We do not remember in
order to reproduce the hates, the violence, and the corruption which characterised our past. Rather we remember
in order not to repeat such abominations and in order to transform such latent forces of domination into potent
forces for the empowerment of the weak ~~~ E.E.
Uzukwu.
Introduction
On January 15, 1966, a dramatic event took place in Nigeria. Five majors in the Nigerian army staged a bloody coup
d'état in an attempt to topple the federal government. The coup failed but the military took over the mantle
of leadership. Consequent upon that tragic event were waves of frightening and unrelenting cold-blooded massacres
of peoples from Eastern Nigeria. On July 29, 1966, an even bloodier military coup struck the country once again
like a sledge-hammer and set in motion a series of events that culminated in the secession of the Eastern Region
as the independent Republic of Biafra.
Predictably, what started as an intra-state political turmoil, crystallized into an international social armed
conflict and, for the first time, in Cold War bipolar era, most of the major world powers found themselves courting
and supporting one party to the conflict. The result of this was
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that the solution to the Biafran crisis depended to a greater extent on decisions made in London, Washington, Moscow
and Paris. Consequently, the role of the international community in the thirty-month internecine war that ensued,
generated heated moral and political controversies, especially over why the United Nations did not launch a humanitarian
intervention to forestall further loss of lives and to bring in relief aid to the starving people of Biafra in
accordance with international humanitarian and human rights laws.
War
is an ill wind, which blows no one any good. Both
the aggressor,
the victim, the victor and the vanquished � all get a substantial share of the ill-fortune and bitter taste and
ravages of war. With the declaration of surrender by General Philip Effiong on January 15, 1970, Biafra formally ceased to exist. The military
struggle came to an end but according to Emeka Ojukwu � the General of the People�s Army in a statement released
on January
14, 1970, in
Ivory
Coast,
"Biafra lives, the struggle continues..."
(N.
U. Akpan, 1976).
For Ndigbo mostly, the struggle continued though from a different angel, as they began to settle down to gather
the pieces of their lives; to get a decent meal; to sleep now with both eyes closed, walk around in the open without
the fear that a Jet-Fighter might dive in the night or daylight and drop bombs on the roof of their houses, at
the hospitals or market places; to give their daughters in marriage without fear of their being kidnapped and raped
by marauding federal soldiers.
For
Ndigbo, it was time then to count their losses and they were many indeed. Thirty-three years after the war, Ndigbo
are still bearing the brunt of losing a war that was forced upon them without any reasonable alternatives to choose
from. Nor is the issue of security of life and property for which the war was fought in any way guaranteed them
in the present Nigerian society. Incessant riots leading to destruction of property and massacres of Igbos still
go on in some parts of the new and united Nigeria. No doubt, all this brings back to
them the tragic years punctuated by traumatic memories of a lost war.
Generally
speaking, when losses are mentioned, especially in war situations, the mind goes immediately to the physical material
losses such as life and property in form of houses, cars, office equipment etc. (Stephen Lewis, 1968). For the
Igbos and for the entire Nigerian populace for that matter, the thirty-month war was a set-back for about three
hundred years or more. The impacts and effects of the war are multi-faceted and varied - some are positive as bye-products
but far too many are negative. I shall discuss the impacts and effects of the war on Ndigbo under the following
sub-headings: human casualties, destruction of development and manpower, economic losses, health and environmental
disasters, dislocation of political, religious and psycho-social life.
Human Casualties:
Loss of life and Personal Injuries
During
World War II, one of the issues that attracted indignation and revulsion and, in fact, �shocked the world conscience,�
was the Holocaust � the Nazi policy designed to wipe out the Jews completely from the face of the earth. There
seems to be no other crime or inhuman treatment that would affect a race or group of people so adversely as the
physical and brutal elimination of its people. The massacre of the Igbos in many parts of Nigeria, to put it in
a Nazi parlance, was the 'final solution' to either wipe them out completely or reduce their number drastically
so that in future, any hope of attaining a numerical strength which would put them in the lime light of political
affairs in the country would be dashed.
For
Nigerians and particularly, for the Igbos, the most painful effect of the war is the toll of human life � the loss
of innocent people who died in a most horrible manner. It was estimated that about three million people died in
the war. For the people of Eastern
Nigeria, a
huge loss of life and property preceded the military combat which started on July 6, 1967. It stretched back to the mass-slaughter
of mostly Ndigbo, which began on May
29, 1966 and
continued unabated till October 1966. The British government, in 1969, put the figure of those who died in the
pogrom at 7,000. After checking and cross-checking of those killed or missing during this period, the Biafran government
estimated the death toll at 50,000.
The
Tribunal of Inquiry instituted by the Biafran Government to investigate the causes and extent of the killings had
as its reference point among other things, to "ascertain the extent of loss of life and personal injuries."
The Tribunal sat from December 1966 to June 1967 � a period of 49 days (Ben Obumselu, 1988). The Tribunal conducted
a thorough inquiry and recorded evidence from 253 witnesses and received a total of 498 exhibits. Venues for the
sitting of the Tribunal included Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Uyo and Ogoja. During the
period covered by the Tribunal, a total of 45,000 to 50,000 were said to have been killed in the North and other
parts of Nigeria from May 29 to December 1966. Out
of this number, 4,665 lost their lives during the massacre in the Midwest in September and October 1966, following
the aborted invasion of the Biafran troops in August 1967. In Asaba alone, 700 Igbo males who came out to welcome
�victorious� federal soldiers were singled out and slaughtered in a market place (Emma Okocha, 1994).
This
incident was further collaborated by the reports from the international press and an International Committee on
Crimes of Genocide. The New
York Review, on December 21, 1967 reported: "In some areas outside
the East which were temporarily held by Biafran forces, as at Benin and the Midwestern Region, Ibos were
killed by local people with at least the acquiescence of the Federal forces. About 1,000 Ibo civilians perished
at Benin in this way." The London Observer also reported on January 21, 1968: �The greatest single massacre occurred
in the Ibo town of Asaba where 700 Ibo males were lined up
and shot.� Again, Monsignor Georges Rocheau, an envoy from His Holiness Pope Paul VI in an interview with Le
Monde, a French Newspaper
had this to say concerning the killings: "There has been genocide, for example on the occasion of the 1966
massacres... Two areas have suffered badly. Firstly the region between the towns of Benin and Asaba where only
widows and orphans remain, Federal troops having for unknown reasons massacred all the men."
There
were also other incidents of mass killing of especially young boys and men in Nsukka and Ikot-Ekpene. The killing
at Ikot-Ekpene, one of the minority towns in the Eastern Region was particularly more revealing in the sense that
it contradicted the much-publicised federal propaganda that the crisis was entirely an Igbo affair and that the
federal soldiers were quite benevolent in their dealings, especially with the minorities whom they claim to have
liberated. Furthermore, this incident also contradicts the claim that the minorities in Eastern Nigeria wanted to join the Nigerian federation
but were prevented by Ojukwu. According to Axel Harneit-Sievers et
al, (1977), the killing in Ikot-Ekpene was in retaliation
for the latter's support of the NCNC in the first Republic. Again, the fact that such retaliation could still take
place in that circumstance seems incomprehensible.
What
is even more horrifying about the pogrom was the orchestrated and coordinated planning aided and abated by Northern
leaders with the instigation of erstwhile colonial officials especially lecturers at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Worthy of note also is the fact that
there had been incidents of such unprovoked killings dating back to 1945, 1953 and 1964. The Commission of Inquiry
set up to investigate the 1953 massacre warned that if the underlying causes were not tackled, it would happen
again. The manner in which those unfortunate victims lost their lives is better experienced than imagined. There
would be no point in recounting the whole disgusting story; it suffices to mention just a few of those incidents.
This cursory glimpse into the massacres of genocidal proportions throws some light into the mood, feelings, trauma,
humiliation and total frustration of the people of Eastern
Nigeria in
the aftermaths of the pogroms and the subsequent war of attrition waged against a people whose patience and spirit
of forbearance had been stretched far beyond any reasonable limit.
The
pre-war killings of 1966 were an undeclared war. The Easterners residing in the North were completely taken by
surprise. The narration of the gruesome event by lucky survivors arriving by road, air, and rail and on foot were
enough to prompt an instant incursion by the Easterners into the North to avenge themselves. On arrival the refugees
were
rushed to the hospitals. Many were already without their eyes, hands, legs; some with multiple body wounds inflicted
by bullets, axes, daggers and arrows of Northern Nigerian mobs and savages. Orphaned in tears and pains [cried
in desperation] where is mama? Where is papa? (Biafran
Government, 1968).
In
one incident, a man arrived at the Enugu airport with a machete cut in his
head. He recounted how the mob in Zaria drove a spear through his back. In
another scene at the same airport, stood a group of mangled, maimed, exhausted, speechless and hungry returnees.
One of them had one of his eyes gorged out with a stick, a machete cut across his face and body, his arms and bones
were broken with rifle butts. At
the General Hospital Enugu also stood a group of dazed returnees: one of them paralyzed, limbs riddled with bullets,
bayonets driven through the waist.
And yet another, with his right hand chopped off with an axe in Kainji Dam. The most pathetic appeared to be about
two incidents. The first involved a man who returned from Jos. A dagger was trust into his mouth to slash it open
up to the ear and the second, a man who was half burnt � fuel was poured on his head and set ablaze by a band of
rioters.
The
American Time
Magazine described
the scene in Kaduna on October 7, 1966: �In the Northern capital of Kaduna, raging mobs of Moslems armed with
iron bars and broken bottles surged through the streets shouting anti-Ibo slogans. They killed at least thirty
of the Ibo aliens from the East. From the airport, the troops fanned out through downtown Kano, hunting down Ibos in bars, hotels
and on the streets. One contingent drove their Land Rovers to the railroad station where more than 100 Ibos were
waiting for a train, and cut them down with automatic weapon fire. The soldiers did not have to all the killing.
They were soon joined by thousands of Hausa civilians, who rampaged through the city, armed with stones, cutlasses,
machetes, and home-made weapons of metal and broken glass. Crying Heathen! and Allah! the
mobs and troops invaded the Sabon
gari (stranger�s quarters),
ransacking, looting and burning Ibo homes and stores and murdering their owners. All night long and into the morning
the massacre went on. Then tired but fulfilled, the Hausas drifted back to their homes and barracks to get some
breakfast and sleep. Municipal garbage trucks were sent out to collect the dead and dump them into mass graves
outside the city. The death toll will never be known, but it was at least 1,000.�
The
survivors of this sorry spectacle were still being carried from one place to the other, when the Nigerian Air Force
started strafing hospitals, civilian populations, markets places etc. It is to be noted that not all Northerners
participated in the pre-war killings. Some of them objected but were overruled by the authorities who organized
it. Some Northerners and Westerners were instrumental to the survival of some Easterners. General Ojukwu noted
that his own sister was saved by a Yoruba neighbor who came to her rescue.
In
addition to loss of life and personal injuries as a result of the pogroms, at the battle fields, strafing of airplanes
etc., was the more painful and agonizing deaths due to mass starvation. According to John Okpoko, conservative
estimate of death toll arising from starvation presented to the British Parliament on July 22, 1968, by George Thomson, the Commonwealth
Secretary, pegged the figure at 200-300 daily.
Obviously, death
toll impacted more on children � the future of any race. It was estimated that 50% of children between 2 to 5 years
of age during this period lost their lives in the war. The UN, the OAU and the Nigeria military government systematically
obstructed and prevented relief aid from being sent to Biafra. The UNICEF was the only UN organ
that defied intimidation and threats from Britain, the US and the then UN Secretary-General,
U Thant and sent food to Biafra.
In
a Petition submitted to the Oputa Panel of Inquiry on April 26, 2001, by the Ohaneze Ndigbo, death arising from
massacre of civilians in conquered areas, air attacks on concentrated areas, rape, torture, murder of war prisoners
and civilians who surrendered, amounted to one million. Thirty-three years after the war, Ndigbo are still singled
out and massacred in many cities in the North and West and their property looted. The government turns a blind
eye and the perpetrators of this savagery go unpunished. What type of one Nigeria are we living in?
Destruction of
Manpower and Infrastructure
Closely
related to the loss of life is the devastation of infrastructure that took millions of 'man-hours', energy, time
and enormous amount of money to build which impacted so adversely and negatively on manpower development and infrastructure
potentials of the country. As Kofi Annan observed in reference to the Persian Gulf War, "none can yet say
how much time reconstruction will take, nor calculate its price in billions of dollars." The tragedy of the
thirty-month war can only be compared with the inhuman and obnoxious traffic of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
that robbed Nigerians especially the Igbos of their vibrant manpower. The state of affairs in Eastern Nigeria after the war fits well with Isichei's
evaluation of the impact of Slave Trade. Commenting on this impact on the Igbos, she stated that "it robbed
the people of Eastern
Nigeria especially
the Igbos a great number of their strongest and able bodied and most vibrant men and women who were just in their
prime." As mass starvation threatened to wipe out the entire population of Biafra, non-governmental agencies through
aid workers in collaboration with some friendly governments flew thousands of Biafran children to safety in some
African and even European countries. These children are valuable assets to their second homes today but their first
homes have been robbed of their useful services.
Nor
should the negative impacts the war brought on skilled labour be over-looked. The late Ivorian President (a very
good friend of Biafra) Felix Houphouét-Boigny, expressing his disgust and disappointment
on the senseless killings during the war lamented:
And yet, Nigerians continue to make it a point of duty to invite all kinds of
foreign agencies particularly Britain and Russia to cause chaos and to help us �Africans � decimate our manpower, slow down our
development and plunge us in this twentieth century, back below our level in the tenth century (Biafran Government,
1968).
As
all efforts in Biafra were directed to nothing else but
the war, primary and secondary schools and other higher institutions of learning grounded to a halt. This period
created a vacuum which has not been filed up till now and, with the resurgence of ethnic politics in the past and
present civilian administrations, there appears to be no bright prospect of closing this gap in the near future
as federal policies since the end of the war had tended to kill any developmental initiative in Igboland. One of
these was the Federal Government forceful take-over of Church and private schools without any compensation shortly
after the war. This take-over inflicted a deadly blow on the educational system. The take-over appears to have
had a two-pronged aim, namely, to control schools and run them down and to punish the Christian Missionaries who
were some of the original proprietors of the schools and who were accused of having prolonged the war by supporting
Biafra. Most of the Missionaries were deported
en
masse during the war.
This
policy of running down schools appears to be targeted against the morbid fear of Igbo domination which was seen
to have stemmed from the latter's unparalleled ambition to acquire Western education. It is difficult not to see
this approach as a means of reducing Igbo potentials in Nigerian affairs. As education was considered the 'biggest'
industry of the Igbos due mainly to the socio-economic leverage and mobility it gives them, the take-over of schools
slowed down the pace of progress in education and badly affected its standard which has deteriorated to its lowest
ebb. It is only now that government, after destroying the system, is gradually handing back some of those schools
in total chaos and dilapidated state to the Churches and other private proprietors. To revamp the school system
to its pre-war standard will take a long time.
In
the area of infrastructure, the appalling sight of homes, hospitals, schools, churches, industries, bridges, airports
and seaports being smashed by diving Jet Fighters, by burning and other forms of wanton destruction, was a sorry
spectacle to behold. Before the war started, community development projects in Biafra include: Bridges (12,561
feet), 13 Cooperative Shops, 214 Postal Agencies, 680 Maternity Homes, 36 Leper Segregation Centres, 89 Hospitals
and Rural Health Centres, 350 Dispensaries, 275 Community Schools and Domestic Science Centres, 1,216 Adult Education
Centres, 60 Libraries etc (Biafra, 1967). Paul Anber (1967) observes that by 1965, Eastern
Nigeria "had
the most extensive hospital facilities in the country, the largest regional production of electricity by 1954,
and the greatest number of vehicle registrations by 1963." A good number of Easterners were well represented
in the federal service.
For
instance, Anber notes that in 1964, 270 Igbos out of 431 officials occupied the senior post in the Railway Corporation
and that the Igbos were also massively represented in the Foreign Service. Having lost the war, the Igbos, who
used to be in the forefront of Nigerian affairs, have now been marginalized and almost completely banished from
the main stream of economic and political arena in Nigeria. There are certain strategic posts no Igbo person would
dream of getting in the present day Nigeria. The Ohaneze argues that there was
mass dismissal of Igbo public servants after the war coupled with systematic exclusion of Igbos from higher echelon
of policy-making. Prior to the war, the Igbos were able to attain enviable position in spite of the overt favoritism
of the North, which characterized the British imperial policy.
Perhaps,
one of the most adverse effects of the war, which impacted so negatively not only on Biafra and Nigeria but also
on the whole Black race, was the destruction of the astonishing and mesmerising technological breakthrough that
was the hallmark of the short period of Biafra's existence. This jump over the dreadful and intimidating abyss
that separate the 'almighty' first world from the weak - impoverished and exploited third world, seemed to have
frightened the superpowers whose monopoly of this potent and mind-boggling technological tool guarantees it limitless
power and hegemony over the rest of the world. Cataloguing items on these priceless technological achievements,
General Ojukwu, with some kind of ironic pride reminisces:
In the three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three
years of heroic bound, we leapt across the great chasm that separates knowledge from know-how. We built bombs,
we built rockets, and we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets. We guided them far,
we guided them accurately. For three years, blockaded without hope of import, we maintained all our vehicles. The
state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens. We built and maintained our airports,
maintained them under heavy bombardment. Despite the heavy bombardment, we recovered so quickly after each raid
that we were able to maintain the record for the busiest Airport in the continent of Africa. We spoke to the world through a telecommunication system engineered by local
ingenuity; the world heard us and spoke back to us. We built armored cars and tanks. We modified aircraft from
trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In the three years of freedom we had broken the technological
barrier. In three years we became the most civilized, the most technologically advanced Black people on earth.
We spurn nylon yarn; we developed new seeds for food and medicines (Emeka Ojukwu, 1998).
For
an informed reader, Ojukwu's reminiscence is a dirge for a shattered hope � a dream unrealized. And when the Igbos
sing this song � this funeral song, others
should not laugh for the song is a cry of desperation. It is an indisputable fact that in the area of scientific
and technological advancement, the first world stands like a Colossus in Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar and, the third
world like 'petty men,' peep under its huge legs and is exploited, dispossessed and traumatized by the perpetual
fear of being crushed to pieces by its mighty feet. Hence, it was no surprise that the entire developed world including
the Soviet
Union despite
its ideological war and antagonism with the Western world, could team up with Great Britain to arm Nigeria in order to destroy one of the most
promising breakthroughs of the Black race. By so doing, they made sure that Biafra did not see the light of day. Again,
Ojukwu, lamenting this loss, puts it more succinctly:
At the end of the war this pocket of Nigerian civilization was systematically
destroyed, dismantled and scattered. What a great pity � this was a beginning of a truly Black Risorgimento. The
men who achieved this breakthrough � where are they?
Echoing
the same mournful lament, Arthur Nwankwo (1972) notes that "the irresistible opportunity to establish a modern
African state bereft of all the traditional ills that plague most African countries," seemed to have disappeared
and vanished into oblivion with the death of Biafra.�
This instrument for economic and technological 'salvation' of the black race seemed to have temporarily died. G.
K. Osei also captures this idea so beautifully in the following assertion:
Negroes must look around themselves, and not afar, for the instruments of and
forces that must be utilized for their salvation. Neither institutions nor friends can make a race to stand unless
it has strength in its own legs. Races like individuals must stand or fall by their own merits. It is only through
struggle and the surmounting of difficulties that races, like individuals, are made strong, powerful and useful.
This is the road the Negro should travel, this is the road... the Negro will travel.
Biafra seemed to have heeded Osei's advice
of standing on its own legs. Hemmed in from all sides due to the Federal Government�s blockade, Biafran Intelligentsia
discarded books written in Britain and America, went into the forest and, trusting
their own ability, produced some of the most portent tools of war.
The
dream and hope of the black people as envisaged by Osei, Ojukwu and Nwankwo and many others, when viewed in the
context of the scientific and technological breakthrough that was fully manifested in Biafra, now appears to have
been a dream unrealised - a shattered hope. The generation of those veterans and scientific doyens � nuclear physicists
such as Sam Orji and Roy Umenyi both of blessed memory, is dying out gradually without passing such life-saving
and potent tools of freedom and emancipation to the young ones. In this, lies the defeat of Biafra
and in fact, the defeat of Nigeria and the entire black race in general. The unfinished business of
Biafra
is a quagmire and a stagnant water into which Nigeria is likely to sink unless something is done and urgently too.
To be continued!