U.S. Classified Files Reveal Untold Story Of Ojukwu, Biafra By Americans, Others
U.S. Classified Files Reveal Untold Story Of Ojukwu, Biafra By Americans, Others
Biafran Head of State, LT. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu inspects guard of honour
Secret American diplomatic dispatches, spread over 21,000 pages, provide previously unknown information about the Nigerian Civil War
Early in the morning of 1 July 1967, Nigeria’s young head of state, Colonel Yakubu Gowon, was feeling uneasy in his office at the Supreme Headquarters, Dodan Barracks in Lagos. The unease was a result of his being ceaselessly pressured to authorize a military invasion of the breakaway Republic of Biafra.
Thirty officers had been recalled from courses abroad. Trains and truck convoys, bearing fuel, supplies and men, were still leaving Kano and Kaduna for the south of River Benue.
Colonel Mohammed Shuwa of the First Area Command had moved his command headquarters southwards and set it up in Makurdi. The 2nd Battalion was already headquartered in Adikpo. Schools and private homes had been commandeered for the use of Major Sule Apollo and his 4th Battalion in Oturkpo. They were itching for action. The same day, Major B.M. Usman “a member of the intimate northern group around Gowon” told the American defense attaché: “I do not know what in hell he is waiting for; the boys are all ready to go. They are only waiting on his word.”
Members of the Supreme Military Council, who had been meeting twice daily, were waiting for his word. The whole nation was waiting. Biafra, which was on high alert, was also waiting.
On 27 June 1967, Cyprian Ekwensi, famous writer and Biafra’s Director of Information Service, through the Voice of Biafra (formerly Enugu Radio), urged Biafrans to be prepared for an invasion on June 29 since “Northerners have often struck on 29th day of the month.” He was alluding to the day northern officers, led by Major T.Y. Danjuma, seized Gowon’s predecessor, Major- General Aguiyi-Ironsi, and killed him in a forest outside Ibadan.
Gowon, then 31, had been running the affairs of 57million Nigerians for 10 months. It had not been easy. Chief Obafemi Awolowo, his 58-year old trusted deputy and adviser, was with Okoi Arikpo and Philip Asiodu, permanent secretaries of the ministries of External Affairs and Trade and Industries respectively.
They were preparing to put the noose on the neck of the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, Shell-BP, which had frozen royalty payments due to the Federation Account on 1 June 1967 and had offered to pay the Biafran government £250,000.
Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafran leader, had ordered all oil companies to start paying all royalties to Enugu because they were operating in a new country or risk heavy penalties.
Ojukwu: Sworn in as Head of State of Biafra
Specifically, he demanded a minimum of £2million from Shell-BP. The Federal Government had imposed an economic blockade on Biafra. It entailed barring all merchant vessels and sea tankers from sailing to and from Koko, Warri, Sapele, Escravos, Bonny, Port Harcourt, Calabar ports, which Ojukwu had declared part and parcel of Biafra.
Biafra controlled the land on which the oil installations sat; the Nigerian government controlled the coastal entrance and exit to those lands. Shell-BP was confused as to whose order should be obeyed. Sir David Hunt, the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, told his American counterpart after the meeting with the Nigerian delegation: “Awolowo is very firmly in control of Ministry of Finance and he is giving Stanley Gray, Shell’s General Manager and other experts from London a very difficult time for the past three days.” They persuaded Awolowo to accept a deal that would favour the Nigerian government and, at the same time, would predispose oil workers and the £150million investment to danger in the hands of Biafran military forces. Awolowo refused, arguing that anything short of the status quo was recognition of Biafra and concession to the rebels. As for security of investments and personnel, he argued that once royalties were paid, the Nigerian government would have the capacity to fund whatever action it would take on the rebels and Shell-BP’s investments would be safe.
Gowon paced to the large outdated map of the country by the door to his office. When he asked Awolowo to come and join his government, Awolowo said he would accept only if Gowon did something about the dominance of North over the rest of the nation. A month before, Gowon had broken up the North into six states, but the map by the door still showed the old Nigeria, with an imposing North at the top. He ran his finger around the boundaries of Biafra and asked himself: “How can I authorize an invasion of my own people?” He knew what it meant to be resented. He was not the most senior officer in the army. He was not a Muslim Hausa or Fulani from Kano, Kaduna or Sokoto. He was a Christian from one of the small minorities that dot the North and yet, events had promoted him to the position of the Head of State and Commander-in-Chief–to the chagrin of many northern officers, politicians, and emirs.
He knew the Igbo were resented in the North for succeeding where indigenes had failed. His Igbo lover, Edith Ike, told him her life was threatened twice in Lagos since she returned from the North in March.
According to the secret US document of 1 July 1967, Edith’s parents, having lived in the North for 30 years, where she too was born, had fled back to the East in October 1966 because of that year’s massacre of the Igbo. Not 30,000 but around 7,000 were killed, according to the American documents. Donald Patterson of the Political Section and Tom Smith of the Economic Section travelled from the US Embassy in Lagos to the North after the pogrom. “The Sabon-Garis were ghost towns, deserted, with the detritus of people, who had fled rapidly, left behind. Most Northerners we talked to had no apologies for what had happened to the Ibos, for the pogrom that had killed so many. There were exceptions, but in general, there was no remorse and the feeling was one of good riddance.
“One day, our Hausa gardener attacked and tried to beat up our Ibo cook. We fired the gardener, but not long afterwards, the cook left for the East,” said Patterson.
Earlier that week, Gowon called the West German Ambassador in Lagos. The Germans were eager to be in the good graces of the Gowon administration. A war loomed. And in wars, buildings, roads, bridges, and other infrastructure are destroyed. These would need rebuilding. The contract for the 2nd Mainland Bridge (later called Eko Bridge) was signed two years earlier by the Ambassador, CEO of Julius Berger Tiefbau AG and Shehu Shagari, Federal Commissioner for Works and Survey. That was Julius Berger’s first contract in Nigeria. It was due for completion in less than two years and they wanted more bilateral cooperation. The ambassador assured Gowon over the phone that he had taken care of all the details and guaranteed the safety of Edith, the nation’s “First Girlfriend”.
On the evening of 30 June, just before her departure on a commercial airline, Edith told the American Defense Attaché Standish Brooks, and his wife, Gail, that she actually wanted to go to the UK or USA, but Jack, as she affectionately called Gowon, insisted that she could be exposed to danger in either of the two countries. Germany, he reasoned, would be safer.
To Major B.M. Usman and other northern officers around Gowon, who had attributed his slow response to the secession to the fact that his girlfriend was Igbo and that her parents were resettled in the East, it was such a huge relief that at the Supreme Military Council meeting of 3 July 1967, Gowon authorized the long awaited military campaign.
Edith had safely landed in West Germany. Gowon told the gathering: “Gentlemen, we are going to crush the rebellion, but note that we are going after the rebels, not the Ibos.” The military action, which was to become the Nigerian Civil War or the Biafran War or Operation Unicord, as it was coded in military circles, officially started on 6 July 1967 at 5 a.m.
The North was minded to use the war as a tool to reassert its dominance of national affairs. Mallam Kagu, Damboa, Regional Editor of the Morning Post, told the American consul in Kaduna: “No one should kid himself that this is a fight between the East and the rest of Nigeria. It is a fight between the North and the Ibo.” He added that the rebels would be flushed out of Enugu within six weeks. Lt. Colonel Hassan Katsina went further to say with the level of enthusiasm among the soldiers; it would be a matter of “only hours before Ojukwu and his men were rounded up”.
The northern section of the Nigerian military was the best equipped in the country. To ensure the region’s continued dominance, the British assigned most of the army and air force resources to the North. It was only the Navy’s they could not transfer. All the elite military schools were there. The headquarters of the infantry and artillery corps were there. Kaduna alone was home to the headquarters of the 1st Division of the Nigerian Army, Defense Industries Corporation of Nigeria (Army Depot), Air Force Training School and, Nigerian Defence Academy.
Maitama Sule, Minister of Mines and Power in 1966, once told the story of how Muhammadu Ribadu, his counterpart in Defence Ministry, went to the Nigerian Military School, Zaria, and the British Commandant of the school told him many of the students could not continue because they failed woefully. When Ribadu thumbed through the list, Sule said, it was a Mohammed, an Ibrahim, a Yusuf or an Abdullahi. “You don’t know what you are doing and because of this you cannot continue to head the school,” an irate Ribadu was said to have told the commandant.
Shehu Musa Yar’Adua was one of the students for whom the commandant was sacked. “You can see what Yar’Adua later became in life. He became the vice president. This is the power of forward planning,” Sule declared.
Unknown to the forward planners, according to the US documents, Ojukwu had been meticulously preparing for war as early as October 1966, after the second round of massacre in the North. He had stopped the Eastern share of revenues that were supposed to accrue to the Federation Account. By 30 April 1967, he had recalled all Igbos serving in Nigeria embassies and foreign missions and those that heeded his call were placed on the payroll of the government of Eastern Region. The 77,000 square kilometres of the Republic of Biafra–a mere 8 per cent of the size of Nigeria–was already divided into 20 provinces, with leaders selected for each. They had their own judiciary, legislative councils, ministries and ambassadors. Alouette helicopters and a B26 bomber were procured from the French Air Force through a Luxemburg trading company. Hank Warton, the German-American arms dealer, had been flying in Czech and Israeli arms via Spain and Portugal since October 1966. The military hardware, they could not get, they seized. A DC3 and a Fokker F27 were seized from the Nigerian Air Force in April. NNS Ibadan, a Nigerian Navy Seaward Defence Boat (SDB) that docked in Calabar Port, was quickly made Biafran.
Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu, who was supposed to be in Enugu in prison for his role in 1966 coup, joined in training recruits in Abakaliki. Foreign mercenaries were training indoctrinated old people, young men and teenagers recruited as NCOs [Non-commissioned Officers] in jungle warfare, bomb making, mortar and other artillery firing. Ojukwu, through speeches, town hall meetings, market square performances and radio broadcasts, succeeded in convincing his people that their destiny was death or a separate state. All his performances in Ghana that culminated in the Aburi Accord of January 1967, or discussions with the Awolowo-led National Conciliation Committee five months later, turned out to be ruse.
The underground war preparations, the secret arms stockpiles openly manifested themselves as Ojukwu’s stubborn refusal to accept offers or concessions during these peace meetings.
But the Biafrans knew that their vulnerable line was along Ogoja, Ikom, Calabar, Port Harcourt, and Yenogoa. Support from the six million people making up the Eastern minorities was very much unsure. The minorities viewed their leaders in Biafra high command as traitors. And without the minorities, Biafra would be landlocked and most likely, unviable as a state. More so, their vast oil and gas resources were the reason they contemplated secession in the first place. The Biafra high command believed that if there was going to be any troop incursion from there, they are going to be transported through ship. They already had a B26 bomber to deal fire to Nigeria’s only transport ship, NNS Lokoja, anytime it approached the Biafran coastline.
The Biafrans also knew that Gowon wanted to respect the neutrality of Midwest and not invade through Niger Bridge, which would have driven the people of the Midwest into waiting Biafran hands. But if Gowon changed his mind and there was a general mobilization of the two battalions of the federal troops there, they had trustworthy men there that would alert Enugu. And if that failed, according to the US documents, the Niger Bridge had been mined using “explosives with metal covering across the roadbed at second pier out from the eastern side”.
The Biafrans also knew that the Yoruba, who were sworn enemies of the Northern hegemony, would never join the North militarily or politically against the Biafrans. When Gowon vouched to “crush the rebellion,” progressive Yoruba intellectuals deplored the language. Professor Hezekiah Oluwasanmi, Vice Chancellor of University of Ife, described the use of the word as unfortunate. Justice Kayode Eso of the Western Court of Appeal said: “Crushing the East was not the way to make Nigeria one.”
Mr. Strong, the American consul in Ibadan, whom they had been speaking to, confidentially wrote: “As intellectuals and modernizers, they see the conflict in terms of continuing determination of conservative North to dominate the more advanced South and they expressed fear that once North subdues East, it will seek to assert outright dominance over the West. The centre of trouble might then swing back to the West, where it all started.”
The Biafrans understood, therefore, that their strongest defence perimeter would be along Nsukka, Obudu, Gakem and Nyonya in Ogoja province, where they share border with the North. That was where they concentrated. On 8 July after three days of fighting, only four Biafran troops were dead and nine wounded in Obudu, while up to 100 Nigerian troops were dead, according to the Irish Embassy official, Eamon O’tuathail, who visited the Catholic Mission Hospital in Obudu. He said: “Forty five (45) of the dead had already been buried and the villagers were seen carrying the heads of the remaining around town.” In June before fighting started, Ojukwu charged on Biafra Radio: “Each Biafran soldier should bring back ten or twenty Hausa heads.”
At Nyanya, Nigerian troops attempted to seize the bridge linking Obudu and Ogoja, but were beaten back by the Biafran troops on 7 July at 1400hrs. According to the New York Times’ Lloyd Garrison’s dispatch of 8 July: “The Biafran Air Force–a lone B-26 fighter bomber–flew sorties from Enugu today, bombing and strafing enemy columns. Asked what damage it had inflicted, its European pilot replied: “Frankly, I don’t know. But we made a lot of smoke. Hundreds of Enugu pedestrians waved and cheered each time the plane returned from a mission and swooped low over the city buzzing Ogui Avenue.”
Tunde Akingbade of the Daily Times, who was returning from the frontlines, said the first Nigerian battalion in Ogoja area was “almost completely wiped out by a combination of mines and electrical devices (Ogbunigwe)”.
In the first few weeks of the war, the Biafrans were clearly on top. “Enugu is very calm,” the confidential cable of 13 July 1967 noted. “Ojukwu is dining with Field Commanders in State House tonight.”
On the federal side, confusion reigned. They had grossly underestimated Biafran capabilities. “Gowon and his immediate military advisers believe they can carry out a successful operation putting their trust in the superiority of the Hausa soldier,” the British High Commissioner, Sir David Hunt, told his American counterpart on 31 May 1967. He said further: “A northern incursion would be hastily mounted, ill-conceived and more in the nature of a foray.”
Even the Nigerian infantry, which advanced as far as Obolo on Oturkpo-Nsukka Road, was easily repelled. It ran out of ammunition. At the Supreme Headquarters in Lagos, they were accusing Shuwa, the commander, of not sending enough information about what was going on. Shuwa counter-accused that he was not getting enough and timely orders. Requests for ammunition and hardware procurement were chaotically coming to the Federal Armament Board from different units, not collectively from the central command.
Major S.A. Alao, acting commander of Nigerian Air Force (after George Kurubo defected to Biafran High Command) together with the German adviser, Lieutenant Colonel Karl Shipp, had travelled to many European cities to buy jets. They were unsuccessful. Gowon had written to the American president for arms. The State Department declined military assistance to either side. Gowon replied that he was not requesting for assistance, but a right to buy arms from the American market. That too was rejected.
The CIA had predicted a victory for Ojukwu, but American diplomatic and consular corps in Nigeria predicted victory for the Federal side and concluded that a united Nigeria served American interests better than the one without the Eastern Region. Two conflicting conclusions from an important department and a useful agency. The American government chose to be neutral. Dean Rusk, America’s Secretary of State said: “America is not in a position to take action as Nigeria is an area under British influence.”
The British on the other hand were foot-dragging. At the insistence of Awolowo, “the acting prime minister” as he was called in diplomatic circles, Gowon approached the Soviet Union.
According to a secret cable (dated 24/08/67) sent by Dr. Martin Hillenbrand, American Ambassador in East Germany, to his counterpart in Lagos, MCK Ajuluchukwu, Ojukwu’s special envoy, met Soviet Ambassador to Nigeria, Alexandr Romanov, in Moscow in June 1967. Romanov said that for USSR to recognize Biafra and supply it arms, the latter had to nationalize the oil industry. Ojukwu refused, saying that he had no money to reimburse the oil companies and that Biafrans did not have the expertise to run the oil installations.
A month later, Anthony Enahoro, the Federal Commissioner for Information and Labour, went to Moscow, signed a cultural agreement with Moscow and promised to nationalize the oil industry, including its allied industries once they got arms to recapture them from the Biafrans. Within days, 15 MiGs arrived in sections in Ikeja and Kano airports, awaiting assemblage. There was no nationalization.
Meanwhile, buoyed by the confidence from early success, the Biafrans went on the offensive. Their B26 (one of the six originally intended for use against the Nigerian Navy) was fitted with multiple canon and 50mm calibre machine gun mounts. It conducted bombing raids on Makurdi airfield, Kano and Kaduna. Luckily for Nigeria, the two transport DC3s had gone to Lagos to get more reserve mortar and 106-artillery ammo. In Kano, there were no fatalities, only a slight damage to the wing of a commercial plane.
Kaduna, however, was not that lucky. On 10 August 1967, the B26 dropped bombs on Kaduna airbase, damaging many buildings and the main hangar. The German consulate in Kaduna confirmed that a German citizen, a Dornier technician tasked with maintaining Nigerian military planes, was killed and two others injured.
A week later, the senior traffic control officer, A.O. Amaku, was arrested for sabotage. He was accused of failing to shut off the airport’s homing device, thus giving the Biafran plane navigational assistance. His British assistant, Mr. Palfrey, was similarly suspected. He resigned and immediately returned to the UK. However, Major Obada, the airbase commanding officer and an Urhobo from the Midwest, strongly defended the accused.
The daring bomb raid provoked many more Northern civilians to run to the nearest army base and enlist to fight.
According to a report by US Ambassador Elbert Matthews, cabled to Washington on 3 July 1967, unidentified men tried to bomb the police headquarters in Lagos on the night of 2 July. They attempted to drive an automobile into the compound, but the guards did not open the gate. They packed the car across the street near a small house opposite a petrol station. Leaving the car, the men fled and within seconds, an explosion took place. The house was demolished and all its occupants killed, but the petrol station was unaffected. Eleven people, including some of the guards at the police headquarters, were injured.
Two hours later, a second explosion, from explosives in a car parked by a petrol station, rocked Yaba. This time, the station caught fire. The ambassador remarked: “It is possible this is a start of campaign of terrorism…public reactions could further jeopardize safety of Ibos in Lagos.” And sure it did.
A Lagos resident, who visited the police headquarters after the attack, told the Australian ambassador “Ibos must be killed.”
There was panic all over Lagos. Anti-Igbo riots broke out. Northern soldiers at the 2nd Battalion Barracks in Ikeja used the opportunity to launch a mini-version of the previous year’s torture and massacre of the Igbo in the North. On 7 July 1967, Lagos State governor, Lieutenant Colonel Mobolaji Johnson, condemned the bombing in a radio broadcast. “A good number of Igbos in Lagos is innocent and loyal to the federal government. It is only fair that they be allowed to go about their business unmolested so long as they abide by the law and are not agents and evildoers,” Johnson said.
He called for Lagosians to join civil defence units and for Easterners to come and register with the police.
Meanwhile, the corpses of troops and soldiers wounded in Yahe, Wakande, Obudu and Gakem that arrived Kaduna by train on 11 July 1967 sparked enormous interest in enlistment and volunteering. Recruitment centres were established in Ibadan, Enugu, Lagos and Kano. But it was at the Kano centre, headquarters of the 4th Battalion of the Nigerian Regiment that generated the biggest number of recruits. According to the US confidential cable of 17 July 1967, 20,000 of these were veterans, who had been recruited to fight on the British side in Burma. The Burma veterans marched angrily to the recruitment offices to replace those that had been killed or injured. Around 7,000 were accepted. Of these, 5,000 were immediately sent to the frontline. They said they needed no training; only guns.
As they advanced, towards the outskirts of Ikem, 4km southeast of Nsukka, when mortal fires from the Biafran artillery landed close by, inexperienced recruits ducked for cover behind their transport columns out of fear and incompetence in bush warfare. Not these Burma veterans. Damboa, the Regional Editor of the Morning Post, was embedded with some of these veterans under the command of Major Shande, formerly of the 5th Battalion, Kano, which Ojukwu commanded in 1963.
One day, at about 2a.m, Biafran forces began firing from the jungle in the hope of drawing a return fire if the enemy was ahead. “But the veterans were too smart and began to creep towards the source of firing. After some time, the Biafran troops began to advance thinking that there were no federal troops ahead since there was no return of fire. They walked straight into the pointing guns of these veterans, their fingers squeezed the triggers,” said Damboa to a US Consulate officer named Arp.
These veterans were shooting at innocent Igbo civilians, too. Damboa further told Arp, when he came back from the frontlines on 17 September 1967, that “federal troops were shooting most Ibo civilians on sight, including women and children except for women with babies in their arms. Initially they observed the rules laid down by Gowon on the treatment of civilians. Then, after the takeover of the Midwest, they heard stories that Ibo soldiers had killed all the northerners they found residing in the Midwest. Since that time, Federal troops have been shooting Ibo civilians on sight,” added Damboa.
The Midwest Invasion
Something was happening to Biafran soldiers, which the Federal troops observed but could not explain. Indeed, the fortunes of the Federal troops were improving. Colonel Benjamin Adekunle’s 3rd Marine Commando had landed on 25 July 1967 at Bonny Island, establishing a heavy presence of federal forces in the creeks. Two L29 Delfins fighter jets from Czechoslovakia (NAF 401 and NAF 402) were at the Ikeja Airport and battle ready.
Five more, on board Polish vessel Krakow, were a week away from the Apapa Ports. Major Lal, an ammunition ordnance officer seconded from the Indian Army to Nigeria, had arrived from Eastern Europe, where he had gone to acquire information necessary to utilize Czech aerial ordnance. Sections of 15 Soviet MiG bombers hidden in NAF hangars were being assembled by 40 Russian technicians lodging in Central Hotel, Kano. Bruce Brent of Mobil Oil was flying jet oil to Kano to fuel these bombers. Captain N.O. Sandburg of Nigerian Airlines had flown in seven pilots, who had previously done mercenary work in South Africa and Congo, to fly the MiGs. Names, birthdates and passport numbers of 26 Russians, who were to serve as military advisors had been passed to Edwin Ogbu, Permanent Secretary, External Affairs Ministry. They were in Western Europe awaiting a direct flight to Lagos.
But George Kurubo, the Federal Air Force Chief of Staff, who had earlier joined the Biafran high command, had defected back to the fold and had been sent to Moscow as ambassador to facilitate the flow of more arms from the Soviets.
Lt. Colonel Oluwole Rotimi, Quartermaster-General of the Nigerian Army, went to western Europe with a fat chequebook.
What followed was the arrival of Norwegian ship, Hoegh Bell, bearing 2,000 cases of ammunition; and British ship, Perang, which discharged its own 2000 cases of ammunition. A German ship Suderholm also arrived. Those in charge of it claimed she was in Apapa to offload gypsum. But the US defense attaché reported that it was carrying “300 tonnes of 60mm and 90mm ammo.” The Ghanaian vessel, Sakumo Lagoon, was already in Lome, heading to Apapa to discharge its own ammo. A cache of 1,000 automatic fabriquenationale rifles had arrived Lagos by air on 8 August 1967 from the UK.
Speaking secretly to UK Defence Attaché, Lt. Colonel Ikwue said he too had gone to the German Defence Firm, Merex, to buy ammunition: 106mm US recoilless rifles at $86 per round; 84mm ammo for the Carl Gustav recoilless rifles at $72 per round; 105mm HEAT- High Explosive Anti-Tank warheads at $47 per round. Ikwue also bought three English Electra Canberra, eight Mark II Bombers at $105,000 each, 15 Sabre MK VI-T33 Jets at $100,000 each.
With all of these, Awolowo, rejected Hassan Katsina’s request for funding of 55, 000 more rifles for new recruits. However, he agreed once Gowon intervened and assured him it was not a request inspired by fraudulent intentions.
Federal troops had captured Nsukka, 56km from Enugu. Over 200 non-Igbo Biafran policemen had fled across the Mamfe border into Cameroun. In Ogoja, the Ishibori, Mbube and other non-Igbo Biafrans welcomed the federal troops after driving out the Biafran troops in a fierce battle.
The Biafrans blew up the bridge over the Ayim River at Mfume as they retreated.
The momentum was with the Federal side, but they knew their victories were not only because of their military superiority. At critical stages of battle, even when the Biafrans were clearly winning, they suddenly withdrew. An instance was on 15 July 1967, to the west of Nsukka on the route to Obolo. According to a conversation Colonel J.R. Akahan, Nigeria’s Chief of Army Staff, had with British Defence Advisor, the Nigerian infantry companies of the 4th Battalion, totally unaware of the presence of the 8th Battalion of the Biafran army, were buried under a hail of bullets and mortar.
Yet, the Biafran forces began to retreat. This enabled the remnants of the federal infantry company to regroup and successfully counter-attack. Even more senior Biafran commanders that should have been aware that the area had come under federal control were driving into the arms of the federal side. Nzeogwu and Tome Bigger (Ojukwu’s half-brother) were victims of the mysterious happening. Ojukwu initially put this down to breakdown of communication in the chain of command. During a special announcement over Biafran radio on 15 July 1967, Ojukwu said: “Yesterday, a special attack, which would have completely sealed the doom of enemy troops in the Nsukka sector of the northern front, was ruthlessly sabotaged by a mysterious order from the army high command…Our valiant troops were treacherously exposed to enemy flanks.”
At 9.30p.m on 8 August 1967, Biafran forces invaded the Midwest. In the recollection of Major (Dr.) Albert Nwazu Okonkwo, military administrator of Midwest, made available in confidence through an American teacher living in Asaba to Clinton Olson, Deputy Chief of Mission in Lagos on 1 November 1967, it was known by 4 August 1967 in Asaba that the Midwest, West and Lagos would soon be invaded.
On 5 August, Ojukwu had warned the Midwest government, headed by Colonel David Ejoor, that if northern troops were allowed to stay in the Midwest, the region would become a battleground. Many Midwestern officers knew of the plans; some of them had gone to Biafra earlier to help in the preparations. Lt Col. Nwawo, Commander of the Fourth Area Command at Benin, was probably aware. Lt Col. Okwechime, according to the document, certainly knew of it. Lt Col. Nwajei did not know and was never trusted by the anti-Lagos elements in the Midwest. “After the Biafran takeover, Nwajei was sent back to his village of Ibusa, where he was said to be engaged in repainting his home until just the arrival of Nigerian troops in the area,” disclosed the document.
Major Albert Okonkwo, later appointed military administrator, did not know in advance. Lieutenant (later Major) Joseph Isichei and Lieutenant Colonel Chukwurah were not informed in advance. “Major Samuel Ogbemudia participated in the invasion, properly by prior agreement,” the document stated.
That night of 8 August, Biafran army units blazed across the Onitsha Bridge and disarmed the Asaba garrison that was then stationed at St Peter’s Teachers’ Training College. Then they went on to the Catering Rest House, where Midwest officers were living, and disarmed the officers. The only exception was Major Asama, the local commander, who escaped and drove to Agbor at about 22.30hrs.
There were no casualties except for one officer with a gunshot wound in the leg. The invading force drove to Agbor, where it split into three columns. One column drove northwards towards Auchi and Aghenebode. A second column went to Warri and Sapele.
“The main force led by Victor Banjo was supposed to drive on to Benin and capture Ijebu-Ode, reach Ibadan on 9 August, reach Ikeja near Lagos by 10 August, setting up a blockade there to seal off the capital city,” the document quoted Okonkwo as saying.
However, this main column stopped in Agbor for six hours, reaching Benin at dawn. There was no real resistance in Benin, where no civilian was killed. The main column left Benin for Ijebu-Ode early in the afternoon. It stopped at Ore, just at the Western Region’s border.
According to US Defense Attaché report, three weeks before, Ejoor informed the Supreme Headquarters that he had information that Ojukwu was planning to send soldiers in mufti to conquer the Midwest. So, the 3rd Battalion, which was heading towards the Okene – Idah route to join the 1st Division on the Nsukka frontline, was ordered to stop at Owo. The first Recce Squadron from Ibadan, which had already reached Okene, was reassigned to take care of any surprise in the Midwest. By the time Lagos heard of the invasion, this squadron was quickly upgraded from company strength to a battalion, with troops of Shuwa’s 1st Division across the river, and another battalion was stationed at Idah to hold a defensive alignment against any Biafran surprise from Auchi.
Upon receiving the telephone call from Major Asama about the Biafran invasion at Asaba, Ejoor hurriedly left his wife and children at the State House, went to his friend, Dr Albert Okonkwo at Benin Hospital to borrow his car. He then sought asylum in the home of Catholic Bishop of Benin, Patrick Kelly.
In his first radio address to the people of Midwest on 9 August 1967, Banjo said Ejoor was safe and “efforts were being made to enlist his continued service in Midwest and in Nigeria.” Ejoor stayed in the seminary next door to the bishop’s house for almost two weeks, receiving visitors including Banjo, Colonels Nwawo and Nwajei, Major (Dr.) Okonkwo, who were trying to persuade him to make a speech supporting the new administration.
Ejoor refused. He was told that he was free to go wherever he wished without molestation. Not trusting what they might do, he went back to Isoko his native area, where he remained till federal forces captured it on 22 September 1967.
Before Banjo knew the full score, he met with Mr. Bell, UK Deputy High Commissioner, the evening of Benin invasion. Bell summarized his and Banjo’s words as:
a. There were no fatal casualties though some were wounded.
b. Ejoor and two senior officers were not in Benin when Eastern troops arrived. Bell had firm impression that they had been warned about the day’s event.
c. All the Midwest is now under the control of combined East/Midwest forces.
d. East was asked to cooperate by certain Midwest officers because an invasion of the Midwest by the North was imminent.
e. That he does not agree with Ojukwu on the separate existence of Biafra. He is convinced that a united Nigeria is essential.
f. Bell said he saw only three officers at the army headquarters: one was a Midwestern medical officer (Major Okoko). All others were Easterners.
Meanwhile when Banjo made the first radio address, he announced the impending appointment of a military administrator, but there was considerable difficulty among the Biafran and Midwestern leaders in selecting a suitable man.
First choice was to be someone from the Ishan or Afemai areas. Someone from the Delta was next, preferably an Ika-Igbo. However, the stalemate continued until Ojukwu intervened and selected Albert Okonkwo. Ojukwu knew Okonkwo only by reputation.
Okonkwo had certain things that recommended him. First, he had an American wife, which cut the family/tribe relationship problem of those times in half. Second, he was considered to be politically “sterile,” having been in the US for 13 years and was not associated with any political party or faction. Third, he was commissioned a captain in the medical corps on 2 October 1965 and just made a Major on 22 June 1967. The implication was that he was not tainted by army politics. He was also very pro-Biafra.
As soon as Okonkwo became military administrator, Banjo was recalled to Enugu to explain the failure of the military campaign. During his absence, the Midwest Administration was established (an Advisory Council and an Administrative Council). Banjo succeeded in convincing Biafran leaders in Enugu that his halt at Ore had been dictated by military expediency. He then returned to the Midwest front. Banjo informed Okonkwo of the military situation through Major Isichei, Chief of Staff of the Midwest. Isichei later commented that he had noticed that Banjo’s headquarters staff never discussed plans or operations in his presence. Through Isichei, Banjo told Okonkwo that Auchi had been lost after a fierce battle when, in fact, it was not defended at all.
Suspicions began to thicken around Banjo. Okonkwo, in a confidential statement made available to the Americans, said he also noticed that Banjo obtained money by requisition from him for materials, food and officers salaries’, thus drawing on the Midwest treasury. On 19 September, when Okonkwo telephoned Enugu, he discovered from the Biafran Army HQ that Banjo was simultaneously drawing funds from Biafra for all these supplies. Okonkwo sent Major Isichei to arrest Banjo for embezzlement, but they found that he had already left Benin and had left orders for all Midwest and Biafran soldiers to fall back to Agbor.
Okonkwo ordered his Midwest government to move from Benin to Asaba, which it did that day. The seat of the government was behind the textile factory, in homes once inhabited by expatriates. In August, Okonkwo tape-recorded five broadcasts to be used when possible. Those included the Declaration of Independence and the Proclamation of the Republic of Benin, as well as a decree setting up a Benin Central Bank, a Benin University, etc. The Republic of Benin Proclamation was delayed while the consent of the Oba of Benin was sought. Finally, just when the Oba had been convinced that the Republic was “best for his people,” the actions of Banjo were discovered and the Midwest seemed about to be lost, or at least Benin was undefended. Okonkwo went ahead with the broadcast early on 20 September 1967 in order to record for history that the Midwest was separate from Biafra. It was the last act of his government in Benin.
Early afternoon on 9 August, Banjo’s main force left Benin for Ijebu-Ode. It was composed of both Biafran and Midwest units. Midwest troops, who were mostly Igbo, had joined the “liberation army”. Commanding the Midwest forces with Banjo was Major Samuel Ogbemudia, who had been nursing the idea of defection. When the troops reached Ore and halted, Ogbemudia disappeared to later rejoin the Nigerian Army. Lt. Col Bisalla, acting Chief of Army Staff, confirmed that Ogbemudia, in the morning of 9 August, telephoned him precisely at 7:20am to inform him of the “trouble in Benin.”
According to Standish Brooks, the US Defense Attaché, Ogbemudia was the first Nigerian officer to attend American Military School’s counterinsurgency course in Fort Bragg, 1961. Brooks said after his arrival in Lagos on 9 September 1967, Ogbemudia said: “He escaped with a small group of non-Ibo troops from the Benin garrison and have been waging a guerrilla warfare against Eastern units. Having run out of ammo, he made his way back to Lagos.”
Army Headquarters believed him and Brooks’ report further stated: “Ogbemudia would be sent to the headquarters of Second Division in Auchi to assist in operational planning because of his intimate knowledge of the Midwest area and his recent experience in the Midwest under Eastern control.”
From 20 September onwards, the Midwest and Biafran Army began to fall apart. The 17th Battalion in Ikom mutinied and fled. So did the 12th and 16th Battalion in the Midwest.
In the evening of 22 September, the Midwest paymaster, Col. Morah, from Eze near Onicha Olona, offered an American expatriate in Asaba £3, 000 if the American would arrange for Morah to get $5,000 upon his arrival in the United States. This would have been a profit of about $3, 400 to the American. The offer was refused. Later on September 25, Morah disappeared with £33, 000, the document said. This was the time six NAF planes went on reconnaissance and reported back to the Defence Headquarters that they had noticed “heavy movements of civilians over the bridge from Asaba to Onitsha,” but did not have the details. On 27 September, Okonkwo called a meeting of all Midwest civil servants, where he said if the Nigerian Army reached Agbor, he would close the Onitsha Bridge. He would not let the civil servants abandon the population of Asaba to the inevitable massacre when the Federal Army reached the town. The people of Asaba knew by this time of the killings of Igbos in Benin when the federal forces reached it on 20 September. Everyone assumed that it would happen in Asaba.
From 20 September, there were no Biafran soldiers stationed west of Umunede, east of Agbor.
On 1 October, Midwest commanders in Umunede and Igueben, south of Ubiaja on the Auchi-Agbor Road, fled from their positions. Their Biafran subordinates promptly retreated. Constant streams of retreating Biafran and Midwest troops filed through Asaba on 2 and 3 October. The Biafrans were usually mounted in vehicles, while the Midwesterners had to walk. The attitude of the Biafran soldiers and officers was that they would not fight for the Midwest if the Midwest Army did not want to fight. In Asaba on 2 October, the elders and chiefs met to consider sending a delegation to the approaching Nigerian Army to surrender the town and ask for protection in return for help in finding and capturing Biafran soldiers in the town. Cadet Uchei, who brought soldiers to stop the delegation with death threats, thwarted this effort. At this time, some 35 non-Igbos were rounded up and given shelter at St. Patrick’s College, Asaba.
Twice, Cadet Uchei brought soldiers to kill the refugees and arrest the Americans in charge of the school. On the first occasion, Lt. Christian Ogbulo, ADC to Okonkwo, stopped the attempt. Cadet Williams from Ogwashi-Uku brought soldiers to rescue only the Americans from Uchei’s second attempt. Also on 2 October, Col. Chukwurah, who had been the commanding officer at Agbor, came to Asaba and told the Midwest Army HQ staff that he had overthrown Okonkwo and he was now military governor of the Midwest. Chukwurah fled across the bridge to Biafra before nightfall.
Only two of the officers of the Midwest Army were known not to have fled from battle during the campaign: Major Joe Isichei (who was a Lieutenant on August 9) and Lt-Col. Joe Achuzia. Gathering a few soldiers, they attempted to shoot their way out. Okwechime was seen in Onitsha at this time; he had been wounded. By the evening of 2 October, the Midwest Army was completely dissolved.
From 6 a.m on 4 October, machine gun-and mortar fire was heard near Asaba, but the direction was uncertain. It was later discovered that the firing came from Asaba-Isele-Uku Road. At about 1p.m, as the staff members of St. Patrick’s College were leaving the dining room, the first mortar shell landed on the school football field. Mortar shelling continued until dusk. Federal troops reached the northern edge of the campus, along the Asaba-Agbor Road, at about 5p.m. By noon of 5 October, there were six battalions lining up on the road in front of the college, according to Captain Johnson, who was third in command of the 71st Battalion. By the evening of 6 October, Federal forces held the road all the way into the Catholic Mission, two miles inside Asaba. Biafran resistance west of the Niger was over.
Major Alani Akinrinade commanded the 71st Battalion. (Akinrinade in a clarification, said his command was the 6th Brigade and truly he was in Asaba at this time.
His second in command was a Tiv officer, older than Alani. The men of this battalion were mostly Yoruba and Tiv, with some Delta (Ijaw) men. “Most spoke English. They were disciplined, courageous and polite,” the American report stated.
Captain Johnson ordered the Americans to leave Asaba by the morning of 6 October. The reason was understood to be that the 71st Battalion was unable to guarantee their safety from the “second wave” of federal soldiers, known as “the Sweepers” coming behind. “The Sweepers” were only briefly observed, but they wore long hair, had “cross-hatching tribal marks on both cheeks” and apparently willing to live up to their reputation as “exterminators.” According to secret cables sent from American embassies in Niger and Chad to the Embassy and consulates in Nigeria, thousands of Nigeriens and Chadians crossed the border to enlist for the war.
Ten trucks of Nigerien soldiers were seen being transported for service in the Nigerian Army from Gusau to Kaduna and over 2,000 more waiting on Niger-Nigeria border for transportation to Kaduna. The secret document went on: “1,000 Chadian soldiers passed through Maiduguri en route Kaduna. These mercenary soldiers constituted the “Sweepers.” The captured American teachers aptly observed that there were soldiers regarded as fighting soldiers and there were other units that came behind to conduct mass exterminations.
Major Alani, it was understood, was trying to get as many civilians as possible into the bush before the sweepers could arrive.
On the 5 October, when they came, a lieutenant attempted to arrest the American teachers at St. Patrick’s College and their non-Igbo refugees, who had hidden from retreating but still vicious Biafran troops.
Captain Johnson quickly summoned Major Alani. The lieutenant claimed to be acting for a “Major Jordane,” but a check proved this as false. Alani sent the lieutenant and his men away and posted a guard to the school until the staff and refugees left Asaba. There were too many civilians to be executed that Captain Paul Ogbebor and his men were asked to get rid of a group of several hundred Asaba citizens rounded up on 7 October. Not wanting to risk insubordination, he marched the contingent into the bush, told the people to run and had his men fire harmlessly into the ground. Eyewitness accounts confirmed that he performed the same life-saving deception in Ogwashi-Uku.
However, other civilian contingents the sweepers rounded up were shot behind the Catholic Mission and their bodies thrown into the Niger River. This incident and many others were reported to Colonel Arthur Halligan, the US military attaché in Nigeria at that time, the document concluded.
At night on 19 September, Banjo was arrested in Agbor. He was court martialed in Enugu three days later. Okonkwo participated in the court-martial and Ojukwu was present too. Banjo was found guilty, together with Emmanuel Ifeajuna (“the man from Ilaah who shot Abubakar” –the Prime Minister), Phillip Alale and Sam Agbam.
Bob Barnard, American consul in Enugu, said Ojukwu told him that he ordered the killing of Banjo, Ifeajuna, Alale and Agbam because they had planned to oust him from office, oust Gowon as well and install Awolowo as Prime Minister. The American military attaché, Arthur Halligan and Brooks, the Defense Attaché who had some prior intimation of the coup cabled the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington 3 August 1967 that “in the long run, Njoku will unseat Ojukwu.”
Ojukwu told Barnard: “The plotters intended to take Brigadier Hillary Njoku, the head of Biafran Army into custody and bring him to the State House under heavy armed guard ostensibly to demand of him that Njoku be relieved of command on the grounds of incompetence.” They had been behind the withdrawal of troops and reverses of prior Biafran victories. He continued: “Once inside the State House, Njoku’s guards would be used against him. Ifeajuna would then declare himself acting Governor and offer ceasefire on Gowon’s terms. Banjo would go to the West and replace Brigadier Yinka Adebayo, the military governor of Western Region. Next, Gowon would be removed and Awolowo declared Prime Minister of Reunited Federation…Victor Banjo, Ifeajuna and others kept in touch with co-conspirators in Lagos via British Deputy High Commission’s facilities in Benin.”
When the American consul asked Ojukwu for evidence, Ojukwu replied: “Banjo is a very meticulous man who kept records and notes of everything he did. The mistake of the plotters was they talked too much, their moves too conspicuous and they made notes. As a result, the conspirators came under surveillance from the early stages of the plot’s existence. Their plans then became known and confirmed by subsequent events.”
In a separate document, Clint Olson, American Deputy Chief of Mission wrote: “Much of the information recounted came from Major (Dr.) Okonkwo. Banjo freely admitted in his testimony that a group of Yorubas on both sides of the battle were plotting together to take over Lagos and Enugu governments and unite Nigeria under Chief Awolowo. Gowon, Ojukwu, and Okonkwo were to be eliminated; Gowon was to have been killed by Yoruba officers in the Federal Army.”
The document stated further: “When arrested on the night of 19 – 20th September, Banjo offered no resistance because he said then it was too late to stop the affair and the plot was already in motion. His role, Banjo said, was already accomplished. As far as is known, Banjo died without revealing the names of his collaborators in Lagos.”
Before Banjo got to Enugu after his arrest, Okonkwo had telephoned Gowon to warn him of a threat to his life. Okonkwo said he was afraid that the assassination of Gowon would prevent the Heads of State Mission of the Organization of African Unity from coming to Nigeria. The OAU mission held the best hope of resolving the war, Okonkwo believed.
Whether Ojukwu knew of or agreed with Okonkwo’s warning to Gowon was not known. However according to the American Olson, roadblocks appeared in many places in Lagos and were severely enforced. They were removed after about 48 hours as mysteriously as they had appeared.
Gowon, in an exclusive interview with New Nigeria after Banjo revealed himself as the head of an invading army, said he once met Banjo and Ojukwu in 1965 during the crisis that followed the 1964 parliamentary elections. They were discussing the merits of the army taking over governance.
Meanwhile on 10th August 1967, at 9:25pm NNS Lokoja, (Nigeria’s only landing craft) left Lagos again with supplies to reinforce the activities of Adekunle’s 3Marine Commandos(3MCDS). Two weeks before, she had taken two battalions – the first consignment of the 35,000 men strong Division to Bonny. The Biafran Navy comprised speedboats, tug boats, barges commandeered from the oil companies and canoes and rafts of fishermen.
NNS Ibadan a Second World War British navy Seaward Defence Boat with a 40/60mm Bofors anti-aircraft forehead that could hardly fire three rounds without jamming was the command ship of this Navy. She was proudly rechristened BNS Biafra. Commander Winifred Anuku, head of the Biafran Navy had mapped out a plan to arm an old dilapidated dredging ship with hidden artilleries and several companies in its well and deck fittings. Seeing it was old and non-military, one of the NNS enforcing the blockade would be confident to approach her and interrogate her, they reckoned. Then they would quickly open fire on the upper deck of the Nigerian ship, over power her and walk her to their Naval Dockyard in Port Harcourt as the new Biafran sea jewel. Three days in sea, no NNS approached. Lt Cdr P.J. Odu the commander of this planned piracy reported back to Anuku: “no enemy ship sighted 20miles offshore.” He then dismissed the naval blockade as “propaganda to convince friendly countries from sending shipments of arms.” When James Parker, the UK Deputy High Commissioner stationed in Enugu and Bob Barnard, his American counterpart met Ojukwu and asked him about the rumoured invasion from the sea, Ojukwu simply spread his teeth surrounded by his bushy beard. “He laughed at the thought that the Nigerian Navy could enforce a blockade of Biafran ports or mount amphibious on Biafran coasts with its winding creeks and primordial mangrove swamp running twenty miles inland,” Barnard wrote. “He said he doesn’t know where the Nigerian naval vessels go when they depart Lagos but they are not, repeat, not patrolling off the coast of Biafra.”
Unknown to the Biafrans, NNS Penelope the command ship of the Nigerian Navy had been summoned with all her sisters including the five taking turns to enforce the blockade to the Naval Dockyard in Apapa. By 1800hrs on 18th July 1967, they were all there. Also assembled were three merchant vessels from the Nigerian National Shipping Line, King Jaja, Oranyan, Bode Thomas and later Oduduwa and Warigi from Farrell Lines. They were there to rehearse a joint Army and Navy amphibious operation which was later variously described as “masterpiece in the history of warfare in Africa, ”“the first of its kind by any 3rd world country,” “the African version of Omaha Beach landings that turned the tide of the Second World War.”
By the 25th July, the invasion to stamp Federal boots on the Niger Delta and close in on Biafra from the south was launched. The three Seaward Defence Boats(SDBs) NNS Ogoja, Benin, Enugu, proceeded into Bonny river channel while NNS Nigeria, a frigate, stood on the high seas guarding NNS Lokoja with its human cargo. Because of her longer range 4 inch battery, Nigeria was still able to provide support for the operational objectives of the three SDBs ahead. NNS Ogoja the largest of the SDB spotted BNS Biafra heading downstream. She quickly sheared away from the convoy to engaged her. Once Biafra came within her range, Ogoja volleyed thunderous shots in rapid successions and Biafra replied feebly and its Bofors guns kept on jamming after three shots. Akin Aduwo commanding Ogoja and P.J. Odu commanding Biafra were colleagues and very good friends for years and the war had made them reached a point where one must destroy the other for the greater glory of his country.
While the engineers were fixing this jam, Biafra was trying to quickly manoeuvre round in a tight circle so that it won’t be in a broadsides range with Ogoja hence becoming a turkey shoot. Then she got stuck in the shallow end of the river. Adunwo depressed his guns, fired low at the stern to jam the engines and propellers. That ensured Biafra was going nowhere again. His friend and his crew quickly deserted the ship and escaped into the swamps. The tow tug boat Abdul Maliki later came to tow BNS Biafra back to Naval Dockyard in Lagos where it was rechristened NNS Ibadan. Ogoja returned to join Benin and Enugu never realising that the fight between friends, the desertion of Biafra, its rechristening in Lagos would be the metaphor for the 30 months civil war.
The heavy fire from Enugu, Benin and Ogoja so thoroughly subdued the Biafran defensive positions on Bonny Island that resistance to the NNS Lokoja’s troop landings were too scattered to make an impact. Not only was this D Company under the Biafran 8th Battalion of Port Harcourt too small to defend Bonny, they went on offensive when the ships were not within range, hence easily giving away their stations. Hence Federal SDBs didn’t have to recourse to indiscriminate shelling to subdue the island which may have affected the oil installations and refinery jetties. US Defence Attaché’s noted in his secret report of 27th July 1967, Gowon, was “overjoyed” when Adekunle reported that Bonny had been taken with “no damage to the oil installations.” All the 16 storage tanks with their 3.9 million crude oil were intact. Quickly, they consolidated their positions on both sides of the river channel and by mid-morning 5th August, Dawes Island which controls river channels leading to Okrika were in Adekunle’s hands.
On the 10th of August, Adekunle received report from Supreme Headquarters that a whole Biafran Brigade had crossed the Niger Bridge and they had split in Agbor. Some battalions were heading northwards towards Auchi and Agenebode, some were heading westwards to Benin and more pertinently to him, some were heading southwards to Warri and Sapele. So the 3MCDs made immediate plans to respond to this Biafran surprise. First Adekunle knew that this Biafran invasion may be a tactical objective whose overall mission imperative was the recapture of Bonny. Biafran Navy Headquarters in Port Harcourt cannot feel safe knowing that a Nigerian brigade was stationed 35km away at Bonny. What Adekunle did was to quickly redeploy the 7th and 32nd battalions to the Forcados and Escravos creeks 166 nautical miles away to contain any advance of Biafran troops to the creeks. The 8th battalion proceeded to hold a defensive alignment with Port Harcourt.
Major Abubakar’s 9th Battalion left to hold Bonny Island and perform rear operations. The NNS that were bringing in supplies, equipment, personnel were re-routed 166 nautical miles back to Forcados and Escravos. The Nigerian national line cargo vessel, Oranyan which on the 8th of August had departed from Lagos and arrived in Bonny with supplies, equipment and some personnel was ordered unload at the village of Sobolo-Obotobo which is northwest of Forcados. At 6:30am on the 11th of August, NNS Enugu had left Bonny River and was on recce in Escravos River in case there were militarised speedboats, tugs or barges lurking somewhere. None. At 9am, NNS Lokoja disgorged two additional rifle companies at Escravos and they quickly established defensive positions there. On the 13th of August, MV Bode Thomas added more supplies, equipment and personnel reinforcements. The build-up continued.
To the annoyance of Adekunle who arguably was the most successful war commanders in Nigeria’s military history, a new Division was created and called 2nd Division headed by Lt Col Murtala Muhammad while his own formation despite the success of his mission so far was not upgraded to a Divisional strength. With the addition of 31st and 33rd Battalion, he was upgraded to 3rd Marine Commando Division. Muhammad’s 2nd comprised three brigades 4th, 5th, 6th Brigades commanded by Lt Cols Godwin Ally, Francis Aisida, Alani Akinrinade. Their mission imperative was to rout the Biafran forces from the Midwest by invading from the West, Northwest and North.
Ally’s 4th Brigade (which was to be later commanded by Major Ibrahim Taiwo CO of the 10th Battalion because a sniper fire hit Ally in the chest in Asaba and almost killed him) was on the Ore, Ofosu, Okitipupa sector holding a defensive alignment against Banjo’s advance. Akinrinade’s 6th Brigade was tasked with Owo-Akure sector and Aisida’s 5th was the command Brigade in Okene with Auchi, Ubiaja being their strategic objectives and Benin, Agbor, and Asaba being their operational objectives. All the brigade commanders were waiting for a sign. In his report of 24th August 1967, Standish Brooks, US defence Attaché wrote: “Murtala Muhammad does not want to fight a piecemeal campaign without a series of logical and successive objectives being assigned and without reasonable capabilities to achieve the objectives at hand.” Bisalla, the Chief of Staff(Army) said of Murtala, I know him “when he starts he wants to go all the way to the River[Niger] before he even thinks of stopping.” But he needed the sign first and his brigade commanders were waiting too. Tick-tock.
Besides the military communication units, the army headquarters in Lagos, at times used the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation to transmit information to all the divisional headquarters and brigade commanders. It could be done during radio programmes, news bulletins or radio jingles. They public heard these secret codes but they thought they were part of the show. But on the 20th of September 1967, at 8 o’clock in the morning NBC broadcast the sign the field commanders had been waiting for. “The frogs are swimming; the frogs are swimming.” The CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)monitored and recorded key signals, statements and speech about the war from every radio station in Nigeria, Biafra and neighbouring countries. And they shared them with American Diplomatic/Consular units, CICSTRIKE (Commander In Chief STRIKE – Swift Tactical Response In Every Known Environment), ACSI (Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence), CINCMEAFSA(Commander in Chief Middle East/South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara) and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency). Standish Brooks, their Attaché posted to Nigeria analysed The frogs are swimming intelligence thus: “this informed the 2nd Division and the guerrilla bands operating in various areas of the Midwest that elements of Adekunle’s 3rd Division are already ashore from the Escravos/Forcados creeks.”
Hastily marshalled Midwestern militias had been dealing fires to the Biafran occupiers. It was reported that Urhobo, Ijaw and Itsekiri swimmers were diving underwater and organising surprising attacks on Biafran units and formations along the Ethiope River. In Benin too they reminded themselves they were the city of Ovonramwen Nogbaisi and these Biafran forces were the latest version of the British expedition forces of the 19th century. And so rapidly, young men were organising themselves as into deadly underground resistance groups, old people who could not fight were contributing money and their dane guns; young women like Moremi were reported to be offering their bodies to get close to these Biafran forces and poison their food. The Midwest must be made inhospitable for Biafran agenda.
The frogs are swimming. Adekunle and his 3MCDOs left their Escravos base at 3am and they were blazing towards their objectives on speedboats. The boats held a platoon of 26 troops and the ones that carried a Land Rover each could only take 12 soldiers. With NNS Enugu providing the operational support, seven hours later, they had secured the ports of Koko and Sapele. They forked into two columns: One headed towards Warri and by 22nd of September, they had captured the Warri port and the ECN power station in Ughelli. The frogs are swimming. The other column headed northeast to Agbor on Sapele/Agbor Road. And a northern column from the 6th Brigade of the 2nd Division was heading south east to Agbor too via Ehor-Agbor Road. The following day, 26th of September 1967, Agbor fell. To keep up the momentum, Lagos send in 5000 German G3 7.62 rifles to be issued to marine commandoes. The riverine operation of the 3MCDs was billed to be defining in its ruthless efficiency because the federal government wanted to use it especially to send a message to the oil companies suspending royalty payments who their boss was: Nigeria or Biafra. The American secret cable of 3rd July stated that Shell-BP was convinced that “Biafra was here to stay and that Ojukwu would be kind to the company.”
The 2nd Division too had been moving rapidly on its objectives. The frogs are swimming. After the fall of Ubiaja, Muhammad divided the new 8th Brigade reassigned from the 5th Brigade into two columns. As of the night of 21st September 1967, a column was at the village of Ekpon 20km away from Agbor on Uromi-Agbor Road. The other column was at that time was in the village of Ebu blazing towards Asaba which was 40km away. Elements of the 6th brigade were at Okeze village heading towards Agbor after capturing Benin. In seven days, Ore, Benin, Agbor, Asaba, Kwale, Warri, Sapele fell; Ojukwu fled.
The 3MCDs were asked to pull back from Agbor and Kwale and the Ethiope River was made into the interdivisional boundary with the 2nd Division. On 29th September at 1550hrs, CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service recorded Adekunle on Benin Radio warning Midwesterners: “not to take advantage of the presence of federal troops to engage in looting, murder, and other criminalities.” Addressing the people of Warri, western Ishekiri, Agbor, he warned against using soldiers to achieve “personal vendettas.” Adekunle reminded his listeners that “he has powers to impose martial law in coastal areas but does not wish to do so.” He then signed himself off as General Officer Commanding Nigerian Coastal Sector.” It wasn’t only Adekunle made Colonel after the successful Bonny Island landing that promoted himself again without the approval of Lagos. On 21st of September, Murtala Mohammed went on the same Benin Radio, as monitored by the CIA, to “officially confirm the complete liberation of the Midwestern state except Agbor and Asaba” as the GOC of the second division when he was only a lieutenant Colonel. He then announced “on behalf of the head of the Federal military government” the appointment of “Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Ogbemudia as the temporary administrator.” Gowon and the federal executive council were reported to have been “shocked” but they “regularised the appointment since Ogbemudia was the most appropriate for the job.” Another document titled Military Campaign in the Midwest recorded “Ogbemudia’s father is of mixed Benin-Ika extraction, as his home village near Agbor is inhabited by a tribally mixed people. Ogbemudia’s mother is ‘pure Ibo’ from the East.”
Later in the evening, Ogbemudia came to radio to address the people. The CIA was listening too. He asked all workers to resume work on the morning of September 22 and voided all the appointments and promotions made by the Biafran regime. He asked the people not to “pay back Ibos in their own coin” and announced the the lifting of the curfew imposed by the Biafran regime. However, he advised people to keep indoors after 10:00pm “to allow the federal troops to complete the operation of mopping few relining stragglers.” But why after 10pm in the night?
On Wednesday 20 September 1967, federal troops opened a barrage of fire on a Catholic Convent in Benin City. There was only one nun there and she managed to escape with a few injuries. The soldiers subsequently said they were told by the local people that some Igbos were hiding behind the convent and so the opened fire on anything that moved. Furthermore, while Bishop Patrick Kelly was giving spiritual comfort to one Igbo civilian who was badly wounded, some soldiers approached him, enquired whether he was yet dead. When the Bishop said he was still alive, they promptly killed him. The bishop made a report to the Irish ambassador who subsequently gave Gowon and the American ambassador too.
The cold-blooded massacres in Midwest were not monopolised by the federal troops only. In a confidential report of 15 October 1967 recorded that, “as the Biafrans retreated from Benin to Agbor, they killed all the men, women and children they could find who were not Igbos. The town of Abudu, one of the larger places between Agbor and Benin lost virtually of its population with the exception of a small proportion that fled into the bush.” The British expatriate teacher, Anthony Charles Stephens was killed there when he refused to surrender his car to the retreating Biafran forces. Father Coleman an Irish SSMA priest said before Biafran troops left Agbor “without a fight” they killed off most of “non-Ibo men, women and children.”
In general, the American confidential report stated, non-Igbo Midwesterners were very anti-Biafran throughout the occupation. Many of them hid Northerners in their houses for weeks away from the Biafran troops who set out to kill them. The document continued: “Nearly all rejoiced when federal troops came in. The only town that was an exception was Ehor where even after the federal troops arrived, the local populace was protecting the Igbo soldiers and tried to confuse the federal troops.” However in Benin, there was no intention to confuse at all; “the civilians were busy pointing out the Ibos.” So the federal troops set up “two big camps to serve as safe havens in a school for the Ibos. The women and children were taken there,” the report said. But the men? Sam Idah, the director of the Benin Cemetery on Ifon Road told the American diplomats that day (21/09/67), 24 hours after the federal troops arrived 1,258 bodies have been buried there. “Trucks from the ministry of work and transport and from Benin development council were used to haul the corpses to the open pits.” Rev Rooney a Catholic Missionary with Benin Public Service said “a total of 989 civilians had been killed that day in the city.”
Ambassador Elbert Mathews noted that “with the capture of the Midwest and the fall of the Biafran capital within days, the Federal Government senses eventual military victories and was in no mood for outside criticisms.” And so the massacres went on unchecked. Their report in the international media encouraged some diplomatic recognition for Biafra and arms shipments which prolonged the war for another 27 months. (Oblong Media)
Ojukwu, Biafra and I, by war
SPECIAL BRANCH REPORT: HOW IRONSI WAS KILLED. ~ BY HIS ADC CAPTAIN ANDREW NWANKWO.
Senator Andrew Nwankwo from the Izzi clan in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, was a captain in the Nigeria Air Force before the January 1966 coup that made way for Major General J. T. U Aguiyi Ironsi to emerge as Head of State.
He became Ironsi’s Aide-De-Camp through the recommendation of Brigadier George Krubo who was then in-charge of the Air Force and subsequently supervised the late Head of State’s security.
Capt. Andrew Nwankwo (rtd) said he was to die with his boss, but for fate. He was present when both Ironsi and Fajuyi were shot dead.
Tracking the 61-year-old former ADC down in his one story building residence in Abakaliki was not as difficult as getting him to recall the events that led to the death of his master 38 years ago.
He would start by taking you down memory lane when he served as a courier to late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, “I was manning the octopus-a helicopter that carries 105 artillery gun and six other machine guns.
“So when Ethiopia was at war with Somalia in 1964/65 we formed the defence group of the emperor, we also formed an attack force. When the emperor is going to the frontline to see what is happening, we ring him round to clear the way for him”.
“So when Ethiopia was at war with Somalia in 1964/65 we formed the defence group of the emperor, we also formed an attack force. When the emperor is going to the frontline to see what is happening, we ring him round to clear the way for him”.
It was part of these that Ironsi saw and handed over his security to the young captain. “It was cool working with Ironsi, he understood everything about what I should do because he had commanded the UN forces in Congo, and that exposed him to the type of people he needed”.
The coup
Recalling the events of that night, July 29, 1966, Nwankwo noted that they were in Ibadan, “we had a small detachment of 106 Artillery, Commanded by one Walbe from Plateau”
The Head of State had the previous day hosted traditional rulers from all parts of the country in the Ibadan Government House. “He wasn’t feeling quite well, he had a knee problem and had to go to bed early.
“Lieutenant Sanni Bello was the army ADC, and we were very close. So, we left that night to go and look out and came back late. Lt. Adamu who was the ADC to Fajuyi, Sanni Bello, Walbe and myself, we all slept together in one room that night”.
“Lieutenant Sanni Bello was the army ADC, and we were very close. So, we left that night to go and look out and came back late. Lt. Adamu who was the ADC to Fajuyi, Sanni Bello, Walbe and myself, we all slept together in one room that night”.
At about 4a.m the telephone rang, I picked it up and that was Adeola, the then commissioner of police, Ibadan he said he wanted to speak with Ironsi, I said I was the ADC, he said he wanted to speak with him because there was a coup and he gave me some names Orok and two others that had been killed in
Abeokuta.
Abeokuta.
“Immediately, I made a mental picture of it, and I knew that it was the northerners that were responsible. So, I handed the phone to Ironsi and they talked. I then alerted Adamu and Sanni Bello and said look, there is a coup and the trend is this way.
“Bello assured me that if it is his own people he will protect me, because, there was tension in the land such that we knew a coup was imminent. So, we agreed to protect each other depending on where it will be coming from. I later discovered that Walbe who was sleeping with us was part of the coup; he later became ADC to Gowon.
“Around 5:30 we heard gunfire, then Ironsi had called Col. Njoku to tell him about the coup. As Njoku was going out, he was short at, but he escaped with bullet wounds. It was Njoku, who was the commander of Lagos Garrison that alerted others outside the Government House, Ibadan.
“Bello assured me that if it is his own people he will protect me, because, there was tension in the land such that we knew a coup was imminent. So, we agreed to protect each other depending on where it will be coming from. I later discovered that Walbe who was sleeping with us was part of the coup; he later became ADC to Gowon.
“Around 5:30 we heard gunfire, then Ironsi had called Col. Njoku to tell him about the coup. As Njoku was going out, he was short at, but he escaped with bullet wounds. It was Njoku, who was the commander of Lagos Garrison that alerted others outside the Government House, Ibadan.
“Fajuyi later sent me outside the government House to find out what was happening. I met Danjuma, who was then a major and he was my friend. He pretended he didn’t know what was happening, he was asking me, and I said I didn’t know. While I was trying to go back, one sergeant from Benue almost shot me, but Danjuma stopped him and spoke to him in Hausa. Danjuma later told me that he would like to see Ironsi, so that he could tell them what to do.
“It was then that Fajuyi came out to find out what was holding me, and there inside the Government House Danjuma ordered for his arrest and mine too. That was when I saw Walbe. Then Fajuyi asked me to take him to Ironsi so that they will obey him, that there should be only one person in charge. So, I took them to Ironsi, and major Newman, immediately he saw Ironsi, he seized his crocodile swagger stick, and then they started asking him about the January coup, he said he didn’t know about it that he only agreed to be Head of State so that he can restore confidence and normalcy. It was immediately they arrested Ironsi that they turned violent”.
“It was then that Fajuyi came out to find out what was holding me, and there inside the Government House Danjuma ordered for his arrest and mine too. That was when I saw Walbe. Then Fajuyi asked me to take him to Ironsi so that they will obey him, that there should be only one person in charge. So, I took them to Ironsi, and major Newman, immediately he saw Ironsi, he seized his crocodile swagger stick, and then they started asking him about the January coup, he said he didn’t know about it that he only agreed to be Head of State so that he can restore confidence and normalcy. It was immediately they arrested Ironsi that they turned violent”.
The road to the valley of death.
They marched us down, Ironsi and myself, to where Fajuyi was. They used telephone cable to tie my hands behind and my legs, with a little space to walk. Same they did to Ironsi, but they removed his shirt, he wore only trousers, they also tied Fajuyi. Ironsi was in a Land Rover, Fajuyi in a mini bus and myself in another bus. They drove us towards Iwo Road, 10 km from Ibadan, there was a small forest were they stopped, marched us to the right hand side of the bush, Fajuyi was leading and as he tried to cross a small stream, he fell down, the soldiers were unruly, it appeared some of them had for the first time taken Indian hemp, so when he fell down some of them started beating him.
My escape.
As Fajuyi fell down and they were beating him, Sanni Bello came to me and tapped me and said, we could do something now. It was providence, may be I was not destined to die. I took a few steps from them and jumped into a nearby ditch, all in a split of a second, Bello came and stood by the ditch and was shouting that I had escaped pointing at another direction. So the soldiers ran around that direction shooting into the bush, and when they felt they must have killed me, they shot Fajuyi and then Ironsi there, by the side of the stream. So Bello made sure that he was the last to leave the place.
The ADC, who was later elected senator in 1983 stated that the former Head of State could have escaped if not that he wanted to make sure that there was no bloodshed. He said if he sacrificed his life and prevented bloodshed in Nigeria, it’s better for him. Even his chaplain urged him to escape but he said No. Also many of his officers who were contacted instead of taking action ran away.
The ADC denied the prevailing story that Ironsi was tied to a Land Rover and dragged along the road. He maintained that he saw Ironsi and Fajuyi shot dead. “They shot him on the chest and it was a burst, so he would have died after the first shot”.
The crocodile staff
It was a swagger stick, which he made after his name Aguiyi (crocodile). It was in the Congo, when he was commanding the United Nations Forces, the Indian troops were to land at the Lumumbashi Airport but the Cameroon gendarmes went and blocked the place with trucks, so that the Indian soldiers will not land, so, he used a Land Rover and with the stagger stick waved as they were shouting, he was eventually able to convince them to remove the trucks. Many attributed that feat to extraordinary powers in his swagger stick. But there was nothing in it, it was just a stick. Ironsi was not fetish; he was a devoted Catholic and attended mass every morning, even the day he was killed.
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commander, Col Achuzia
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Nigeria’s war time Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, at the end of the Nigerian civil war in1970 announced ‘’No victor, no vanquished’’, a slogan, many thought, was meant to give those on the side of the defunct Biafra a kind of psychological relief and ‘sense of belonging’ in the affairs of the country. However, one of the top Biafran war commanders and a very close, trusted associate of Ojukwu the Biafran leader, Col Joseph Achuzia a.k.a “Air Raid’’, “Hannibal’’ or “Achucriminal’’ was thrown into jail for seven years after the war on the orders of the Federal Government under Gowon.A British trained Aeronautic engineer and one-time Secretary General of the apex Igbo sociocultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Achuzia spoke inside his sitting room at his Asaba residence. Excerpts:
Could you comment on the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu you knew ?
Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu has always been known to me right from my secondary school days, when we were in Kings College together. Then later we met in Britain. And by the time Nigeria became independent, in October 1960, and I came home, we met again. By then he had already become entrenched within his position in the Nigerian Army.
We did not interact before the first coup took place; and immediately after the coup I left back to Britain. And I was following events because he was a key player in the scenario that was unfolding. Then the next landmark in my relationship with him took place when he was appointed the Governor of Eastern Region and Ejoor (General David Ejoor, rtd) was also appointed a governor.
Ejoor was sent to Enugu and Ojukwu protested, which made the then Head of State, General Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi to change the postings and sent him to Enugu while Ejoor was posted to Benin.
When we got to Enugu the situation was such that a townsman of mine was also the Secretary to the Eastern Regional Government in the person of C. C. Mordi, from Asaba here. A lot of things were going on: the killings in the North, pogrom; so many Igbos from the North were rushing down home; and what was taking place made me to have a closer look into the sort of programme the then governor of Eastern Region, in the person of Odumegwu Ojukwu held for the Igbo people because the trauma being created by the extensive killing was such that it required somebody with a proper insight in dealing with human tragedy to handle. Soldiers, civilians, civil servants were affected.
In fact, what took place affected the core inner group that held Igbo citizenship together, something that made the Igbo Union, which one regarded as all supreme in everything, of which Ohanaeze today, the Igbozuruome of today, were modeled after. Igbo Union had to retreat to the East. And in doing so, every Igbo person, male, female, child everything, for survival, was heading eastward.
Why did Ojukwu protested Ejoor’s posting to Enugu
It seemed that Ojukwu, who probably foresaw tomorrow, knew what would happen in the future. Perhaps that was the reason he protested against Ejoor being sent to Enugu because I am quite certain, in my mind now, not on hindsight but from what I saw around that time that the posting wasn’t correct and that Ojukwu was right to protest.
From then on my interest became more firm and solid, in terms of support, which I made up my mind to give to him. He came to Enugu, we met, discussed briefly, then I left back to Britain. It was while I was back in Britain that 1p.m news, in the afternoon, in London, it was announced that, Chief Obafemi Awolowo said that if the East goes, the West will go. So I realised that the whole of this thing was heading towards a shooting match; and I felt that with the loss of so many experienced, trained officers from the East that they, Eastern Region, would need every hand available on deck.
That made me to board a plane coming back to Nigeria then to meet another coup, the July 1966 coup, which brought Gowon on board. I spent two days at Airport Hotel in Ikeja. When Murtala Mohammed was a Major, I knew him. George Miller, a friend of mine married to a German that I was going to stay in his house knew him (Murtala) but the instruction at the airport when we came out of the plane was that nobody goes out anywhere.
So we were taken to the Airport Hotel. George Miller, being friendly with Murtala, brought him and we met. We discussed and he assured that I should wait for a day or so and there would be flight to Benin. He kept to his words. Two days later, the route to Benin was opened again. And myself, my wife and child were taken to the plane which we boarded to Benin.
From there we headed to the East. By this time the situation was getting critical that second coup that we met was so devastating that it wasn’t only the army but everybody of Igbo origin or that came from the Eastern Region, including those Igbos from the Midwest became involved in the selective killings that were taking place.
And the vision which Ojukwu saw, when he protested now crystallized itself because the Midwesterners, Western Igbos, that were returning from the North and from the West, heading home, on reaching Benin, were not welcomed. Reliefs that were being distributed were not given them. Placements in the civil service departments where they were working, to enable them obtain salary or whatever would be given for succour were not allowed. They were told to go and meet their people in Enugu.
So they all trooped out and headed for Enugu. We were also around to assist in receiving them. In fact, that was when Ika Igbo Association was formed, just as today you are hearing Anioma, Anioma; Anioma wasn’t in our lexicon then. What we had was Ika Igbo. And our interaction with Ojukwu and his government was concretised at that time.
From then, even though the army in the Midwestern Command, the high echelon, was more of Midwestern Igbos, the civil service cadre that should have lent weight to them and support were no more available. Most of them had headed across the Niger. And it must also be borne in mind that the Nigerian boundaries vis a vis East and West were not as they are today, where you have as Ogbaru and those places used to be Midwest, Midwestern Region, the Niger wasn’t a natural boundary, it was the effect of the war that brought about the Niger, at the end of the war being regarded as a natural boundary and the configuration that took place since then still makes it difficult for the Igbos to settle down properly.
The Ojukwu I knew
As I was saying, you are talking about Ojukwu. Here was a man because of his vision, somehow prepared by God or providence, whatever it is, prepared him and placed him at this point in time in history at a place where he was to act as Moses for his people. This was the reason why all his pronouncements had always been that efforts must be made to make sure that the Igbos still remain recognised within the set up and arrangement called Nigeria.
He made a lot of pronouncements and also, at the same time made a lot of requests from the Igbo people. I remember that there was a meeting he called of Leaders of Thoughts. During that meeting, he said what we are asking for is not separation but what we are entitled to by being partners in the arrangement called Nigeria. He said we were being pushed with intention of pushing us out of Nigeria, and this we will resist.
For the first time he was the one who clarified what we mean in my mind and conditioned my attitude during the period of warfare, in the battle field. He said they can push us, we will take our stand in our own soil with our back against the wall but we will not give up what we have already created in Nigeria.
He said, in terms of civilised norms implanted into Nigeria, it is the Igboman alone that feels he must build a decent house, not only to accommodate his family, but to accommodate those in whose land, in whose territory he acquired wealth and built these things. He said the Igbo man by education, self help, both within the commercial business group, the civil service, the entrepreneurship are the Igbos that we can’t abandon. We must resist the push.
Having heard all these, one wonders why, what do we do to redress the needless ferocious attack and traumatisation by the pogrom. Everybody encouraged him to go to Aburi. He went. What he came back with emboldened us to mobilise our people to wait for the onslaught of Police action when the army was unleashed on the Eastern Region as if they were intruders.
We tried to resist, hoping that it would be just something that well, in a month or two, Nigeria would get tired; we will get back to the roundtable to discuss issues. But what we were getting back from senior civil servants that were out and envoys that we had outside was that this attack unleashed on us wouldn’t last long, that if they pushed any further that there were countries within the civilised community, who will then come to our aid.
So everybody guarded their loins ready to continue resisting to be pushed out so as to give time to and chance for help to come. That help never came. The help that came from a few African countries and the half-hearted help from the French side seemed to be the only help that we could expect.
In the meantime, through his propaganda machinery and the way he interacted with the grassroots of our people, everybody was ready to lay down their lives to defend the cause he believed in, which he made us believe in. This was the reason why young students, graduates from University of Nigeria, Nsukka, everybody was clamouring “Ojukwu give us guns” ‘’we will defend ourselves’’. The guns were not there and those that were there were not sufficient to even equip the army, let alone giving young graduates, who did not know how to handle guns.
Why we forced Ojukwu to declare Biafra
All of a sudden, we were given a date that on such and such a day the federal government is going to carve up Eastern Region. Ojukwu then called a Consultative Assembly of the people, among which were the Ika Igbos, also given a pride of place as part of the Igbo nation. Our traditional rulers from the Midwest, the Igbo speaking areas attended that conference.
I was privy. I was there. And around 1pm a news flash came. What we were hearing as rumour became a reality: Eastern Region was carved. They carved out Rivers State and South East State. So we went into the afternoon recess and by the time we came out of recess and went into afternoon session, a decision was quickly reached that we can’t sit back and see ourselves divided, so the best thing to do was that we must ask Ojukwu to declare the State of Biafra.
Before that there has been a lot of argument, here and there, over the issue of what name do we go by. So many different names and configurations were bandied about but finally we asked the group of lawyers assembled to prepare a communiqué declaring the state of Biafra.
Even that meeting, Ojukwu wasn’t there, he was still in Government House. This meeting was being held within Hotel Presidential. So by the time the decision was reached, this was carried to him, we were surprised that he said no. He will not do it. He said that he will not declare. We thought either they didn’t teach the military what is meant when somebody is trying to cut you to bits. If he didn’t understand, we did. So message was sent back to him and an ultimatum was given him that if by 8:00 O’clock that night he didn’t declare the state of Biafra, not only will we remove him, we will declare and decide who leads us.
Later in the evening he finally announced the state of Biafra. So we all rejoiced that now, at least, if Nigeria continued attacking us, we now knew how we were going to fight. The Eastern Region was one whole entity notwithstanding the earlier announcement by federal government creating three states out of Eastern Region.
Ojukwu as a magician
First to keep the morale of the people going, Ojukwu performed like a magician. People say, ah Okokon Ndem, Uche Chukwumerije, so many of them within the propaganda machinery, it was somebody that gave them the inspiration. Without Ojukwu, they wouldn’t have risen to the occasion. The army quickly changed by creating a situation where civilians were quickly mobilised into what was called Civil Defence.
It is this Civil Defenders that became the backbone of the Biafran Army and one should not forget that the Biafran Army is the Nigerian Eastern Command, whoever is recruited there belongs to Nigeria and is part and parcel of the Nigerian Army. The strength infused in them by Ojukwu made for the staunch, gallant defence of that realm by that army.
When there were shortage of arms and equipment, Ojukwu called on the Biafran educated engineers and they met and he said go and find an answer. Supposing we don’t get arms from anywhere or no money to buy since Nigeria was changing her currency, find an answer to these equipment scarcity.
We quickly formed the Research and Production (RAD). The story of what RAD did I will tell at a future date, not now. BOF was created, the story of who and what happened, I will tell at a later date because I was at the helm of all these groupings, to give direction and show them what to do.
Were you in the Nigerian Army before the war?
No!
Are you saying that Ojukwu was not interested in the Eastern Region pulling out from Nigeria because many say his stubbornness and personality led to the war?
No! Like I said we followed his actions from the first coup. If it wasn’t for Ojukwu and the role he played, the North would have been the battle ground because Nzeogwu was holding the North and the army firmly in his hands. And the North could have been the battle ground. But that aspect of Ojukwu’s action which favoured the people who are now saying that he caused the war, if he didn’t take the steps he took, the story would have been different.
The people who should be criticising Ojukwu are the Igbos because every Igboman, including the Northerners, were happy with the situation when the first coup took place. And the role Ojukwu played, like I started by saying that he objected to his posting as governor that he would rather be posted to Enugu, to the East and let Ejoor go to the Midwest.
How should Ojukwu be buried, as an officer of the Nigerian Army; as a General of the Biafran Army or Eze Gburugburu of Ndigbo?
Any of the caps fits him. I repeat, any of the caps fits him. But you ask me, in everything there are always stakeholders, notwithstanding, the relations, which, under our tradition, are the first port of call for burial, by his position. He is now a public figure belonging to the Igbo race, belonging to Nigerian army, while at the same belonging to the Nigerian civil populace.
Every one of these arms gained by the experience of coming in contact with Ojukwu. So, the burial should be such that all stakeholders should feel a sense of belonging within the process of his final interment.
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Nigeria’s war time Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, at the end of the Nigerian civil war in1970 announced ‘’No victor, no vanquished’’, a slogan, many thought, was meant to give those on the side of the defunct Biafra a kind of psychological relief and ‘sense of belonging’ in the affairs of the country. However, one of the top Biafran war commanders and a very close, trusted associate of Ojukwu the Biafran leader, Col Joseph Achuzia a.k.a “Air Raid’’, “Hannibal’’ or “Achucriminal’’ was thrown into jail for seven years after the war on the orders of the Federal Government under Gowon.A British trained Aeronautic engineer and one-time Secretary General of the apex Igbo sociocultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Achuzia spoke inside his sitting room at his Asaba residence. Excerpts:
Could you comment on the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu you knew ?
Dim Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu has always been known to me right from my secondary school days, when we were in Kings College together. Then later we met in Britain. And by the time Nigeria became independent, in October 1960, and I came home, we met again. By then he had already become entrenched within his position in the Nigerian Army.
We did not interact before the first coup took place; and immediately after the coup I left back to Britain. And I was following events because he was a key player in the scenario that was unfolding. Then the next landmark in my relationship with him took place when he was appointed the Governor of Eastern Region and Ejoor (General David Ejoor, rtd) was also appointed a governor.
Ejoor was sent to Enugu and Ojukwu protested, which made the then Head of State, General Johnson Thomas Umunakwe Aguiyi-Ironsi to change the postings and sent him to Enugu while Ejoor was posted to Benin.
When we got to Enugu the situation was such that a townsman of mine was also the Secretary to the Eastern Regional Government in the person of C. C. Mordi, from Asaba here. A lot of things were going on: the killings in the North, pogrom; so many Igbos from the North were rushing down home; and what was taking place made me to have a closer look into the sort of programme the then governor of Eastern Region, in the person of Odumegwu Ojukwu held for the Igbo people because the trauma being created by the extensive killing was such that it required somebody with a proper insight in dealing with human tragedy to handle. Soldiers, civilians, civil servants were affected.
In fact, what took place affected the core inner group that held Igbo citizenship together, something that made the Igbo Union, which one regarded as all supreme in everything, of which Ohanaeze today, the Igbozuruome of today, were modeled after. Igbo Union had to retreat to the East. And in doing so, every Igbo person, male, female, child everything, for survival, was heading eastward.
Why did Ojukwu protested Ejoor’s posting to Enugu
It seemed that Ojukwu, who probably foresaw tomorrow, knew what would happen in the future. Perhaps that was the reason he protested against Ejoor being sent to Enugu because I am quite certain, in my mind now, not on hindsight but from what I saw around that time that the posting wasn’t correct and that Ojukwu was right to protest.
From then on my interest became more firm and solid, in terms of support, which I made up my mind to give to him. He came to Enugu, we met, discussed briefly, then I left back to Britain. It was while I was back in Britain that 1p.m news, in the afternoon, in London, it was announced that, Chief Obafemi Awolowo said that if the East goes, the West will go. So I realised that the whole of this thing was heading towards a shooting match; and I felt that with the loss of so many experienced, trained officers from the East that they, Eastern Region, would need every hand available on deck.
That made me to board a plane coming back to Nigeria then to meet another coup, the July 1966 coup, which brought Gowon on board. I spent two days at Airport Hotel in Ikeja. When Murtala Mohammed was a Major, I knew him. George Miller, a friend of mine married to a German that I was going to stay in his house knew him (Murtala) but the instruction at the airport when we came out of the plane was that nobody goes out anywhere.
So we were taken to the Airport Hotel. George Miller, being friendly with Murtala, brought him and we met. We discussed and he assured that I should wait for a day or so and there would be flight to Benin. He kept to his words. Two days later, the route to Benin was opened again. And myself, my wife and child were taken to the plane which we boarded to Benin.
From there we headed to the East. By this time the situation was getting critical that second coup that we met was so devastating that it wasn’t only the army but everybody of Igbo origin or that came from the Eastern Region, including those Igbos from the Midwest became involved in the selective killings that were taking place.
And the vision which Ojukwu saw, when he protested now crystallized itself because the Midwesterners, Western Igbos, that were returning from the North and from the West, heading home, on reaching Benin, were not welcomed. Reliefs that were being distributed were not given them. Placements in the civil service departments where they were working, to enable them obtain salary or whatever would be given for succour were not allowed. They were told to go and meet their people in Enugu.
So they all trooped out and headed for Enugu. We were also around to assist in receiving them. In fact, that was when Ika Igbo Association was formed, just as today you are hearing Anioma, Anioma; Anioma wasn’t in our lexicon then. What we had was Ika Igbo. And our interaction with Ojukwu and his government was concretised at that time.
From then, even though the army in the Midwestern Command, the high echelon, was more of Midwestern Igbos, the civil service cadre that should have lent weight to them and support were no more available. Most of them had headed across the Niger. And it must also be borne in mind that the Nigerian boundaries vis a vis East and West were not as they are today, where you have as Ogbaru and those places used to be Midwest, Midwestern Region, the Niger wasn’t a natural boundary, it was the effect of the war that brought about the Niger, at the end of the war being regarded as a natural boundary and the configuration that took place since then still makes it difficult for the Igbos to settle down properly.
The Ojukwu I knew
As I was saying, you are talking about Ojukwu. Here was a man because of his vision, somehow prepared by God or providence, whatever it is, prepared him and placed him at this point in time in history at a place where he was to act as Moses for his people. This was the reason why all his pronouncements had always been that efforts must be made to make sure that the Igbos still remain recognised within the set up and arrangement called Nigeria.
He made a lot of pronouncements and also, at the same time made a lot of requests from the Igbo people. I remember that there was a meeting he called of Leaders of Thoughts. During that meeting, he said what we are asking for is not separation but what we are entitled to by being partners in the arrangement called Nigeria. He said we were being pushed with intention of pushing us out of Nigeria, and this we will resist.
For the first time he was the one who clarified what we mean in my mind and conditioned my attitude during the period of warfare, in the battle field. He said they can push us, we will take our stand in our own soil with our back against the wall but we will not give up what we have already created in Nigeria.
He said, in terms of civilised norms implanted into Nigeria, it is the Igboman alone that feels he must build a decent house, not only to accommodate his family, but to accommodate those in whose land, in whose territory he acquired wealth and built these things. He said the Igbo man by education, self help, both within the commercial business group, the civil service, the entrepreneurship are the Igbos that we can’t abandon. We must resist the push.
Having heard all these, one wonders why, what do we do to redress the needless ferocious attack and traumatisation by the pogrom. Everybody encouraged him to go to Aburi. He went. What he came back with emboldened us to mobilise our people to wait for the onslaught of Police action when the army was unleashed on the Eastern Region as if they were intruders.
We tried to resist, hoping that it would be just something that well, in a month or two, Nigeria would get tired; we will get back to the roundtable to discuss issues. But what we were getting back from senior civil servants that were out and envoys that we had outside was that this attack unleashed on us wouldn’t last long, that if they pushed any further that there were countries within the civilised community, who will then come to our aid.
So everybody guarded their loins ready to continue resisting to be pushed out so as to give time to and chance for help to come. That help never came. The help that came from a few African countries and the half-hearted help from the French side seemed to be the only help that we could expect.
In the meantime, through his propaganda machinery and the way he interacted with the grassroots of our people, everybody was ready to lay down their lives to defend the cause he believed in, which he made us believe in. This was the reason why young students, graduates from University of Nigeria, Nsukka, everybody was clamouring “Ojukwu give us guns” ‘’we will defend ourselves’’. The guns were not there and those that were there were not sufficient to even equip the army, let alone giving young graduates, who did not know how to handle guns.
Why we forced Ojukwu to declare Biafra
All of a sudden, we were given a date that on such and such a day the federal government is going to carve up Eastern Region. Ojukwu then called a Consultative Assembly of the people, among which were the Ika Igbos, also given a pride of place as part of the Igbo nation. Our traditional rulers from the Midwest, the Igbo speaking areas attended that conference.
I was privy. I was there. And around 1pm a news flash came. What we were hearing as rumour became a reality: Eastern Region was carved. They carved out Rivers State and South East State. So we went into the afternoon recess and by the time we came out of recess and went into afternoon session, a decision was quickly reached that we can’t sit back and see ourselves divided, so the best thing to do was that we must ask Ojukwu to declare the State of Biafra.
Before that there has been a lot of argument, here and there, over the issue of what name do we go by. So many different names and configurations were bandied about but finally we asked the group of lawyers assembled to prepare a communiqué declaring the state of Biafra.
Even that meeting, Ojukwu wasn’t there, he was still in Government House. This meeting was being held within Hotel Presidential. So by the time the decision was reached, this was carried to him, we were surprised that he said no. He will not do it. He said that he will not declare. We thought either they didn’t teach the military what is meant when somebody is trying to cut you to bits. If he didn’t understand, we did. So message was sent back to him and an ultimatum was given him that if by 8:00 O’clock that night he didn’t declare the state of Biafra, not only will we remove him, we will declare and decide who leads us.
Later in the evening he finally announced the state of Biafra. So we all rejoiced that now, at least, if Nigeria continued attacking us, we now knew how we were going to fight. The Eastern Region was one whole entity notwithstanding the earlier announcement by federal government creating three states out of Eastern Region.
Ojukwu as a magician
First to keep the morale of the people going, Ojukwu performed like a magician. People say, ah Okokon Ndem, Uche Chukwumerije, so many of them within the propaganda machinery, it was somebody that gave them the inspiration. Without Ojukwu, they wouldn’t have risen to the occasion. The army quickly changed by creating a situation where civilians were quickly mobilised into what was called Civil Defence.
It is this Civil Defenders that became the backbone of the Biafran Army and one should not forget that the Biafran Army is the Nigerian Eastern Command, whoever is recruited there belongs to Nigeria and is part and parcel of the Nigerian Army. The strength infused in them by Ojukwu made for the staunch, gallant defence of that realm by that army.
When there were shortage of arms and equipment, Ojukwu called on the Biafran educated engineers and they met and he said go and find an answer. Supposing we don’t get arms from anywhere or no money to buy since Nigeria was changing her currency, find an answer to these equipment scarcity.
We quickly formed the Research and Production (RAD). The story of what RAD did I will tell at a future date, not now. BOF was created, the story of who and what happened, I will tell at a later date because I was at the helm of all these groupings, to give direction and show them what to do.
Were you in the Nigerian Army before the war?
No!
Are you saying that Ojukwu was not interested in the Eastern Region pulling out from Nigeria because many say his stubbornness and personality led to the war?
No! Like I said we followed his actions from the first coup. If it wasn’t for Ojukwu and the role he played, the North would have been the battle ground because Nzeogwu was holding the North and the army firmly in his hands. And the North could have been the battle ground. But that aspect of Ojukwu’s action which favoured the people who are now saying that he caused the war, if he didn’t take the steps he took, the story would have been different.
The people who should be criticising Ojukwu are the Igbos because every Igboman, including the Northerners, were happy with the situation when the first coup took place. And the role Ojukwu played, like I started by saying that he objected to his posting as governor that he would rather be posted to Enugu, to the East and let Ejoor go to the Midwest.
How should Ojukwu be buried, as an officer of the Nigerian Army; as a General of the Biafran Army or Eze Gburugburu of Ndigbo?
Any of the caps fits him. I repeat, any of the caps fits him. But you ask me, in everything there are always stakeholders, notwithstanding, the relations, which, under our tradition, are the first port of call for burial, by his position. He is now a public figure belonging to the Igbo race, belonging to Nigerian army, while at the same belonging to the Nigerian civil populace.
Every one of these arms gained by the experience of coming in contact with Ojukwu. So, the burial should be such that all stakeholders should feel a sense of belonging within the process of his final interment.
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