No Victors
The Biafran war.
Is it truly that which must not be named, discussed, critiqued, included in the nation’s education curriculum, or even fictionalized for arts and entertainment sake in an attempt to be deliberately forgotten? Or have most of the country simply healed and moved past their past?
I’ll refer to the war here as what it really is, The Nigerian Civil War not what it is colloquially called, The Biafran War. Our tendency towards forgetting and minimizing our history and its aftermath, makes it even more important to note that the war was a Nigerian and global event. While the actual shooting war was cordoned off to Nigeria’s South-Eastern and eventually Eastern region only, a civil war in the largest oil-rich and most populous Black nation on the dawn of their colonial independence is never an internal affair.
The responses came from all over the world. The big guys got involved; both in arms and in aid. Britain supplied arms, military intelligence, military planes and vehicles to Nigeria and ironically aid to Biafra. France supplied arms, mercenaries and aid to Biafra, Egyptian military pilots flying Nigerian bomber planes over Biafra, the planes supplied by the Russians. Nixon personally and subtly supporting Biafra in speeches and calls for peace talks to end the genocide, although the U.S took a neutral position diplomatically. World powers and oil giants scrambling to declare, safeguard and observe their interest — crude.
The protests poured in; Bruce Mayrock, the Jewish American student at Columbia who set himself on fire in front of the UN in protest for Biafra, The Beatles’ John Lennon returned his MBE to the Queen in protest of British government involvement, international humanitarian NGO, Médecins Sans Frontières, popularly known as Doctors Without Borders was formed in 1971 by a group of young French doctors and journalists who provided aid in Biafra. The International Red Cross flew in relief materials and set up shop — relief centers, clinics, offices — in towns in Eastern Nigeria. And then came the largest civilian airlift in history, the famous controversial Biafran Airlift, which I believe could make quite an entertaining blockbuster film by the way.
“It flew more than 5.000 sorties, saving hundreds of thousands of children from dying of starvation. It flew only at night into the world’s most unusual airport Uli — a converted tarmac rod in West Africa with the code name ‘Annabelle’. It was run by amateurs — priests mainly. Its planes were old propeller planes in an age when jets had almost taken over. It flew in violation of international law with the blessing of the Pope. The scene was the Nigerian Civil War 1967–70. The airline was called JCA — Joint Church Aid. Its rugged aircrews called it JESUS CHRIST AIRLINES.”
— Lasse Jensen, Director of the documentary Jesus Christ Airlines.
“Towards the crisis poured a welter of outsiders trying to help, or just help themselves: politicians, journalists, camera-men, philanthropists, doctors, pilots and pundits; along with mercenaries, arms dealers, oilmen, conmen and call-girls. No author could have invented such a cast-list.”
— Frederick Forsyth, in his foreword in the 1997 book, Airlift To Biafra.
In March 2019, I visited the Rwanda Genocide Memoriam in Kigali with some friends and as we walked through the halls taking in the horrifying archive of photos, films, skeletal remains and torn bloodied clothes of the dead, we met a number of other Nigerians, equally moved by the scenes. Two middle-aged men amongst them mused aloud on why 50 odd years after the Nigerian civil war, we have nothing like this. Another Nigerian laughed dryly “when history is not even thought in schools, is it historical museum you want to have?” The rest of us chimed in, until we found ourselves a group of Nigerians in the middle of a Rwandan History Museum discussing our history and realizing the irony of the moment we were in.
Shortly after I returned to Nigeria, I was re-inspired to pick up research on a documentary project around the war that I had earlier abandoned and made a mental note to speak to more young Nigerians about their opinions on the subject. After a film screening somewhere in Lagos for the documentary Winnie, a conversation amongst the audience began. When it segued towards the importance of documenting history and its players just like the film’s makers documented Winnie Mandela and her role in the anti- Apartheid struggle, I decided to try a small experiment.
I asked the room to indicate by show of hands who thinks we need to discuss and document the Nigerian Civil War in order to move towards any real truth and reconciliation and it led to a strangely but unsurprisingly heated debate. The room was divided, about 60% said it is unnecessary and another opportunity for Igbos to cry victim, the other 40% felt it was necessary and is one of the big elephants in Nigeria we try to force under a carpet.
I asked the 60% if there isn’t any need to discuss the war crimes, like the genocide and the many instances of mass murder of civilians, and the economic stifling of Easterners and South-Easterners during and after the war, retorts came in the form of statements like: “all is fair in war” “starvation and genocide are weapons of war” “well, the Igbos shouldn’t have seceded” “you ask for war, you get war” “Ojukwu was arrogant and wanted to form his own country” etc.
I was curious about where their frustration stemmed from. As far as I knew, none of them were alive during the war, or had any personal or family experiences as a result of the war. I don’t imagine any instance of increased discourse about the war and its events will have much of an effects on their lives today. Or maybe there is something I’m yet to understand about that. But what I understand is that none of them are Igbo. And in a country where tribal sentiments are passed down from one generation to the next without empathy or consideration for any outsiders, those responses made sense. The Igbos in the room were mostly part of the 40%, which also included other ethnic groups and some foreigners. And during this argument there was a familiar look on their faces. Perhaps they were directly or indirectly affected by the war, with family experiences and lost lives, property, wealth. Who like me might have grown up hearing bitter stories of that time from older relatives who were survivors and soldiers. A look that said why bother.
A few months later, I told a friend I had just returned from filming the initial phase of a civil war documentary in the East and she responded “But, Ifeoma do you really think the Igbos were victims?” This is not an uncommon response, even from ethnically Igbo people. She is Delta Igbo, same region as my mother. They were part of Nigeria during the war — mostly due to geographical reasons. Although they are ethnically Igbo, the region is separated from the Eastern region by the Niger Bridge. I contemplated on the irony of a Delta Igbo person asking such a question when thousands of her own people who did not secede were brutally massacred and raped by soldiers on Nigerian soil, even as they innocently took to the streets chanting “One Nigeria” to prove their solidarity. Simply because, in the eyes of those soldiers they were still rebels, after all they had Igbo names, ate Igbo food, spoke Igbo. My mother once told me how hundreds of babies born in that region after the war were bitter reminders of soldiers raping the civilians. Here is an incredibly moving personal family account of the Asaba Massacre by Cheta Nwanze.
Later on I thought about how interesting it was that that question, loaded with doubt, was her first response to me announcing I was working on a Nigerian civil war documentary. And why I didn’t find that unusual. If a people have been told all their lives that fully acknowledging their history is victimhood, maybe they can start to believe it too?
On January 15, 1966, a number of junior officers in the Nigerian army staged a coup to overthrow the government citing corruption, nepotism and abuse of power by politicians. The coup was led by 29 year old Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna and three other Majors. Their plan? To overthrow the government then release Obafemi Awolowo who was politically imprisoned in Calabar and install him as head of state. According to the coup plotters, they believed he was the best man at the time to lead Nigeria forward. I recommend reading “Why We Struck” a personal account by Adewale Ademoyega, one of the five Majors who led the coup and this (incomplete but somewhat detailed) police report on the events of the coup for more details. Although a blatant abuse of power, the coup was popular. Perhaps because the country had never seen anything like it before. In the days immediately after, students and labour groups all over the country — North, South, East and West — took to the streets to celebrate the new freedom from their corrupt government.
According to the coup leaders, in their plan to overthrow the government, they plotted to execute a number of senior military officers to avoid suppression of the coup and arrest the Prime Minister Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, his cabinet of ministers and other politicians. The events of the coup led to the deaths of an estimate 22 persons, mostly senior military officers and politicians including the Prime Minister, Finance Minister Festus Okotie-Eboh, The premier of the Northern and Western Regions, Sir Ahmadu Bello and Chief Samuel Akintola amongst others. The coup plotters did not succeed in killing the most senior army officer and head of the Nigerian army at the time, Major-General Aguiyi Ironsi. This was the coup’s fatal error as Ironsi, with the help of Lt-Colonels Hilary Njoku, Yakubu Gowon and Odumegwu Ojukwu suppressed the mutiny and the coup failed.
After the coup failed, the understandably shaken ministers and politicians decided that it was best for the military leadership to take over government in the interim. Major General Ironsi as the most senior man and head of the army became the head of state. He appointed Lt-Col Yakubu Gowon as his Chief of Staff. Now with an Igbo head of state and with majority of the January coup plotters being Igbo officers of the Nigerian army, some conspiracy theories and tribal sentiments began to spread within the army, with most suspecting that Ironsi was in on the coup. Actually those sentiments had existed for years, even before the coup. At the time, the Igbos were arguably the most western educated group hence dominated the civil service, public offices and the army, especially the junior officer ranks. Often, the Premier of the Northern region Sir Ahmadu Bello had expressed concern about this, also allegedly once urging the Prime Minister to reduce the examination cut off marks for Northerners who wished to join the army to enable more of them who had not yet embraced western education like their Southern counterparts to become soldiers as he and a number of Northern army officers were concerned about Igbo domination within the army.
These sentiments turned devastating for the country….
Ironsi in a bid to quell the conspiracy theories surrounded himself with Northerners in his cabinet and members of his security detail. This paved the way for a bloody counter-coup. The mutiny was code-named “Operation Araba” and staged by Northern soldiers within the Nigerian army on July, 29 1966. Ironsi was executed by the members of his own security detail and the bloodiest coup in Nigeria’s history till date began.
“Within three days of the July outbreak, every Igbo soldier serving in the army outside the East was dead, imprisoned or fleeing eastward for his life”, Professor Ruth First in The Barrel of a Gun: The Politics of Coups d’Etat in Africa [Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 1970, p317.]
But it did not end in the army….
The 1966 anti-Igbo pogrom came. This was a series of massacres of Igbos and South-Easterners living in Northern Nigeria by soldiers and civilian mobs starting in May 1966 and reaching a peak after 29 September 1966. An estimated 30,000 or more Easterners and South-Easterners living in the North were killed. Pregnant women were killed, then cut open and disemboweled. Men, women and children were often beheaded, women were raped, tortured and sodomized before they were killed. An aunt explained to me once how sand and glass and other objects were stuffed into the genitals of many women before they were killed.
There is a scene in the film Half of a Yellow Sun that depicts an actual event of one of the many massacres of the pogrom. The Kano Airport massacre scene. As horrifying as it is, what this scene does not depict is that the soldiers continued onto the waiting plane on the tarmac, full of fleeing Igbos, separated the Igbos from others, hauled them off the plane and shot them dead on the tarmac. A number of trains and lorries leaving the North were stopped and infiltrated by soldiers and violent civilian mobs before they could cross the borders to the East and Igbos were removed and killed. There were incidents where vehicles were stopped and the occupants thrown over the bridge into the vast deep Niger river. Anti-Igbo riots and violence also spread to the South-West, mainly Lagos where millions also lived and worked.
The January 1966 coup should not have happened. A family member who was a Lieutenant in the Nigerian army was one of the coup plotters and I know it is something he feels deep guilt about to this day, he will not even discuss it. It should not have happened. It was an abuse of power, a total disregard for law and order and lives — loved ones — were lost. It emboldened the military and set a precedent for three decades of military dictatorship forced on the country by coup after coup. A pogrom killing tens of thousands of innocent people in retaliation, merely on account of their tribe, should also never have happened. It is impossible to justify or even understand. A horrific breakdown of whatever shaky trust there was between regions.
As millions of Igbos all over the country fled to the East. The military governor of the Eastern Region, Lt-Col Ojukwu refused to attend any meetings outside of the Eastern region for fear of his safety which led to a meeting of the Supreme Military Council at Aburi and birthed the Aburi accord. On return to Nigeria, the accord broke down causing Ojukwu and the leadership of the Eastern region to chose secession from Nigeria. Biafra was declared on 30, May 1967 and Nigeria refusing to let its people go, waged war on Biafra.
I recommend Oil, Politics and Violence by Max Siollun and the aforementioned book by Ademoyega for full accounts of both coups, their aftermath and the war.
Today marks 50 years since the end of the war. A half-century.
On January 15 1970, ironically exactly 3 years after the January 15 1966 coup which is widely — and erroneously — regarded as the incident that led to the war, Nigeria won the war and the then Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon made a benevolent declaration “No Victor, No Vanquished”.
Perhaps it was well-intentioned but it was untrue. There were certainly many vanquished. By the end of the war, an estimated 1–2 million of Igbos and South-Easterners had lost their lives. Millions of civilian lives lost on the Biafran side mostly by Nigerian air raids and numerous bombings, children and babies dying from starvation caused by land, air and sea blockades by the Nigerian federal government which controlled the ports.
Formerly wealthy families plunged into poverty post-war unfortunately right at the time Nigeria experienced an economic boom. With their pre-war businesses, employment and property taken over in Lagos, Kano and other cities outside their region and sources of livelihood and property destroyed in their homeland, many had to start from scratch plunging into unemployment and poverty. Of course Biafran pounds became useless, and savings in Nigerian banks were gone. 20 Nigerian pounds was given to everyone formerly on the Biafran side in exchange for whatever they had prior to and during the war. So when the Indigenization Decree was passed, many Easterners and South-Easterners were marginalized and could not access the same economic opportunities from the decree that a significant number of wealthy Nigerians today can trace their wealth to.
And we often forget the small but mighty human stories, the relationships destroyed. Perhaps the inter-tribal best friends or lovers in Kano, Lagos, Enugu who frolicked with each other one day and found themselves torn as their people waged war against each other the next day. The businesses and properties years and decades old, destroyed and burnt to ashes in an instant. Inter-tribally married couples who chose to flee their home country and become refugees abroad because they considered staying together more important than staying home as both of their countries fought. The thousands of Biafran babies airlifted hurriedly and without proper documentation to various countries. Many of whom never got reunited with their birth families as they were taken before they even knew their names. Because living unknown in a new country is more important than staying with your family and dying.
I wish Gowon had simply declared “No Victors” and in the years after the civil war, the country followed through with clear and outright plans focused on rebuilding post-tragedy — economically, socially, politically, in every sense of the word. The ultimate danger of sweeping things under the carpet and trudging along regardless of true reconciliation, rebuilding and reparation efforts, is that there is a resentment and hurt that comes when you show people their history does not matter. It’s why IPOB continues to exist and Nnamdi Kanu, however genuine or not his intentions and cause are will always have followers, some of whom aren’t exactly sure what even they are agitating for, unlike their predecessors in the 60s who were fighting for survival and a sense of true nationhood.
Resentment festers, if we let it. A country that does not understand and accept its history — the good, the bad and the ugly parts — is a country that is at risk of remaining broken. Truth and reconciliation efforts, the kind that begins with deliberate and honest steps away from the erasure, suppression or rewriting of our history. This is a prerequisite for real progress in any society. It only takes one step at a time.
