Chinua Achebe and the Moral Obligation to be Intelligent

By

Damola Awoyokun

A writer should not be an accomplice to lies. Even when thorns infect the land, a

writer must embody and defend the perennial destiny of high values and principles. It

is not the business of a writer to side with the powerless against the powerful; the

powerless can be thoughtless and wrong. (The Nazi party was once a powerless

group). A writer should not prefer falsehoods to reality just because they serve

patriotic ends. In times of great upheavals in a multi-ethnic society, a writer should

get out and warn the society that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its

consequences. Pride in one’s ethnic identity is good, patriotism is fantastic but when

they are not properly moderated by other higher considerations, they can prove more

destructive than nuclear weapons.

I was in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife when another round of the war of self-

determination and secession broke out between Modakeke and Ife. As the war

escalated, a single bullet wasn’t enough to kill the “enemy,” he had to be butchered

into little pieces and the severed heads displayed at each other’s market squares to

huge approval and celebration. Such was the power of the mutual hatred unleashed

from their pride in their respective ethnic identities that these two communities were

not rebuked by the fact that were both Yoruba, both Nigerians, or that the massacres

were being conducted around the famed cradle of Yoruba civilization.

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Patriotism when deployed must always be simultaneously governed by something

higher and lower than itself like the arms of a democratic government.  These provide

checks and balances so that patriotism doesn’t become a false conception of greatness

at the expense of other tribes or nations. It is for this reason that we proceed to discuss

Achebe’s patriotic autobiography, There Was a Country: A Personal History of

Biafra in the light of something higher than it: 21,000 pages of Confidential, Secret,

Top Secret US State Department Central Files on Nigeria-Biafra 1967- 1969 and

something lower: The Education of a British Protected Child by Chinua Achebe

himself.

…A Country is written for modern day Igbos to know from where the injustice of

their existence originated. Achebe’s logic is neat and simplistic: Africa began to

suffer 500 years ago when Europe discovered it (that is, there was no suffering or

intertribal wars before then in Africa!) Nigeria began to suffer when Lord Lugard

amalgamated it. And Igbos began to suffer because of the event surrounding the

Biafran secession. To Achebe, there should have been more countries in the behemoth

Lord Lugard cobbled together called Nigeria.  What Achebe does not take into

account is the role rabid tribalism plays in doing violence to social cohesion which

makes every region counterproductively seeks a perfect answer in demanding its own

nation state. There are over 250 tribes in Nigeria and there cannot be over 250

countries in Nigeria. There are officially 645 distinctive tribes in India and only one

country. All over the world there are tens of thousands of tribes and there are only 206

countries. What the tribes that constitute Nigeria need to learn for the unity of the

country is the democratization of their tribal loyalties. And that inevitably leads to

gradual detribalization of consciousness which makes it possible to treat a person as

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an individual and not basically a member of another tribe.  That is the first error of

Achebe.

Instead of writing the book as a writer who is Igbo, Achebe wrote the book as an Igbo

writer hence working himself into a Zugzwang bind. In chess once you are in this

bind, every step you make weakens your position further and further. All the places

that should alarm the moral consciousness of any writer, Achebe is either indifferent

to or dismisses them outright because the victims are not his people. However, in

every encounter that shows Igbos being killed or resented by Nigerians, or by the

Yoruba in particular, Achebe intensifies the spotlight, deploying stratospheric

rhetoric, amassing quotes from foreign authors with further elaborations in endnotes

to show he is not partial. Achebe calls upon powerfully coercive emotive words and

phrasings to dignify what is clearly repugnant to reason. Furthermore, not only does

he take pride in ignoring the findings of common sense, he allocates primetime

attention to facts-free rants just because they say his people are the most superior tribe

in Nigeria. The book, to say the least, is a masterpiece of propaganda and sycophancy.

And yet it is not a writer’s business to be an accomplice to lies.

First let’s take Achebe’s Christopher Okigbo.  Throughout the book, Achebe presents

Okigbo in loving moments complete with tender details: Okigbo attending to

Achebe’s wife during labour, Okigbo ordering opulent room service dishes for

Achebe wife in a swank hotel while Achebe was out of the country, Okigbo being a

dearly beloved uncle to Achebe’s children, Okigbo opening a publishing house in the

middle of the war. Out of the blue he writes that he hears on Radio Nigeria the death

of Major Christopher Okigbo.  Major? The reader is completely shocked and feels

revulsion for the side that killed him and sympathy for the side that lost him. Unlike

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other accounts like Obi Nwakanma’s definitive biography of Okigbo, Achebe skips

details of Okigbo running arms and ammunition from Birmingham to Biafra and also

from place to place in Biafra; he suppresses the fact that Okigbo knew of the January

1966 coup beforehand through Emmanuel Ifeajuna; he omits the fact that Okigbo was

an active-duty guerrilla fighter killing the other side before he himself got killed. Like

many other episodes recounted in the book, Achebe photoshops the true picture so

that readers would allocate early enough which side should merit their sympathy,

which side should be for slated for revulsion. Pities, cheap sympathy, sloppy

sentimentalism, one-sided victimhood are what are on sale throughout the book.

Achebe of course is preparing the reader for his agenda at the end of the book.

To Achebe, the final straw that led to secession was the alleged 30,000 Igbos killed in

the North. He carefully structures the narrative to locate the reason for this systematic

killing/pogrom/ethnic-cleansing in the so-called usual resentment of Igbos and not

from the fallout of the first coup in the history of Nigeria. Achebe dismisses the

targeted assassinations as not an Igbo coup. The two reasons Achebe gives are

because there was a Yoruba officer among the coup plotters and that the alleged

leader of the coup, Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was Igbo in name only. “Not

only was he born in Kaduna, the capital of the Muslim North, he was widely known

as someone who saw himself as a Northerner, spoke fluent Hausa and little Igbo, and

wore the Northern traditional dress when not in uniform(pg 79).” Really? First, it was

not mysterious that Azikiwe left the country in October 1965 on an endless medical

cruise to Britain and the Caribbean.  Dr. Idemudia Idehen his personal doctor,

abandoned him when he got tired of the endless medical trip.  Not even the

Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference never held outside London but hosted in

Lagos for the first time in early January was incentive enough for Azikiwe to return

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and yet he was the  president of the nation. In a revelation contained in the American

secret documents, it was Azikiwe’s presidential bodyguards from Federal Guards that

Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the coup’s mastermind, used to capture the Prime

Minister, Abubakar Balewa.  Once Ifeajuna and Major Donatus Okafor, the

Commanding officer of the Federal Guards tipped off Azikiwe about the planned

bloodshed, Okafor, Godfrey Ezedigbo and others Guards became freer to meet in

Ifeajuna’s house in Apapa to take the plan to the next level. The recruitment for the

ringleaders was done between August and October 1965.  Immediately Azikiwe left,

planning and training for the execution began.

Second, the eastern leadership was spared when others were brutally wasted. Third,

the head of state Major-General Aguyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, didn’t try and execute the coup

plotters as was the practice if it were a pure military affair. (Ojukwu told Suzanne

Cronje, the British-South African author that he asked Aguyi-Ironsi to take over and

told him how to unite the army behind him. That was the reason he made him the

governor of Eastern Region.) Four, when Awolowo, Bola Ige, Anthony Enahoro,

Lateef Jakande, etc were imprisoned for sedition, they served their terms in Calabar

away from their regions as was the normal practice. When Wole Soyinka was

imprisoned for activities at the beginning of the civil war, he was sent to faraway

Kaduna and Jos prisons but the ring leaders of coup plotters were moved from Lagos

back to the Eastern Region, among their people on the advice of Ojukwu. Five, during

the Aburi negotiations, why was full reprieve for the coup plotters put on the table?

Six, a freed Nzeogwu by April 1967 before the secession declaration joined in

training recruits in Abakaliki  for the inevitable war with Nigeria. He later died on the

Nsukka front fighting for Biafra. Yet that was Achebe’s Hausa-speaking, kaftan-

wearing Kaduna man, who is Igbo in name only.  It was an Igbo coup. (The same

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repackaging was attempted for the invasion and occupation of the Midwest. It was

called liberation of the Midwest from Hausa-Fulani domination when it was simply

another Igbo coup for Igbo ends planned in Enugu albeit headed by a Yoruba, Colonel

Victor Banjo)

The January coup didn’t foment a much more viscera response in Western Region

since their assassinated political leader was part of the corrupt, troublesome, election-

rigging class. To Westerners, the coup was good riddance to bad rubbish. However to

the Northerners who were feudal in their social organization and Hobbesian in their

consciousness, it was different matter. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the slain Sardauna of

Sokoto was their all in all; he was the heir to the powerful Sokoto Caliphate and

descendant of Usman dan Fodio. More than Azikiwe and Awolowo, Sardauna was the

most powerful politician in Nigeria (pg 46). Murdering him was murdering the pride

of a people. Achebe chooses to ignore this perspective and more importantly was the

fact that Igbos in the North were widely taunting their hosts on the loss of their

leaders with Rex Lawson’s song “Ewu Ne Ba Akwa” (Goats are crying) and others

celebrating “Igbo power”, the “January Victory.” Posters, stickers, postcards, cartoons

displaying the murdered Sardauna begging Nzeogwu at the gates of heaven or Balewa

burning outright in pits of hell, or Nzeogwu standing St George-like on Sardauna the

defeated dragon began to show up across Northern towns and cities. These

provocations were so pervasive that they warranted the promulgation of Decree 44 of

1966 banning them. The Igbos didn’t stop.  Azikiwe is more honest than Achebe. In

his pamphlet, The Origins of the Civil War, he writes: “…some Ibo elements who

were domiciled in Northern Nigeria taunted Northerners by defaming their leaders

through means of records or songs or pictures. They also published pamphlets and

postcards which displayed a peculiar representation of certain Northerners, living or

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dead, in a manner likely to provoke disaffection.”  It was these images and songs that

eventually led to the so-called pogroms/ethnic-cleansing/genocide not the coup. The

coup was in January, the pogroms started late in May, and the provocations were in

between.

However Igbos in the East did not sit idly by. They started the massacre of innocent

Northerners in their midst. Achebe chose to ignore this account since it doesn’t serve

his agenda so we return to Azikiwe: “Between August and September 1966, either by

chance or by design, hundreds of  Hausa, Fulani, Nupe and Igalla-speaking peoples of

Northern Nigeria origin residing in the Eastern Nigeria were abducted and massacred

in Aba, Abakaliki, Enugu, Onitsha and Port Harcourt.” It is important to note that

these Northerners never published nor circulated irreverent or taunting pictures of

Eastern leaders unlike the Igbos of the North, they were just massacred for being

Northerners. The government of Eastern Region did not  stop these massacres.

Neither did the Igbo intellectuals. Ojukwu, the military administrator even made a

radio broadcast saying that  he can no longer guarantee the security of non-Eastern

Nigerians in the East, Easterners who did not return to Igboland would be looked on

as traitors. This was when Professor Sam Aluko who was the head of Economics

department at University of Nigeria, Nsukka and a personal friend of Ojukwu fled

back to the West. Azikiwe continues in his book: “Eyewitnesses gave on-the-spot

accounts of corpses floating in the Imo River and River Niger. [Faraway]Radio

Cotonou broadcast this macabre news, which was suppressed by Enugu Radio.  Then

Radio Kaduna relayed it and this sparked off the massacres of September – October

1966 [in the North]”.

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Achebe, like Enugu Radio, suppressed this information and goes on to pivot the

‘pogrom’ on the fact that Igbos were resented because they were the most superior,

most successful tribe in the country. He claims they were “the dominant tribe(pg

233)” “led the nation in virtually every sector – politics, education, commerce, and the

arts(pg 66),” which included having two vice chancellors in Yoruba land; they the

Igbos are the folkloric “leopard, the wise and peaceful king of the animals (pg177),”

they “spearheaded”(pg 97) the struggle to free Nigeria from colonial rule: “This

group, the Igbo, that gave the colonizing British so many headaches and then literarily

drove them out of Nigeria was now an open target, scapegoats for the failings and

grievances of colonial and post-independent Nigeria(pg 67).” An Igboman, Achebe

writes, has “an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots…Unlike the

Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was

unhampered by traditional hierarchies…Although the Yoruba had a huge historical

head start, the Igbo wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy in the

twenty years between1930 to1950 (pg 74).” Beside the fact that this has a language

consistent with white supremacist literature, Achebe, to demonstrate he is not partial

or a chauvinist, based himself on a 17 page report by Paul Anber in Journal of

Modern African Studies titled Modernization and Political Disintegration: Nigeria

and the Ibos.

I looked up the 1967 journal. Curiously this ‘scholar’ was designated as “a member of

staff of one the Nigerian Universities.” Why would a scholar hide his place of work in

a journal? I checked the essays and book reviews in all the 196 issues of Journal of

Modern African Studies from Volume 1 issue 1 of January 1963 to the last issue

Volume 49 November 2011, there was nowhere a piece was published and the

designation of the scholar vague or hidden. Also this Paul Anber never published any

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piece before and after this article in this or any other journal. I wanted to start

checking the academic staff list of the five universities in Nigeria then until I realized

again that it says “he is a staff of Nigerian university;” I would have to check the

names of janitors and cleaners, and other non-academic staff too. The truth is Paul

Anber is a fake name under which someone else or a group of people possibly Igbo is

masquerading. And he/they never used this name again for any other piece or books.

So that this ruse would not be found out was the reason he/they hid his/their

university. And this piece like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has been the

cornerstone of books and widely quoted by other journals over a period 45 years. It is

the cornerstone of the chapter A History Of Ethnic Tension And Resentment which

Achebe used to skew the motive for Igbo people’s maltreatment from the fallout of

January 1966 coup and the inflammatory provocations they published to resentment

for being allegedly the most successful and dominant tribe in Nigeria.

Had Achebe not been overdosing on rabid Igbo nationalism, he would have had his

chest-beating ethnic bombasts inflected by a deeper and more sobering analysis of the

Nigerian situation in the next essay in the Journal: The Inevitability of Instability

written by a real and existing Professor James O’Connell, an Irish priest and professor

of government in a real and existing institution: Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.  O’

Connell argues that the lack of constitutionalism and disregard for rule of law fuel

psychology of insecurities in all ethnic groups. He fingers as an inevitable cause of

our national instability, Nigerians’ “failure to find an identity and loyalty beyond their

primordial communities that lead them constantly to choose their fellow workers,

political and administrative, from the same community, ignoring considerations of

merit.”

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The symbolism of Igbos heading the University of Ibadan and University of Lagos

both in Yoruba land was a positive image to assist Tiv, Hausa, Ijaw, Urhobo, Yoruba,

Ibibio, Igbo, Efik, etc students  shed their over-loyalty to their respective primordial

communities and to fashion a higher sense of identity that is national in character and

federal in outlook.  To Achebe, the symbolism was an example of the dominance and

superiority of Igbos.  “It would appear that the God of Africa has created the Ibo

nation to lead the children of  Africa from the bondage of ages,” Paul Anber quotes

Azikiwe saying in his West African Pilot, “History has enabled them not only to

conquer others but also to adapt themselves to the role of preserver… The Ibo nation

cannot shirk its responsibility.” Anber says in his/their essay: “The Ibo reaction to the

British was not typically one of complete rejection and resistance, though Ibos were

militantly anti-colonial. Since modernisation is in many respects basically a process of

imitation, the Ibos modelled themselves after their masters, seeing, as Simon

Ottenberg put it, that ‘The task was not merely to control the British influence but to

capture it.’ To some degree, it may be said that this is precisely what they proceeded

to do. Faced with internal problems of land hunger, impoverished soil, and population

pressure, the Ibos migrated in large numbers to urban areas both in their own region

and in the North and West…”

The spirit of inclusive humanism, the Martin Luther King Ideal, the Mandela

Example, the conscience of a writer should necessitate that if a child in Sokoto goes to

bed hungry someone in Umuahia should get angry. If a pregnant woman in Kotangora

needs justice someone in Patani should be able to stand up and fight for her. If an Osu

group is being maltreated in Igboland, someone in Zaria should stand up and defend

them. But to Achebe, there should be no mercy for the weak in so far as he or she

belongs to the other side. Take for instance the butchering of the lone shell-shocked

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“Mali-Chad mercenary” wandering around “dazed and aimless” in the bush Achebe

witnessed. To show the fight-to-finish courage of his people in face of overwhelming

force, he describes how Major Jonathan Uchendu’s Abagana Ambush succeeded in

destroying Colonel Murtala Mohammed’s convoy of 96 vehicles, four armoured

vehicle killing 500 Nigerians in one and a half hours. “There were widespread reports

of atrocities perpetrated by angry Igbo villagers who captured wandering soldiers. I

was an eyewitness to one such angry bloody frenzy of retaliation after a particularly

tall and lanky soldier – clearly a mercenary from Chad or Mali wandered into an

ambush of young men with machetes. His lifeless body was found mutilated on the

roadside in a matter of seconds (pg 173).”

Achebe does not tell us if he tried to prevent this cold-blooded butchering even

though there was an episode where he intervened to save the life and chastity of a

Biafran woman arguing with some wandering Nigerian soldiers who wanted to

requisition her goat for food (pg 201). If Achebe couldn’t intervene in the butchering,

what did he think of the killing then or now that he is writing the book with the

benefit of hindsight? Shouldn’t the man have been handed over as a prisoner of war?

Was his killing not a violation of Geneva conventions which he so much accused the

Nigerian side of disrespecting (pg 212)? Did villagers behaving this way not rebus sic

stantibus blur the lines between soldiers and civilians hence making themselves fair

game in war? Also notice how Achebe starts the narration with an active first person

voice: “I was an eye witness to…” and how he quickly switches to a passive third

person voice in the next sentence: “His body was found…” Achebe quickly goes

AWOL “in a matter of seconds” leaving a moral vacuum for the Igbo writer to

emerge and the conscientious writer to go under.

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When atrocities were committed against Biafrans, Achebe deploys strong active voice

(subject + verb), isolates the aggressive phrases of military bravado with italics or

quotation marks. But when Biafra is caught committing the atrocity, he employs

passive sentence structures, modal verbs of likelihood, euphemisms and he never

isolates pledges of murder in italics or quotation marks. Take the “Kwale Incident (pg

218)” that eventually became an international embarrassment for Biafra. Based on an

unsubstantiated source, he writes, “Biafran military intelligence allegedly obtained

information that foreign oilmen…were allegedly providing sensitive military

information to federal forces – about Biafran troop positions, strategic military

manoeuvres, and training.” So Biafra decided to invade. “At the end of the

‘exercise’,” Achebe writes, “eleven workers had been killed”

Also compare these two accounts: the background is the Biafran invasion of Midwest.

Despite Ojukwu’s assurance to them before the secession that he would absolutely

respect their choice of belonging to neither side, he invaded them, occupied their land,

foisted his government on them, took charge of their resources, looted the Central

Bank of Nigeria in Benin, set up military check points in several places to regulate the

flow of goods and human beings, imposed dawn-to-dusk curfews, flooded the

airwaves with Biafran propaganda, imprisoned and executed dissidents on a daily

basis according to Nowa Omoigui’s The Invasion of Midwest and Samuel

Ogbemudia’s Years of Challenge. In fact, “The Hausa community in the Lagos street

area of Benin and other parts of the state were targeted for particularly savage

treatment, in part a reprisal for the pogroms of 1966, but also out of security concerns

that they would naturally harbour sympathies for the regime in Lagos,” Omoigui

writes. The Midwesterners regarded Biafrans as liars and traitors. And the Nigerian

army came to their rescue.

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Achebe writes: “The retreating Biafran forces, according to several accounts,

allegedly beat up a number of Mid-Westerners who they believed had served as

saboteurs. Nigerian radio reports claimed that the Biafrans shot a number of innocent

civilians as they fled the advancing federal forces. As disturbing as these allegations

are, I have found no credible corroboration of them (pg 133).” Yes, he can’t find it;

they were not his people. Also note his euphemisms: “allegedly beat up”… “shot a

number of innocent civilians”(shot not killed). He writes: “a number of innocents” to

disguise the fact that massacres took place. He also writes: “saboteurs.”

Midwesterners collaborated with federal forces to liberate their lands from Biafran

traitors and occupiers, Achebe calls them “saboteurs.” Now note in the next paragraph

how he describes what happened to his people when the Federal army in hot

pursuance of the Biafran soldiers reached the Igbo side of the Midwest. It is noisily

headlined: The Asaba Massacre(pg 133).

“Armed with direct orders to retake the occupied areas at all costs, this division

rounded up and shot as many defenceless Igbo men as they could find. Some reports

place the death toll at five hundred, others as high as one thousand. The Asaba

Massacre, as it would be known, was only one of many such post-pogrom atrocities

committed by Nigerian soldiers during the war. It became a particular abomination for

Asaba residents, as many of those killed were titled Igbo chiefs and common folk

alike, and their bodies were disposed of with reckless abandon in mass graves,

without regard to the wishes of the families of the victims or the town’s ancient

traditions.” Then he goes on to quote lengthily from books and what the Pope’s

emissary said about it in a French newspaper, what Gowon said, what was said at

Oputa panel etc etc. He found time to research. They were his people unlike the 

sufferings, the Eshan, Benin, Ijaw, Isekiri, Urhrobo people underwent at the hands of

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the Biafrans which he couldn’t find “credible corroboration of.”  Achebe is incapable

of being interested in the sufferings of others.

In the chapter The Calabar Massacre, Achebe not only totally avoids the well-

documented atrocities including massacres Biafran forces committed against the

Efiks, Ibibios, Ikwerre,  when they occupied their lands, he goes on to tell lies against

the Federal forces. Achebe writes: “By the time the Nigerians were done they had

‘shot at least 1,000 and perhaps 2,000 Ibos[sic], most of them civilians.’ There were

other atrocities throughout the region. ‘In Oji River,’ The Times of London reported

on August 2, 1968, ‘the Nigerian forces opened fire and murdered fourteen nurses and

the patients in the wards.’” Achebe continues still referring to the same  Times article:

“In Uyo and Okigwe more innocent lives were lost to the brutality and bloodlust of

the Nigerian soldiers(pg137).” How the fact checking services of his publishers

allowed him to get away with these is baffling. I looked up the 1968 piece of course. 

It is a syndicated story written by Lloyd Garrison of the New York Times to balance

the piece by their own John Young which appeared three days before. In the London

Times piece Achebe quotes, there is no mention of  Uyo or Okigwe or Oji River at all.

This is what is in the piece – the journalist was quoting Brother Aloysius, an Irish

missionary in Uturu 150km away from Abakaliki: “But when they[Federal forces]

took Abakaliki, they put the 11 white fathers there on house arrest. In the hospital

outside Enugu, they shot all the fourteen Biafran nurses who stayed behind, then went

down the wards killing the patients as well. It was the same thing in Port Harcourt.”

This missionary had believed the ruthlessly efficient Biafran propaganda service.

Because of the atrocities Nigeria soldiers committed earlier in the Ogoja –Nsukka

front and the revenge killings in Asaba, the world had been alerted and it was hurting

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Nigeria’s arms procurement from Britain. So Gowon agreed to an international

observer team made of representatives from UN general secretary and OAU  to

monitor the activities of the three Nigerian divisions  against the claims Radio Biafra

was sending to the world and its people. In their first report released on 9th October

1968, there was no evidence of the killings even though it was brought to their

attention. Even  Lloyd Garrison and other members of the international press corps in

Biafra couldn’t find evidence of that particular killings in the hospital.  Also note

Achebe’s statement: “By the time the Nigerians were done they had ‘shot at least

1,000 and perhaps 2,000 Ibos[sic], most of them civilians.’” How can an intelligent

mind write “they had shot at least 1,000” which is an uncertainty, and then following

it up with another uncertainty: “perhaps 2,000 Ibos” and then say with certainty “most

of them are civilians”? How can you say for sure that most of them are civilians when

you are not even sure whether they are 1000 or 2000? It defies sense and logic to

build a certainty on two concurrent uncertainties and then offer it as the truth.  But

that is the meaning of propaganda. William Berndhardt of Markpress and Robert

Goldstein of Hollwood were on contract from Ojukwu to handle  Biafra’s  marketing

and propaganda. Nathaniel Whittemore’s seminal thesis, How Biafra Came to Be:

Genocide, starvation and American Imagination of the Nigerian Civil War revealed

how they did it and how it worked.

Achebe proceeds to celebrate “the great ingenuity” of scientists from Biafran

Research and Production Unit who developed “a great number of rockets, bombs, and

telecommunication gadgets, and devised an ingenious indigenous strategy to refine

petroleum.” Then he drops the most disingenuously incongruous jaw-dropping

statement in the book: “I would like to make it crystal clear that I abhor violence, and

a discussion of the weapons of war does not imply that I am a war enthusiast or

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condone violence (pg 156).”  That is Achebe who pages before lamented the lack of

weapons for his people; that is Achebe who travelled the world soliciting material

relief including arms for Biafra; that is Achebe who watched the butchering of a lone

mercenary without flinching; that is Achebe who told Rajat Neogy on pg 105:

“Portugal has not given us any arms. We buy arms on the black market. What we

cannot get elsewhere, we try and make.”

But there is a reason why he drops this dishonest statement here; he is preparing us for

what is coming next. We all know what happened in The Godfather when Don

Michael Corleone renounced Satan and all his evil works: Achebe begins to praise the

indigenously manufactured bomb, “Ogbunigwe” (meaning mass killer, a translation

unlike others Achebe doesn’t include in the book for obvious reasons: one of which is

a people he is trying to attract the world’s pity to as victims must not be caught killing

en mass). Achebe continues: “Ogbunigwe bombs struck great terror in the hearts of

many a Nigerian soldier, and were used to great effect by the Biafran army throughout

the conflict. The novelist Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike captures the hysteria and dread

evoked by it in a passage in his important book Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about

Biafra: When the history of this war comes to be written, the ogbunigwe[sic] and the

shore batteries will receive special mention as Biafra’s greatest saviours. We’ve been

able to wipe out more Nigerians with those devices than with any imported weapons”

If the other side dare uses “wipe out,” Achebe would have flagged it as an evidence of

the plan to “annihilate the Igbos” but here, he let it pass without comment. It is from

his side.  And Ogbunigwe was not a product of Igbo ingenuity; it was a

“bespectacled” American mercenary from MIT uncovered by the Irish journalist

Donal Musgrave that was secretly training Biafrans on how to use fertilizers to make

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bombs (cf 13 August 1968 cable from American embassy in Dublin to the one in the

Lagos).

In the book, Achebe narrates the many diplomatic missions – official and unofficial –

he embarked on for the secession. A particularly telling one was to the President of

Senegal, Leopold Senghor(pg162). He and Ojukwu were attracted to Senghor because

of his Negritude philosophical movement. [This story of course is not true. Sam

Agbam who Achebe claimed he travelled with was executed alongside with Victor

Banjo, Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Philip Alale in Enugu on Saturday 23 rd September

1967. What Achebe went to warn Senghor about didn’t become an issue until June

1968 when Biafra was  losing and Ojukwu had to move the capital further south to the

heartland of Umuahia then to Orlu. And there was a monstrously centripetal migration

of Igbos towards the new capital which resulted in the humanitarian catastrophe. And

the Uli airport Achebe claimed they flew from hadn’t being constructed before his

travel companion Sam was executed on 23rd September 1967. It was constructed and

opened for use in August 1968 because Enugu and Port Harcourt which were Biafra’s

only airports had fallen into the hands of the Federal forces.  So let’s take Achebe’s

story as story and move on]. Achebe tells us after days of bureaucratic obstacles, he

directly delivered to Senghor, Ojukwu’s personal letter that “informs him of the real

catastrophe building up in Biafra.” Senghor, Achebe writes, “glanced through the

letter quickly, and then turned to me and said he would deal with it overnight…as

soon as possible (pg 162).”

Throughout the book Achebe never says what Senghor response was. That alone

should alert the reader that the response wasn’t flattering to the Biafran cause since

Achebe usually suppresses unfavourable views and information. In the Foreword

17

Senghor wrote during the war for Raph Uwechue’s book Reflections on Nigerian

Civil War: Call for Realism, we see the reason why Achebe chooses to omit

Senghor’s stand. Senghor delivers a classic rebuke to Achebe, Ojukwu and the very

idea of Biafra. First, Senghor effusively praises Uwechue: “here at last, is a man of

courage and sense,” who didn’t forgo “his ibotism, but because in him this is

transcended by a national will, he thus acquires the force to judge both facts and men

with serene objectivity.” He said reading the manuscript and encountering arguments

“for the unity of Nigeria,” Raph Uwechue “won him over at once.” Note that with

Ojukwu’s letter which Achebe brought, Senghor “glanced through” “quickly” and

promised to do something overnight. Then he started discussing philosophy and

literature with Achebe. Ojukwu’s letter never “won him over at once.” Yet the letter

warned of the urgency of Biafran humanitarian calamity. Clearly, Senghor wasn’t

falling for the emotional manipulations the Biafrans are using the humanitarian

situation to market like salesmen of dubious artefacts. Uwechue’s says that all the

countries (African) that recognised Biafra as a state did so because of the

humanitarian catastrophe not that they saw any value in a sovereign Biafra. He writes:

“The leaders of Biafra should understand that the sympathy which compelled these

countries to give them recognition was provoked by the suffering of the ordinary

people whom the Biafran leadership despite their earlier assurances proved unable to

protect and that the act of recognition was not a premeditated approval of the political

choice of secession. Like the secession itself, it was more a REACTION AGAINST

than a DECISION FOR.”

I recommend Ralph Uwechue’s book to every Nigerian not only because of the

analysis and conclusions he supplies about the war, but because the man is

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coruscatingly intelligent. President Senghor praises him further: “what he proposes to

us, after presenting us with a series of verifiable facts, is more than just a solution. It

is a method of finding solutions that are at once just and effective. Herein lies his

double merit. Uwechue is a man well informed and consequently objective. He is a

man of principle who is at the same time a realist. All through the length of the work,

which is clear and brief, we find the combination of practice and theory, of

methodical pragmatism and moral rationalism – a characteristic which marks out the

very best amongst the anglophones.” In other words, he is everything Achebe is not.

Of course the epic humanitarian catastrophe was Biafra’s golden goose. Their leaders

were drumming give-me-guns-o-I-want-to-fight-o songs and dances on the bloated

bellies of those kwashiorkor children. Achebe writes revealingly: “Ojukwu seized

upon this humanitarian emergency and channelled the Biafran propaganda machinery

to broadcast and showcase the suffering of Biafra to the world. In one speech he

accused Gowon of a ‘calculated war of destruction and genocide.’ Known in some

circles as the ‘Biafran babies’ speech, it was hugely effective and touched the hearts

of many around the world. This move was brilliant in a couple of respects. First, it

deflected from himself or his war cabinet any sentiment of culpability and outrage

that might have been welling up in the hearts and minds of Biafrans, and second, it

was another opportunity to cast his arch nemesis, Gowon, in a negative light (pg 210;

italics mine).” Ojukwu never made efforts to take care of those little children as any

leader with a heart would do. Instead, Achebe continues: he “dispatched several of his

ambassadors to world’s capitals hoping to build on the momentum from his

broadcast.” But the world capitals refused to be duped. Their spies and diplomats

were collating objective facts and insider’s accounts and sending them. Sir Louis

Mbanefo, the Biafran chief justice, then emitted a nessum dorma howl: “…if we are

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condemned to die, all right, we will die. But at least let the world, and the United

States, be honest about it (pg 211).”

Uwechue did what Achebe never did: acting from a firm moral base, he berated

Ojukwu and all the Biafran leaders for rallying Igbos to die en mass for the secession.

“Sovereignty or mass suicide,” he writes “is an irresponsible slogan unworthy of the

sanction or encouragement of any serious and sensible leadership.”  What could have

caused a thinking man to at least flinch, Achebe rejoices in.  Here the unthinking man

is narrating the “explosion of musical, lyrical, and poetic creativity and artistry

(pg151)” that the Biafran war had brought about: “But if the price is death for all we

hold dear,/ Then let us die without a shred of fear…/Spilling our blood we’ll count a

privilege;…/We shall remember those who died in mass;…(pg 152)”  That was the

Biafran national anthem, Land of the Rising Sun.  Achebe continues: “The anthem

was set to the beautiful music of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius….” For Igbos to

ever compare the Biafran deaths to the Holocaust is to desecrate the Holocaust and

cast insults on the memory of the Jewish dead. European Jewry never had an anthem

rallying themselves to mass deaths this way.

Another telling episode in the book is the war-ready celebrations amongst Biafran

Christians in their houses of God: “Biafran churches made links to the persecution of

the early Christians, others on radio to the Inquisition and the persecution of the

Jewish people. The prevalent mantra of the time was ‘Ojukwu nye anyi egbe ka anyi

nuo agha’ – ‘Ojukwu give us guns to fight a war.’ It was an energetic, infectious duty

song, one sung to a well-known melody and used effectively to recruit young men

into the People’s Army (the army of the Republic of Biafra). But in the early stages of

the war, when the Biafran army grew quite rapidly, sadly Ojukwu had no guns to give

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those brave souls(pg 171).” Yes Achebe’s words: ‘sadly’… ‘brave souls’… in the

house of God? Yet pages before, Don Michael Corleone told us he had renounced

Satan and all his evil works.

The wrongheaded intransigence of Ojukwu to take another path in place of secession

that was even alarming to neutral observers never makes it into this book unlike other

books that recounted the stories.  Nnamdi Azikiwe’s Origins of Civil War lists the

properties Ojukwu stole even before he declared secession: how “he obstructed the

passage of goods belonging to neighbouring countries like, Cameroon, Chad and

Niger, and expropriated them.” Achebe writes that wealthy Biafrans’ private accounts

were used to buy hardwares for the war. He never tells us that Ojukwu stole via armed

robbery, money worth billions in today rates at the CBN branches at Benin, Calabar

and Enugu because he had no money to prosecute a war he was obsessed with

fighting without thinking the consequences through very well. Achebe never berates

Ojukwu both then and now that he is recollecting with benefit of hindsight on clearly

stupid judgements. For instance, swindled by propaganda, Dick Tiger, the Liverpool-

based Nigerian boxer renounced his MBE to come and fight on the side of Biafra.

Achebe writes: “Ojukwu made Dick Tiger a lieutenant in the army of Biafra as soon

as he enlisted (pg 158.)” That was a man with no military training or background

given over hundred fighters to command as an assistant of a captain by just showing

up in Nigeria.

Achebe goes on to praise Ojukwu as a man who needed little or no advice. “This trait

would bring Ojukwu in direct collision with some senior Biafrans, such as Dr Nnamdi

Azikiwe, [Dr] Michael Okpara, Dr Okechukwu Ikejiani and a few others who were

concerned about Ojukwu’s tendency toward introversion and independent decision

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making (pg119).” The Americans did not dignify dictatorship with fanciful language

the way Achebe does; they called it by its proper name. Here is a telegram cabled to

Washington and some other American embassies worldwide:

“Internal situation has changed a great deal since secession was first declared.

Ojukwu now rules as a dictator and moves about surrounded by retinue of relatives

and yes men. Responsible Ibos who had been advising him at the start of the war have

been eliminated in one way or the other from the picture because they came to believe

accommodation of some sorts would have to be reached with FMG[Gowon’s Federal

Military Government]. Situation so bad that Biafran representative in Paris

Okechukwu Mezu has quit in disgust. Azikiwe refuses to go back to Biafra and is

sitting in London as an exile. Ojukwu’s propaganda machine, by succeeding in

creating the impression of some forward movement, masked the cold fact that

Biafrans are unable to break out of FMG’s encirclement.”

That was 2nd of February 1969 – 11months to the end of the war. Had Ojukwu listened

to the advice of “responsible Ibos” in his inner caucus all along, more lives would

have been saved, instead he surrounded himself with irresponsible Igbos like Achebe

and other yes men. Take the chapter The Republic of Biafra: The Intellectual

Foundation of a New Nation. Achebe’s committee was National Guidance

Committee; his office was in Ojukwu’s state house. “Ojukwu then told me he wanted

the new committee to report directly to him, outside the control of the cabinet. I

became immediately apprehensive…Nevertheless I went ahead and chose a larger

committee of experts for the task at hand (pg 144).” Then the experts started to work

on what was to become the Ahiara Declaration which Ojukwu read on radio June 1,

1969 “very close to the end of the war.” There was starvation, great panic, epidemic,

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anxiety, bereavements and despair in the streets. Even according to Biafra’s

propaganda statistics over a million  were already dead. The war was obviously

unwinnable. Federal forces had captured Enugu Biafra’s first capital, Umuahia, the

second capital, Onitsha, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Nsukka and many places in Biafra.

Biafran troops were desperately fleeing and hiding. Yet Achebe and his Oxford and

Cambridge Igbo intellectuals who clearly had the ear of Ojukwu and put truth into it

in order to prevent further deaths were busy writing sycophantic declarations. [N.U.

Akpan too who was the secretary to Biafran government was particularly scathing on

these “arrogant” “ignorant” intellectuals in his own book, The struggle For

Succession] “The day this declaration was published and read by Ojukwu was a day

of celebration in Biafra,” Achebe writes. “My late brother Frank described the effect

of this Ahiara Declaration this way: ‘Odika si gbabia agbagba’ (It was as if we

should be dancing to what Ojukwu was saying). People listened from wherever they

were. It sounded right to them:  freedom, quality, self-determination, excellence.

Ojukwu read it beautifully that day. He had a gift for oratory(pg 149).” It was a day of

celebrations indeed. Now we know that Abacha’s Ministers of Lies and Dishonest

Fabrications, Comrade Uche Chukumerijie and Dr Walter Ofonagoro had a common

precedent.

The Americans too took note of the two and a half hour long Declaration and cabled

this commentary to Washington:

“Ojukwu repeatedly develops the theme that ‘our disability is racial. The root cause of

our problems lies in the fact that we are black.’ Considering the humanitarian and

political support in response to Biafran propaganda, the level of relief flown in, and

the concern expressed by private organizations and governments, Ojukwu’s speech is

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almost unreal as he omits even a passing reference to the International Red Cross,

Caritas or French military assistance.” That was people whom Ojukwu accused of

being racists. The Americans continue: “In his efforts to foster solidarity and support

for continuing the war and maintaining the secession, Ojukwu appeals as much to fear

and xenophobia… Ojukwu sees the Nigerian civil war in almost conspiratorial terms.

For example: he describes the war as the ‘latest recrudescence in our time of the age-

old struggle of the blackman for his true stature of man. We are the latest victims of a

wicked collusion between the three traditional curses of the blackman: racism, Arab-

Muslim expansionism and white economic imperialism.”

All along the Americans knew of the ruthlessly efficient Biafran propaganda. They

questioned how they arrived at the 20/30/50,000 killed in  the North before the war.

Reviewing Ojukwu’s radio broadcast of 14th November 1968, the Americans cabled

this to Washington: “Ojukwu claimed 50,000 were ‘slaughtered like cattle’ in 1966,

adding that in the course of war ‘well over one million of us have been killed, yet the

world is unimpressed and looks on in indifference.’ (Comment: this is the highest

figure we have seen him use for the pre-war deaths, and the one million claimed killed

since the war began is inconsistent with his assertion in the same speech that 6,700

Biafrans have been killed daily since July 6, 1967.)

They also noted Ojukwu’s fabrications in his broadcast of 31st of October 1969 that

President Nixon “had acknowledged fact of genocide,” that earlier on, he, ‘General’

Ojukwu called on Nixon “to live up to his words.”  When at the inception of

secession, Biafran Radio broadcast the countries that had recognised Biafra, the

Americans informed Washington: “Following countries have denied recognition of

Biafra: US, USSR, Ethiopia, Israel, Australia, Ghana, Guinea…wording of statements

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varies greatly, but all disapprove of  secession, or use words such as recognition,

integrity of Nigeria, support for federal government. (June 9, 1967)” In fact, Ojukwu

and the Biafran project were one long crisis of credibility. In the cable of 22 nd of May

1969, the Americans cabled Washington: “How he (Ojukwu) can continue to deceive

his people, and apparently get away with it, is minor miracle, but difficult to see how

much delusions can last much longer.”

By the time truth finally triumphed over propaganda, the Biafrans had to find another

man to blame for the war and the deaths: Enter Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo,

the Losi of Ikenne (whom Achebe falsely claimed Ojukwu released from prison).

First to what the autobiography of Harold Smith, one of the colonial officers the

British Government sent to rig Nigeria’s pre-Independent elections in favour of the

North had to say about Awolowo:

“But the British were not treated as gods by the Yoruba. In my experience, the

Yoruba regarded themselves as superior to the British and one only had to read a book

written by Awolowo, the Western leader, to know why. The Yoruba were often highly

intelligent and they taunted the British with sending inferior people to Nigeria. The

Igbo would be humble and avert his eyes in the presence of a European. The Yoruba

child would look at an important European and shout, ‘Hello, white man,’ as if he

were a freak.”

What is more: “Awolowo in the West had taunted the British by claiming that his

Government had accomplished more in the space of two or three years for his people

than the British had since they arrived in West Africa.” Of course Achebe knows

about these facts because he quoted from the book but only the part favourable to his

agenda. Smith again:

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“The thrust of the British Government’s policy was against the Action Group led by

Chief Awolowo which ruled in the Western Region. Not only was the British

Government working hand in glove with the North which was a puppet state favoured

and controlled by the British administration, but it was colluding through Okotie Eboh

with Dr Azikiwe – Zik – the leader of the largely Igbo NCNC which ruled in the

East.” More: “We tricked Azikiwe into accepting to be president having known that

Balewa will be the main man with power. Awolowo has to go to jail to cripple his

genius plans for a greater Nigeria.”

Achebe reveals his own mentality we never suspected before: “We [intellectuals]

were especially disheartened by the disintegration of the state because we were

brought up in the belief we were destined to rule [pg 108].” He uses this mind-set of

his to judge Awolowo:

“It is my impression that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was driven by an overriding

ambition for power, for himself in particular and for his Yoruba people in general…

However Awolowo saw the dominant Igbos at the time as the obstacle to that goal,

and when the opportunity arose – the Nigeria – Biafra War – his ambition drove him

into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the Biafran case it meant

hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the number of his enemies significantly

through starvation – eliminating over two million people, mainly members of future

generation (pg233).”

This is a blood libel and an evil lie. It will taint Albert Chinualumogu Achebe forever.

Awolowo built the first stadium in Africa, the first TV station in Africa, the first high

rise building in Nigeria, first industrial estate, cocoa development board, Odua

Investment Group like the current Dubai World or Chinese Investment Corporation.

26

He offered free universal education and free universal primary healthcare that

America has been struggling to achieve for the past 200 years. What is more

important, Awolowo never situated all these in his hometown of Ikenne in Ogun state;

he spread them round the region he presided on. And the free universal education and

free primary healthcare were available to anyone of any tribe or nationality including

Nupe, Igbos, Ijaw and Ghanaians living in the Western Region. Awolowo was

interested in bettering the lives of everyone not just the Yoruba.

Of course we know that the lasting legacy of the Biafra war was the creation of a

well-organized Yoruba-bashing industrial complex headquartered in Igbo

consciousness working with machine regularity from generation to generation and

whose genuine aim is to fundamentally deflect blame from Ojukwu and the Biafran

hierarchy until misunderstandings are perverted into evidence of Yoruba guilt,

outright lies are perverted into undisputed truth.  Yes, Awolowo was a master

architect of the war to defeat the secession, the American documents called him “the

Acting Prime Minister” to the 32 year old Gowon. So let us proceed to examine the

case made against him one by one.

On the so-called Awolowo Blockade

To talk about a blockade of Awolowo on Biafra is to concede that the control of

Biafra’s borders was already under his control. The control or defence of borders is

the main aim of any war since the beginning of war making all over the world. That is

why the best of US battleships and fighter jets are currently patrolling east and west

coasts and airspace.  That was why Troy built impossibly high fortifications around

their city. One of the main reasons Roman Empire collapsed was that its boundaries

were getting too vast to be defended by an incommensurate number of men and

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resources. But the 34year old General, Lt Colonel Ojukwu led Biafra to secede based

on only two thousand professional soldiers and extremely few artillery; they didn’t

have enough to defend their borders. “If the Nigerian side had known the state of

Biafran troops including their morale, they would have pursued them even on canoes

across the River Niger. Had the Nigerians taken up such pursuit, they might have

taken Onitsha, Awka and Enugu that same day.” That is Achike Udenwa who was a

Biafran soldier and later became the governor of Imo writing about the Federal defeat

of Biafra in the Midwest during the early weeks of the war in his own recollection

Nigerian/Biafra War. Even, the so-called January boys, Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna both

voiced their concern that the Biafran soldiers were vastly underprepared for any kind

of war. Achebe also admits that: “Biafran soldiers marched into war one man behind

the other because they had only one rifle between them, and the thinking was that if

one soldier was killed in combat the other would pick up the only weapon available

and continue fighting(pg 153).”

Therefore, before the first bullet was fired, the secession was not only a failure but

was an epic humanitarian catastrophe waiting to happen. Awolowo told Ojukwu one

of the reasons the West won’t be able to join the secession was because the region

already occupied by Northern troops didn’t have enough loyal men in the Nigerian

army to defend the region. Weaned on the hermeneutics of Yoruba history, Awolowo

was not persuaded by the seductive but senseless logic that the Nigerian forces would

lose because they would not be able to prosecute war on two fronts if the West joined

the East in seceding. At one point during the Kiriji war in the 19 th century, Bashorun

Ogunmola(omo arogunde yo) the Kingdom of Ibadan’s generalissimo  was

simultaneously warring with five neighbouring and far-flung kingdoms. Ibadan never

lost. To defeat Ibadan you don’t have to defeat even its retreating soldiers only, you

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have to defeat those dull-looking but patriotic hills surrounding it. In fact, one of the

reasons why Ibadan was so belligerent in its history was that those mighty hills

allowed her to spend little resources defending and more on attacking. But Biafra was

not surrounded by hills literarily or figuratively. Her borders were so porous that

they fell easily into the opponent’s hand. Days after declaration of secession, the sea

boundary of Biafra was already being manned by Nigeria’s battleships. By the sixth

week all the boundaries of Biafra were already under the control of Nigerian

government.

I conducted an experiment with my Igbo colleagues. Let us assume that Awolowo or

the entire West adopted a ‘siddon look’ approach. Draw the map of Biafra complete

with the Atlantic Ocean, Niger and Benue bridges as Golden Gate Bridge and

Brooklyn Bridge and call the place USA. I asked them to outline the strategies to

capture USA in the event of a war.  Their strategies were not different from the path

the Biafran propaganda accused Nigerian government of taking. And in fact had only

Awolowo’s Western Region seceded, the strategy to recapture it would not be at

variance with the one used against Biafra because the West is geographically an

enantiomer of the East. It was the same blockade Major Nzeogwu used before going

in to capture and kill in cold blood their targets: the Sardauna and his senior wife,

Ademulegun and his eight months pregnant wife, Mrs. Latifa Noble in the presence of

their two children Solape and Kole. (As Solape recollects years later, Nzeogwu  was a

family friend who used to come often to their house to eat pounded yam and egusi

soup.) It was the same blockade Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi imposed to capture

Fani-Kayode and kill Akintola, the Western Premier. It was the same blockade

American Navy Seals imposed around Osama Bin Laden’s hideout before they

zoomed in.

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“What about the neighbouring country, (Cameroon) whose side was it on?” One of

my participants asked. Of course Cameroon was firmly on the Nigerian side yet they

have a sizeable Igbo population and Azikiwe’s Igbo party was NCNC – National

Council for Nigerian and the Cameroons.   But Ojukwu had stepped on their toes: he

had stolen enough of their goods and supplies that they helped the federal side to take

Calabar and cooperated with the naval blockade of Biafra. As the US State

Department’s cable of 29th November 1968 discloses: “GFRC[Government of the

Federal Republic of Cameroon] continues to support FMG [federal military

government] and recently ordered the dissolution of newly formed Cameroon relief

organisation(CAMRO) which was being organized to receive Biafran children in west

Cameroon.” Note to Ojukwu in case of next time: Be careful of the message your

actions send to your friends. When they turn against you, they won’t be nice.

On the so-called Awolowo’s starvation policy.

In Achebe’s book one could see several places where Biafrans violated the basis of

Geneva conventions. You could see where villagers who were non-combatants and

should have been protected under Geneva conventions were taking machetes to the

necks of Federal soldiers hence becoming legitimate targets of war themselves.

Another striking instance was when Achebe was with his extended family and

overnight their compound was turned into military base without their consent (pg

172). Heavens forbid the Nigerian side bombed the base. Yes, the Biafran propaganda

machine would go to work that an innocent illustrious family had been eradicated by

the “genocidal Nigerian army” and may even use it as an evidence of war crime. But

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the truth is that, the Biafran army deserved condemnation for compromising Achebe’s

household.

As part of security preparation for the last Olympics, the British Army commandeered

a strategic high-rise residential building and placed surface-to-air missiles at the top.

The residents protested and went to court. Let us assume a war broke out and the

enemy flatten the whole building. He has not committed a war crime because it was

the British army that made the civilian residents a legitimate target in the first place.

Unfortunate though it may sound, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, relief centres

become legitimate targets once military activities begin to go on there in the event of

a war. Check for instance the current Hamas tactics against Israel or the bombing of

the University of Nigeria, Nsukka  when it allowed itself to become  the headquarters

of local Biafran army with several professors joining in expedition force to hunt down

lost Federal soldiers in the bush and their wives back on campus took care of

wounded Biafran soldiers and students were going for daily drills and rifle shooting

practice under Prof  John C. Ene, Dean of Faculty of Sciences and Commander

University Defence Corps as revealed in the US secret cable of 16/06/1967. Or the

Federal raid on the Catholic Cathedral of The Most Holy Trinity, Onitsha when it was

discovered Biafran snipers with their ammunitions were operating from there.

When a plane or ship is designated as flying relief supplies to war sufferers, it must

not be used to supply arms. Once it does, it is no longer covered by Geneva

conventions.  There was an Austrian Count, Carl Gustaf von Rosen whom Achebe

praises a lot for his humanitarian assistance in flying relief efforts to Biafra. This is

what the Count’s wife had to say: “He told me he was going to Biafra but he didn’t

say he would be bombing MIGs (pg 300).” Achebe writes of the von Rosen: “He led

31

multiple relief flights with humanitarian aid into Uli airport – Biafra’s chief airstrip.

Fed up with Nigerian air force interference with his peaceful missions, he entered the

war heroes’ hall of fame after leading a five-plane assault on Nigerian aircraft in Port

Harcourt, Benin City, Ughelli, Enugu, and some other locations. He took the Nigerian

air force by total surprise and destroyed several Soviet-supplied aircraft in the

process.” That was someone flying humanitarian aid. How would the Federal side

begin to see other humanitarian flights that were supposed to be carrying food and

medical supplies to war-ravished children?   Cyprian Ekwensi a writer and head of

external publicity for Biafra admitted in his post-war reminiscences that the relief

materials had arms built into them. (The American documents too confirmed it. The

same Hank Warton which the relief agencies were using to fly food into Biafra was

the one Ojukwu was using to deliver arms. Lt Col. Merle, the French military attaché

in Gabon was in charge of  shipments of French arms from France through Gabon to

Biafra. He was also the head of French Red Cross operating in Biafra)

Of course the Nigerian side knew this and mandated all relief flights to Biafra to

submit themselves for inspection at the Port Harcourt airport. That was the

interference Achebe claimed the Count was fed up with. (Anyway the Count never

claimed such in that 6th July 1969 interview he gave the London Observer) Those

planes that passed their inspection delivered their relief. Those that did not were shot

down. One particular case was the Swiss Red Cross DC7 Flight heading towards the

Uli strip (pg 101). After repeated warnings to change course and land for inspection, it

was shot down.  The Biafran propaganda went to work saying it was part of the

genocide policies of Nigerian military to destroy merciful food supplies meant for the

malnourished children.

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Never mind that many of the relief supplies meant for the children were either

ambushed by soldiers or ended up in the black markets. Ekwensi again: “People were

stealing and selling the food. You could buy it in the market but you couldn’t get it in

the relief centres.” But why would Biafra rely on food from thousands of miles away

when their normal antebellum route of supply was merely tens of miles nearby in the

Midwest and Northern Nigeria, the food basket of the nation? It was because of the

supply of arms and ammunition. Ojukwu and the Biafran leadership never cared about

those poor children. In a memorandum to the White House, Benjamin Read, the

Executive Secretary of US State Department writes: “Because of the absence of other

airlines willing to make hazardous flights into Biafra, the ICRC[International

Committee Of The Red Cross] has been forced to charter planes from Henry Warton,

an American citizen, who is widely known to be Biafra’s only gun runner. In

engaging Warton, the ICRC is risking its good relations with the FMG, which has

long feared that ICRC flights might provide opportunity for gun running.” When

Awolowo offered to reopen the usual food corridors, Ojukwu flatly refused. Achebe

writes: “Ojukwu like many Biafrans, was concerned about the prospect that Nigerians

could poison the food supplies (pg211).” Awolowo let in the food supplies for the

children anyway working with the cover of Caritas and Red Cross. Achebe can tell

lies: “In America, the Nixon administration increased diplomatic pressure on the

Gowon administration to open up avenues for international relief agencies at about the

same time, following months of impasse over the logistics of supply route.(pg 221)”

There was neither pressure nor its increment.

“The problem of disaster relief in Biafra is not the lack of supplies or means of

transport but the lack of access, particularly by a land corridor to Biafra.” William B.

Macomber, Jr, the Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations wrote in a letter

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dated 20 December 1968 to Congresswoman Florence Dwyer when she sought

clarification on the plight of Biafran refugees she kept seeing in the media. “The

authorities [Biafran] on the spot, under the conditions of civil war have given a higher

priority to politico-military considerations than to arranging food to be delivered to

Biafra. In early November [1968] the Nigerian government told the ICRC

[International Committee of the Red Cross] that it would agree to daylight relief

flights to the major airstrip now held by Biafra if the ICRC could give assurances that

the strip would handle only relief flight in daylight hours. We welcome this step by

the Federal Government (FMG), which would substantially increase the flow of relief.

So far, however, the Biafran authorities have refused to agree. We find it

incomprehensible that despite the millions of Biafran lives at stake, the Biafran

leadership has not yet given its agreement. The Nigerian government has also offered

to cooperate in efforts to open a land corridor to Biafran-held territory. We hope that

the Biafran authorities will respond positively to this but heretofore they have alleged

they fear the food may be poisoned while transiting FMG territory.”

Later when Awolowo visited the battlefronts and saw the heartrending impact of 

kwashiorkor on the children, he asked about the  food supplies, only to discover that

soldiers were ambushing the supplies, feeding themselves and the top hierarchy so as

to continue the war. They never cared about those suffering children. Awolowo

decided this “dangerous policy” must stop. To protect those children who were

suffering because of the war, he asked for a stop to the food supply that was

inevitably going to the soldiers and the Biafran plutocrats unnecessarily elongating a

war they would never win.

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It takes deep wisdom to understand Awolowo’s concern for the poor Biafran children.

As he himself repeatedly said “only the deep can understand the deep.”  So let’s distil

this wisdom for Achebe to understand. There was a family of beggars from Niger

Republic I once saw at Falomo roundabout, in Ikoyi, Lagos. The useless parents lay

idle all day and night under the bridge and sent their children around to beg for alms.

One would literarily have a big stone in place of a heart not to help those children

once they approached you. They were really suffering and stinking. Church members

from of Our Lady of Assumption, Falomo (one of the richest in the country) decided

to help the children, bathing them, sprucing them up in decent clothes and giving

them nourishing food. By the following day, their parents have redressed the children

in tattered and stinking clothes because that was the form that was needed to compel

emotions from people and get huge alms.

As someone who now understood clearly what the parents were using their kids for,

are you still supposed to be giving those children alms?  (Once Cameroon too realised

that to the Biafran authorities, the suffering kwashiorkor children existed for show

business and arms trade, they not only refused to take them into their country, they

disbanded the newly formed relief agency dedicated to their welfare.)  Now consider

what these manipulative parents of filthy children in Falomo, Ikoyi would say when

they discover alms are no longer coming in? ‘Look at these rich people from a rich

house of God; aren’t they supposed to be kind and merciful to suffering little

children?’ This perspective of irresponsible parents was the basis of accusing

Awolowo of genocide through starvation. What is more, Achebe boasts of Biafran

prowess in manufacturing Ogbuniwe, ‘the mass killing bombs’, he boasted of Biafran

innovative refinement of petroleum that kept Biafran vehicles on the road throughout

the war without western technological help, but the most basic of human necessities –

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the production or the supply of food  – they had no clue. And the farmers that were

supposed to grow food as the US documents noted were conscripted into the Biafran

army during planting season of 1967. The fertilizers that could have been used to

better their lands were used to make Ogbunigwe, the mass-killing bombs. And yet

Achebe claimed the starvation was Awolowo’s fault.

On The Twenty Pound Policy

Throughout the war, as the US State Department’s confidential files disclose, there

was no shortage of people and “isms” to blame for the failure of war.  At different

times and to different audiences, Biafrans blamed racism, neo-imperialism, 

colonialism for the war. When Ojukwu sent Pius Okigbo to the mainly  Latin America

to solicit for funds and arms for Biafra, he blamed the war on “the desire of Arab

Muslims who saw Biafra as the only obstacle to the spread of Islam in Africa”.

Okigbo noted to his audiences that “Biafra is 60%  Catholic and 40% Protestant.” He

told them what they wanted to hear. Also, during several of his radio addresses,

Ojukwu blamed the war on the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson who supplied

15% of Nigeria’s arms. He called the Kwashiorkor afflicting Biafran children Harold

Wilson Syndrome or Herod Disease. Like the biblical King Herod, Ojukwu said,

Harold Wilson wanted to exterminate the children of Biafra. They believed him.

While the blame-Arabs/Hausa/Islam narrative, blame Wilson/racism/imperialism

narratives that were so potently alive during the war are now safely dead, the blame

Awolowo for starvation narrative is well alive going viral from generation to

generation because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices. To the

Americans who monitored and documented everything about the war, there was no

time Awolowo was blamed for the starvation or deaths in these 21,000 pages.

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However, after the war, it was through this twenty pound policy that the blame –

Awolowo narrative began. To develop it, they seized on this policy and worked their

way back to include what Awolowo may have said or done and mix them together

form a pernicious narrative.

The twenty-pounds-for-every-Igbo was a myth; it never happened. What happened

then was a currency crisis. On the 30th of December 1967 during the war, Awolowo

decided to change the Nigerian currency in circulation in order to render the £37

million Ojukwu had stolen useless for buying foreign weapons. The Biafran

leadership quickly took the loot, mopped up the ones they could get in circulation and

headed to Europe to exchange them for hard currencies. Eventually they introduced

Biafran notes as the only legal tender. There were around £149 million Biafran

pounds in circulation by the end of the war – an average of £10 per every Igbo. After

the war, there was a general scramble to exchange these notes for the new Nigerian

notes. As Awolowo explained, he didn’t know on what basis these notes were

produced. It is like someone bringing a single fifty billion Zimbabwean dollar note to

the bank and expected to be given fifty billion naira.   The exchange rate should be

known to determine the worth of the Zimbabwean dollar. Currently, 39 billion

Zimbabwean dollars is worth 1 US dollar. In the case of Biafra, the worth of the

currency was unknown; they were produced out of desperation with lax security

features to boot. In his statement of 1st February 1968, Dr Pius Okigbo, Biafra’s

Commissioner of Economic Affairs said that “the lack of international acceptance and

lack of a commensurate exchange rate was immaterial since the currency was

intended only for circulation in Biafra.” In other words, it is worthless outside Biafra.

After the war those that had this junk money were carting them to Nigerian banks

hoping to get equivalent new Nigerian notes. No banker or economists of sense would

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approve that. Awolowo in his move to rehabilitate the Igbos and restore economic

normalcy approved the payment of 20 Nigerian pounds flat rate for every Biafran

notes depositor. It was never £20 for every Igbo. £20 for every Biafran? That would

have been around £300 million when Nigeria’s  annual budget  before the war was

£342.22 million for a population of 57million.

On the Indigenization Decree.

The true winner of the civil war was  the Nigerian military class who succeeded in

using everybody against everybody and continue their indefinite aggrandizement of 

the self by fleecing the country to the bone as the next 30 years confirmed. After the

January coup, Aguyi-Ironsi used Dr Nwafor Orizu, the acting president, to capture

power. What Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna wanted to use bloodletting to achieve, he grabbed

it on “a scrap piece of paper” as Shehu Shagari’s eyewitness account Beckoned to

Serve discloses. The New York Times describes it as a coup within a coup. Gowon

used Awolowo  for the war and to keep the country economically viable. He took

advantage of the failed secession to perpetuate himself in power. “Go On With One

Nigeria (GOWON),” he stumped.  He was not only Nigeria’s longest serving head of

state, he was the longest looter of Nigeria’s treasury. Ojukwu too as Wole Soyinka

observes in his own ipsissima verba You Must Set Forth At Dawn, was also

interested in conquering Nigeria not only in seceding. Unknown to Victor Banjo and

his Third Force, Ojukwu had embedded special companies within the Third Force to

topple Banjo and hand control of Nigeria to him in case Banjo succeeds in conquering

the West and Lagos.

The indigenisation decree had nothing to do with disenfranchising the Igbos or other

Biafrans of economic power. As was the vogue in 14 African nations then,

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indigenisation and nationalisation was the ruling military class and their friends’ way

of dressing their bottomless impulse to loot  with the populist cloak of fighting

western imperialism and neo-colonialism. For their roles during the war, Awolowo or

Chief Anthony Enahoro should be getting major oil blocks. But no, they were

interested in nation-building not treasury-looting. How can Achebe explain someone

like Achike Udenwa who as a Biafran soldier fought for the so-called liberation and

self-determination his people only to become a governor 40years later and rob his

people of billions? And yet he is one of those still propagating the myth indigenisation

decree was to disenfranchise the Igbos  The Nigerian ruling thieves span all tribes and

so are their victims.

Indeed Awolowo could be ‘ethnocentric.’ The Yoruba region like pre-European

Union Europe was always in a state of constant war. Ibadan vs Ekiti vs Egba vs Ondo

vs Ijebus vs Ife vs Ijesha vs Egbado etc. It was because of this internecine war that

made Yoruba land susceptible to easy French colonialism to the west (Dahomey,

Benin Republic) and British Royal Niger Company taking the rest. When Awolowo

“resuscitated ethnic pride,” he used it to rally Yoruba to stop fighting and killing each

other. This resuscitation wasn’t to elevate the Yoruba so that they would dominate

other tribes. Achebe observes:  “Awolowo transformed the Action Group into a

formidable, highly disciplined political machine that often outperformed the NCNC in

regional elections. It did so by meticulously galvanizing political support in Yoruba

land and among the riverine and minority groups in the Niger Delta who shared

similar dread of the prospects of Igbo political domination (pg45).”

Achebe never addresses this dread even though he mentions it in two other places.

Nowhere in the book does he stump for brotherliness or make a stand for tribal

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harmony. In 1961, the British Cameroonians had to decide their fate through a UN

plebiscite since their lands were too small and landlocked to stand as a country. The

peoples of the Northern Cameroons voted to belong to northern Nigeria while the

peoples of the Southern Cameroons not wanting to belong to the Igbos dominating the

Easter Region of Nigeria decided to belong to the Republic of Cameroon even though

they were French-speaking. The reason why minorities need to be very afraid at the

prospects of collaborating with Igbos is an important topic Achebe conspicuously

skips, instead he spends the final pages of the book resurrecting the 44 years old

propaganda of genocide.

To prepare us to be swindled, Achebe litters the book with hyped phrases and

sentences like “Smash the Biafrans,” “presence of organized genocide”(pg 92)… “the

Nigerian forces decided to purge the city of its Igbo inhabitants (pg137)”… “the cost

in human life made it one of the bloodiest civil wars in human history(pg 227)…

“prospect of annihilation (pg 217)”… “Standing on the precipice of annihilation (pg

217).” Whereas those that can rightly talk of annihilation were the people of Abudu.

The American document of 15/10/67 noted: “As the ‘Biafrans’ retreated from Benin

to Agbor, they killed all the men, women and children they could find who were not

Ibos. The town of Abudu, one of the larger places between Agbor and Benin, lost

virtually all of its population with the exception of a few who had escaped to the

bush.”  Those that can rightly talk of annihilation were the Jews. Not only do Nazi

policy documents say so, on-the-ground facts support that. In Poland, Germany,

Austria and the Baltic countries alone, Hitler aiming for 100%, killed 90% of Jews.

The writer, Cyprian Ekwensi, a chief of Biafran propaganda says: “We gave the

number of children dying per day as 1,000. Can you prove that? Can you disprove it?

But can you believe it? That is propaganda.” So let us take the Biafran propaganda at

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its highest and assume 3 million, i.e. 100,000 per month died in the 30months war.

The Vietnamese  genuinely lost close to 3 million to the Vietnam War but they do not

talk of America’s plan to annihilate them.

Neither do the Japanese, the world’s first and only victims of nuclear explosion.

Azikiwe repeatedly argued that though Igbos were killed in the North, it doesn’t mean

the tribe was “slated for slaughter” as a policy. Even Colin Legum whom Achebe

claims was the first to describe the 1966 revenge killings of Igbos in the North as

pogroms does not think so too. On pg 82 instead of stating the source of Legum

article, Achebe references his own interview in Transition. However in the London

Observer of 26 May 1968, Legum writes: “It is clear that there is no systematic

attempt at exterminating Ibos to justify charge of genocide.” Also Ojukwu’s hitherto

unknown Director of Intelligence and External Communications, the Irish priest Rev

Fr Kevin Doheny too said in a secret but frank conversation with an American

diplomat that the claim of genocide is “highly exaggerated but without it Biafrans

would have given up fighting long time ago.” Biafra’s biggest arms donor, France

sent a five man delegation  headed by Aymar Achille-Fould and Louis Massoubre on

5th February 1969 to investigate the genocide claims, they reported back to Charles

Gaulle, the French president, there was no genocide.

If there was any intention to exterminate Igbos,  after Ojukwu had fled and the

Biafran military had been completely paralysed, why didn’t  the Nigerian military

seized the opportunity to  turn the guns on the defenceless Biafrans and mow them

down, or carpet bomb them? They never did that. Instead there were steps to welcome

them back into the fold. It is wicked and irresponsible of anyone to keep on talking   

of “genocide” or “prospect of annihilation” when the context and facts on ground had

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been revealed to say otherwise.  It is insulting to the memory of true genocide

victims.  “If you are blind, describing an elephant is easy.” Achebe writes in The

Education of a British-Protected Child. “You can call it, like one of the six blind

men in the fable, a huge tree trunk; or perhaps a gigantic fan; or an enormous rope,

and so on. But having eyes, far from making such descriptions easy, actually

complicates them.” Achebe throughout the book choose the easy path  of the blind

over the complex task of a conscientious writer. Having taken a low road, he wants to

arrive at a high point by invoking the Mandela Example in the final pages.  Mandela

described Achebe as the writer “in whose company the prison walls fell down.” With

this his presumably last book, There Was A Country, Achebe is the writer in whose

company dangerous walls are rising up: walls of tribal hatred, walls of lies, walls of

sloppy thinking and lazy research, wall of propaganda and walls of moral ineptitude.

-          Damola Awoyokun, a Structural and Marine Engineer in London is also

the Executive Editor of Pwc Review. He can be reached at executiveeditor AT

pwc-review DOT com

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