events of the last few days, I am resolved not to allow what has happened to becloud my sense of responsibility to the Republic as a whole and to the people of the Mid-West in particular. A new Military Government, led by Lt. Col. Gowon, has been announced and we should do our utmost to co-operate with it.

I am convinced, however, that it is idle and unpatriotic to pretend that all is now well with the nation. Frankly, the position, as I see it, is still tense and all true lovers of the country, especially those in positions of trust and authority, must take all necessary measures firmly to arrest the situation. Time may well be against us . . . .

It seems that most Mid-Westerners are giving serious thought to the following questions:

Are we to have a unitary state with powers centralized at the national capital?

A federal state with strong Central Government and relatively weak regional or provincial Government?

A loose Federation with strong Regional (or provincial) Government and a relatively weak Government at the centre responsible only for limited common services? Or Should the country be broken up into several new and independent states?

The questions posed above raise fundamental issues to which the right answer must be found without delay, not by bullets but by mutualand friendly discussion.

This is a challenge from which we must not flinch.

I hope that the Head of the new National Military Government will accept it and arrange in the next few days for a conference to be attended by representatives of all parts of the Republic and at which serious and objective attempt would be made to help determine the future of the country.

Note: This is absolutely rubbish but I have to post it here anyway for the records -- Ambrose

Genocide is Totally Indefensible

2009-04-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

The Igbo and the east had already made a quasi-strategic withdrawal from the all-Nigeria mission they embarked upon in the 1940s/early 1950s as a result of the series of British counter-measures of the subsequent years, including especially London’s decision to hand over supreme political power to its anti-Nigerian liberation-client north region. The Igbo had spearheaded the liberation of Nigeria from formal British rule. The east was a booming economy, enjoying Africa’s highest growth rate. It was educationally and economically much more advanced than any other part of Nigeria. The east was on course to developing into a leading economic and industrial power in another decade, fulfilling a comprehensive socioecconomic transformation goal it had launched in 1954.

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

It is important to note the striking disclaimer that Max Siollun makes right from the outset in his article on the Igbo genocide (“The Northern Counter-Coup Of 1966: The Full Story”) published in nigeriavillagesquare.com. Interestingly, Siollun is not prepared to take personal responsibility for his article but instead invites his readers to “consult” his “cited” sources to authenticate the veracity or otherwise of his supposedly “Full Story”. Siollun is undoubtedly aware of the immense gravity of his subject matter, the 1966-1970 genocide against the Igbo during which 3.1 million of these people were murdered – hence, his presumed caution. But this is not good enough. You do not merely lodge a personal disclaimer whilst writing about genocide, this heinous crime against humanity. You condemn genocide – and condemn it unreservedly. You also insist on the punishment of its perpetrator(s). Siollun has done none of these. His recourse to discredited and opportunistic “sources” including some in academia and media such as Robin Luckham and Lindsay Barrett (both of whom have enjoyed lucrative careers in the past three decades, “rationalising”/denying the Igbo genocide) to tell his “Full Story” cannot therefore obviate the saliency and urgency of personal responsibility on this score.

Patrick Wilmot has argued that the sociopolitical leadership in north Nigeria has “no tradition for managing social change. The only answer to dissent or rebellion is the massacre.” Yet, to offer some rational explanation for a reason or reasons for a specific act of massacre of the Igbo carried out by this leadership since 1945, at the apogee of the British occupation of Nigeria, is fraught with difficulties. For instance, when in November 2002 it ordered the murder of hundreds of Igbo immigrants in north Nigeria over the staging, in Nigeria, of the Miss World beauty competition (organised, not by any Igbo business interests, but by a London-based business conglomerate), it would have been most intriguing for any observer to discern the “Igbo connection” that elicited this monstrous act. Similarly, an observer would be hard pressed to locate the “Igbo connection” to astronomy as yet another gruesome example of an ordered Igbo pogrom in the north illustrates. In January 2001, hundreds of Igbo residents in the north city of Maiduguri were murdered by rampaging youths soon after a lunar eclipse was in progress. The émigrés’ homes and business properties worth million of dollars were looted or destroyed during the carnage. For the north leadership, which has since 1945 regarded the Igbo émigrés in its region as a “targeted population” or “hostage population” to attack at will in furtherance of its myriad sociopolitical positions and objectives, “dissent” or “rebellion” or indeed any other factors need not be necessarily associated or referenced to the Igbo directly for it to execute its deadly mission on the latter. We should therefore surmise, following from this, that for 1966, one factor may have prompted the carefully planned genocide of Igbo immigrants in the north. This concerned the outcome of the official inquiry ordered by General Johnson Aguyi-Ironsi, the military head of state, into the failed January (1966) coup led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu. As part of his continuing disposition to assure north Nigeria of his regime’s “goodwill” to the region, Aguyi-Ironsi insisted that the 3-person board of investigators to the failed coup be made up exclusively of north officers: M.D. Yusuf, head of the country’s special branch, who came from a prominent Hausa-Fulani family; Colonel Yakubu Gowon, who Aguyi-Ironsi had just appointed chief of army staff, and who would play a key role in the Igbo genocide and the murder of Aguyi-Ironsi himself; Captain Baba Usman, military intelligence.

The inquiry’s terms of reference were comprehensive – to uncover the motives, the intentions, and the long-term objectives of the January majors’ failed coup. It took three months to complete its work. About two hundred officers and other personnel in the military, including the principal leaders of the event, were interrogated. Important coup documents retrieved from Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Kaduna, Zaria and elsewhere, were exhaustively evaluated. The report on the outcome of the inquiry showed that the plans to overthrow the Balewa government were restricted strictly to the military; there was no involvement by members of the civilian population. While the majority of officers involved in the action were mainly from the south, and particularly Igbo, there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest or indicate that the coup was a south or indeed some Igbo conspiracy to seize and control the country. Nzeogwu and his group acted alone. In May (1966), the board submitted its report to the government. But while the government studied it, prior to publication, Colonel Gowon (board member and army chief of staff, who also worked for British intelligence in Nigeria since his recruitment to this service whilst at the Sandhurst military academy in England in the 1950s) leaked its main conclusions to the British diplomatic mission in Lagos and a number of politicians and local government leaders in the north. Gowon’s motive was essentially to coalesce the activities of the anti-Aguyi-Ironsi forces, whose interests he shared, into some form of revolt. The north leaders were extremely disappointed with the findings of the investigation, despite the fact that it was carried out by well-known and respected north security officers. The leaders had felt, all along, that the south, especially the Igbo, would be found culpable in the failed coup. They expressed their disappointment in a series of memoranda and other representations made on the subject to both the central government and the north region’s military administration in Kaduna. They specifically called on Aguyi-Ironsi not to publish the commission’s report. Pointedly, even General Olusegun Obasanjo’s 1987 study on the failed coup (21 years after the event!) comes to the same conclusion as the Yusuf-Gowon-Usman investigating board: namely, that Nzeogwu and his group’s action was not an Igbo plot to seize power. This is despite the fact that Obasanjo participated in the second phase of the Igbo genocide (July 1967-January 1970), commanding a notorious brigade at the time, which destroyed hundreds of Igbo villages and towns, murdering thousands of people in the process. There is thus no love lost between him and the Igbo.

Yoruba Project
Given the matrix of the evaluative characterisation, interests, and ambitions of the constituent nations in Nigeria of 1966 (Igbo, Urhobo, Ijo, Hausa-Fulani, Tiv, Yoruba, etc., etc), the January majors’ failed coup was effectively a pro-Yoruba project, aimed at achieving the following goals: (a) end the state of insurgency in Yorubaland that had gone on for 3-4 years; (b) ensure the return and rehabilitation of the mass of displaced Yoruba on exile, especially the thousands in the neighbouring Dahomey (now Benin Republic); (c) release Obafemi Awolowo, the incarcerated Yoruba leader, who had been imprisoned by the erstwhile Hausa-Fulani-dominated central government in Lagos; (d) appoint Awolowo the prime minister in a provisional military-civilian diarchal government.

The Igbo and the east had already made a quasi-strategic withdrawal from the all-Nigeria mission they embarked upon in the 1940s/early 1950s as a result of the series of British counter-measures of the subsequent years, including especially London’s decision to hand over supreme political power to its anti-Nigerian liberation-client north region. The Igbo had spearheaded the liberation of Nigeria from formal British rule. The east was a booming economy, enjoying Africa’s highest growth rate. It was educationally and economically much more advanced than any other part of Nigeria. The east was on course to developing into a leading economic and industrial power in another decade, fulfilling a comprehensive socioecconomic transformation goal it had launched in 1954.

Neither this enterprising economy, which was in no way linked to the Nigerian military establishment (apart from a small army garrison in Enugwu – the east capital – the British had effectively cut the east off from the country’s military bases and allied infrastructure located in the north and Lagos/west regions), nor the Igbo’s famed (some would say ultra-) republican society as a whole therefore stood to benefit whatsoever from a coup d’état in Lagos or elsewhere in Nigeria. The Igbo officers involved in both the putsch attempt and also in suppressing it, had no political nor popular constituency anywhere in Igboland. The military presence in the east was minimal (just a small army garrison in Enugwu, usually staffed by predominantly north and Yoruba personnel), a feature that had been the case right from British times. This was part of the occupation’s long established anti-Igbo programme to install military bases away from the region – preferring, instead, to site these in its favoured north, and in the west incorporating the Lagos-Ibadan-Abeokuta district. As a result, the Igbo officers in the military lived most of their lives outside Igboland and those especially in the west region developed life-long friendships with the Yoruba, particularly members of the intelligentsia in civil society (including, notably, Wole Soyinka, the playwright, and Bola Ige, the politician) and the military (including Colonel Victor Banjo, Major Ademoyega and Captain Gani Adeleke). They were therefore more likely to be in tune and responsive to local politics and development (i.e. west/Yoruba) than occurrences in Igboland/east. These Igbo officers were professionals, technocrats, who acted on their own as the Yusuf-Gowon-Baba investigating panel and the Obasanjo study have, correctly, stated. The presence of these excellent officers, the cream of the indigenous Nigerian military officers on the eve of the (problematic) restoration of independence, in the January 1966 events (pro- and anti-) was essentially attributable to the high-level humanpower development that the east had made across the board (academia, research, production, economy, etc.) as a result of its 20-year societal transformation programme.

Contours of Genocide
In the end, the only outstanding subject in Nigerian politics that was really of concern to the Igbo, particularly in the 1964-1966 period, was the fate of their 1.5 million immigrants in the north, many of whom ran successful commercial, medical, educational and leisure enterprises. These émigrés were often seen by the north leadership as a telling symbol of Igbo “extra-territorial” ambitions and versatility, a discomforting reminder of the Igbo lead-role in the liberation of Nigeria, and their audacious 1940s/early 1950s’ all-Nigeria transformation project. As a result, measures against the émigrés usually featured very highly on the set of policy options “available” to the north leadership, whilst reacting to an astronomical phenomenon such as an eclipse or responding to periods of acute sociopolitical development or controversy in the country (as seen, for instance, in the leadership’s ordering and organisation of pogroms against this Igbo population during the 1945 labour strikes/the NCNC pan-African freedom party campaigns for the country’s liberation, and the 1953 debates on dates for the termination of the British occupation) or indeed in respect to international politics. On the latter, to refer to a more recent example (February 2006 – forty years after 1966!), the fundamentals remain tragically the same: the north’s leadership ordered the murder of scores of Igbo immigrants across north Nigerian cities, towns and villages over cartoons published in Danish newspapers, 4000 miles away, purportedly critical of the muslim religion. No Igbo artists were the authors of these cartoons, as the world knows; no Igbo newspapers or newsmagazines reproduced these cartoons; the Igbo, who are Africans, are not in any way related to the Danes, who are a European people. Some of those Igbo murdered in their homes, schools, businesses or places of worship, were probably never aware of the existence of these cartoons, let alone the controversy surrounding the drawings before they met their untimely deaths. Yet, the north leadership’s choice of the Igbo for “retaliation” over the cartoons, instead of venting their anger on the Dane (who are visibly resident in capital Abuja where they have their embassy) or in fact on any of the nationals from the other European Union member states in Nigeria, underscores the point of the haunting historical vulnerability of this immigrant population. It was of course the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, which pointedly began with attacks on these émigrés in May-October 1966 and the incorporation of the Igbo military personnel in the savagery (during July-August 1966), that demonstrated the latter’s vulnerability most profoundly, and the depravity of the north-leadership organisers, most chillingly.

The genocide was organised and coordinated by a coterie of north politicians and local government officials, muslim clerics, as well as academics and students of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The ABU, a public-funded university, acquired the unenviable “accolade” as the first institution of higher learning in post-conquest Africa which was the nerve-centre for the planning and execution of the crime of genocide. The north operatives received full cooperation and coordination from the British diplomatic mission in Lagos right from the beginning, and also liaised closely with Gowon. Several British nationals including academics at the ABU and those who worked in the north civil service in Kaduna and elsewhere in the region played varying crucial roles in the genocide. These included intelligence work, incitement, propaganda and distribution of material, financing, and the provision, especially by some of the British academics who taught at the ABU, of personal transport to facilitate the movement of rampaging north students and others across towns and cities on their way to murder the Igbo and loot their property. Besides being generally unhappy with what they felt was the gradual “displacement” of the north from the apex of control of Nigeria, which the British occupation had enthroned, the British, particularly those resident in the north region, were riled by Aguyi-Ironsi’s so-called “unification” decree no. 34 of April 1966. These Britons felt that it would jeopardise their heavily entrenched interests in the north. Britons had in the previous six years particularly (i.e. since the so-called restoration of independence) turned the north into the consummate haven to continue to work and live with all the imperious privileges of the era of the occupation, unperturbed by the energised Africanisation of personnel in all works of life in the east and west of the country. The north government had effectively guaranteed the indefinite provision of this haven for Britons (and other favoured foreigners) with its late-1950s’ “northernisation” legislation, which barred south Nigerians from working in the north’s civil service and schools/allied institutions. These Britons therefore supported and participated in the Igbo genocide because they were not prepared to contend with the inevitable competition that their exalted positions and life styles would face from especially the teeming numbers of highly qualified Igbo and others from the south graduating from the universities of Nsukka, Ibadan and Lagos, and from overseas (Britain, United States, Federal Republic of Germany, Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, etc.), now that exclusivist regional labour services in Nigeria had been abolished by the “unification decree”. The following north and west Nigerian cities and towns, where 100,000 Igbo were murdered so gruesomely between May-October 1966, bear the stamp of perpetual shame as dominant sites of the perpetration of this crime against humanity: Sokoto, Katsina, Zaria, Kaduna, Kano, Kaura-Namoda, Nguru, Bauchi, Gombe, Saminaka, Yola, Kafanchan, Damaturu, Ningi, Darazo, Gusau, Birnin-Kebbi, Bukuru, Numan, Jos, Yola, Keffi, Wase, Langtang, Takum, Mangu, Shandam, Kantangora, Minna, Gudi, Mada, Mokwa, Ayaragu, Wukari, Makurdi, Ilorin, Zungeru, Otukpo, Gboko, Ilorin, Lafia, Tanglawaja, Lagos (especially Ikeja suburb), Ibadan, Abeokuta, Osogbo and Oyo.

Nigeria launched the second phase of its campaign of genocide on the Igbo by directly attacking the Igbo homeland, Biafra, on 6 July 1967. Yakubu Gowon, who had now assumed the position of head of state, after murdering Aguyi-Ironsi, his commander-in-chief, received full backing from the British government which pledged its unflinching military and diplomatic support throughout the campaign. The Gowonist forces envisaged a very short campaign – “48 hours,” according to Colonel Hassan Katsina, the chief of army staff to direct the operation. The Nigerian objective was to simultaneously overrun three strategic Biafran towns, all positioned within a 50-mile arc from the southern fringes of Nigerian territory: Nsukka, the university town, Enugwu, the capital, and Abakaliki, the headquarters of the rich agricultural province of the Ebonyi and Asu valleys. Nigeria’s confidence of a swift victory over Biafra was based on the fact that it had not only “inherited” the entire Nigerian military assets including seven-eights of the combatant personnel prior to the beginning of the genocide in 1966, but it had been involved lately, particularly since October 1966, in the massive importation of arms. It would also count on British support, an important consideration given London’s role as the leading global power in Africa of the mid-1960s.

The core units Gowon assigned to spearhead the invasion of Biafra were the very ones that led the genocidal attacks on Igbo population centres across the north and elsewhere in the country during the previous year. The Kaduna radio and television services of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, assisted by the New Nigerian daily and Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo weekly, went into a sustained bout of racist, vitriolic broadcast and publicity to mobilise and recruit for the campaign in Igboland. Such was the utter virulence of the anti-Igbo propaganda material on these media services that they constituted the most effective “recruiting sergeant” for the tens of thousands of young men across Nigeria and the neighbouring states of Chad (the notorious gwodogwodo operatives), Niger, and north Cameroon who Nigeria and Britain would train and deploy across Igboland to murder, rape, burn, loot, and waste during three long years of genocide, not seen in Africa since Belgian King Leopold II’s ravages of the countries of the Congo basin during the 19th century.

Nigeria inaugurated another maleficent “first” in Africa of the epoch, to be copied with devastating consequences 40 years later by genocidist broadcasters in Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Congo Democratic Republic, when the Kaduna public-funded radio and television campaigned openly in their broadcast outputs for the Nigerian military and other recruits to march to Igboland and embark on the mass murder of Igbo people, the rape of Igbo womanhood, the looting and vandalisation of Igbo property. These radio and television stations aired the following fiendish jingles in Hausa (with spot advertisements or editorial comments on the theme regularly reproduced in both New Nigerian and Gaskiya Ta Fi Kwabo during the period) before and after the broadcast of each news bulletin and other current affairs programmes throughout the course of the second phase of the genocide – July 1966-January 1970:

Mu je mu kashe nyamiri
Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su
Mu chi mata su da yan mata su
Mu kwashe kaya su

English Translation

Let’s go kill the damned Igbo
Kill off their men and boys
Rape their wives and daughters
Cart off their property
Fully armed and reinforced continuously by Britain, which also had a contingent of advisors and instructors on the ground, the Nigerian forces descended on Biafra with unimaginable ferocity, turning the country, Africa’s most densely-populated area outside the Nile valley, into an extensive crime scene as the Radio Kaduna jingles indeed beckoned. The Nigerians began to murder, rape, burn and loot as they were unmistakably expected to perform. The hallowed justice of the world must urgently investigate this crime thoroughly. No doubt, Igbo and other human rights prosecutors from elsewhere now have a pressing task to accomplish for humanity. Thankfully, the lead organisers and perpetrators of the Igbo genocide such as Generals Gowon, Obasanjo, Abubakar, Babangida, Buhari, Haruna, Akinrinade, Brigadier Adekunle, Captain King and Messrs Enaharo, Ayida and Aminu are still alive, including those on Siollun’s “disclaimer” article. Many of these genocidist generals and others are more likely to be seen today strutting across the world’s capitals as dubious democrats and statespersons instead of being sequestrated at The Hague International Criminal Court house to answer charges against Africa’s post-conquest foundational genocide. It mustn’t be forgotten that 40 years before its routine operationalisation in Rwanda, the Nigerians established on the ground of Biafra, in 1967-1970, the use of rape and the public executions of men and boys as pivotal instruments in waging a war of genocide in Africa. Every Igbo town or village overrun by the Nigerians became a haunting milestone in an inexorable march of rape, death, and destruction: Obollo Afo ... Obollo Eke ... Enugwu-Ezike ... Opi ... Ukehe ... Nkalagu ... Owgwu ... Abakaliki … Eha Amufu ... Nsukka ... Enugwu ... Agbaani ... Asaba ... Ogwashi-Ukwu ... Isele-Ukwu ... Umunede ... Onicha ... Oka ... Aba ... Udi ... Evugbo ... Evugbo Road ... Okigwe ... Umuahia ... Owere ... Abagana ... Ugwuocha/Port Harcourt ... Ahaoda ... Obiigbo ... Azumini ... Umu Ubani/Bonny ... Opobo ... Ugwuta ... Amasiri ... Akaeze ... Uzuakoli ...

One of the tragic features of the Igbo genocide, was the lack of concerted effort from the rest of the world, including governments and peoples in Africa, to stop the Nigerian state’s meticulously organised murders, rapes, lootings and destruction of Igbo lives and property that went on from May 1966 to January 1970. The world could have stopped this genocide, should have stopped this genocide, if it had really endeavoured to do so. In Nigeria, itself, there was a palpable lack of concern shown to the victims by most Nigerians elsewhere, particularly in the west region, a situation which has led Okwudiba Nnoli to observe that, “[a]t that time, Nigeria seemed morally anesthesized.” In what was clearly an obscene postscript to the first phase of the genocide in October 1966, a group of Yoruba obas (kings) toured north Nigeria, soon after these horrific events, to “thank” local community leaders and authorities there for “offering protection” to the Yoruba domiciled in the region during the genocide from being murdered. It of course needs no reminder that the north leaders and authorities being praised by the Yoruba obas were the same who had played an instrumental role, on the ground, in spearheading the Igbo genocide up and down their communities during the May-October 1966 phase. The logistics entailed in ensuring the very “success” of this “protection” enterprise for the Yoruba during a time frame of five months as 100,000 Igbo were being murdered across north Nigeria, a land space that is about one-half of the entire west Europe, once again underlines the premeditated and rigorous planning in the execution of this crime.

In appreciation of the north leaders’ success in safeguarding the lives of thousands of Yoruba émigrés in the north during the Igbo slaughter, the obas supported the rest of the Yoruba leadership, principally Obafemi Awolowo (who Gowon had released from prison and appointed his deputy), to send the Yoruba military to participate in the expanded phase of the genocide in Biafra when it began in July 1967. Awolowo, a rabid Yoruba exclusivist, thought that he now had an opportunity that he had sought frantically for 15 years to “offset” his punishing electoral “humiliation” brought about by his election defeat in his Yoruba/west region homestead (in 1951) by Nnamdi Azikiwe and the NCNC all-Nigeria liberation party. Awolowo always believed that the enterprising and seemingly irreverent Igbo were the victor in the 30-year-old (1935-1965) classic Igbo-Yoruba competition/rivalry that dominated the history of economic, political and cultural transformation in south Nigeria during this epoch. He felt that this outcome had placed the Igbo at the position where it had developed a variegated high-level humanpower and regional economic base from which to “dominate” socioeconomics relations in post-conquest Nigeria. For Awolowo, the May-October first phase of the Igbo genocide was a “shattering blow” to Igbo historic fortunes and it was in the national interest of the Yoruba to lend its support to the north in the latter’s expanded attack on the Igbo. In gratitude, the north assigned the entire south Biafra to the Yoruba military, led initially by Brigadier Adekunle and later Colonel Obasanjo, to ravage. In the meantime, the Yoruba began to fill the plum positions in academia, the bureaucracy, business, industry, military, police, etc., etc., across Nigeria “vacated” by the ubiquitous Igbo who had either been murdered during the earlier phase of the genocide, or were awaiting the new onslaught in their homeland launched in July 1967. The Yoruba also seized, as had been the case in the north, “abandoned” Igbo businesses and property in Lagos and the west some of which were established 50 years earlier. The apparent “Yoruba Age” in Nigeria had, at last, dawned but on sheer greed and opportunism.

Chester Crocker points to the fundamental problem of the state in Africa. It is “not the absence of nations; it is the absence of states with the legitimacy and authority to manage their affairs … As such, they have always derived a major, if not dominant, share of their legitimacy from the international system rather than from domestic society.” It is this question of alienability that is at the crux of this grave crisis. Crocker may have had the Igbo experience especially in mind as he wrote those lines. In Nigeria, on 29 May 1966, this form of state, supported fully by Britain, which created it in 1900, turned on its Igbo population in north Nigeria murdering, raping, burning, pillaging. By 1970, this genocide had claimed 3.1 million Igbo lives, the worst in Africa for a century. Soon, the killing fields from Igboland expanded almost inexorably across Africa as the following sites of slaughter during the epoch illustrate: Congo Republic, Zaire/Congo Democratic Republic, Rwanda, Burundi, Central Africa Empire/Central Africa Republic, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, southern Guinea, Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan. Twelve million have been killed in these 14 countries. Added to the 3.1 million Igbo dead, Africa has had the monstrous tally of 15 million murdered by its genocide states in the past 41 years.

Tectonic Rupture
While it is true that the Igbo independence from Nigeria was declared formally a year later on 30 May 1967 in Enugwu, it was in fact on that fateful May day in 1966, 29 May, that the Igbo ceased to be Nigerians forever. That resolve, that renunciation of Nigerian citizenship, was the permanent Igbo indictment of a state that had violated its most sacred tenet of responsibility to its citizens – provision of security. Instead of providing security to these citizens, the Nigerian state murdered 3.1 million of them. Nigeria’s 12 January 1970 so-called “truce” on this campaign of genocide did not therefore, in any way, alter the fundamentals of this Igbo resolve. The resolve is irreversible. The Igbo did not return to Nigeria on 12 January 1970. To suggest otherwise would be a contradiction in terms. There could be no question of the Igbo returning to Nigeria just as the African nations in this southeast part of west Africa that made up Nigeria, before 29 May 1966, could not return to the British conquest and occupation enforcement of the 1900-1960 epoch. What has happened in Igbo-Nigeria relations since 12 January 1970 has been a Nigerian state military, police and bureaucratic occupation of Igboland. As in all occupations in history, this too shall end. The current events on the ground in Igboland, particularly the politics of the de-Nigerianisation of Igbo social existence spearheaded by the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, point to a much earlier termination of the occupation that only few scholars would have predicted with great certainty just a few years ago.

Pointedly, the Igbo created the state of Biafra on 29 May 1966 – right there on the ground of those death camps in the sabon gari residential districts and offices and railway stations and coach stations and airports and churches and schools and markets and hospitals across north Nigeria to protect the Igbo people from the genocide unleashed by the Nigerian state and its myriad of allies. In other words, the Igbo created Biafra, the first African peoples’-centred state on African soil since the 1885 formal loss of African sovereignty, to safeguard an African population subjected to genocide by the Nigerian state, actively propped up by its European originator and overlord as this appalling crime got underway. 29 May 1966 therefore emerges as a more historic date in the annals of African reckoning than the 1 October 1960 so-called restoration of independence in Nigeria or indeed the 1 January 1956 restoration date in the Sudan – often tagged the “post-occupation breakthrough” in Africa.

Biafra was tasked to provide security to the Igbo and prevent the Nigerian state, a genocide-state, from accomplishing its dreaded mission. And contrary to the British-inflected, Nigeria’s declaration of “no victor, no vanquished” on 12 January 1970, the Igbo were indeed the victor in this encounter. They survived. This was an extraordinary triumph of human will and tenacity. The Igbo overcame an amalgam of desperately brutish forces, some of whom were otherwise antagonists or nominal rivals in regional or the broader expanses of international politics in the post-World War II epoch: Hausa-Fulani, Britain, Yoruba/Oduduwa, Soviet Union, Tiv, Egypt, Berom, Yergam, Nupe, Ishan, the Sudan, Angas, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Igala, Bachama, Poland, Bini, Sura, Algeria, Jarawa (central Nigeria), Jukun, Saudi Arabia, Gwari, Guinea, Kanuri, Syria, Idoma, German Democratic Republic, Iraq, Chad/gwodogwodo.

The Nigerian state and its allies failed to accomplish their goal. This is why Olusegun Obasanjo, one of the most crudely loquacious of Nigeria’s league of genocidists, has in recent years not minced his words about the Nigerian state’s stated desire to complete its 1966 envisaged task on the Igbo people. But Obasanjo must now know that the Igbo will never go under. Ultimate Biafran liberation is evidently assured. Nothing can stop this realisation. The Igbo will resume the march, started in earnest in 1954, to transform their homeland into an advanced civilisation that will be a beacon to their long-cherished aspirations and those of the Africa World. For all intents and purposes, Nigeria collapsed as a functioning state with any serious prospects or possibilities on 29 May 1966 – in the wake of its launch of the Igbo genocide. Despite earning the gargantuan sum of US$650 billion in oil sales in the subsequent 40 years, an overwhelming proportion of this from occupied Igboland in its Delta, Rivers, Imo and Abia administrative regions, Nigeria has cascaded into a frighteningly degenerative slump politically, economically, intellectually, socially, morally and spiritually. And this terminal status, surely, remains Nigeria’s epitaph in history.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Biafra Revisited (African Renaissance, 2006).

Biafra: The Tragedy of Misplaced Priorities

2009-03-16T18:12:00.000-07:00

By Emeka Eze

“At present, we are enveloped in darkness…. Providence has done much for us in this contest, but we must do something for ourselves”

(Gen. Washington to James Mchenry)

Article 2 of the Vienna Declaration and programme of Action States, “ All peoples have the right of self determination, by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status, and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

The Article went further to say, “taking into account the particular situation of peoples under colonial or other forms of alien domination or foreign occupation, the world conference on Human Rights recognises the right of peoples to take any legitimate action… to realize their inalienable right of self determination”

The excesses of this article are for meaningful development. All human rights instruments are for a common good. Where the common good is not forthcoming, the prevailing situation would be that of “violation” amounting to confusions and the breakdown of rule of law.

The aspirations of all peoples should be the respect of the principles of equal rights and self – determination of peoples, peace, democracy, justice, equality, rule of law, pluralism, development of better standards of living and solidarity. Where these are not visible, the alternative to achieve them is the next option. The next option leads us to the topic of this write-up.

May 30th, 1967, lt.Col. Chukwumeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, being mandated by Eastern consultative Assembly declared, “ whereas we are living witnesses of injustices and atrocities committed against Eastern Nigeria, among which are the premeditated murder of over 30,000 of our innocent men, women and children by Northern Nigerians, the Calculated destruction of the property of our sons and daughters, the shameless conversion of two million Eastern Nigerians into refugees in their own country, all this without remorse”

The 1967 Nigeria / Biafra war was fought to stop the premeditated murder of the people of eastern Nigeria. The atrocities were committed by the Nigerian government “without remorse”. Though Ojukwu could not accomplish this mission due to personal limitations and because of the activities of saboteurs, the attempt, nevertheless had been made.

It is unfortunate that the same group of sell-outs are still present in the struggle started by Uwazuruike etal. Uwazuruike along with other Igbo youths while hoisting the Biafra flag in Aba, Abia State capital on 22 May, 2000 saw injustice, inequality and marginalisation of the Baifra people as the order of the day. In the one year anniversary of the hoisting of the flag, Uwazuruike said, “Beloved Biafrans, we cannot be part of a nation where injustice, inequality and marginalisation are the order of the day. We cannot be citizens of a country where corruption is a way of life. We cannot belong to a country where dictatorship, violence and intimidation are principle of state policy. We cannot belong to a nation where our children have no future. It is better to die in the struggle for liberty than to live as slaves.” He did not live up to this declearation as his actions will reveal later.

Uwazuruike’s good intention was demonstrated in the burial of late Gabriel Ogu, when he bent down to kiss the casket of Gabriel Ogu, when he, Ogu was lying in state. “if I deviate in the struggle to actualize Biafra,” Uwazuruike took an oath, “may I lay as Ogu laid now”. Since that oath, the spirit of Gabriel Ogu was following the massob leader. Events will later prove that Uwazuruike either forgot about this oath that he swore or he never meant it when he made the oath. It is fools that make oath without keeping them as present contemporary events have proven here.

The struggle has as of now taken another dimension. The original thinking of chief Uwazuruike was diverted to money making. Some group of people are thinking on how to move the struggle forward, while others, led by Ralph Uwazuruike thinks on how to secure positions and make money. Uwazuruike is now a known agent of the Nigerian government and this is part of the deal that he made in order to secure his release from prison as was brokered by Nnamdi (Andy) Uba of Uga, Aguata Anambra State. For years many within the struggle saw something wrong emerging by the dictatoral tendencies of Ralph Uwazuruike, every effort was said to have been made to make him see the errors of his ways, but like the proverbial dog that is headed to destruction, his heart and ears were sealed so much that he could not and would not hear or listen to any body.

Biafra risorgimento was the spirit of baifra citizens suffering everywhere in Nigerian. Those who go by the name Biafra become victims of circumstance. The rate of development in Biafraland is not something to write home about. There is no employment to Biafra youths. Graduates have now turned to be Okada riders, no good roads, no good water, and no electricity. Innocent Biafra Citizens have filled up in Nigeria cells with trumped-up-charges against them. The one who supposedly was leading them is now a turn-coat who have abandoned the ship of Biafra in search of perssonal self actualization. Uwazuruike and his family in time, will realize that Biafra being an institution, may be betrayed by him but cannot be destroyed. In the fullness of time what must be, will surely come to pass.

Businessmen and women have heavy tariffs placed on their imported goods. Biafra conditions in Nigeria are deplorable. Government of Nigeria is insensitive to the plight of the Biafra people. Coupled with these types of living conditions, the people came out en-mass to give the Biafra struggle a boost. They supported Uwazuruike and other Biafra Actualization groups. The unfortunate thing was the change of mood of the leaders. Instead of struggling to actualize Biafra, they dumped the spirit with which Ojukwu utilized more that 80% of his father’s wealth, and 100% of his own wealth to fight for Baifra emancipation. When Ojukwu was busy “fighting” to defeat the Nigerian aggressors, some disgruntled elements and saboteurs in Biafra were busy scheming to frustrate the fight. The same groups of people are still around doing one dirty job or the other to make sure the people of Biafra are still living in bondage. This time around, it is the leaders who sell out. They collect huge sums of money from the government of their oppressors, and turn around to deceive their subjects to believe their exploits.

Sources with close contact on ground, have it on good ground that Uwazuruike and co have been found to have engaged in wealth acquisition rather than pursue the emancipation of Biafra. It is also on good record that the Niger Delta people were willing to work with MASSOB under Uwazuruike but he made it impossible due to his desire to be the leader without having leadership skills. My findings on the wealth of our leaders, reveals an alarming craze for property and business ownership by Ralph and his family as well as few of his acolytes. It was revealed that filling stations, (Gas stations) beautiful mansion in Victoria Island, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Aba, some oil blocks, acres of land are owned by these discredited judases who love wealth and blood money more than liberation from the yoke of bondage which Nigeria represents on the lives of our people. Uwazuruike by this act, have shown once again that the Igbo man is subject to compromise especially when money and property is involved. What these fraudlent men and women did was a betrayal of those who have given their lives and resources to the Biafra Actualization and in time, he will pay the price. Right now, Ralph is paying the price by becoming like the proverbial Cain who is running all over the place in search of shelter from the unknown danger that his acts (the killing of Abel) brought upon him.

Some whom the freedom fighters trusted as leaders are the people who inform the security agents of the activities of the Biafra freedom fighters. For instance, on 30th of January, 2007, while a meeting of the MASSOB members were going on in okwe, home town of Ralph Uwazuruike, some MASSOB leaders used their cell phones to make secret calls to military men, telling them how the levies are collected and when the exercise will end. As soon as the money have been collected and packed in Ghana must go sack, the security agents arrived and in the process, more than 30 MASSOB members were killed. The leaders were spotted inside the bush sharing the money, the part that will go to Nigeria security agents, and the part that would go to their purse. The rest of the things that happened are history today. It has been one scam after another under the leadership of Ralph Uwazuruike and just like everything in life, there is time for everything. A time to steal and a time to get caught, a time to deceive and a time for the truth to be revealed. Some within this struggle cried out four years ago regarding the direction that Uwazurike and his clique were taking the struggle but those groups who suppose to address this issues ignored it thinking that Ralph will rediscover his ways and make amends but such group like the Biafra Foundation in USA, know better now. They also were victims of Uwazurike's corrupt ways.

The entire leadership of the struggle under Uwazurike have been involved in place seeking as well as deceiving its followers. It is to maintain his place especially in the monetary matters, that Uwazurike resisted every effort to work with people like Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo. The fallen leader of MASSOB himself was so sure of what his mission was, that he felt that he will be able to look after himself by shedding the blood of Igbo/Biafra youths and turn around to profit by it. When the leader does not have faith in whatever he does, that leader should be discarded. He was busy acquiring wealth and building and buying landed property here and there. This atitude brought the struggle into disrepute and conflict of interest with what the original goal was-Actualization of Biafra. The incident that took place during Uwazurike's last visit to the United States was to reveal what had been going on in the past few years and his style of leadership. This is a man who regards the MASSOB as a private project blindly ignoring the obvious fact that this is something that is greater than him and his family, selfishness or endless desire for deception. He traveled to the States to purchase properties using the money that was collected from the struggling youths whose means of livelihood he messed up and took away their monies and handed them currencies that are no legal tender. Will this man walk away from this criminal activities that he so brazenly have committed against the Biafran nation?

Chief Uwazuruike flamboyantly told us in his one year anniversary of the struggle for a new Biafra that .a nation we want is the ideal state, that the nation we want is a nation where justice, equality, fair play, freedom, truth etc are the principles of state policy. Hence, the comment, “It is better to die in the struggle for liberty than to live as slave” This is the man who claimed to be following in the steps of Mahatma Ghandi and that of Dr. Martin Luther King. Uwazurike have betrayed the confidence of those that reposed confidence in him and by so doing, have made himself an outcast even in the same struggle for which he stated that he is willing to "lay down" his life. In the language of Plato in his book
The Republic, I quote, “No one must have any private property whatsoever except what is absolutely necessary. Secondly, no one must have any lodging or storehouse at all which is not open to all comers… they must live in common, attending in messes as if they were in the field… they alone of all in the city dare not have any dealings with gold or silver or even touch them or come under the same roof with them”
(Republic, Book 111, 415 E) This is actually Plato’s requirement for the ruling class of his ideal Republic.

St Augustine (354-430 A.D) known as the platonizer of Christianity saw that intellectual darkness was rapidly descending over the Roman Empire. The empire was disintegrating, its vast institutional and cultural resources suffered from the empire’s neglect and the church’s indifference or hostility to pagan culture. In his book “The city of God”, st Augustine’s distinction between the sensible and the intelligible world is expressed in Christian terms as the distinction between the earthly city of the flux of opinion, and the heavenly city of God’s eternal truth.

What am I talking about here? I mean that the so-called leader who championed the cause of Biafra struggle is fake. He along with his ilk felt that in their respective professions, they are never-do-wells, and therefore, the earnest way to make money is in the use of Biafra. And for the peoples of the nation of Biafra, while they suffer in the hands of the Nigeria government, they will use it as a vehicle to acquire wealth for their individual families. In other words, the people want to go, they want freedom but do not have honest and dedicated leaders that will lead them to the promise. The unmasking of Uwazurike and his criminal gang is a good outcome for all those who are praying and seeking emancipation as this will help refocus and re-energize the people of Biafra and also help heal all the rift that this evil man brought into the movement for his selfish ends. Another lesson here is that we all must watch people live the life they preach about and do the work they claim to have been trained on. Uwazuruike claimed to have been trained as a lawyer in of all places, India and never practiced for a day. I guess it is possible that he may never have been to India yet the lies and deception operating within him, are able to confuse him and mislead others.

Let those who think that this is unachivable project not rejoice yet as this revelation about the person of Uwazuruike and his lies are a good developement for the emergence of Biafra in no distant time. A look at Nigeria will reveal that it is not making any progress toward unification rather there is disquietness and anarchy in the land. Nigeria is moving in cirles and it appears that the gods have sworn to have her destroyed and have cursed her with serpent leaders as well as scorpions who do nothing but bite and sting the people of the land. These are those who have driven the defenceless people of the East to either engage in non violence struggle and armed struggle as is the case in the Delta. Biafra Actualization agitation and the war going on in the East of the Niger are all testimonies as to the fallen state of Nigeria.

I want to say that those who think they can make money, or secure positions in the name of Biafra struggle, will have themselves disappointed at last. The cries of those who lost their lives in these struggle, become cries of Abel from the grave. God is still asking the impostors of Biafra struggle, "Where is your brother?" The Abels of this struggle. In as much as Biafra struggle is a divine mandate, every care must be taken to make sure that we are not repeating what brought setback in the past. Uwazurike is not Biafra. He was a leader of MASSOB until he was found wanting. And if Biafra foundation or other groups out there are for Biafra struggle, then all must shun sentiments and deploy every resources such as Voice of Biafra international to educate and enlighten our people on the state of things.

Niger Delta has more than 25 groups operating and fighting for their rights. But once any of their sons is arrested, all other group of their sons is arrested, all other group start action from different angle. The goal is one – to achieve whatever is their objective/ mission. Their's is a mission with cohesion and direction void of any selfish tendencies as is the case with some Biafra leaning movements right now. Though they may be infiltrated right now, yet they are able to forge ahead in the face of enourmous challenges. Our people who still believe that Biafra will be handed to to us on a platter of gold may need to have a rethink since we are not dealing with western Europe here. Our failure in deploying all our resources on behalf of Biafra is not helping right now. Finally, I say, non-violence cannot give us Biafra, neither will violence do but we must listen to the wise one who said to the slugard to "go to the ant and learn her ways" There are few lessons that we can learn from our cousins in the Delta.

If there is no re-think, and re-strategizing now, Biafra struggle will be a tragedy and the priority will remain misplaced. While there is a chance of re-igniting the fire that is fast fading away, all honest and sincere Biafrans all around the world, are called to wake up and see what is happening to the struggle more than forty years after loosing more than 2 million of our people to the genocide that was unleashed upon us. The Okwe chief (Ralph Uwazurike) have shown that he is not the messiah but rather a hungry man who do not have what it takes to deliver. It is good that the charade that he represents is exposed for all to see and all those out there who still thinks that he is the all in all, must now have a rethink or go down with him. Biafra is greater than Uwazuruike and his greedy ways and more importantly, Biafra deserves a more inteligent set of people to lead its actualization than a man who lies and deceives at every turn.

“ Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious” (George Orwell: 1984)

Emeka Eze
ezestc@gmail.com

Breakthrough, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

2009-03-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

For 43 years, African peoples have waited patiently, sometimes in understandable despair, for this laudable news report from The Hague: the issuance of an arrest warrant, by the International Criminal Court, to apprehend the head of an African regime to stand trial for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”. Thanks to the work of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court’s indefatigable chief prosecutor, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has the unenviable accolade as the first “head of state” in office to be so indicted. In the past six years, his regime has murdered 300,000 Darfuri (in west Sudan) and forced 2.5 million survivors into refugee camps in neighbouring Chad.

Since 29 May 1966, when the north Nigerian political, religious and military establishment ordered its own janjaweed to attack Igbo population centres across the entire stretch of north Nigeria – killing, raping, looting, wasting and heralding the first phase of the Igbo genocide, the gruesome total of 15 million Africans have been murdered by the continent’s genocide states. Such is the cataclysm of Africa’s age of pestilence that this state form, which originated from Nigeria, has snaked its way across Africa to Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congos, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia, Central African Republic, the Sudan and elsewhere on the continent.

Survivors of these state-organised mass slaughters have waited anxiously for justice for their devastating ordeal and will undoubtedly view the al-Bashir arrest warrant as the beginning of this overdue process of restitution. The following haunting references to the catastrophe, ingeniously recorded by children, are a chilling reminder that African children have borne the brunt of this slaughter since the Igbo genocide of May 1966-January 1970. See: (BBC News)

Members of Africa’s “leaderships” (at whatever tiers of their regimes) who have murdered African children, women and men or are currently murdering African children, women and men or are in the process of planning to murder African children, women and men now know that they can no longer hide under the bogus rubric of “immunity from prosecution” or seek the protective diplomatic cover offered by a London or Moscow or whoever else. The world’s tribune of justice, even if belatedly, now demands and expects justice for the slain and the survivor. As a result, the time for reckoning has surely drawn much closer, than ever before, for the principal architects of this age of slaughter who are still alive and who are responsible for the murder of 3.1 million Igbo people: Danjuma, Babangida, Obasanjo, King, Useni, Gowon, Are, Ayida, Rotimi, Aminu, Haruna, Akinrinade, Buhari, King, Adekunle, Enahoro…

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (forthcoming, 2009)

More than a rag-tag controversy

2009-03-04T18:56:00.000-08:00

By Akeem Soboyede
Published: Thursday, 5 Mar 2009

“It will be a long, long, long time, possibly generations, before passions die out over the Nigerian Civil War.”

— Prof. Wole Soyinka, The Man Died (1972)

The ferocious conflict that pitched the Nigerian federation against the break-away Republic of Biafra ended in January 1970. But you wouldn’t know this if you followed the controversy ignited by statements recently credited to outgoing Nigerian Ambassador to the United States, retired Brigadier-General Oluwole Rotimi.

First, a background. For some weeks, rumours had floated among Nigerians in the Washington, DC area that the relationship between Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, and the man who heads the “crown jewel” of Nigerian missions abroad, the ambassador to the United States, was far from cordial. Rotimi had assumed his post only in April 2008; his boss, the Foreign Minister, was said to have a fondness for visiting the Washington, DC area. Protocol demanded that during those visits, the minister’s host and ambassador to the United States, the 71-year old “Old Soldier,” receive Maduekwe on arrival at the airport and generally cater to his every wishes while “in town.”

Things got to a head when Maduekwe arrived in DC for the Obama Inauguration with a “high-powered” presidential delegation headlined by former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku. US government protocol demanded that official tickets to the Inauguration go to a country’s head of mission in the US. In this case, it meant Ambassador Rotimi. It was said the honourable minister would have none of that but that the ambassador stood his grounds.

Later, at a party the ambassador hosted for Nigerians and other dignitaries to mark the Obama Inauguration, an announcement was said to have been made to the effect that it was time for the ambassador to go to bed, so guests would have to leave. Furthermore, the minister allegedly received a correspondence in which the ambassador was said to have written the following: “I have dealt with people like you in the past. I was the Quarter-Master General of the Nigerian Army that thoroughly defeated your rag-tag Biafran Army.” Yuck!

The words credited to the ambassador are incendiary and clearly undiplomatic. They must have cut quite close to home for Maduekwe, said to be a former Captain in the defunct Biafran Army. But the fact that the minister’s ego was clearly bruised here is not the issue; if the words are true, that was the ambassador’s intention and he achieved his aim. And no one is crying for the minister, too: he got his revenge with the ambassador’s very public recall after a rather brief stint as ambassador to the US.

Brigadier-General Rotimi has since said his words were twisted out of context. But they certainly formed the basis of his recall from his ambassadorial position. Even more important, they provoked the internecine battle Nigerians of all stripes both at home and in the diaspora, especially the latter, have launched against one another over the reported remarks.

A big lesson here is that the Nigerian Civil War remains very fresh in the minds of those who, arguably, were on the receiving end of the hostilities. When Rotimi’s alleged “Biafra comments” were first made public, an Igbo individual on an Internet message board made a posting that had Rotimi’s picture, with the subject-line “This is the bastard who boasted of defeating Biafran Army.” Another Igbo individual wrote, “This man, Rotimi, deserves 36 lashes on his buttocks.” Among these postings by Igbo individuals, “idiot” was the least derogatory word used in making reference to the ambassador.

Yes, the ambassador’s alleged comments, if true, were unbefitting of his status and office. He should not have made those statements in the context of addressing his boss, the minister, and should have avoided offending the sensibilities of Nigerians in the diaspora that he represented, especially the Igbos among them.

But an issue that also needs to be addressed is why the sensibilities of Nigerians of Igbo extraction remain so raw, close to 40 years after the end of the Nigerian Civil War.

War is a dirty business and its pains usually linger for generations, long after the dead are buried and the wounds are healed. For instance, the feelings of many in the Southern states of the US remained raw for decades after the end of the American Civil War. This accounted for the failure of the policy of Reconstruction in that country, and why a Civil Rights struggle had to be waged more than a hundred years later to fully realise equal rights for African-Americans.

It does seem General Yakubu Gowon’s own version of America’s Reconstruction, encapsulated in his proclamation of “No victor, no vanquished” immediately after the Nigerian Civil War simply wasn’t enough to assuage Igbo fears and expectations regarding their position in post-war Nigeria.

Igbos have, for decades, complained of being under-represented in federal appointments, the military and all other important facets of Nigerian life. Even more ominous, a group like the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) does not exactly renounce violence as part of the tactics it intends to use to achieve the aim its name suggests.

In addition, perhaps the anger at Brig-Gen. Rotimi’s comments was reinforced by long-standing perceptions among Igbos that leaders and members of Rotimi’s Yoruba ethnic group were most instrumental in the defeat of Biafran forces. I have often heard Igbos talk pointedly about Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s supposed betrayal of the Igbos after the Aburi talks.

The exploits of Yoruba generals in that war, like Olusegun Obasanjo and Benjamin Adekunle, were widely celebrated in the popular media, which also relegated the efforts of Northern generals to the background. Everyone knows too that the most popular books on the Civil War from participants on the victorious side have been penned by Yoruba officers, notably Obasanjo’s “My Command” and “Not My Will.” Igbos’ feelings have clearly not been assuaged by Obasanjo’s recent presidential act of announcing payment of the pension arrears of Biafran officers and soldiers.

Aside from the documented political and social inequities suffered by the ethnic group in the aftermath of the Civil War, I also happen to believe that the story of the Igbos regarding the events leading to the Civil War and the prosecution of the struggle itself has not been well told. Save for Alexander Madiebo’s laudable effort, there isn’t a major body of work by Igbo actors involved in the Biafran struggle from the beginning to end. One waits, eternally it seems, for “The Book” promised by General Odimegwu Ojukwu, who clearly remains exhausted after his last literary effort, a long love letter to the ravishing Bianca titled “Because I Am Involved.”

Ojukwu’s telling, when it eventually comes, should clarify many of the sources of Igbos’ angst regarding the war and Yorubas’ perceived role in it: whether Awolowo actually betrayed Ojukwu and the Igbos at Aburi; and whether the Yoruba leadership that served in the Gowon regime actually crafted policies that aimed to strip Igbos of their assets, in spite of Gowon’s “No victor, no vanquished” policy.

Perhaps awaiting such a telling of the comprehensive Igbo story is being too optimistic. After all, millions did die in the Nigerian Civil war, a great majority of these being Igbo. Others still carry the mental, physical and existential scars, including exile; and many of these may have been the Igbo “Internet Warriors” who lit up the message boards with vitriol as they reacted to Oluwole’s alleged words. No re-telling or acts of rehabilitation would assuage the scarred memories of such people.

Erstwhile Ambassador Oluwole Rotimi should have realised this fact, and thought better about reopening old wounds that apparently never heal.

Soboyede, lawyer-journalist, wrote via jeffdan37@ comcast.net

A New Helsinki Accord

2008-09-02T10:46:00.000-07:00

By Anton Caragea

The conflict in Caucasus has proven that the European Union is unfortunately still in need of a coherent foreign policy. In March 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, EU member states decided in Brussels that never again would they be caught wrong-footed by international events. The result of this decision was the creation of the post of EU High Representative on Foreign Policy and the naming of Javier Solana as the czar of EU foreign affairs. But the Caucasus conflict proves that EU is still uncertain about its role in European affairs.

To craft a new status for the EU in the aftermath of this crisis, French President Nicolas Sarkozy requested an emergency meeting of EU leaders for September 1. It is time for Europe to keep its word and develop a coherent foreign policy. Such a bold initiative, however, requires a new agreement to replace the 1975 Helsinki Accords and address the new challenges to borders and sovereignty.

For its September 1 meeting and after, the EU must prove that it is capable of tackling sensitive problems in its own backyard without outside intervention. The most important item on the agenda will be countries like Kosovo, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, which appeared on the world map only in the last six months. A second objective for European leaders is to strengthen the EU-Russia relationship.

The Caucasus crisis proves that the EU must be more engaged in international security issues and willing to assume peacekeeping missions not only in places like Lebanon but even in lands closer to home. In this process, the EU must find its own voice. Condemning Russia for its intervention turns the EU into a mere spokesperson for U.S. foreign policy rather than an independent entity. Moreover, if it doesn't speak up in favor of the principle of territorial integrity, the EU itself will become vulnerable in the future.

No-Man's Land Syndrome

Kosovo's February 17 declaration of independence marked the birth of a new category for Europe after World War II: countries that have de facto sovereignty but not de jure status. These are virtual no-man's lands. Kosovo's independence was proclaimed in breach of both UN Resolution 1244 and the 1999 Rambouillet Accord that guaranteed Serbia's territorial integrity. Also, Kosovo independence was against the UN Charter and the 1975 Final Agreement of Helsinki Conference that underlined the territorial integrity and security of European borders. Similarly, Abkhazian and South Ossetian independence are in breach of the UN Charter, the 1975 Helsinki Agreement, and UN Resolution 1808 that established the UNOMIG peacekeeping forces in Georgia in 2008.

All three countries establish a precedent that minority collective rights can prevail over national borders, territorial integrity, and the UN Charter. To accept this point of view is to open a Pandora's box that will only unleash conflict and territorial claims all around the world. Minority collective rights will be a powerful rationale for large powers to intervene in what they perceive as their area of influence. Russia's actions in Georgia are just such an assertion of regional power status.

Countries such as Kosovo, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia all contribute to the erosion of countries whose borders were internationally recognized and inscribed in the final act of the Helsinki Conference in 1975. If Europe doesn't stop this proliferation of new countries, the epidemic will spread around the world. In Europe alone, the pursuit by minorities for sovereignty, as applied in Kosovo and Abkhazia, can be seen as well in Macedonia (with a large and concentrated Albanian minority), Spain (with the Basque and Catalan regions), and Belgium (with conflict between the Walloon and Flemish communities).

Europe is not the only continent with such ruptures. In South America, Venezuela is pressing for the creation of the so-called Rupununi state in Guyana; in Mexico the Chiapas Indians have been pushing for an autonomous state for more than 60 years; in North America, Québécois independence is a dream never forgotten. In Africa, too, civil wars have broken out as a result of separatist struggles, within Sudan (Darfur), Somalia (Somaliland), Congo (Katanga), and Nigeria (Biafra). Kurds push for independence in Turkey, and in South Asia the Kashmir cry for independence grows stronger every day.

A New Helsinki Agreement

In 1975, when the Cold War was far from over, the Helsinki Accords offered Europe a guarantee of peace and stability by confirming the borders of the old continent and establishing the way that new countries could be born. It was flexible enough to accommodate the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Czechoslovakia partition of 1991, and the reunification of Germany. But the cases of Kosovo, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia have called into question the mechanisms of the Helsinki Accords.
The EU Summit on September 1 can not provide any long-term solution to this problem because almost half of Europe (in surface and population) are not members. These non-member countries are equally interested in resolving the crises of the no man's lands.

Only a new international conference uniting all European countries together with Russia and the United States can reaffirm the Helsinki Accords and offer a solution to the present crises. Such an international conference is necessary to reconfirm borders and establish the principles by which further changes in Europe can take place. To continue on the present path, in which the United States supports Kosovo independence and Russia backs Abkhazia and South Ossetia, is to invite a large-scale, worldwide reinvention of borders.

Of course, a new Helsinki Accord could not be reached in a month. The initial conference required more then three years of preparation. But in the meantime we should establish a freeze on the recognition of new states and a general reinforcement of the principle of territorial integrity. In his August 26 speech, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev agreed to an international solution on border issues. The EU must follow suit and begin to draft a new Helsinki Accords on post-Cold War borders. On September 1, Europe must establish a new voice on international issues or it will no longer matter on the international stage.

Anton Caragea is professor of international relations and political science and director of the Institute for Research on International Relations and Political Science in Romania. A contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), he is the author of 15 books on European and Asian history.

Starvation Was The Policy

2008-02-02T17:17:00.000-08:00

THE BRUTALITY OF NATIONS By Dan Jacobs.

383 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $22.95.
Reviewed by Colin Campbell

ANYONE who has followed the huge international aid operations that have been mounted in recent years in Ethiopia, Cambodia and other devastated countries must have noticed that these efforts keep running into technical and political obstacles, and that they raise other issues as well. Shipments of food and medicine always seem to arrive in such places too late. There aren't enough planes or trucks to deliver the stuff. Dozens of different aid agencies leap into the act, and it's only a matter of time before they start disagreeing passionately over just what the problem is and how to deal with it.

Fortunately, these emergencies have generated a few important case studies, and one can read about the all-too-human world of several big emergency aid operations in appalling detail. Now ''The Brutality of Nations'' by Dan Jacobs has appeared, dealing with the emergency in Biafra, the short-lived Ibo tribal state that seceded from Nigeria in 1967. Biafra soon found itself at war with Nigerian federal troops, surrounded and cut off from reliable food supplies. Perhaps two million people died of hunger and related diseases between 1968 and 1970. But the book's real theme is horrifying in another way, and is summed up in a long subtitle on the jacket: ''How, in pursuit of political objectives in the Nigerian Civil War, a number of great and small nations, including Britain and the United States, worked to prevent supplies of food and medicine from reaching the starving children of rebel Biafra.'' Mr. Jacobs, a former speechwriter for Hubert Humphrey and other public figures, worked in 1968 as a consultant and spokesman for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, one of many relief agencies that found themselves frustrated time and again in their efforts to get supplies to Biafra. He finally quit his job in the firm belief that U Thant, then Secretary General of the United Nations, was obstructing aid. Mr. Jacobs subsequently became director of a group called the Committee for Nigeria-Biafra Relief, which tried unsuccessfully to get a relief effort started that would ferry supplies by helicopter from aircraft carriers off the Nigerian coast. So he was pretty much in the thick of things during the crisis. He has also done a good deal of research since then. Continued on next page He has come up with considerable evidence that Britain especially, but also several other crucial actors - including the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross, which was supposed to be coordinating the relief effort - accepted the Nigerian argument that the civil war was an internal matter. They and a lot of small countries that wanted to preserve the principle of national sovereignty all believed that emergency aid to Biafra could not legally be supplied if the Government authorities in Lagos did not want it supplied. And the authorities in Lagos did not. THERE are several points at which Mr. Jacobs's complicated moral and political story seems softer than it should, depending more on circumstantial evidence or on unattributed quotations than on solid facts or documents. And yet the general theme of the tale is very hard to deny. Whatever their sympathies for the tortured and dying Biafrans, too many powerful players in the drama were ruled by other considerations than the Biafrans' lives. Washington, like London, had no intention of alienating Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, or of crossing the Organization of African Unity, which also backed Nigeria. The United Nations and others threw up their hands.

The Nigerians were therefore free to crush the Biafrans as they chose. Nigeria's head of state, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, ''seemed a genuinely humanitarian man,'' Mr. Jacobs writes, but General Gowon may have been exceptional. More significant from the Biafrans' viewpoint was the attitude of a Nigerian colonel named Benjamin Adekunle, who was forever telling reporters that aid for Biafra was ''humanitarian rubbish.'' ''If children must die first, then that is too bad, just too bad,'' the colonel once said.

The war was very cruel, and federal troops did not hesitate to shoot up emergency relief operations. As Jean Mayer, the American nutritionist, wrote in 1969 after a trip to Biafra: ''Every major hospital has been bombed and strafed, even though all had large crosses on the roof, and even though many were far from towns, crossroads or any other legitimate target. At present, red crosses are being camouflaged. . . .'' Dr. Mayer appealed to his former Harvard colleague Henry Kissinger to urge the new Nixon Administration to take more vigorous steps. But despite President Nixon's interest in the Biafrans' plight, his Administration never overturned the State Department's basic policy.

The Biafrans, meanwhile, rejected proposals that would have opened a land corridor into their enclave; they feared that the Nigerians would use it to invade. Biafra also rejected plans that would have let the Nigerians inspect food shipments, so that no arms slipped through; the Biafrans said they feared being poisoned by their tribal enemies.

Under conditions like these it is amazing that any aid at all reached Biafra, but it did. In the latter half of 1968, the International Committee of the Red Cross (which Mr. Jacobs suspects was chosen by Britain to coordinate the relief because it seemed unlikely to enter Biafra without Nigeria's permission), under tremendous European public pressure, organized an ''illegal'' airlift that flew by night, when Nigeria's fighters were unable to shoot the planes down. By now, some 8,000 to 12,000 starving Biafrans were dying each day. The airlift at its peak flew in daily shipments of several hundred tons. But in June 1969, a Nigerian fighter downed a relief plane, and American diplomats informed the Red Cross that the Nigerian Air Force had acquired a night-fighting ability and planned to shoot down relief flights as well as Biafran planes and suppliers of Biafran arms. That was the end of the Red Cross airlift. Joint Church Aid, an umbrella organization for 33 church relief agencies, continued to fly at night, but Biafra grew steadily hungrier, and in January 1970 its soldiers ''laid down their rifles and faded away,'' Mr. Jacobs writes. ''Biafra collapsed. The policy of starvation had succeeded.'' MR. JACOBS is a believer in the potential of international law and the enforcement of the Geneva Conventions against genocide and the victimization of civilians. I hope his belief is justified and that the human rights movement will someday have much more force. In the meantime, I am impressed with the power of words and pictures - of timely news accounts and perhaps also of angry histories like ''The Brutality of Nations'' - to help mobilize the world's richest people into helping a few million of the world's sorriest victims. WHO WAS TO BLAME?

Dan Jacobs began writing ''The Brutality of Nations'' shortly after the end of the Biafran war in January 1970. He was angry at the behavior of the governments involved and moved by a tragedy in which some two million people - mostly children -starved. He was then working for UNICEF. Disturbed because he felt the United Nations was hindering aid, Mr. Jacobs left the organization and headed a citizens' group that tried, unsuccessfully, to get supplies to the beleaguered Biafrans. He also knew what few others knew. ''The one piece of information I had that the general public did not have and that enabled me to write was that the top level of the relief agencies and the governments all knew it was the Nigerian Government that was blocking the aid,'' Mr. Jacobs said during a telephone conversation from his apartment on the East Side of Manhattan. ''It was deliberate propaganda to mislead the humanitarian campaigns for Biafra. I was in the inner group. I wasn't misled.''

One of the lessons he learned from his research, he said, was that the top figures in government - in this case particularly the British, who from the start backed the Nigerians at the expense of the Biafrans - pay too little attention to the formation of policy. ''It is the problem of the structures of governments. They leave policy making too long at the working level. These men who had direct responsibility at the top level finally adopted the propaganda line. It became internalized. And they came to believe it.'' JANE PERLEZ

Humanatarian Issues In The Biafra Conflict

2008-02-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

Nathaniel H. Goetz
Pepperdine University
School of Public Policy
California USA

E-mail: ngoetz17@aol.com

April 2001

These working papers provide a means for UNHCR staff, consultants, interns and associates to publish the preliminary results of their research on refugee-related issues. The papers do not represent the official views of UNHCR. They are also available online at

ISSN 1020-7473

Introduction [1]
Over three decades have passed since the end of the Nigerian Civil War (1967 – 1970). During almost thirty months of fighting between the Federal Government and Biafran secessionists, the conflict received more attention from the west than any other previous African ‘emergency.’ From the standpoint of the international humanitarian sector, Biafra served as one of the first conflicts where issues of more contemporary complex emergencies began to develop. Biafra taught the international community how to better provide and coordinate aid and assistance to those affected by a complex emergency. From these lessons came the beginnings of a framework for several issues, including: dealing with internally displaced persons (IDPs), negotiating humanitarian access and repatriation of unaccompanied children. However, in spite of Biafra’s importance, the world seems to have little recollection of this conflict and the lessons learned.

The lessons that can be learned from Biafra seem to share a common thread of coordination, and the lack thereof. This commonality unites these lessons with the present, since problems of coordination have been found in many of the subsequent, large-scale humanitarian emergencies. The United Nations Coordination of the International Humanitarian Response to the Gulf Crisis, published in 1992, clearly points to this:

“Coordination” is one of the most overused and least understood terms in international parlance today. Those providing financial and moral support for humanitarian activities are increasingly insistent that coordination be improved and duplication, waste and competition be avoided. [2]

The purpose of this study is to re-visit the events of Biafra and, through debate in the humanitarian and academic communities, reconsider the lessons learned. The reason for this reconsideration is simple: little has been accomplished in terms of putting the lessons learned in Biafra to practise in present day complex emergencies.

This study is unique, in that it is based largely upon firsthand, formerly confidential documents from the archives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United States Department of State. These documents have never before been openly considered in the context of the conflict in Biafra. The use of these documents throughout this study allows for a fresh look at a conflict, from which many of today’s most pressing humanitarian issues have their beginnings. Of particular relevance, are three issues on which this study focuses: protecting and assisting IDPs, negotiating humanitarian access and repatriation of unaccompanied children.

Background
The civil war in Nigeria is generally recognized as one of the first conflicts in which large-scale humanitarian aid operations were conducted at the regional level. With this in mind, this study will look broadly at the issues concerning IDPs, achieving negotiated humanitarian access and the repatriation of unaccompanied children during the Nigerian Civil War. It will consider some similarities to present-day emergencies, and look at what lessons can be learned from each issue as a means for solving problems in the future.

The roots of the conflict in Nigeria are ethnic and religious in nature. Political lines drawn up in 1914 by British colonial rulers had little regard for the vast diversity that existed within the new boundaries of the colony. Different groups, united under artificial constraints, had very little in common in terms of culture, ethnicity and religion. It was these conditions that set the stage for conflict.

In 1960, Nigeria peacefully gained its independence from Great Britain. However, many social disparities remained unchecked. The Northern and Southern regions of Nigeria were on opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of socioeconomic development. The 1999 International Committee of the Red Cross Report on the Rules of War provides a vivid picture of these disparities:
Primary amongst the differences was the disparity of educational levels between North and South – so vast that it was feared that the North would not have enough qualified civil servants to constitute a smoothly running government. In addition, economic development in the South had far outpaced that of the North. In the South, Nigerians had benefited from education and access to the colonial apparatus, while the North lacked an entrepreneurial and commercial class. [3]

The violence began on 15 January 1966. A coup, led by military officers, resulted in the assassination of the prime minister and other top-ranking officials. The coup failed, but its negative impact dragged the country further into crisis. In the chaos that followed, General Aguiyi Ironsi declared himself leader of Nigeria on 16 January, adopting military rule. Ironsi, an Eastern Ibo, took on an agenda aimed at domination of the country.

On 15 March 1967, three people were injured during an anti-Ibo demonstration in a market in the Western town of Ibadan. The Times, in Great Britain, reported that, “the incident is seen as the first phase of a reprisal against the order by Col. Ojukwu [the Eastern region’s governor] banning West Nigerians from his region.” [4]

On 30 May, Ojukwu formally declared the secession of the Eastern region and the formation of the ‘Republic of Biafra.’ Tensions reached their peak in July 1967, with the assassination of Ironsi and the subsequent counter-coup that followed, led by officers from the North. On 1 August 1967, General Yakubu Gowon became the new head of state, maintaining military rule and adopting a policy of uniting Nigeria. What followed was a protracted civil war, lasting almost two and-a-half years.

Unlike other previous conflicts within Africa, the Nigerian Civil War did not go unnoticed internationally. The heavy use of the media, primarily television, (used by both sides to gain international sympathy for their cause), fed images to the world on a daily basis. The primary images shown were shocking pictures of the starvation of millions of children. The world suddenly took a critical interest in the conflict and called for humanitarian action to be taken. J.M. Clevenger, in his 1975 thesis, described this:

The time was ripe for the internationalisation of the relief operation. A sudden burst of publicity from the world’s press in May and June 1968 brought the impending disaster to the forefront of the world’s attention and stimulated the development of a massive international effort to rescue starving Nigerians and Biafrans. [5]

One of the organizations present within Nigeria prior to the conflict was the United States Peace Corps. Following their missions, two of its volunteers, Jim and Susan Hummer, were hired by the Nigerian Federal Government to teach in secondary school, and shared some of their experiences and perspectives of the civil war:

One Nigerian official we knew well was reluctant to comment on the Federal Government’s prosecution of the war. He told us it was not their custom to criticize their leaders or to “wash their linen in public.” We were aware that there was a military blockade and that those within the Eastern Region were being denied food and the necessary supplies in order to hasten their surrender. We knew that innocent people were dying from starvation and disease. We also knew that the Nigerians we lived and worked with supported the reunification of their country. They were very certain that the Federal Government would accomplish this goal through steady tightening of the blockade as the Federal forces continued to move deep into the secession area. [6]

Internally displaced persons

The term ‘internally displaced person’ had not yet been coined at the time of this conflict. Throughout the literature and first-hand sources consulted for this section, it was found that the term ‘refugee’ was largely used for both those internally displaced, as well as for those outside their country of origin. However, this was not the case for UNHCR, which did have such a distinction. Instances found in the present-day definition of internally displaced persons reflect that, in many respects, the situation that existed in Biafra was identical in nature. This is especially true of the causation, which, argues Cohen and Deng, is predominantly as a result of “conflict among different ethnic groups or between governments and minorities of a different race, language, culture, or religion.” [7]

This particular cause of internal displacement clearly existed in Biafra. Large-scale displacement began in September 1966, after Ojukwu concluded that the safety of Easterners living outside the region could no longer be guaranteed, and asked them to return home. This request, combined with the revenge massacres of Northerners in Port Harcourt, Enugu and other Eastern cities, led to a counter-exodus of non-Easterners from the region. [8] By the final quarter of 1966, there were hundreds of thousands of IDPs throughout Nigeria/Biafra.

Problems of protection and assistance
The most severe problems for those internally displaced came with the Federal Government’s declaration of an embargo and blockade of Biafra in 1967, which kept out precious commodities, including salt, meat and fish (staples of the Nigerian diet). In response, Biafra tried to increase its production of chickens and eggs, but as refugees from other parts of Nigeria flooded in and food stocks dwindled, so hunger grew. [9] The IDPs most affected by this artificially created famine, were children, the victims of ‘total’ war. An early fact-finding mission in 1968, conducted by ICRC Doctor Edwin Spirgi, found that at least 300,000 children suffering from kwashiorkor. [10]

By the summer of 1968, the ICRC reported that three million children were near death. A combination of the vast numbers of displaced persons throughout Nigeria and the federal blockage on food was driving more than 2,500 people into the hospital every week. [11] Besides the deadly kwashiorkor, common ailments among the internally displaced included acute exhaustion and hunger. There was also a high need amongst IDPs for vaccination against various diseases.

Temporary camps established by the international community attempted to assist in the protection of those internally displaced. However, life in the camps was bleak. A personal account from Dr. Philip Emeagwali, who, as a child, spent many months in the St. Joseph’s Primary School of Awka – Etiti camp, tells of his experience:

Many children in our camp suffered from the malnutrition disease called kwashiorkor. We stood in line for warm milk, dried stockfish (okporoko) and corn meal. My mentor (I have forgotten his name, but called him “teacher”) was forcefully conscripted into the Biafran army. After three days of military training, he was posted to the war front. Teacher never returned from the war front. He was the only child of his mother. [When someone died in the camp] we unceremoniously buried the dead at the bushes behind our camp. My niece, “Baby” Okwuosa and my paternal step-grandmother were buried without a funeral. [12]

Another serious problem for IDPs came at the end of the war in January 1970. This involved how to meet the needs of the unaccompanied children displaced by the conflict. A memorandum for the creation of a welfare scheme for children stated:

These [displaced] children have to be returned sooner or later, but for the time, money and effort lavished on them to be meaningful, arrangements must be made for their continuing care and supervision upon their return. As yet no plans exist for this mainly because no properly coordinated and overall programme has been set up for the welfare of the children here in Biafra. [13]

Between 20 February and 20 March 1970, the International Social Service (ISS) and International Union for Child Welfare (IUCW) conducted a mission to Nigeria, visiting centers that had been established to deal with the unaccompanied children. The primary purpose of the centers was to assist in the identification of as many of the children as possible. However, very few had been able to achieve this monumental task. The report stated that, “this work [identification] is most difficult with those groups of children which had moved several times during the war period.” [14] However, the mission found that, for the most part, the children were well cared for and there were very few staff that were “unprepared to understand and meet the needs of the children living in large groups away from their normal family environment.” [15]

In June 1970, the first statistics concerning the number of displaced children were released. The estimated number of children inside Nigeria was 30,000, “most of whom will have to be accommodated in the [receiving] centers, at least in transition to more permanent placement.” [16]

On 3 June, in response to the needs of the displaced children, the IUCW and the Federal Military Government of Nigeria reached an agreement in Lagos. It formed a “system for the [children’s] identification, tracing their families and the promotion of family reunion as well as the children’s care on a temporary or long-term basis.” [17]

The role of UNHCR
On 9 November 1967, a confidential meeting was held between High Commissioner Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan and representatives of Biafra. The topic of the meeting was to discuss the problems of Ibo and the minority tribes in Eastern Nigeria resulting from the civil war. The following indicates the High Commissioner’s response and policy position:

The High Commissioner informed [the representatives from Biafra] that the statute of the Office empowers him to assist in solving problems of refugees at the request of governments of countries of asylum. A refugee, in this context, is a person who is outside his country and does not, for various specified reasons, wish to avail himself of the protection of his country of origin. Since “Biafra” is not recognized as a separate state, the displaced people from other parts of Nigeria into Eastern Nigeria do not fall within the mandate of the Office and, therefore, there is nothing the Office could do for them. [18]

UNHCR took a position that reflected its mandate and, in doing so, could not offer protection nor assistance to those displaced persons in Biafra. [19] Despite this position, UNHCR did closely monitor the problem of internal displacement. Material found in the UNHCR’s archives suggests that its reasoning for doing so was because of the large number of persons who crossed frontiers into several West African states, including Gabon and the Ivory Coast.

International response By May 1968, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), OXFAM, Caritas, World Food Programme (WFP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), were distributing supplies and dozens of other organizations were also providing assistance. It is the ICRC that is largely credited for leading the internal humanitarian operations within Nigeria/Biafra during the conflict.

In April 1969, the ICRC, greatly helped by supplies and medical teams from UNICEF and the WCC, was running the biggest relief operation they had ever mounted, employed many hundreds of foreigners, Swiss delegates, doctors seconded from the national societies and expatriates, as well as 2,000 Nigerians. [20] The ICRC had 400 vehicles and various ships and aircraft, delivering over three million meals a week in Biafra. [21] Between 1967 and 1970, some 60,000 tons of food was distributed to the starving population. [22] The ICRC also carried out an extensive vaccination program. [23]

Negotiating humanitarian access [24]
The term ‘negotiated humanitarian access,’ like that of ‘internally displaced person,’ had not yet been coined at the time of Biafra. Instead, the term ‘negotiated agreement’ was found in several sources consulted, which had a similar meaning to ‘negotiated access.’ Similar to the present day, there was no pre-planned framework for negotiating access; rather it was done primarily on an ad hoc basis, by a variety of actors, mostly at the highest levels of government. Biafra is very likely to have been the first complex emergency where such negotiations took place solely in the name of transportation of aid to affected groups.

This section considers the development of negotiated access talks, primarily between the United States, the Federal Government of Nigeria and ICRC, and the extent to which they succeeded in reaching their objectives.

The access process: trial and error
By 1968, the fighting between the Federal Government and Biafran forces had escalated and, in response to the amount of civilians in need of relief, the international community made its first efforts to supply aid to those affected populations.

The first transport efforts were by religious organizations that chartered planes to send in aid, “sometimes permitting weapons to travel alongside.” [25] This was done primarily because no alternative existed in terms of being able to bargain with the warring parties. Secondly, since an open ‘air corridor’ existed, gunrunners took advantage of the opportunity to fly their supplies into Biafra as well. This created a situation of protection for both gunrunners and aid flights. This is because the warring parties did not want to be held responsible for shooting down a humanitarian aircraft and drawing negative attention upon themselves. Although such early efforts managed to get in some aid, the fact that weapons were sometimes transported in by the humanitarian airlifts, and gunrunners misused the system provided by the airlift, only served to increase the mistrust between the warring parties.

Unlike the independent religious groups, organizations such as the ICRC, were bound by Article 23 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which states:

All delivery of aid in this kind of situation was to be subordinate to the agreement of the contracting power, who had to be convinced that the relief would go only to the civilians to whom it was destined and that enemy troops would derive no gain or advantage from it. [26]

This created difficulties for the organization, but after recognizing just how severe the humanitarian problems were, Gowon gave the ICRC authorization to begin flying relief into Biafra in early 1968. Although this gesture was seen as positive, only one plane carrying 16 to 20 tons of food per night was being delivered.

However, the airlift did manage to expand with support from other International Red Cross Societies. On 8 April 1968, the ICRC commenced a regular flight operation direct from Europe to Biafra via Fernando Poo Island. [27] But even this was short-lived, for by August 1968, the “mercy” flights of the ICRC ceased, reportedly because “Biafran arms planes have taken advantage of the reduced flak Gowon puts up against the mercy flights, so that Gowon has stopped making any special provisions and the Red Cross has had some near misses.” [28]

Despite the setbacks, negotiations continued. The warring parties both firmly believed that the humanitarian aid that did make it in was going to help support the other side’s military efforts. Thus, the element of mistrust became one of the primary factors that hindered the amount of aid reaching the affected populations.

United States support
United States policy toward Nigeria in 1968 was, on the whole, in agreement with the Organization of African Unity’s position of supporting a “unified” Nigeria. In terms of other African states’ support for such a policy, “more than thirty-five recognized Biafra or showed sympathy toward Biafra. The rest of them were in favor of the unified Nigeria, partly because they all shuddered at the thought of breaking up over tribal ground.” [29]

A 12 August 1968 cable from the United States National Security Council to the President’s Special Assistant outlined specific U.S. policy toward the conflict: [30]

Stimulate the Red Cross to serve as the international cover for a relief operation.
Confidentially put pressure on both sides to agree to a settlement or at least to a relief agreement.
Offer all help necessary to make a relief operation work.
Push particularly hard on Gowon to dramatize the fact that it is not the Federal Government keeping the food out of Biafra.
-Work out the logistics of the relief scheme so that it is ready to move as soon as political arrangements are made.
In an effort to reopen the air corridor, Edward Hamilton of the United States National Security Council staff proposed to:

Persuade Gowon to permit airdrops of food from planes departing from Federal territory. This would allow him to inspect cargoes to be sure there are no arms; dramatize the fact that he wants to feed the hungry; and it would actually move sizeable amounts of food into Biafra. [31]

As the United States was preparing this proposal, the ICRC was working on a new plan to airlift aid from an airstrip in Federal territory to one in Biafra. However, with both of these plans for a new air ‘mercy’ corridor, there came many problems: 1) should Gowon and Ojukwu approve the plan, they would need to each provide an airstrip for the exclusive use of humanitarian actors under the guidance of the ICRC and, 2) they would need to at least provide some sort of guarantee that those international aid workers would be safe from attack.

The United States Embassy in Lagos presented both proposals to Gowon on 14 August 1968. However, they were rejected. A State Department cable on the 15 August stated:

Gowon told the [United States Ambassador] that he had already decided that the FMG [Federal Military Government] could not accept the ICRC's proposal for a relief airstrip because the airstrip that Ojukwu had offered was already under attack and likely to fall into FRG hands soon and because he did not like the way the ICRC had handled the matter, attempting to face the FMG with fait accompli. [32]

In response, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson sent Gowon a cable concerning the proposed access corridor. Johnson attempted to appeal to Gowon personally in order to get him to reconsider the proposal. The cable read:

Knowing that you [Gowon] share my own deep concern over the suffering of those innocent persons, I feel justified in addressing this personal appeal to you to give your urgent agreement to the ICRC proposals for an air mercy corridor. Hopefully, this can be followed by rapid agreement on a land corridor. [33]

Once again, there was rejection from the Federal Government. For the international community, especially the ICRC and United States, this meant “frustration by the failure of Biafra and the Federal Government to reach agreement on the methods of transportation and distribution.” [34] J.M. Clevenger noted the complexity of this issue:

Neither of the belligerents was willing to concede the superiority of humanitarian over political considerations, which made it impossible to reach any agreement about the routes and methods to be used for moving relief supplies through the Federal blockade. In these circumstances, the humanitarian agencies felt compelled, given the gravity of the nutritional situation inside the enclave [of Biafra] in the summer of 1968, to step up their ‘clandestine’ airlift of relief supplies. [35]

Another difficulty lay in the internal operations of the access negotiations. Since there were several relief organizations working within Biafra, it became difficult to coordinate one united effort amongst them. Instead, there emerged an element of competition amongst humanitarian organizations. A cable from the National Security Council to the President’s Special Assistant noted this on 14 November 1968:

[There are] very real difficulties of getting relief organizations to pull together and of persuading the two sides in the civil war to let them operate as freely as necessary. [36]

Because of the amount of media attention being given to the conflict, American public opinion grew in favour of humanitarian support for Biafra. At the Congressional level, Senators Kennedy and Mondale, among others, had been approached by church voluntary agencies to help secure eight Globemaster transports [aircraft] for the international relief effort. Secretary Dean Rusk recommended in a 24 December 1968 United States Security Council meeting that,

The only real problem [with supplying these aircraft to the various church voluntary agencies] is with the [Nigerian] Federal Government. They are bound to object to our giving planes, if only because they regard the voluntary agencies as pro-Biafran and sometimes gunrunners. We have to come up with 8 planes rather than 6 and can afford to split the contribution between the voluntary agencies and Red Cross, which puts a better face on it for the Feds. This deal makes eminent good sense. It will cost us nothing, can save lives, and will, for the time being at least, lessen the Congressional heat here at home. [37]

The plan, approved by President Johnson the following day, would significantly help the ICRC in its efforts to airlift aid into Biafra. Representatives from Biafra met secretly with Rusk to discus the preparation of an airfield to be used “exclusively” for relief. Rusk reported that although there were many problems with this proposal, “we are quietly offering to send in an expert from one of the relief agencies to see what they have in mind. We are telling the Biafrans, as we tell everyone else, that we are closing no options on saving lives.” [38]

By the end of 1968, a new airstrip had been opened in Biafra for ICRC use. Aware of this, the Federal Government allowed the flights to resume, however, on an “at your own risk” basis. In January 1969, the ICRC successfully negotiated with the Governments of Equatorial Guinea and Dahomey to use airstrips for flying in relief to Biafra. With airstrips on Fernando Poo island, Equatorial Guinea and at Contonou, Dahomey “the humanitarian aid airlifts occurred under the auspices of Inter-Church Aid” between 1 and 2 February 1969. [39]

The United States and ICRC reached an agreement of cooperation in early 1969, dividing the access negotiations between air and land corridors, the United States taking the former. Although previous efforts to negotiate a land corridor under President Johnson had failed, it was agreed that the Nixon Administration to make a final attempt:

The Americans believed that use of the Cross River was the best way to get large-scale relief into Biafra, with foodstuffs off-load onto shallow watercraft from ocean-going vessels. This Cross River project was eventually agreed to in principle by both sides, but it was largely a meaningless gesture, as the parties subsequently refused to discuss specifics. [40]

Politically, the possibility of a land corridor seemed impossible. One of the many disagreements between the warring parties was simple, yet it illustrates both the mistrust and complexity of what was occurring: Ojukwu forbade the necessary food to reach the country through a neutral corridor for fear Nigerian troops would poison it. [41] The ICRC continued to successfully airlift aid into Biafra, although each flight was still done on an “at your own risk” basis. This only lasted four months, when the risks involved tragically cost the organization. On 5 June, an ICRC DC-7 aircraft was shot down by the Federal air force over Biafra, killing the three aid workers on board. Because of this incident, serious disputes over the conduct of relief operations arose and the airlift was again suspended.

Access talks between July and September 1969 produced an agreement between the ICRC and Federal Government concerning daytime flights. [42] The agreement was signed on 13 September. However, the next day, it was rejected by the Biafran government on the grounds that it contained “no adequate guarantee against Nigerian military exploitation of the flights.” [43]

Effectively, this incident ended any more attempts to negotiate access. A formal agreement was signed on 2 October 1969 in Lagos between the Federal Government and the ICRC, terminating the role of the ICRC as relief coordinating authority in Federal territory. [44]

‘Ground rules’ [45]
One of the factors that caused frustration for the United States in its access negotiations with the warring parties was the inability to come to an agreement on what the ‘ground rules’ for access should be. Without agreement on such rules, talks between the warring parties and United States were largely ineffective. Several factors contributed to the inability to reach agreement on the ground rules, including: mistrust of humanitarian actors (which were seen, at times, as pro-Biafran) and mistrust of the humanitarian airlift itself (which was viewed as a ‘cover’ for running guns into both Nigeria and Biafra).

In a 1970 interview, Secretary Dean Rusk pointed out the frustration that occurred over the inability to agree on the ground rules for access:

We [the United States] were concerned about food supplies for the Biafrans; we were ready to put in large amounts of food ourselves from our own stocks and were prepared to divert food ships going to other countries to Biafra. But the leaders of the two sides in Nigeria never could get together on the ground rules for furnishing food to the Biafrans, so the problem was not the availability of food but the ability to get it to those who were hungry. [46]

Access negotiations experienced many difficulties, making them only partly successful. These difficulties or “points of friction,” as noted in 1977 by Dr. David P. Forsythe, included: [47]

Shielding of the gunrunners by ICRC planes, albeit unintended.
The ICRC had asked Lagos to lift its blockade in the fall of 1967.
The Federal military requisitioned some Red Cross aircraft for military purposes.
The Federal air force bombed not only civilian targets in Biafra, but Red Cross installations as well – and Red Cross personnel were killed by Federal troops.
Repatriation of unaccompanied children

In August 1968, evacuations led by Caritas International, began transporting children out of Nigeria to Sao Tome. Subsequent evacuations to Gabon were arranged by other international organizations, including the “Biafran” National Red Cross Society, the Order of Malta, the French Red Cross and Terre des Hommes. Similar evacuations also took place to the Ivory Coast.

The Ifekwunigwe repatriation scheme

In January 1969, Dr. A.E. Ifekwunigwe, Chief Paediatrician of the Okporoh Hospital (Nigeria), published a memorandum on the welfare scheme for refugee children, which created a framework to be used for the eventual repatriation of the evacuated children. Because of his position and experience (having participated extensively in the 1968 evacuation), Ifekwunigwe was entrusted by the Federal authorities with coordinating the repatriation of the Nigerian children. In January 1970, Ifekwunigwe published a second memorandum as a follow-up.

Ifekwunigwe’s memoranda were extremely valuable in that they served as the framework adopted as the final repatriation scheme. They provided detailed analysis and solutions, while addressing the shortcomings of the evacuation process. Most importantly, they provided the evidence that repatriation of unaccompanied children was a key policy concern for all sides involved in the Biafran conflict.

In his memorandum of 17 January 1969, Ifekwunigwe wrote:

one should consider the problem not in the narrow context of evacuation of a very small proportion of the children abroad, but one should take a global view of the situation and think of evacuation of children abroad as just one facet. [48] With regard to the coordination of the evacuation program, he noted that “there has been no definite plan to guide them as to the priorities of our needs and no attempt has been made to coordinate their activities in order to avoid the waste that results from duplication of effort. They should be encouraged as much as possible to devote their attention to what can be done for the children here in Biafra rather than having their attention diverted by the scheme for evacuating the children abroad.” [49]

Ifekwunigwe’s plan allowed for the process of repatriation not to be rushed. It rested largely on making sure that the ‘best interests’ of the children were met and that adequate staff (properly trained) and ‘reception’ centers were available before the children were moved from the host countries. Ifekwunigwe wrote:

It is desirable that the children should be returned to “Biafra” when they are well enough. The period varies with individual children, but this is generally about 3 to 6 months. However, as stressed earlier, for the exercise to be worthwhile, adequate arrangements for their resettlement and continuing care must be made. It is possible to set up camps for these children on return, but this has limitations and obvious disadvantages. Even if they go to a camp immediately on return, it should be only a transit camp for about 2 to 4 weeks and every effort should be made to place them either in their own homes or with a suitable guardian. A register of such children in the area should be kept by a Welfare Officer, specially appointed to pay home visits on them. The Relief Organizations should be encouraged to set up a Nutrition Center in each area to which these children have been returned. [50]

Moving toward repatriation

In April 1970, a meeting at UNHCR was held to begin planning for the possible participation in the repatriation of the children from Gabon and the Ivory Coast. One of the main points discussed was the pilot repatriation scheme, which was first drafted in January 1969 and 1970 by Dr. A.E. Ifekwunigwe (as seen above.) This plan was tentatively agreed to by the Federal Government of Nigeria, as well as the Governments of Ivory Coast and Gabon, but final assurances that the children’s well-being would be ensured was still a topic of primary concern.

At the meeting, UNHCR decided to take a role in the repatriation, thus making its services available to the Governments of Nigeria, Gabon and the Ivory Coast. In terms of the status of the children as defined by its mandate, UNHCR held that it “did not consider these children to be refugees and therefore, its offer of assistance [in the repatriation] falls within its good offices activities.” [51] The Federal Government of Nigeria also held this position, having indicated in a memorandum to the High Commissioner that it “is unable to accept that one of the criteria under which the status of refugee is conferred on any person under the appropriate Geneva Convention is a voluntary wish of the person to live outside his country.” [52] Instead, the Federal Government referred to the children as “evacuees.” [53]

On 3 May 1970, an article appeared in the New York Enquirer based on an interview with Princess Cecilia Bourban Parma concerning her experiences that she claimed to have had with affected children in Biafra during the conflict. In a letter from the Embassy of Nigeria in Washington, DC to Robin Jordan, Chairperson of Americans for Children’s Relief, it was believed that the interview was designed to:

…arouse sympathy for, and perpetuate the idea of, the secession and the rebellion, well over three months after the civil war has ended, and at a time when those who engaged in this civil war are working together towards reconciliation and rehabilitation of all concerned. Such an article, and its publication at this time, is an unfortunate act and a disservice to everyone, and not least to those who Princess Cecilia claims to espouse.” [54]

The interview focused on Bourban Parma’s supposed 15 months in Biafra, and never once mentions that any sort of international concern was being given to the war-affected children of Biafra. [55] A few weeks later, Bourban Parma denied conducting the interview, calling it “fabricated.” [56] Although not directly involved, UNHCR monitored the situation very closely, as Americans for Children’s Relief was playing a key role in the repatriation and the incident could have potentially complicated relations with the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Negotiating repatriation

UNHCR’s role of negotiator did not begin until the final details for the repatriation scheme had been worked out between the Governments of Nigeria, Gabon and the Ivory Coast. The original request for UNHCR to step-in came from the Federal Government of Nigeria, which was experiencing difficulties attempting to negotiate on its own with two governments who did not believe that it was stable enough for the repatriation:

Nigeria remained acutely aware of the support of Gabon and the Ivory Coast for the Biafran cause during the war, while Gabon and the Ivory Coast wished reassurances that conditions in the former secessionist areas were suitable for the return of the children. [57]

The second factor involved international borders. Since the children had been evacuated to Gabon and the Ivory Coast, each government felt that is was solely responsible for those children within its borders and, therefore, did not wish to have any sort of international intervention. This was especially true with the Government of Gabon, who, in March 1970, issued a message to those international organizations dealing with the Nigerian children, as received through the United States Embassy in Livreville:

President Bongo of Gabon convoked all the local voluntary agencies to inform them that they should not become involved in the question of Nigerian children, who were the sole responsibility of the Gabonese Government. [58]

On 5 May 1970, High Commissioner Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan sent a cable to Gowon expressing his willingness to send UNHCR Director of Operations Thomas Jamieson to Lagos to begin to “discuss how UNHCR might proceed to assist with the humanitarian objective of repatriating the children now outside of Nigeria.” [59] To help matters, on 20 May, President Bongo of Gabon announced that he was willing to begin negotiations for the repatriation of Nigerian children within his country. A UNHCR cable of 20 May stated:

Arrangements for the return to Nigeria of children evacuated to Gabon from former Biafra could only be made through direct negotiations between Nigerian and Gabonese representatives, with the possible mediation of Cameroon President Ahmadon Ahidjo.” [60]

Although both of these steps were small, they were the first concrete commitments made by UNHCR and Gabon to begin to work toward the repatriation.

Reaching agreement

It took until the beginning of June 1970 for Gowon to respond to the High Commissioner’s offer. Gowon had previously met with Antonie Noel, Chief of the Legal Section for Africa and Asia of UNHCR in February 1970 and had requested assistance in ascertaining the exact numbers of the Nigerian children and their supporting staff inside Gabon, the Ivory Coast and Sao Tome; and in helping to provide the identities of those children. Gowon reminded the High Commissioner that he had not yet heard from him on the progress made towards those two points, and once again requested his assistance in the matter. The High Commissioner compiled the information for Gowon one week later, thus helping to seal the final details for the repatriation. The following relevant information was included: [61]

3,940 Nigerian children in Gabon, 2,792 of whom have been identified.
908 Nigerian children in the Ivory Coast and it is unsure how many have been identified.
Between 120 and 130 in Sao Tome and it is unsure how many have been identified.
The children in general are in good health and are being taken care of either by the government concerned, jointly with the local Red Cross Society, and/or by private confessional and non-confessional agencies.
The High Commissioner recently took steps to obtain all necessary data on the children concerned (identity with photographs, place of birth, physical and mental conditions, etc.) This work is now being carried out in the Ivory Coast and will be available shortly.
On 25 June 1970, it was announced that Gabon and Nigeria had agreed on:

… a rapid and dignified repatriation of refugee children evacuated from secessionist Biafra in 1968. Under an agreement worked out through the mediation of President Ahmadou Ahidjo of Cameroon, Nigeria has undertaken to transport the children home as soon as possible. About 3,500 youngsters will be involved. [62]

The High Commissioner, in order to further assist in the effort, made the decision to help fund the repatriation in late July 1970. Together with funding from UNHCR and cooperation between the Governments of Gabon, the Ivory Coast and Nigeria, the repatriation was ready to take place. As had been outlined in the Ifekwunigwe memorandums, receiving centers had been established under the auspices of the Nigerian Red Cross, supported by other international organizations, including WFP and UNICEF.

By September 1970, 891 children in the Ivory Coast had been identified and, with completed dossiers (at the earlier request of the Federal Government), were ready to be repatriated. In October, the High Commissioner was called upon to “help negotiate the final arrangements between the Governments of Nigeria, Gabon and the Ivory Coast for the airlifting of the children.” [63]

A few weeks later, Thomas Jamieson, UNHCR Director of Operations, conducted his mission (which had been originally proposed to Gowon in June 1970) and found:

… all of the centers, each with a capacity to accommodate 300 to 350 children, were adequately equipped and staffed, largely by Nigerians, and ready to receive the children. Food supplied had been donated by WFP and blankets and equipment by UNICEF.” [64]

Between 9 and 22 November 1970, the operation to repatriate the 891 children from the Ivory Coast took place. The airlift for the children in Gabon occurred in two stages: the first between 23 November and 20 December, and the second between 11 January and 8 February 1971. In all, 3,711 of the refugee children in Gabon and the Ivory Coast were repatriated by an airlift totalling 78 flights. [65] The total cost of the operation was estimated to be about $500,000, of which Denmark [the largest donor] contributed $76,000. [66]

Conclusion

As discussed in the introduction, a key common theme that emerged in the three areas of foci of this research was that of coordination. Indeed, coordination continues to be a key problem that hinders current day complex emergencies. The following list of lessons which can be drawn from the Biafran conflict share many similarities to present day complex emergencies:

In times of conflict, internal displacement will inevitably occur and the needs of IDPs will need to be identified (including protection and assistance issues) and the means found to implement programs to meet those needs. It is important to identify how to best implement such programs and who should be involved in their planning and implementation.
Although the circumstances under which access negotiations take place vary, it is important to establish a clear, pre-set framework for how such negotiations will be conducted. The ability to accomplish this allows for effective communication between the actors involved (including the warring parties) and the ability to establish a clear set of ground rules at the onset of negotiations.
Establishing a clear set of ground rules with the warring parties fosters trust between the various actors involved, increasing the potential for success in negotiating access.
It is vital to develop a framework for the methods of transportation and distribution of aid with the warring parties as early as possible. This will minimize confusion over which organizations are participating in the access negotiations and the delivery of aid, and provides the warring parties with a clear and concise plan of action.
If the evacuation of children from the affected region(s) is not coordinated effectively, then efforts are likely to be duplicated and valuable time wasted.
There is a need to recognize, that regardless of the magnitude of the evacuation, it will not be possible to remove all children from the affected region(s). Thus, it is important for more attention to be paid to those children who are left within the affected region(s) in terms of humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, by allowing host countries to take responsibility for what they have volunteered to do (taking in the children), primary concern can be given to those children left in the affected region(s).
The process of repatriation of unaccompanied children should not be rushed. It requires careful planning and time to ensure that the best interests of the children are met.
If possible, the identification of unaccompanied children before, or during, evacuation saves both time and confusion when it is time to safely repatriate them.
Have we learned from Biafra?
Unfortunately, not a great deal seems to have been learnt from the experience of Biafra. During the three subsequent decades, many of the problems faced continue in present day complex emergencies. Although some of issues faced today also emerged in Biafra, some of the lessons which the international community should have learnt have not been implemented. Several of the most recent emergencies, such as Bosnia and Rwanda, illustrate this all too clearly.

In order that the events in Biafra in the 1960s become no more than a fading memory, studies such as this, should remind us of what did happen and what was learned as a result. It is important to draw upon the experience of past conflicts as a means of assessing lessons learned.

Appendix A

List of Acronyms

ACR Americans for Children’s Relief

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

FMG Federal Military Government of Nigeria (also known as the FRG)

FRG Federal Republican Government of Nigeria

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

IDP Internally displaced persons

ISS International Social Service

IUCW International Union for Child Welfare

NGO Non-governmental organization

NRC Nigerian Red Cross

NSC National Security Council (United States)

OCHA United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

WCC World Council of Churches

WFP World Food Programme

YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association

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“Country Report: Nigerian Country Context,” ICRC worldwide consultation on the rules

of war produced by Greenberg Research, Inc. 1999.

Clevenger, James M. “The Political Economy of Hunger: Famine in Nigeria, 1967 –

1970,” Master of Social Sciences Thesis, University of Birmingham (United

Kingdom), June 1975.

Books

Holborn, Louise. “Refugees: A Problem of Our Time,” Volume II, Mentuchen, New

Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1975.

Moorehead, Caroline. “Dunant’s Dream,” New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1998.

Osaghae, Eghosa. “Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence,” Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1998.

“Keesing’s Research Report of Africa Independent: A Survey of Political Demands,”

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.

Forsythe, David P. “Humanitarian Politics,” Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1977.

Cohen, Roberta and Deng, Francis M. (eds.) “The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the

Internally Displaced,” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1998.

Interviews
Personal interview with Jim and Susan Hummer, 16 September 2000.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Nathaniel H. Goetz recently completed a graduate internship with UNHCR’s Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, during which he prepared this paper. He wishes to thank Dr. Jeff Crisp, Arafat Jamal, Sean Loughna, Ragnhild Ek, Dr. David Turton, Dr. Nicholas Van Hear, Dr. Michael McBride, Dr. David Forsythe, Dr. Robert Lloyd, Jim and Susan Hummer, and Parul Patel for their generous assistance.

[2] “United Nations Coordination of the International Humanitarian Response to the Gulf Crisis, 1990 – 92,” Geneva: United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs, June 1992, p.2.

[3] “Country Report: Nigerian Country Context,” ICRC worldwide consultation on the rules of war produced by Greenberg Research, Inc. 1999.

[4] “Inter-Tribal Riot in West Nigeria: Igbos Attacked in Ibadan Market,” The Times (London), 16 March 1967. 6/1/NIG [3-1964/3-1970]: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[5] Clevenger, James M. “The Political Economy of Hunger: Famine in Nigeria, 1967 – 1970,” Master of Social Sciences Thesis, University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), June 1975, p.80.

[6] E-mail exchange between the author and Jim and Susan Hummer, 16 September 2000.

[7] Cohen, Roberta and Deng, Francis M. (eds.) “The Forsaken People: Case Studies of the Internally Displaced,” Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1998, p.3.

[8] Osaghae, Eghosa. “Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence,” Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, p.63.

[9] Moorehead, Caroline. “Dunant’s Dream,” New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988, p.615.

[10] Moorehead 1998, pp.615-16. Kwashiorkor is a symptom caused by lack of protein, resulting in severe bloating and flesh deterioration.

[11] Moorehead 1998, p.616.

[12] “Memories of Biafra: A Photo Essay,” Dr. Philip Emeagwali.

[13] Ifekwunigwe, Dr. A.E. “A memorandum on the welfare scheme for refugee children,” 17 January 1970. Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[14] “Notes on assignment to Nigeria for the International Union for child welfare,” International Social Service, Geneva, 8 April 1970. #30-A: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[15] International Social Service, 8 April 1970.

[16] UNHCR Memorandum, 18 June 1970. #75: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[17] “An agreement made between the Federal Military Government of Nigeria and the International Union for Child Welfare,” 3 June 1970. #104: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[18] Notes of a confidential UNHCR meeting with Mr. Udo Affia, Commissioner for Health of breakaway Eastern Nigeria “Biafra,” of 9 November 1967. 6/1/NIG [3-1964/3-1970]: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[19] The only way by which UNHCR could have assisted would have been by specifically being requested to by the UN General Assembly or the Secretary-General.

[20] Moorehead 1998, p.621.

[21] Moorehead 1998, p.621.

[22] “Famine and War: Protection of the Civilian Population in Periods of Armed Conflict,” 26th International meeting of the ICRC and RC, 15 September 1995.

[23] Moorehead 1998, p.621.

[24] For a closer look at the issue of negotiated humanitarian access, see M. Cutts’ “The humanitarian operation in Bosnia, 1992 – 95: Dilemmas of negotiated humanitarian access,” UNHCR New Issues in Refugee Research, No. 8, May 1999, and A. Richardson’s “Negotiating humanitarian access in Angola: 1990 – 2000,” UNHCR New Issues in Refugee Research, No. 18, June 2000.

[25] Moorehead 1998, p.618.

[26] Moorehead 1998, p.618.

[27] Clevenger, J.M. p.84.

[28] United States Department of State cable from Edward Hamilton of the US National Security Council to the President’s Special Assistant, 12 August 1968. Foreign Relations of the United States: 1964 – 1968, Volume XXIV: Africa, Department of State, Washington, DC.

[29] Transcript, Dean Rusk Oral History Interview IV, 8 March 1970, by Paige E. Mulhollan, Internet copy, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, p.28.

[30] United States Department of State, 12 August 1968.

[31] United States Department of State, 12 August 1968.

[32] United States Department of State cable to the United States Embassy in Nigeria, 15 August 1968. Foreign Relations of the United States: 1964 – 1968, Volume XXIV: Africa, Department of State, Washington, DC.

[33] United States Department of State, 15 August 1968.

[34] Keesing’s Research Report of Africa Independent: A Survey of Political Demands, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972.

[35] Clevenger, J.M. p.86.

[36] United States Department of State Cable from Harold H. Saunders of the National Security staff to the President’s Special Assistant, 14 November 1968. Foreign Relations of the United States: 1964 – 1968, Volume XXIV: Africa, Department of State, Washington, DC.

[37] Memorandum of 24 December 1968 from Roger Morris of the National Security Council staff to the President’s Special Assistant. Foreign Relations of the United States: 1964 – 1968, Volume XXIV: Africa, Department of State, Washington, DC.

[38] Memorandum, 24 December 1968.

[39] Keesing’s 1972.

[40] Forsythe, David P. “Humanitarian Politics,” Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977, p.188.

[41] “Memories of Biafra: A Photo Essay,” Dr. Philip Emeagwali.

[42] Keesing’s 1972.

[43] Keesing’s 1972.

[44] Keesing’s 1972.

[45] The term ‘ground rules’ has been used over the past few years in Southern Sudan, where it was believed to have originally emerged. However, as evidenced by an 8 March 1970 interview with Dean Rusk, this is not the case and the term dates much earlier to Biafra.

[46] Rusk interview, 8 March 1970, p.27. It must also be noted that the United States did recognize that the leadership of Biafra was creating difficulties for getting aid in, as well. Rusk stated in the same interview, “Colonel Ojukwu, the leader of the Biafran forces, has to carry a heavy share of the responsibility for the deaths by starvation in Biafra because he too was very difficult about the ground rules for getting the food in.”

[47] Forsythe 1977, p.189.

[48] Ifekwunigwe, Dr. A.E. “A memorandum on the welfare scheme for refugee children,” 17 January 1969, Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[49] Ifekwunigwe 1969.

[50] Ifekwunigwe 1969.

[51] UNHCR Note to the file of 6 August 1970, #104-A: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[52] Memorandum from the Federal Government of Nigeria to the High Commissioner, June 1970, Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[53] Ibid.

[54] Letter from the Embassy of Nigeria (sender’s name illegible) to Mrs. Robin Jordan, Chairperson of Americans for Children’s Relief, 28 April 1970, Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives. The article linked Jordan to Bourban Parma, temporarily affecting the relationship between Americans for Children’s Relief and the Nigerian Federal Government.

[55] See “Princess Tearfully Tells of Her 15 Months Helping Children in Biafra,” New York Enquirer, 3 May 1970, Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[56] Confidential UNHCR Interoffice Memorandum of 14 May 1970, #53: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[57] Holborn, Louise. “Refugees: A Problem of Our Time,” Volume II, Mentuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1975, p.1392.

[58] UNHCR Memorandum of 10 March 1970, #10: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[59] UNHCR Outgoing Cable of 5 May 1970, #18-A: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[60] UNHCR Incoming Cable of 21 May 1970, #57-A: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[61] “Data available on Nigerian children outside their homeland,” UNHCR memorandum of 9 June 1970, #69: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[62] UNHCR Incoming Cable of 27 June 1970, #25: Unit 222: Fonds 11: Records of the Central Registry, Sub-Fonds 1: Classified Subject Files: 1951 – 1970, UNHCR Archives.

[63] Holborn, p.1392.

[64] Addendum to Report to General Assembly (XXV), Supplement Number 12-A (A/8012/Add.1), p.25 (also cited in Holborn 1975).

[65] P. Rel. REF/555, 10 February 1971 (from Holborn 1975).

[66] Holborn, p.1393.

An Exchange on Biafra

2007-12-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

The New York Review of Books

Volume 14, Number 8 · April 23, 1970

By Sara S. Berry, George A. Elbert, Norman Thomas Uphoff, Reply by Stanley Diamond

To the Editors:

Stanley Diamond's article, "Who Killed Biafra?" (NYR, February 26) sets out to rescue us from the propaganda of governments seeking to justify their roles in the conflict. His discussion of the considerations which moved other nations to support one side or the other is plausible and informative, but sheds little light on the course of events in Nigeria and Biafra themselves. I have no reason to question Diamond's conclusion that Biafra was not "a puppet of reactionary forces," or the fact that the unequal supply of foreign arms and assistance to the belligerents was crucial to the outcome of the war. (Nor is it startling to learn that foreign powers supported one side or the other only insofar as they felt it would be in their own interests to do so; it hardly seems necessary to demonstrate that nations' policies toward one another are not predicated on altruism.) I do think, however, that to represent the Nigerian war as merely the product of external manipulation, past and present, is highly misleading.

Diamond does devote quite a bit of space to developments in Nigeria itself, but his discussion of them contains serious omissions. One of the fundamental problems which has plagued the peoples of Nigeria for a long time is that of developing a political structure which is responsive to the needs of an ethnically diverse population, without being subservient to the interests of any one cultural or linguistic group. By and large, Diamond dodges this issue, both in his treatment of Biafra since 1967, and in his historical analysis of the Ibos' role in developing Nigerian nationalism.

…Apart from a brief reference to "culturally related peoples," [Diamond] ignores the non-Ibo residents of Eastern Nigeria. In making this omission, Diamond passes up an excellent opportunity to clarify a complex and often obscure situation—namely, the position and involvement of non-Ibo peoples in Biafra, and how their role developed during the war—and contents himself instead with adding to the cloud of emotional prose which surrounded the whole conflict from its inception. "The Biafrans were struggling to protect a nation in which the culture of the primitive past made itself felt and yet had become part of the modern experience," etc. (p. 26)

Diamond makes frequent use of the word "primitive" in his depiction of the history of Ibo relations with the British and the rest of Nigeria.

…the primitive democracies which criss-crossed the primarily Ibo-speaking East resisted [British] domination. [p. 19]
In spite of the slave and palm oil trades, the local communities in the forests of Eastern Nigeria were able to maintain a substantially primitive character. [p. 19]
It should be clear, then, that the Ibos were evolving directly from a "primitive" society to a modern nationality without passing through any significant archaic phase, and thereby conceived the modern Nigerian nation as one that should be both universal and egalitarian. [p. 21]
One sensed, under the social surface [of Biafra] the primitive pulse of Ibo adaptability. [p. 22]
In other words, Diamond seems to conceive of the modern Ibo as a sort of national Minerva springing full-blown from the head of her aboriginal parent; the fact that her passage was unsullied by contact with various forms of "archaic," hierarchical social organization insures the purity of her present political wisdom.

Shades of the Noble Savage? I'm afraid so. Diamond does not do the Ibo the familiar disservice of expecting them to evolve in our own political image; he goes one step further and traces their "emergence" in terms of the romantic images of Western political utopianism. This makes for inspiring reading, but sheds little light on the realities of Nigerian or Biafran life. For example, Diamond dwells on the Ibos' "attempts at self-validation and self-improvement" which led them rapidly to acquire Western education and to settle "as technicians, professionals, traders, and civil servants among a people [sic] of different culture and inferior formal education…." (p. 20) He also emphasizes their role as "the primary architects of Nigerian freedom…[whose] conception was that of an independent, democratic, economically sovereign, unitary state." (p. 20) But he never bothers to develop one obvious implication of these arguments—namely, that had the Ibo succeeded in creating a unitary Nigerian state, they would have controlled it, ipso facto. Were the "routinely corrupt and nepotic Northern hierarchy" the only people in Nigeria who objected to this prospect? The events of 1966 suggest not, just as the ready acceptance by many non-Ibo-speaking people in the Southeast and Rivers States of an early return to Nigerian control suggests that they had mixed feelings concerning their prospects in a predominantly Ibo Biafra.

Diamond criticizes those who would argue that Biafra's secession simply pointed the way to debilitating "Balkanization" of the African continent, and assures us that the Biafrans were "nation-builders" and "pan-Africanists," not "Balkanizers." But it is not clear from Diamond's discussion in what way Ibo nationalism differs from the familiar notion of self-determination, or how Ibo self-determination was to be reconciled with the self-determining impulses of other peoples, either in Biafra or in a unitary Nigeria. He fails to show why, in a Biafran or Nigerian or African context, self-determination should not be expected to lead to Balkanization, just as he does not explain how "nationalism" is the same thing as "pan-Africanism." Thus, Diamond's essay is unconvincing, both as an analysis of the internal problems of Nigeria and Biafra, and as a prescription for African political development.

Sara S. Berry

Bloomington, Indiana

To the Editors:

…History is not made in a day. The issues which appear at a given moment to be matters of life and death are seen in perspective to be ones which time itself heals. Had the Biafrans remained quiet they would undoubtedly have suffered some forms of oppression but certainly nothing like the total tragedy which occurred. They could have recovered their strength and, if they are the kind of people Mr. Diamond claims they are [NYR, February 26], would through "self-improvement" have increased their influence again within a few years. Perhaps on a second try they could have achieved their objectives by diplomacy instead of force….

George A. Elbert

New York City

To the Editors:

…I share Mr. Diamond's admiration of the Ibos as a people. Their energy and talents, however, do not lead me to ignore the needs and rights of the 40 percent minority in Eastern Nigeria who did not want to be part of Biafra. The Efiks, Ijaws, Ibibios, Annangs, Kalabaris, Ogojas and others had been taken advantage of by their Ibo neighbors for decades. These minority tribes had asked repeatedly for independence from the Ibos since the 1950s.

The minority people within the East preferred to be free of Ibo domination by having states of their own as promised by the Federal government. But the Biafran leadership denied them the same right it claimed for itself vis-à-vis the rest of Nigeria, the right of self-determination and protection from victimization….

[Diamond] first exalts the Ibo people, with some justification, and then exalts Biafra, without considering that the two were not identical. True, there were minority persons within the Biafran leadership, but these were mostly "co-opted" (bought off) persons regarded as quislings by their own people.

Within the East, prior to secession and afterwards, there was no free expression of opinion by the minority groups, and Biafra was created without any democratic consultation of the minorities. Hand-picked "representatives" voted for secession or were locked up in Enugu. After the Biafran army had taken hundreds of hostages to its shrinking enclave it dared to call for a plebiscite in the victimized areas.

Reports of Biafran terror and intimidation to ensure "support" from non-Ibo areas never reached the American public because of the press's quick identification of the Ibos/Biafrans as the "underdog." I have missionary reports of burnings of villages (as many as 400 homes at a time), mass graves (sixty men, women and children buried alive at Ndiya), and massacre of non-Ibo civilians by Biafran forces. But these things made the Biafrans look more like Nazis than Jews and conflicted with our preconceptions about the situation. They were therefore given no publicity.

For Ibo secession (planned already in mid-July, 1966) to succeed, it needed to annex the territory of neighboring tribes and in particular to have the oil resources and facilities of Port Harcourt in Ijaw territory. I find in my estimation of the Ibos as a people no justification for the Lebensraum philosophy of the Biafra leadership or of the Anschluss of neighboring territory and people.

An indication of the antipathy felt by "fellow Biafrans" toward Ibo overlordship before and especially during secession was the terrible killing of Ibos in non-Ibo areas once the Biafran army was forced to retreat. Ironically, it was the Federal army which protected Ibo civilians from reprisals of their non-Ibo neighbors once the army had gained control of the areas. But this was never reported.

Non-Ibos objected to secession because they feared being "second class citizens" in an Ibo-majority Biafra. Mr. Diamond's article mutely confirms this objection. Ijaws, Efiks, Ibibios and other non-Ibos are as invisible in his reporting of Biafra as American blacks were in most reporting of the US until only recently….

Norman Thomas Uphoff

Department of Political Science

University of California

Berkeley

Stanley Diamond replies:
My critics take me to task for not doing what I did not propose to do. My intent was to locate the Biafran tragedy within the broadest possible historical and international context; in this light, the points they make (which I am well aware of and which I have dealt with elsewhere) are minor, misleading, and seriously misconceived.

Sara Berry's insouciance about the role of the Great Powers in the Nigerian civil war betrays a lack of subtlety. It is no longer a question of good old-fashioned nineteenth-century conflicting interests but of a single converging interest. Miss Berry does not seem to realize that the peoples of Nigeria and Biafra were subject to exquisitely detailed imperial power politics, with tragic implications for the whole of the third world. The victimization of Biafra, as Jean-Paul Sartre put it, "totalizes" this assault, and represents the ultimate phase of colonial manipulation.

Moreover, as commentators of such divergent views as Richard Sklar and Auberon Waugh have pointed out, it is unlikely that the war would have been declared or, if declared, that it would have followed its tragic course, had the interests of the Big Powers not been decisive. In so critical an area as Nigeria, which attained formal independence as recently as 1960, imperial and internal dynamics can hardly be divorced from each other.

Miss Berry seems equally cynical about my analysis of the social character of the Ibo-speaking people, although it is not entirely clear whether she puts into question my analysis or their character. In support of my argument, I quoted four experienced scholars but could have quoted forty, both Nigerian and foreign. How else can one understand the differential behavior of groups of people except by engaging in cultural and historical analysis? And that means linking the past to the present in both continuity and discontinuity. I fail to see that the social character of the Ibo—the result of continuities in their underlying social system, developing ecological factors, and modern cultural influences—reflects "romantic images of western political utopianism."

Nor am I sure what my sophisticated critic means by "western political utopianism," but I suspect she refers to the tradition evolving from Rousseau through Marx. May I suggest to her, as an aside, that that tradition has been a revolutionary force of world-wide dimension. Rousseau did not naïvely believe in the possibility of a return to the largely hypothetical state of the "Noble Savage." Like Marx, Engels, and Morgan after him, he endeavored to understand the principles of primitive organization in necessary counterpoint to class-structured civilizations, both archaic and modern. It is obvious that Miss Berry has not grasped the revolutionary implications of Rousseau's insight, although leaders throughout the third world have.

She also fails to understand that an authentic pan-Africanism must be based upon the legitimate national aspirations of voluntarily associated peoples. Pan-Africanism can no more emerge from the colonially fixed cultural and geographical frontiers of Black Africa than could a united Nigeria, as we have learned. Like pan-Africanism, self-determination is not a mechanical principle indiscriminately applicable to all groups whatever their social context, nor can it be dismissed as just a "familiar notion," for it is a complex historical process, which is only now beginning to make itself evident, against the interests of the imperial powers and their African clients.

I have no difficulty in reconciling the prewar universalistic Ibo striving with the authenticity of their belief in a unitary state. The Ibo-speaking people were prepared to adopt the larger Nigerian identity, if the larger identity had proved workable. It is mischievous and inherently contradictory to confuse their readiness to become Nigerian with a "tribalistic" desire to dominate Nigeria. Such distortion is only one step away from rationalization for slaughter. As Miss Berry perhaps knows, when the Ibo and other Easterners were driven back to their homeland, they surrendered the notion of a united Nigeria and called for a loose federation, "until the wounds were healed." But this desire for what amounted to confederation, which had been the basic sense of the Aburi agreements reached early in 1967, was unilaterally abrogated by the central government; and that became a proximate cause of secession.

However, my correspondents consider most important the position of minority peoples in Biafra, an issue which they charge me with avoiding. It is relevant to note that Julius Nyerere, the President of multi-ethnic Tanzania, circulated a brilliant and comprehensive memorandum analyzing the over-all Nigeria-Biafra crisis at the September 1969 meeting of the O.A.U., in which he did not mention the Biafran minorities at all. One can hardly charge this humane statesman with either ignorance or callousness. We can only conclude that Nyerere felt that their situation accorded with his brief for Biafran self-determination. Similarly, my stress on the Ibo (who made up between 63 and 68 percent of the Biafran population) acknowledges historical reality, without prejudicial intent.

The fundamentals of the minority situation are as follows:

1. The peoples of Eastern Nigeria have been intricately interrelated, culturally, socially, and economically, for centuries: and they traditionally occupied contiguous areas. Indigenous Eastern Nigeria could be defined as an ethnological "culture area."

2. Since the nineteenth century in particular, migration, intermarriage, internal trade networks, and bilingualism have further blurred ethnic distinctions. Moreover, in the modern period, Easterners have been subject to similar modes of acculturation.

3. Indeed, the Willink Minorities Commission, appointed by the British government in 1958, prior to independence, in order to determine the status of minorities throughout the federation, concluded that there was no adequate basis for the formation of new political units within the Eastern region.

4. It is not surprising, therefore, that the massacres in the North victimized all Easterners—Ibo, Efik, Ibibio, Annang, Ijaw, and others. Perhaps one third of the 30,000 killed were members of the minority groups. As indicated in my article, Western, non-Ibo-speaking Nigerians were not molested. This lack of discrimination with reference to Easterners was also evident in the behavior of federal soldiers in occupied minority areas such as Bonny, and in the bombing of such areas.

5. In the Eastern region of Nigeria, there had been no record of violence directed by the majority against minority groups.

6. The 300-member Consultative Assembly of Eastern Nigeria and the Council of Elders and Chiefs voted unanimously for secession. These bodies were representative of the twenty provinces into which Eastern Nigeria, later transforming itself into the republic of Biafra, had been divided.

7. Eight of the provinces comprised minority areas; their chief administrators were members of the various minority groups. The system was designed for an extensive decentralization of powers in accordance with local custom, while securing national support in response to local needs. One purpose was to achieve even development throughout the nation, since uneven distribution of amenities (primarily because of physical isolation) had been a cause of local resentment in the former Eastern Region.

8. Maintaining civil order never became a problem in Biafra, despite the traumatic effects of bombing, hunger, and the largescale displacement of people. As K. W. J. Post, the respected expatriate scholar, who cannot be accused of pro-Ibo bias, pointed out (January 26, 1968, International Affairs), "…Even with the fall of Enugu, there were no widespread uprisings by the minorities against General Ojukwu, although he would hardly have had sufficient troops to fight the war and hold down five million people." (Indeed, in his article Post does not state nor otherwise imply that there were any such uprisings.)

Moreover, civil decrees, such as the calling in of the old Nigerian currency (which Lagos had nullified in January 1968) in return for "mere official receipts" were executed without disturbance. "If there were any considerable body of responsible opinion in Biafra against [the Regime], it could not have failed to gain publicity long before the present stage [Nov. 1968]." (Page 26 in document mentioned under #11.)

The unprecedented mingling of all groups and the settling of many minority peoples in the Ibo heartland during the course of the war was simply taken for granted. Nonetheless, the Biafran regime was unreservedly committed to plebiscites in any disputed areas within Biafra, or on the borders (as I wrote in my article), so that the people involved could determine their allegiance. It was proposed that these plebiscites be conducted under international (UN or O.A.U.) supervision, and with adequate safeguard against punitive retaliation.

9. The federal government rejected the plebiscite proposal, obviously because it implied the recognition of Biafra and the substitution of a democratic vote for force of arms. Had the plebiscites been held, a cease-fire would have had to be declared, neutral observers would have been on the scene, and the secession would have been revealed as a people's movement.

10. Instead, the federal government stuck to its unilateral division of the Eastern Region into three states as part of the federation-wide twelve-state proclamation of late May 1967,[1] which had been an immediate cause of secession. The division of the East was done by administrative fiat and was clearly directed against the Ibo-speaking peoples of the Biafra heartland.[2] "This was obviously," as K. W. J. Post has written, "an attempt to set the minorities in the East against the Ibo, and was rejected by the new Biafra." For example, the booming city of Port Harcourt (in recent years an oil refinery center), created by the Ibo, who made up the great majority of the population, and whose prosperity was due to Ibo enterprise and labor, [3] was awarded to the Rivers State. One of the rationalizations seemed to be that Port Harcourt had been built on land traditionally claimed by the Ikwerre, who are an Ibo-speaking people, but are not Ibo proper.

It should be noted, however, that the Ibo had been the largest population bloc in the Rivers area. Moreover, the Ogoni people, who inhabit the oil-bearing country between Port Harcourt and Opobo, were strongly pro-Biafran, as were the Ibo-speaking Opobos themselves. The boundary drawn by the federal government between the Rivers and the other two states carefully placed almost all the producing oil wells on the Rivers side. This meant that the Efik, Ibibio, and Annang of the Southeast State would derive no greater direct benefit from that particular reserve than would the Ibo of the East Central State. Such gerrymandering with national consciousness and national resources is hardly likely to prove successful in the long run.

11. In an authoritative and detailed memorandum on the background, cause, and consequences of the Nigerian civil war issued in November 1968 by more than sixty British subjects, including Sir Robert Stapledon, the last British governor of the Eastern Region (1959-60), it was concluded that of the 37 percent of the population which they estimated that the minority group represented in Biafra, only 10 percent would favor continued association with the federal government. The signatories of this widely circulated, but unpublished document, had spent a great part of their lives working in Eastern Nigeria (collectively from 1910 to 1968) as civil servants, missionaries, teachers, anthropologists, and in other capacities.[4]

Their sober cry of conscience, which charged the Nigerian government (and the British Parliament) with evading the Biafran plebiscite proposal, was heard only after the war had continued for sixteen months, and because the resolve of the Biafrans had become clearly evident, along with the "terrible loss of life and destruction of property." The signatories who took pains to indicate that they were not expressing the "Biafran viewpoint" concluded on the issue of plebiscites:

Finally the signatories wish to emphasize that no solution, in their view, will be complete unless it provides for the holding of a plebiscite throughout the area of the former Eastern Region to determine the wishes of the people as to their future status. No reasonable person can deny that there is the strongest prima facie evidence to indicate that a large majority of the population have been profoundly alienated by the policies and actions of the federal government, and the reluctance of that government to agree to any form of plebiscite is in itself further evidence of the fact. The argument that a plebiscite would have been an inducement to disaffection and secession might have been maintained a year or two ago, but by the present stage, after two years of crisis, and a further 16 months of the most desperate civil war, such arguments have lost all plausibility.
12. The foregoing does not mean that there had been no honest sentiment—along with the opportunistic manipulation by northern and western political interests—for separate states expressed by certain minority representatives within the Eastern region of Nigeria during the first republic. But it is necessary to view this in the perspective of subsequent events, and also to ask the question, "what could those minority spokesmen who favored separate states have gained within the federation which their people could not have developed further in Biafra?" As K. W. J. Post put it, "…certainly their [the minorities] bargaining power would be greater as part of the smaller unit [Biafra], of some five million of them out of a total population of about 14 million."[5] As indicated, the Biafran provincial system, negotiated with the localities, was designed to be sensitive to local custom and demand in Ibo, mixed, and minority sectors.

Certainly no one can rationally claim that every "tribal" or linguistic minority must become a politically independent nation, in Nigeria or elsewhere. The conditions for such political sovereignty (beyond the level of states or provinces) are: the natural association of peoples with a society that is defining itself as a nation; economic viability and interrelatedness; freedom for local growth; and a large majority dedicated to the struggle for political self-determination. Biafra met these conditions.

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Mr. Elbert has no right to make his curious, if well-intentioned, statement that the Biafrans should have suffered "some forms of oppression" in the hope of reaching their "objectives by diplomacy in the future." The people who were to call themselves Biafrans had undergone every conceivable risk and penalty, and had made their complement of political mistakes, in the effort to achieve: 1) a unitary Nigeria; 2) a loose federation; and 3) in desperation, secession. Mr. Elbert should know that Colonel Ojukwu, as Governor of the Eastern Region, had advised his compatriots to return to the North after the initial pogrom and flight (summer 1966) in the vain hope of national reconciliation. The bloodiest pogrom was to occur the following September.

Having outlined the minority situation, I see no good reason for responding to the particular distortions and lurid allegations in Mr. Uphoff's letter. I doubt whether the Ibo-speaking people appreciate his praise. He confuses the victim with the aggressor, insinuates that the victim, in spite of his remarkable qualities, or perhaps because of them, deserved his fate. We have heard this sort of thing before. Even now correspondents in Hamburg inform me that Ojukwu is being compared to Hitler in the West German press (the Nigerian Regime drew the same analogy many months ago), and the Ibo are said to have deserved what they got.[6] These paranoid rationalizations are part of the pathology of our time.

Direct reports from the former Biafran enclave (East Central State) indicate the following:

1) No systematic distribution of food and relief supplies is taking place; indeed no adequate effort is being made. This was already evident by the end of January. On the 24th the London Observer had reported that only eighty food distribution centers remained in the enclave; before the surrender there had been 3,000. David Taylor, an America expert quoted in Les Temps Modernes (Feb. 1970), estimated that 9,000 such centers were necessary to reach the population adequately.

2) Biafran currency has not been converted, nor is it accepted as legal tender. This works a particular hardship on the majority of impoverished peasants who must buy seed yams for the current growing season. A new cycle of hunger and dependency seems to have begun.

3) The more than 60,000 federal troops are billeted in secondary schools and private homes throughout the former Biafran enclave. Most if not all secondary schools are so occupied, prolonging the educational crisis.

4) Foreign correspondents are barred from Eastern Nigeria. Dispatches filed from Lagos on the situation in former Biafra are confused and contradictory.

The general policy seems to be one of attrition and isolation of the Ibo-speaking peoples in particular, with the promise of reward being held out for certain minority groups.

Notes
[1] "The history of Nigeria over the last twenty years does not suggest that the twelve-state pattern is likely to prove a much more satisfactory solution than Ironsi's decree of unification; if the latter precipitated tribal rivalries by the premature amalgamation of three major groups with totally different ideals and ways of life, the former seems to be in risk of foundering because it has tried to split a large and powerful group which is still essentially a unit and thinks of itself as such. Any further subdivision into a still larger number of states would merely serve to increase this risk; the smaller the states become, the less would be their effective power as entities, the more important, accordingly, would be the question of power at the center, and the more openly and forcefully would the major political and ethnic groups—Hausa-Fulani, Ibo, and Yoruba—make themselves felt as the only effective units with any true and lasting identity in the complex patchwork of Nigeria." (Page 22 in document listed under #11.)

Post states further that with the failure of Biafran secession, "…a restoration of the old spoils system is certainly on the cards. Similarly the northern leaders may emerge again, heading an axis of the six new states [in the north]; the old NPC [Northern Peoples' Congress] was always something of a coalition of local interests and there is no reason why this should not emerge again under some of the old leaders, probably those from Kano and Bornu."
[2] Dr. E. C. Schwartzenbach wrote in the Swiss Review of Africa (February 1968), on the basis of an interview with a Nigerian Commissioner, whom he described as "one of the most impressive of the present military regime in Lagos":

"The [Nigerian] war aim and solution…of the entire problem was to discriminate against the Ibos in the future in their own interest. Such discrimination would include above all the detachment of those oil-rich territories in the Eastern Region which were not inhabited by them at the beginning of the colonial period, on the lines of the projected twelve-state plan. In addition, the Ibos' movement would be restricted, to prevent their renewed penetration into the other parts of the country. Leaving them any access to the sea, the Commissioner declared, was quite out of the question."
[3] The Ibo, it should be noted, were "over-represented" throughout prewar Nigeria as skilled and semiskilled laborers, trade-unionists, and radicals.

[4] This document was distributed as an ad hoc statement by Peter L. Wood, Glebe House, Stockden, Shipnal, Shropshire.

[5] Post does not mean to imply that the minorities ever acted en bloc. Intra-minority tensions (e.g., Annang vs. Ibibio, or among Ijaw subgroups) certainly existed. And attitudes toward the Ibo proper also ranged from trust to suspicion. But these feelings were not of national consequence. They were the result of social circumstances, such as the differential distribution of scholarships, which were generated in the old Nigerian Federation, and which the Biafrans were determined to rectify.

[6] In the British memo quoted above, it is stated: "There can be no reasonable doubt that the massacre in the North, so concentrated and devastating in its effects, was an organized affair and that its purpose was to drive the Easterners out of the North…. The situation of the Easterners had become similar in many respects to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany; hated by the people they lived among, they were a target for every accusation, and provided a ready scapegoat for all inadequacies and complaints. The critics of the Easterners, of the Ibos in particular, attribute to them many faults; they have been called aggressive (ambitious and energetic, say the defenders), money-loving (thrifty), unscrupulous in grabbing advantages (quick to realize the value of education), and so on.

Each medal has its reverse. But, whatever the verdict, there can be no conceivable justification for what happened to the Ibos in the North in 1966. No objective consideration of their case can avoid the fact that, as rational and sentient human beings, they were made to feel themselves rejected by the most brutal possible means from the North and from Nigeria as a whole. The irony for Biafra was to be that, having seen her people driven out by the rest of Nigeria and hunted back to their homeland, she found Nigeria at war with her to preserve the integrity of a Federation where her people could no longer live." (pp. 15-16.)

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The Secret Furies

2007-12-07T00:12:00.000-08:00

Time Friday, June 10, 1966

In January, when the army overthrew Nigeria's government in a blaze of gunfire, all eyes turned instinctively to the fearsome, feudal Moslem tribes that rule the northern two-thirds of the land. Led by a group of officers from the non-Moslem Ibo tribe in the South, the coup had broken the Northerners' long political hold over Nigeria. It had also taken the lives of the nation's two most prominent Northerners: Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and the revered Sardauna of Sokoto, a portly potentate who was both political and spiritual leader of 12,500,000 Nigerian Moslems. Would the North, whose ferocious horsemen warriors were once the terror of all Nigeria, accept its sudden loss?

For a while, the answer seemed to be yes. Retiring to their homes and mosques, the Moslems prayed quietly for the Sardauna and told one another he was still alive in Mecca. There were no rebellious mobs in the streets, no cries for a war of holy vengeance. Even when the military government began trimming away their regional authority, the Northerners kept their silence. But last week all their secret, pent-up furies finally exploded.

Set off by rumors that troops had fired tear gas into a mosque, Moslem mobs went on a rampage throughout the North, wielding knives, swords, spears and poisoned arrows and screaming for aware (partition). As the violence spread, it took on the shape of an Ibo pogrom. Rioters hunted down Ibo settlers, set fire to such Ibo-owned structures as Zaria's We We Hotel, descended on the sabon gari (strangers' quarter), the principal Ibo section in Kano. By the time police finally restored order at week's end, the known death toll was 115, while countless others had probably been secretly buried by their families.

All told, it was one of the North's worst outbreaks of violence in centuries of Moslem rule, and it revived all the long-held fears that Nigeria, Africa's most populous land (pop: 56 million), was doomed to either civil war or partition. Already, Ibos were fleeing the North by the thousands. And when the region's military governor, a widely respected Moslem officer, called in the North's leading sultans and emirs to plead for peace, they used the occasion to draw up a list of grievances and demands, agreed to hold their subjects in rein only if the government in Lagos quickly promised compliance.

Colonial Legacy, Elite Dissension and the Making of Genocide: The Story of Biafra

2007-12-06T23:52:00.000-08:00

By Sam Amadi

Published on: Jan 10, 2007

Printable Version“The Nigeria civil war broke out on 6 July 1967. The war was the culmination of an uneasy peace and stability that had plagued the nation since independence in 1960. This situation had its genesis in the geography, culture and demography of Nigeria.”
– Major Abubakar A Atofarati1

Introduction

Between 1964 and 1970, the Ibos of eastern Nigeria were victims of mass violence. The violence occurred in two phases, first as a result of planned murderous assault by the Nigerian ruling elites, mainly of Hausa-Fulani ethnic origin in peacetime, and later in a full-blown civil war between Nigeria and Biafra. Biafra was an enclave that the Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, General Odumegwu Ojukwu, carved out and declared a sovereign state at the height of the genocidal attack against the Igbo. Ibos were the overwhelming majority in the new Biafran state. They shared the state with minority ethnic groups in Eastern Nigeria. Ojukwu declared Biafra as Governor of Eastern Nigeria, not necessarily as the representative of the Eastern minorities.

The “genocide” in Nigeria raises a number of questions. Did the government intend to wipe out the Ibos as suggested by the statements of some of the war generals, or to politically confine the Ibos to a position of inferiority and subordination as later events indicate? If the intention was to wipe out the Ibos, why did the Nigerian army stop short of accomplishing the goal immediately after the secessionists surrendered, when it had the upper hand? As I argue later, the plausible interpretation of these complex and conflicting data is that the political elites intended to politically subjugate the Igbo and the genocidal dimension arises from the psychological orientation of the politics of Igbo-phobia.2

Patterns of Violence

Violence against Ibos occurred in phases. Significant “group-targeted” violence began as early as 1945, but the major and sustained phases began in 1966. About 30,000 Ibos, mostly civilians, were killed in three waves of genocidal attacks between May 29 and September 29, 1966. The killings were indiscriminate except that victims were Ibos, and they were killed for being Ibos. The killings were not outcomes of mob actions or riots. Evidence from survivors, victims and observers of the genocides prove that the various acts of violence against the Igbos were deliberated and coordinated by highly placed northern politicians with the connivance of some officers of the federal government.

The instigation for violence against Ibos in 1966 derived from various incitements by government functionaries who complained bitterly about Ibo dominance of commerce in the north. This complaint was extended to mean the existence of an Igbo conspiracy to become the new rulers of independent Nigeria.

The pattern of violence during the pogroms (May 29, July 29 and September 29, 1966) was similar to the attack against the Ibos during the civil war that would last for more than 3 years, between July 1967 and January 1970. Although official hostilities were declared between the federal and Biafran side, the conduct of the war by the federal troops in some instances offended the laws of war and invoked images of the pre-war violence against the Ibo. Even when Biafran strongholds were overrun by the federal side and there were no effective resistances, the genocidal dimensions of the war continued to manifest. Several foreign and local journalists reported cruel attacks on Ibos who were neither belligerents or in the way of battle.

There are many documented testimonies of victims and observers about the gross cruelty and barbarism of the Nigerian soldiers meted on Igbos civilians even after the surrender of Biafran rebel soldiers, acts that raised the question of a genocidal motivation. At least that was the conclusion of the Investigators of the International Commission of Jurists led by Dr. Mensah of Ghana. According to Dr. Mensah he received evidence from two witnesses about mass graves where dead, sick and wounded Biafrans were buried alive with some sucklings and “the cries and wailing of the sick, the wounded and the babies could be heard from a long distance away.” In this testimony, it was also mentioned that, when these mass graves had been covered, the Federal soldiers danced native war dances over them. Dr Mensa concluded that “I am of the opinion that in many of these cases cited to me hatred of the Biafrans (mainly Igbos) and a wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor.” 3

There is no doubt from the evidence of international and local observers of the pogroms of 1966 and the three year civil war that Biafran civilians, especially Ibos, were victims of gross cruelty reminiscent of the Jewish genocide. There is sufficient evidence that the masterminds of these attacks were motivated, as Dr. Mensah put it in the ICJ Report, by a “wish to exterminate” the Ibos. But how does this motivation square up with the policy and politics of the war? Is it really the fact that other ethnic groups, especially the Hausa-Fulani in northern Nigeria, wanted the Ibos completely wiped out or driven out of Nigeria?

The difficulty in understanding the genocidal behavior derives mainly from the nature of the civil war: how to reconcile the genocidal intent with the determination to keep Biafrans in Nigeria? It will appear that rather than other Nigerian ethnic groups wanting the Igbo outside the federation, they wanted them inside. Given that genocide usually involves determination to drive the victimized ethnic or religious group out of the territorial space, how do we understand the sort of genocide that wants the victims inside rather than outside?

The Political Economy of Escalation: History, Institutions, and Leadership
“Northerners” and “Southerners”

The ordinary fact of colonialism, as heinous and ruinous as it was, does not adequately explain the tragic direction Nigerian politics took after independence. But the colonial legacy, in which colonialists conceived and birthed the idea of Nigeria to serve largely imperial interests, cannot be overstressed. The Nigerian erudite political thinker and one of the foremost nationalists, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, has described the idea of Nigeria as a “geographical expression.” The various ethnic nations bounded together into the Niger-area by her majesty servants existed as a nation only in name.

The basic characteristic of British colonialism was that it assumed a “single model of customary authority in precolonial Africa…authority was considered an attribute of a personal despotism.”4 Unlike French colonialists who strived to create French citizens out of Africans, the British retained Nigerians in their ethnic constitutions. But the worst is that British administrative policies created the binaries of citizens and subject and of native and settler.

This bifurcation of citizenship manifested physically in the ghettoization of Nigerians in places outside their so-called states of origin. In the case of northern Nigeria, there developed many “Sabon Gari” (strangers’ quarters) in such major cities as Kano and Jos. The incessant incidences of ethnic attacks, often directed against the Ibos, could be explained by this ghettoization and the subsequent complex of “a stranger in his country.” The British colonial system relied on manpower and resources from the south to run the north. This opened the way for immigration to northern Nigeria. But the problem remained: how to maintain northern cultural exceptionalism as well as allow for needed economic interdependence? The result of the tension was a nation that was administratively interdependent but culturally and politically differentiated. The colonial governor’s wide-ranging powers were applied to demographically segregate Nigerians who managed to migrate to northern Nigeria in spite of dissuasion. Major cities in the north were organized around three categories: the walled city reserved for indigenous population; Tudun Wada housing non-indigenous northerners; and Sabon Gari for southerners.5

The politics of “northerners” and “southerners” beclouds the realities of deeper ethnic and cultural diversities and, similarly, deep interrelatedness.6 The politics of indigene and stranger breeds a psychology of envy and resentment. The Ibos were special butts of resentment and envy. Because of economic considerations, Ibos were the most eager to leave their native land in search of “white man” jobs in northern Nigeria. Many of them became successful merchants living in “Sabon Garis.” These pressures created an unhealthy competition in these cities between generally “northerners” and “southerners,” and in most cases, specifically between the Ibos and the indigenous ethnic groups.

Failure of the Rule of Law Institutions

As a result of minority disquiet, the colonial government commissioned a study of minority questions preparatory to independence, “The Willink Commission.” It toured Nigeria and elicited ideas on the constitutional fundamentals of post-colonial Nigeria that could guarantee peace among the many ethnic groups. The commission rejected the demand for creation of more regions for the minorities, and instead recommended the entrenchment of fundamental human rights in the independent constitution as a protection for minorities.7 Thus began Nigeria’s constitutional democracy. In 1960, a bill of rights was entrenched in the independence constitution, and has remained a permanent fixture in Nigeria’s many truncated, voided and breached constitutions.

The bill of rights guaranteed equality under the law and prohibited discriminatory treatment based on gender, membership or other affiliations with a religious or ethnic group. The problem was that whereas the constitution proclaimed citizenship rights for every Nigerian the colonial laws that regionalized and ethnicized access to privileges and rights remained effective. More importantly, political leaders did not take seriously the responsibility to protect those rights when they were breached in respect of any Nigerian. In May 1966, after the gruesome attack against Ibos, the Aguiyi Ironsi regime did nothing to ensure that those who fomented the crisis and directed violence against Ibos were prosecuted. Little wonder that the same genocidal attack was launched against the Ibos again on July 29, 1966.

The idea of common citizenship is the resource which keeps multiethnic states together. Where this idea is abandoned in practice, the empty platitudes of human rights or the institutions of the rule of law are incapable of protecting citizens from being victims. Hannah Arendt was right to have insisted on civil rights above human rights. For where the guarantees of citizenship are feeble or absent, as in Nigeria, common humanity means nothing; and the worst can be done against fellow citizens.8

The Failure of Leadership: Elite Dissension

Individual leadership flaws contributed both to the dynamics of conflict in Nigeria and the actual outbreak of violence. The personality conflict between Ojukwu and Gowon undermined efforts to peacefully settle the crisis that snow-balled into a war. Negotiations for the settlement of the secession crisis and the regaining of Ibo confidence in the idea of one nation fell through because neither Ojukwu nor Gowon could abandon hard positions.

General Gowon and his cabinet focused more on breaking the political power of the Ibos of Eastern Nigeria instead of reassuring and compensating them for the grievous wrong suffered in a year-long massacre. In the face of the threats of chaos and disintegration, these leaders could not rise to the requirements of forthrightness and selflessness. However, based on official statements, we can give the benefit of doubt to Gowon and conclude that in spite of brutality and violence against civilians, acts that contravened the Geneva Conventions, the policy for taking arms against Biafra was to crush Ojukwu’s rebellion and maintain the federation. But this conclusion has to explain such egregious violence against ordinary Ibos and statements by Nigeria war commanders like Benjamin Adekunle, a.k.a. “Black Scorpion,” that “I want to see no Red Cross, no Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no Pope, no missionary and no UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Ibo from having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves and when our troops march into the center of Ibo territory, we shoot at everything even at things that do not move…”9 Is such statement part of the conduct of a dirty war or does it evince a “motivation” to genocide? At a minimum, we can argue that there was strong hatred and demonization of the Ibos, which made such cruelty and gory killing of civilians conceivable and tolerable, even in the context of a civil war.

General Odumegwu Ojukwu has been faulted, notably by Ken Saro-Wiwa and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, for rejecting peace overtures from the federal government. Both Saro-Wiwa and Azikiwe believe that Ojukwu stage-managed the Eastern Region Constituent Assembly to authorize him to declare secession. The decision to declare Biafra was a product not of deliberative reasoning in the face of odds but of cajolery, bribery, coercion and sophistry tinged with elements of repression of dissent.

The feuding generals had an opportunity to reverse the momentum to war when the Ghanaian Head of State, Gen Ankra, hosted a peace meeting in Aburi, Ghana. An accord was reached at Aburi whose exact terms became a matter of renewed aggression between the federal government and the Biafran government. Ojukwu’s account of the agreement differed from the federal government interpretation on the extent of power and responsibility of the federal executive council vis-à-vis the regions. Ojukwu absented himself from a meeting called to implement the accord. In his absence the meeting approved Decree No.8 enacted by the federal government to implement the agreement. Ojukwu did not accept the decree because it compromised his position by not granting the regions complete authority in dealing with certain issues that concern their sovereignty.10 Azikiwe faults Ojukwu’s rejection of the decree as in service of greed for power and an attempt to “continue a calculated gambit which has led to the civil war.”11

Even as secession was declared the damage could still have been controlled but for the peculiar interplay of arrogance, ambition and naiveté. Ojukwu had boasted about the Biafran capability to face-down federal soldiers; that he had long planned for the crucial moment and that he knew that by starting the war he was “carving his name in History”; and that he had built the largest army in black Africa.12 The propaganda machines on both sides of the war were merciless in their prevarication and embellishment. They overrated their little successes in battle and diminished the scale of human tragedy in Biafra. Ojukwu and his war generals reluctantly admitted the huge loss the young republic was suffering for fear of demoralizing the people who were volunteering and being conscripted for battle. Propaganda helped to blind the people to the fact that the war could and ought to be avoided. It has been alleged that many deaths occurred because of policies by both the federal government and rebels to block food or medical supplies or to prioritize arms delivery above humanitarian aid. By certain perverse incentives the Biafran army was alleged to be compounding the human suffering in Biafra as a ploy to whip up sentiment against Nigeria and in favor of the Biafran republic.13

De-Escalation: What Factors Delayed and Led to the End of Violence
One characteristic of the Ibo massacres between 1967 and 1970 that made them come short of genocide, that is, to be near-genocides, is that they were brought to a halt by the aggressors themselves. Neither the United Nations nor the Organization of African Unity sent troops to stop the killings and keep the peace. The Ibo (Eastern Nigeria) secessionists did not win on the battlefield. As gallant as they were in the battle they were out-gunned by the more formidable Nigerian army equipped and helped by foreign powers. By the late 1969, when the Nigerian army had overrun the Ibo heartland, the civilian population was at the mercy of the Nigerian troops. Although trigger-happy and genocidal federal soldiers shot and killed civilians in conditions of surrender, on the whole the Head of State, General Gowon, was able to accept the surrender of the Eastern Nigeria (Biafra) and graciously proclaimed “no victor, no vanquished.” Although this policy was implemented more in default, it helped to avert open predation of Ibos when they returned back to the federation.

Gowon as a Factor of De-escalation

The Nigeria civil war is the best example of a civil war that ended without open post-war recrimination. Evidence of how quickly the Ibos reentered the Nigerian federation they had exited with belligerence is that in the 1979 general elections, nine years after the civil war, an Ibo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, was on the Presidential ballot on the ticket of a predominantly Ibo party.14 The Ibos grew influential, although still marginalized and repressed, largely due to the permissible environment of the policy of “no victor no vanquished.” Their dynamism and resilience contributed immensely to their quick re-integration. But, if they had been made easy game for predators they would not have thrived. One man who can rightly take credit for conducting a largely decent war, promoting reconciliation and staving off post-war recriminations, is General Gowon.

Gowon’s background as an ethnic and religious minority in northern Nigeria probably influenced his disposition to be less vengeful and spiteful against Ibos. He was a Christian in a predominantly Muslim north and also a Tiv, a minority tribe in northern Nigeria that suffered grave repression both at the hands of the colonialists and Hausa-Fulani feudalists. In spite of Nigeria’s overwhelming military advantage over Biafra, especially when more Ibo cities fell to the control of the federal soldiers, Gowon’s lack of murderous spite against the Ibos ensured that the war did not end as a war of extermination as some of his war generals like Benjamin Adekunle, who vowed to shoot every moveable or immovable thing in Biafran, wanted. Throughout the conflict Gowon allowed the possibility of pull-backs by creating incentives for negotiations. Although these opportunities were not well used because of his moral weakness and Ojukwu’s hawkish nature, the opportunities made it possible for leaders on both sides to intervene.

Gowon’s overall congeniality helped to smooth surrender and the reintegration of the Ibos, as can be seen from his speech accepting the terms of surrender from the rebel second-in-command, Major General Philip Effiong. After gladly accepting the surrender he painted the psychology of the war thus: “On our side we fought the war with great caution, not in anger or hatred, but always in the hope that common sense would prevail. Many times we sought a negotiated settlement, not out of wickedness, but in order to minimize the problems of reintegration, reconciliation and reconstruction. We know that however the war ended, in the battlefield or in the conference room, our brothers fighting under other colors must rejoin us and that we must together build the nation anew.” Most likely Gowon believed what he said, even as some of his commanders believed it was a war of extermination.

The role of charismatic and ideological leaders in fomenting and perpetuating conflict is well noted in the literature of conflict.15 It follows that well meaning and reconciliatory leaders equally help to end violent conflict earlier than predicted. In the case of the Nigerian civil war, Gowon’s lack of manifest residual hatred for the Ibos acted as incentive for Ojukwu’s lieutenants to turn to reconciliation when the tide turned against them.

The Role of Civil Society Leaders

What did important elites who were directly engaged in the secession crisis and the governance questions that triggered the later violence against the Easterners do to stop the violence and settle the conflict? Pretty little. In the context of Nigeria of the 1960s it is difficult to define who constituted civil society. There were no organized human rights or civil society groups apart from many tribal and cultural-cum-intellectual organizations. Even at that, these latter groups were not directly involved in political governance. Actually, it was ethno-religious organizations that played influential roles in governance. This started with colonial government who favored traditional rulers and traditional institutions against the newly emerging intellectual and academic class. The reason the colonialists disfavored the latter class was because they were prone to nationalistic fervor and agitation. Soldiers were made to perceive themselves as disciplined, while the chattering academics were unruly. So, the dynamism was set in motion for the impoverishment of civil advocacy.

But, nevertheless, one or two individuals played important roles in raising a different consciousness about the violence and the war and helped to stimulate non-partisan concerns about the horrors of the war. Notably among individuals outside the government who played key roles is Professor Wole Soyinka. Soyinka’s intervention in the violence dated from his engagement with the political crisis in Western Nigeria. He shocked the nation when as a young lecturer he stormed the Western Region Broadcasting Corporation to denounce the electoral fraud and the political manipulation in the region. It became known as the “Mystery Gun-man” saga.

Soyinka’s major contribution to de-escalation is in focusing attention on the stupidity and inhumanity of the war and increasing public scrutiny of the political process for the formation of the war. In the midst of war rhetoric and preparations, Soyinka opened up contact with the rebel leader to better appreciate the concerns of the government of Eastern Nigeria. He opted for a third way which neither supported the federal or eastern side of the conflict, but rather advocated for the rule of law and social justice for the Ibos and other persecuted people as the foundation for peace.

The impact Soyinka’s activism had on the crisis could be said to be minimal. The Gowon government perceived him to be a radical who was sympathetic to the rebel Biafra and imprisoned him. But, the moral stance he took against the regime and its war machine contributed to more transparent engagement with the process of decision making about the political crisis and helped to whip up more interventions for peace. One means of continuing mass violence is to enshroud the human misery in cloaks of dogmatism. Soyinka’s sharp wit demystified the ideology of war and brought home the human misery caused by elite contention for power.

Another major and influential intervention to defuse the war took place in May 1967 by a group of eminent Nigerians from different walks of life called the National Reconciliation Committee. This was a group of largely self-appointed interveners who desired to break the diplomatic impasse between the federal and rebel sides. Members of the committee included Chief Obafemi Awolowo (the leader of the Action Group who later became Minister of Finance), Professor Aluko (an economist famous for intellectual critique of government policies), Chief Rotimi William (Nigeria’s most eminent lawyer), Sir Kashim Ibrahim (a federal minister from the north) and many other notable politicians and academics. The group met with Ojukwu in Enugu, the Eastern Region capital, and canvassed a negotiated end to the stalemate between Ojukwu and Gowon.

The committee largely failed in its peace mission because Ojukwu objected both to its constitution and its terms of reference. The issue of representation was an albatross that drowned the committee’s peace efforts. Ojukwu had objected to certain members of the committee from the north on the grounds that their impartiality was compromised since the north was a party to the dispute. He also objected to the Eastern representative who was not his own appointee. As much as it tried, the committee could not convince Ojukwu to overlook the credibility of some of the members and the grievances of the past to give it a chance to break the impasse between him and Gowon. But the committee succeeded in convincing Gowon to relax (even if momentarily) the federal blockage of Eastern Nigeria that was already resulting in grave sufferings.

Apart from this, the success of the committee was merely symbolic. But, this symbolism is important for de-frosting the relationship between the East and the rest of the federation and making it possible for members of the rebel government dissatisfied with the war to reach out to their compatriots outside the rebel territory. This bridge assisted in putting pressure on Gowon to negotiate and ultimate accept the fall of Biafra on good terms.16

Another Nigerian whose clear minded opposition to the war contributed to nudging the international community to see the war from the lens of human tragedy rather than of internal sovereignty is Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first Governor-General of Nigeria and the first President of the republican government toppled by the January 1966 coup. Zik, as he is fondly called, had a love-hate relationship with General Ojukwu, a fellow Ibo. The rivalry between them dates from the removal of Azikiwe as the Chancellor of University of Nigeria when Ojukwu was Military Governor of Eastern Region. Whether from resentment or not, Zik mounted a very spirited campaign to expose the foolishness of the war. He implored Ojukwu and Gowon to “listen to the voice of humanity and stop this senseless war… (they) together with those who counsel them, should now have second thoughts and suspend hostilities. They should proceed to the conference table to negotiate a rapprochement which would safeguard the lives and liberties of innocent citizens.”17

Zik did not restrict his advocacy for peace within Nigeria. He internationalized the campaign for peace. Zik was the first to locate the possibility of settlement of the crisis on a direct and decisive intervention of the United Nations through the Security Council. In an address delivered at Rhodes House, Oxford on February 16, 1969, Zik appealed to the UN to intervene because it is “the forum of last resort” when every other effort has failed. He proposed for a UN committee of nineteen to ensure “total arms embargo; armistice embracing cessation of hostilities on land, sea and air; revocation of blockages including economic and administrative sanctions; establishment of an international peace force, to act for and on behalf of the Security Council to assume administration of the war zones, to demobilize troops engaged in war zones,… to conduct a plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants of the war zones whether they want one Nigeria or a divided Nigeria.”18 These proposals were pretty revolutionary in cold war international relations of non-interference. If it was in the post-cold war period, they would have been possible action plans.

The OAU and International Community

Whether the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the United Nation played an important role in de-escalating the conflict is arguable. What is unarguable is that both organizations did not act as decisively as they could and when they ought. Of course, the political climate of international relations when the Biafran-Nigerian conflict occurred is important to understanding the organizations’ dilly-dalliance. Particularly for the OAU, the conflict occurred when the fundamental policy of the organization was the maintenance of the sanctity of the borders of post-colonial states. The leaders of Africa, as part of a policy of fighting neo-colonial interference after grim battles against European colonialialism, affirmed to each other respect for internal sovereignty. There is a rich, and still growing, literature on this ill-fated policy and how it induced the collapse of African states under the twin strike forces of arbitrary rule and weak civil society.19

The OAU made efforts to resolve the crisis before it degenerated into war. But these efforts were sometimes half-hearted, and every time paralyzed by the politics of internal sovereignty. Once military hostilities were declared between Eastern Nigeria and the federal government, Gowon let it be known that any country that recognized Biafra as an independent sovereign state would be viewed by his government as interfering in the internal affairs of the Nigeria. This reduced the organization’s intervention to mere exhortation to peace.

On July 8, 1968, the Presidents of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia made joint appeal to both sides to cease hostilities. The Head of State of Lesotho brought a motion in the OAU for members to consider ways and means of ending the conflict. In a September 1967 session in Kinshasa, African Heads of States succeeded in persuading Nigeria to agree that the issue be discussed at the floor of the General Assembly on condition that they would not interfere with its internal affairs. They formed a committee to go to the Head of State of Nigeria “to assure him of the Assembly’s desire for territorial integrity, unity and peace of Nigeria.” In its resolution the Assembly affirmed its adherence to the “principles of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of member states, condemns secession” and the right of the Nigerian government to determine the nature of OAU’s involvement.20

In several other meetings and peace conferences the organization was crippled by lack of moral authority and the weakness of its voice on behalf of the suffering Ibo civilians. It almost demanded that the Biafrans call off military resistance before the federal government stopped aggression. A few Presidents felt the need for a more proactive engagement with peace and justice in the Biafran question, but the organization was too bogged down in its neo-colonial nightmares to act decisively as required by the conflict. In the midst of this misstep a few countries like Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon and Ivory Coast recognized the right of Biafra and further depleted the leadership resources of the organization. President Nyerere of Tanzania was so incensed by the religious commitment to internal sovereignty to the detriment of human life that he accused African Heads of State of “callously watching the massacre of tens of thousands of people for the sake of upholding territorial integrity of Nigeria.”21

The record of the United Nation in de-escalating the conflict is even more dismal. The United Nation as a body failed to intervene in any significant manner. It deferred leadership and responsibility to the Organization of African Unity, and supported the latter’s affirmation of the supremacy of internal sovereignty and the principle of non-interference. Like the leaders of the OAU, the then Secretary-General of the UN, U Thant, expressed concern at the worsening fate of the people of Eastern Nigeria but hoped that the Kinshasa peace initiative of the OAU would lead to quick resolution of the crisis. The deference to regional initiative may seem very sensible and well meaning in the geo-politics of that period. But, in the face of the huge human tragedy and the precedent of the Vietnam case, the Secretary General could have done more to move the United Nations to intervene to pressure the Nigerian government to reconsider its position and accept better terms of peace.

The Secretary-General laid the responsibility on important members of the UN Security Council or the General Assembly to table the issue for international action. However, most of the western countries that had both the diplomatic resources and stakes to effectively intervene were entangled in the conflict and could not find a neutral voice. Britain, being the former colonial ruler of Nigeria, had sufficient standing to intervene in the peace process. But she was already intervening in supplying arms and technical support to the federal side. The Russians were also supplying firearms to Nigeria. Not to be beaten, France allegedly granted Biafra a loan of 8 million pounds in return for a concession to French oil companies. The war was sustained by the involvement of western countries as arm suppliers and oil importers.

Equally, the war played into the cold war calculations of the world powers. It was obvious that these powers suspected the implication of the revolutionary moment unfolding in Nigeria and preferred to remain committed to the original Nigeria. They did nothing serious to end the war. On January 8, 1969, Radio Prague commented that “the great power rivalry is thus transferring the old West-East dispute into a particular hot part of Africa, and neither Nigeria nor Biafra can possibly benefit from it. For the matter now is no longer Nigeria or Biafra alone; the really big fight is over great power influence and over establishing new spheres of influence, and that is the biggest tragedy of the present Nigerian crisis.”22 With the possible exception of the United States, most western powers had economic interests to protect and hedged in making commitment or denouncing the massacres of the Ibos.

The British government notoriously declined to take a resolute stand in favor of ending the misery of millions of Easterners. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, expressed doubts that arm supplies to the warring parties could cease. In his words, “I know of no mediation that will be successful in ending this tragic fighting. I think the general recognition is that it need take an African solution.” Michael Stewart, the Labour Foreign Minister justified British continuous supply of arms to Nigeria in similar terms: “It would have been quite easy for me to say: this is going to be difficult – let’s cut off all connection with the Nigerian government. If I’d done that I should have known that I was encouraging in Africa the principle of tribal secession – with all the misery that could bring to Africa in the future.” The British diplomatic machine refused to grind into action, in spite of the remonstration of humanists like Lord Bertrand Russell, who argued that the doctrine of non-interference in situations like the Biafran civil war leads to much evil.23

The Role of Humanitarian Organizations and Famous Stars

When the United Nations foot-dragged and the OAU was belabored by its burden of history, some well-meaning individuals and organizations set out to reduce human suffering in the war. The Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), formed as a result of the human suffering of the dead and wounded, and did much to help humanitarian relief, as did the Red Cross. These groups, in addition to helping the wounded and the hungry, also lent their voices for calls to end the war. The reports on the suffering of Biafran civilians, especially the genocidal attack on sleepy villages and fleeing women and children, helped to thaw the ice of the politics of “internal conflict” and present the picture of a genocidal attack. These insights drove global revulsion against the war and helped to put pressure on the Nigerian government to conduct the war with fewer violations of the Geneva Conventions.

Their effort was dramatized and glamorized by famous actors and musicians who signed to the “Biafran” cause and raised money for the suffering in Biafra. In 1968, American folk singer Joan Baez and rock singer Jimi Hendrix performed in a Biafran Relief Benefit in Manhattan to raise money for the refugees of the Biafra-Nigeria war. Several such fund-raisers were organized across western societies by Ibos in Diaspora and by charitable persons and institutions. The allegation was that these charitable funds helped Ojukwu prolong the resistance instead of helping to end the war.24 This perverse incentive was unavoidable in the context of the war. In the end these interventions helped to limit the degree of human tragedy in Eastern Nigeria. The infamous starvation policy adopted by the Nigerian government as part of its war strategy contributed to the death of more Ibos than actual military hostility. But for the interventions of these organizations and individuals, extermination would have been a possibility in the war.

Defeat: The End of all Things

Ultimately, Biafra lost the war. That was the saving grace for the Ibos and Nigerians in general. On 14th of January, 1970 Biafra formally surrendered and Gowon pronounced the end of the war. By the end of 1969 Biafra has lost all its strongholds. General Ojukwu jetted out of the republic in search of peace and handed power to General Philip Efiong, his deputy. As defeat stared him in the eyes, Effiong consulted with the strategy committee and surrendered. Chinua Achebe captured the battle fatigue in a Biafran camp in a story of a palm wine tapper who was asked to come down from his palm wine tree and join the army. The man after thanking the soldiers for their heroism, begged them to tell Ojukwu that he had acted like a man, he should now throw in the towel.25 Better late than never. The war ended and reconstruction began.

Genocide usually ends by either of two ways – the victims are completely exterminated or their attackers are restrained or overcome. In the Biafran conflict none of this happened. Nigerian soldiers were not restrained by Biafran soldiers. No external forces aided the victims against the aggressors. When the aggressors overran the victims, they drew back the sword – meaning, “We did not intend genocide.” For me this is the best evidence that what happened, at least between 1967 and 1970, was a misconceived war – a war waged on the ticket of egregious persecution of Ibos and senseless brinkmanship of arrogant and insensitive leaders. Although there were moments of genocidal madness among war generals and strategists, the war policy was, as Gowon, says, to keep Nigeria together; albeit, without addressing the structural injustice that led to the pogroms. The massacres of the Ibos in 1966 seem to carry the signature of ethnic cleaning of the mild type. It was promoted in order to weaken the political and administrative advantages enjoyed by Ibos, and it was conducted on the diabolical mobilization of northerners to believe that the Ibos wanted to enslave the rest of Nigerians.

After The Violence: Old Problems, New Manifestations

The war ended and Gowon graciously proclaimed “no victor, no vanquished” and then came the tasks of reintegration, reconciliation and reconstruction. The scorecard is dismally poor on all three. The Ibos still feel marginalized, although some reintegration has occurred in the polity. The conflict between citizenship as a bundle of equal rights and indigeneity as a bundle of exclusive privileges is unresolved. Decades of military dictatorship – with its unaccountable use of power – have compounded the problem of ethnicity in politics. Added to the old problem of ethnic chauvinism is now religious fundamentalism. The result is that Nigeria suffers an average of three major ethno-religious and inter-communal violent events every year. Since 1999 more than 5,000 persons have been killed in these violent attacks.

The Ibos are still restless, but nothing near the disenchantment of 1966-1967 that drove them to the cold hands of death in a mismatched war. The Ohaneze Nd’Igbo, the Ibo umbrella cultural and social organization, in its petition to the Human Rights Violations Investigation Committee, alleged systematic marginalization of Ibos in the civil service and military agencies of the constitution. With the aid of statistics it has argued quite persuasively that a glass ceiling exists to stop the Ibos from occupying important and sensitive offices. Besides, it has alleged systematic and deliberate under-provision of social goods and infrastructure in Ibo states. With the notorious bad leadership in Nigeria it is difficult to know which proportion of this under-provision is ethnically constructed. But, the relief is that the Ibos are acting to regain their economic and political power through legitimate political activities.

There remains a significant proportion of Ibos, especially those in diaspora, who agitate for the resumption of the struggle for the Biafran Republic. An organization, the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), is championing this agenda. It has greatly scared the government by its open organizing of resentment against it. The movement has set up chapters in Europe and America and runs a mock embassy in Washington. It mock-heroism is paying off as disenchanted and unemployed and economically displaced Ibos are signing on to the dream of an Ibo state able to provide justice and prosperity. MASSOB’s activities are in sync with other ethnic organizations eating away the nationalism from the distressed Nigerian state.

How these forces play out is uncharted. In November, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa, a champion of the rights of minorities in Nigeria, was executed after a ruthless persecution of oil-rich Ogoni. Interestingly, Saro-Wiwa fought Biafra as administrator of Bonny for the federal government in the war period. Saro-Wiwa defended the economic rights of the Ogoni and alerted the world to what he termed genocide against Ogoni by the Nigerian Federal Military Government and Shell. In 1999 another oil community – Odi – was sacked by rampaging federal soldiers. It was called genocide. In 2004, Hausa (Muslim) and Indigenous (Christian) communities clashed in Plateau State in northern Nigeria leaving many dead and wounded. President Obasanjo, who led the conquering federal troops against Biafra in 1969, declared a state of emergency to save lives and property. The cause of the violence is conflict over rights to resources by those who claim to be natives and those they call settlers.

The war ended but the battle continues. When will the legacy of colonialism be overcome and transformed? Will elites overcome their brinkmanship? When will human rights provisions in the constitution be experienced as national rights alive in state institutions? Until then the Ibos of Nigeria will keep their festering wounds.

Endnotes

1 Major Abubakar A. Atofarati “The Nigerian Civil War: Causes, Strategies, and Lessons,” Report, US Marine Command & Staff College (Academic Year 1991/92).

2 Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe attributes similar intention to the shadowy conspiratory group – “The Kaduna Mafia,” whom he claims was behind the killings. The group intended by the killings to (a) expel Ibos in the civil service from their posts and Ibo industrialists and business from their enterprises, (b) destroy Ibo political influences, (c) achieve the secession of the “north” from Nigeria. See Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, The Biafran War: Nigeria and the Aftermath (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990) page 64.

3 Dr. Mensah, Report of the International Commission of Jurists, 1969.

4 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), page 39.

5 Okwudibia Nnoli, Ethnic Politics in Nigeria (Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978), pages 115-116

6 Nigeria is a nation-state of over two hundred and fifty ethnic nationalities who are different either in culture or language but also share many similarities arising from different degrees of interaction before and after the advent of colonialism. For general readings on the cultures of the peoples of Nigeria, see C.K. Meek, The Northern Tribes of Nigeria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925); P.A. Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria (London: Oxford University Press, 1926); Michael Crowther, The History of Nigeria; Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Trade and Politics in Niger Delta, 1830-1885: An Introduction to the Economic and Political History of Nigeria (Clarendon Press, 1956).

7 The Minority Commission Report, 1958

8 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1951). Arendt argues “Not only did loss of national rights in all instances entail loss of human rights; the restoration of human rights, as the recent example of the State of Israel proves, has been achieved so far only through the restoration or establishment of national rights,” page 299.

9 Quoted by Dr. Philip Emeagwali, “After the Biafran War Was Over”. See www.emeagwali.com/photos/biafra/photo-essay-on-biafra.html pages 15-6.

10 Decree No.8 of 1967 vests in the Supreme Military Council the legislative and executive powers which are exercised with the concurrence of the regional military governors on issues like trade, industry, Armed Forces, the police, and the territorial integrity of the regions. The London-based West Africa magazine of March 28, 1967 described the decree as entrenching a “pseudo- confederacy.” See Nnamdi Azikiwe, Origins of the Nigerian Civil War (Apapa: Nigerian National Press, 1969), pages 8-9.

11 Azikiwe, page 8

12 Saro-Wiwa, On a Darkling Plain: An Account of the Nigerian Civil War (London: Saros International Publishers, 1989), page 83.

13 “The issues in this war were relegated to the background and the human and humanitarian aspects came to the fore. Most of them were genuine in their contributions were used to purchase arms and ammunition which prolonged the war and thereby increased and heightened the sufferings of those who were dying.” Abubakar Atofarati

14 Apart from Azikiwe, another Ibo was the Vice-President of the two other major parties and one of them, Dr. Alex Ekwueme, became the Vice-President from 1979 to 1983 under the ticket of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

15 For a recent book dealing with ethnic violence and treating the role of charismatic leaders and elite manipulation in exhorting to violence see Monica Duffy Toft, The Geography of Ethnic Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).

16 A full transcript of the meeting of the committee with Ojukwu can be found in Awolowo, Awo on Nigerian Civil War (Lagos: John West Publication, 1981).

17 Peace Proposals for Ending the Nigerian Civil War (London: Colusco Limited, 1969), page 22.

18 Published as Peace Proposals for Ending the Nigerian Civil War, 1969 supra.

19 For samplers, see Francis Deng, et al., Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington D.C.: Brookings, 1996); Obiora Okafor, “After Martyrdom: International Law, Sub-state Groups and the Construction of Legitimate Statehood in Africa,” Harvard International Law Journal Vol. 41 No.2 Spring 2000; Deng & Lyon “Promoting Responsible Sovereignty in Africa” in Deng and Lyon (eds.), African Reckoning: A Quest for Good Governance (Washington D.C.: Brookings, 1998).

20 See C. O. C. Amate, Inside the OAU: Pan-Africanism in Practice (London: Macmillan, 1986) for a detailed study of the record of the OAU in settling disputes internal disputes and conflicts in African countries.

21 Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Peace Proposasl for Ending the Nigerian Civil War (London: Colusco Limited, 1969), pages 6-7.

22 Cited in Azikiwe, Peace Proposals for Ending the Nigerian Civil War page 4

23 Azikiwe, page 8

24 Atofarati comments that the great publicity given to the war and the images of Biafran starving children and ruined villages by Markpress elicited strong humanitarian feelings which drove the humanitarian intervention on behalf of Biafra. See Atofarati, page 31

25 Chinua Achebe, Girls at War and Other Story (London: Heinemann, 1971)

What Follows War

2007-12-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

Time February 02, 1970

"If war is hell," TIME Correspondent John Blashill cabled last week from Nigeria, "at least it is organized hell. What immediately follows war can be worse. It is not yet peace, and it is certainly not organized." Blashill was one of 80 foreign newsmen who were given government permission to visit the Biafran enclave. Herewith his report:

In the silent palm forests and broken towns of the region once known as Biafra, the rape and the looting go on. Countless refugees told me this week of being stopped on the road by federal troops. The soldiers stripped them of their belongings, took their money and went off with their women.

Near Orlu, Nigerian marines invaded a Red Cross hospital, took all the food and raped the white nurses. During the brief period I was in Owerri, I saw an attempted rape and an attempt at looting. The looting took place right on the main square in front of most of the visiting newsmen. Several marine enlisted men simply entered a house and started ransacking it. They pulled out a bed and a table before an officer saw them and started shouting in Yoruba. They shrugged and carried the bed and table back inside.

The rape attempt was more dramatic. On the other side of the square, a drunken marine spotted a young refugee with his wife. Neither could have been much more than 20, and they clung together, very frightened. The marine demanded the wife and was about to make off with her when a marine lieutenant happened by. The lieutenant pulled out his .45 and shot the soldier in the foot. Neither rape nor looting is condoned by Nigerian officers. One marine was shot to death on the spot when he was found raping an Ibo girl near the Owerri radio station. He was not even arrested and tried. "There was no need," an officer said, matter-of-factly. "He was caught in the act." Stampede for Food. In the marketplace at Aba, where perhaps 200,000 refugees gathered, a stick-limbed girl in her teens was carrying home a few scraps of food in an old metal bowl perched on her head. A passing bicyclist jolted her, the bowl fell off, the food was spilled. The girl said nothing. She simply squatted on the ground looking at what she would have eaten that day as people trampled it. She was too numbed, too weary to retrieve it. At a makeshift Owerri food stand where the black-market pineapples cost two Nigerian pounds ($5.60) stood a young mother with a baby wrapped, African-fashion, in the robe around her back. The baby was starving, the mother had no money. She stood there for several minutes eying the food longingly. "We can look," she said eventually, "but we cannot buy." The Nigerian Red Cross precipitated a riot by setting up field kitchens at Owerri.

Two people were killed in the stampede to get food. At the Austrian Red Cross food-distribution center the food ran out. A thin old man, white stubble on his chin, walked away slowly, looking at his empty bowl. "Give chop? Give chop?" he muttered to nobody in particular.

Unforgettable Sound. The Niger Maternity Hospital in Port Harcourt is now the home of 538 babies who were trucked down from a hospital near Orlu, and are on the point of death.

They are all suffering from marasmus, the disease of advanced starvation. All have dysentery. Many carry ugly red tails hanging out of their bottoms, the medical term for which is "prolapse of the rectum." Most are too weak to stand. Some are too weak even to sit up and so they just lie there, often face down on the floor (there are not enough beds to go around), their faces resting in pools of mud and diarrhea. Those who have the strength to cry do nothing but cry, and the sound will never be forgotten by anyone who heard it. In Port Harcourt, His Excellency Lieut. Commander A. P. Diete-Spiff, military governor of Rivers State, married Miss Ethel Potts-Johnson, also of Rivers State. The wedding cake, shaped like a ship, was flown in from Lagos. The wedding dinner for 100 guests included two suckling pigs, three turkeys, 30 cold chickens, eight ducks, one side of roast beef, two goats on a spit, 30 chickens on a spit, various fresh salads, charlotte russe, three dozen bottles of vintage champagne, three cases of Scotch. Among the guests was Lieut. Colonel Phillip Effiong, the last leader of Biafra.

Relief, Reconciliation, Reconstruction

2007-12-05T18:43:00.000-08:00

Time Monday, February 02, 1970

THE lights came on again in Lagos last week, ending a 30-month blackout imposed to protect the Nigerian capital from Biafran bombers that never appeared. Unaccustomed to the brightness, bats swooped screeching out of trees to seek darkness elsewhere, and pedestrians stepped neatly over rain ditches they had fallen into during the war. Only half the lights went on again, however; there was not enough power available to light the rest. Plainly, peacetime conditions would not be restored with the mere flick of a switch.

Building Up Jerusalem. That was all too evident in the area of what had been Biafra, where 12 million people had sought to establish a state independent of Nigeria and its 45 million other inhabitants. Nigerian Leader Yakubu Gowon had pledged his victorious government to a program of reconciliation rather than recrimination toward the secessionists. Because of ineptitude and the war's unexpectedly sudden end, which caught relief agencies unprepared, Gowon's peace program flicked on only at half strength. Feeding programs broke down, medical supplies went undelivered and there were countless incidents of rape and looting.

No evidence could be seen of the deliberate genocide against which Biafra's General Odumegwu Ojukwu had warned before he hastily departed from his collapsing nation three weeks ago. Nigerian leaders, for the most part, made genuine efforts to see that Biafra's Ibo tribesmen were cared for. Nigerian money was rushed in to replace worthless Biafran currency, Ibo civil servants were rehired and their 30-month defection listed as "leave of absence without pay." Gowon, wearing a flowing blue African robe instead of a general's uniform, led a thanksgiving service at Lagos' Anglican cathedral. He selected and read the lesson of the service from the second chapter of Nehemiah: "Then I said unto them, ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Come and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem that we be no more a reproach."

Foreign observers, after cursory checks of Gowon's Jerusalem, returned to Lagos with airily optimistic progress reports. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, after two days in Lagos and none in Biafra, said unqualifiedly that "there is no hint, even the remotest evidence of violence by the Nigerian Federal forces." Henrik Beer, secretary general of the League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva, doubted that there had ever been wholesale starvation in Biafra. But hunger remained a very real threat. Gowon adamantly refused to let relief groups use Uli airstrip, a symbol of Biafran resistance. One result of his decision was that many of the 3,500,000 people in Biafra were going hun gry. According to some estimates by churchmen and physicians, as many as 1,000,000 Biafrans were on the verge of starvation. Ignoring pleas to stay put, perhaps 1,000,000 refugees choked the enclave's wreckage-strewn roads.

As for violence, the optimistic reports seemed true enough, although Brigadier General John Drewry, senior Canadian on the four-nation international observers' team that is monitoring the war zone for atrocities, made an astonishing statement. "I do not consider it serious," the Daily Telegraph of London quoted him as saying about reports of widespread rape, "until ten women are raped in the same place at the same time."

Officers of Colonel Olu Obasanjo's 3rd Marine Division were less complacent. They said they had been forced to shoot some of their men for rape and looting. Refugees reported that young girls were fading into the bush to escape "conscription," their euphemism for rape. Concerned, Nigerian authorities prepared to relieve the commandos with the "cooler" 1st Division.

No Miracles. Reports of the commandos' behavior flashed worldwide through dispatches from 80 correspondents who flew into the area on an inspection trip (see following story). Their stories so angered Nigerian officials that the newsmen were detained at Port Harcourt for two days until diplomatic protests freed them. Later, at a press conference, Gowon defended his troops: "We don't expect miracles. Is anyone willing to say there is not misbehavior in their own armies?

Haven't things been happening in Viet Nam?" At the same time, acknowledging that the situation was grimmer than he had anticipated, Gowon increased relief funds from $17 million to $45 million. He also agreed to accept additional assistance from other nations—with the proviso that Nigeria continue to direct all operations. The U.S., which had already dispatched three portable hospitals and 26 Jeeps, also promised a fleet of relief planes, portable generators, blankets and hospital lamps. Britain sent 25 doctors and 50 nurses; Russia supplied the lead contingent of what will be a 60-doctor party. Remembering Friends. The crisis is likely to last at least two more months. Only then is Nigeria likely to begin enjoying some of the benefits of a restored peace. Economically, the situation is bright. Oilfields and refineries in the Biafran enclave are already being checked for damage and restored to production; once they are, Nigeria expects total revenues to reach $1 billion by 1975. Shortly before the war ended, Gowon said: "Our friends will not be forgotten." As a result, the Soviet Union and Britain, the chief suppliers of arms to the federal forces, will reap some benefits. Moscow already has 500 aircraft, arms and machinery technicians in Nigeria, and a Soviet-Nigerian trading company was recently organized to sell Russian-built cars and trucks. A $150 million Soviet-built steel plant may soon be started. In the Lagos government's view, the Russians deserve everything they are getting. "I would give Russia more credit than any other single country," Nigerian Ambassador to Moscow George J. Kurubu said last week.

The U.S., which did not recognize Biafra but encouraged relief efforts to aid its starving people, is in a less solid position. Secretary of State William P. Rogers, who begins a ten-nation African tour in February, will be coolly received in Lagos. Said the Morning Post: "No, sir, Rogers is not welcome." But Nigerian officials later insisted that Rogers would be a welcome guest.

No Politics in Exile. One person who has no future in peacetime Nigeria, or perhaps anywhere in Africa, is Ojukwu. After he fled the country, reports placed him in Lisbon, Paris, Geneva, Lusaka, Dar es Salaam, Libreville, São Tomé and Port-au-Prince. According to the story that emerged last week, Ojukwu was flown out of Uli to Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast. At the Abidjan airport, he transferred to an executive jet belonging to Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny and was flown 250 miles to the President's summer palace at Yamoussoukro, which is guarded by a pool of crocodiles. Ojukwu had hoped to establish a government in exile, but Houphouet-Boigny coldly informed him that there were to be no government, no political activities and no statements to the press out of Yamoussoukro. Perhaps it was just as well, for Ojukwu supporters are as scarce as food in his former enclave nowadays. An elderly Ibo, gaunt from hunger and weary from walking, was typical. Pausing on the road near Owerri and staring at the desolation around him, he said slowly: "It's Ojukwu's fault. All of it."