In the first part of this essay, losses such as human casualties with regard to loss of life and personal injuries and destruction
of manpower, infrastructure and development were examined. Part two takes a cursory look into the areas of health
and environmental disasters, disruption of political and psycho-social life. All these impacted negatively on the
life of
Ndigbo. The present chaotic political situation in Igboland, in which �mercenaries� and the wrong people are empowered
to continue the suppression of Ndigbo is not unconnected with these painful disruptions. When the Igbos came to
the painful realisation that Gowon�s �no victor no vanquished� slogan was only a political ploy, their drive and
ceaseless ingenuity to fashion a better life for themselves were effectively stifled. The Northern Nigerian oligarchs
tightened their strangle-hold on political power while the Yorubas hijacked the higher echelon of the civil service
and economic channels. Consequently, the Igbos were left in the cold and driven to the periphery where some of
them began to irk out a living in some ways that are altogether not wholesome such as in drug pushing and
�419� fraudster. Furthermore, brain-drain and massive migration of Ndigbo to all parts of the world in search of
a greener pasture with their attendant negative impacts and erosion of the fabrics that held their socio-cultural
and political life together are some of the numerous losses the Igbos are still counting.
Health and Environmental Disasters
One Igbo
adage says that health is wealth � ndu bu aku. A healthy environment also contributes immensely to the well-being of the inhabitants. For the Easterners,
the stinking smell of putrefied dead bodies and animals, which filled the air with strong repugnant and repulsive
pungent odour during and immediately after the war, had a traumatic effect on the psyche of the people. It constituted
one of the disastrous health hazards of the war. Mrs. Comfort and Cecilia Achiugo describe the situation thus:
Take for instance the urban areas, new diseases
hitherto unheard of broke out, like Cholera and hepatitis. This was due mainly to poor sanitary condition. The
water supply systems were destroyed, there was no electricity, and sewage systems were destroyed. With the rains
and floods the human wastes in them were carried into surface water systems, which thus became contaminated. These
new diseases claimed so many lives before they were diagnosed; even after that, the lack of drug never helped matters.
In fact, hepatitis claimed the life of Samuel my brother, after the war. Some of the problems are still with us
today. We are simply accommodating the impact of the war in our present life styles, and not that it has been wiped
out completely. I doubt that it will ever be. (Axel Harneit-Sievers et al, 1977).
Stephen Lewis
(Journey to Biafra, 1968) estimated that outbreak of Tuberculosis in the wake of the war would last over a generation.
The unhealthy environment to which the people were exposed despite the federal government promises as contained
in the three Rs
- Rehabilitation, Reconstruction and Reconciliation exposed the people more and more to the risk of infectious diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, dysentery
etc. Here is a brief description of the frequent risks to which one was exposed every now and then immediately
after the war by Cecilia Achiugo:
As we journeyed back to our home we saw many places littered
with human corpses; some decaying, some very swollen while some were real skeletons. The most horrifying was the
numerous places where dead, decaying bodies were heaped together and burnt just beside the road. I had to behold
charred remains of fellow human beings. In some places I had to cross over dead bodies and bare footed. I had to
trample on some oily substance oozing from the decaying bodies; the oily substance clings to the feet and takes
a lot of wiping to clean. This experience was nightmarish and still haunts my memory; in fact the arthritic pain
I now have on my legs I suppose is attributable to my matching on those dead bodies and the oil oozing from them
at the end of the war.
At the same
time, health situation worsened as the lack of social amenities such as toilet facilities, drinking water, proper
waste disposal including proper burial of dead persons received less and less attention. It was not only health
hazards that confronted the people. Agriculture also suffered a severe blow. Consequently, ecological problems
also arose such as decrease in soil fertility due to some chemicals and other related war materials dumped in many
places such as Umuahia, Awgu, and Nguru etc. Furthermore, frequent erosion was blamed on over-utilisation of scarce
land. Many Igbo people also complained of massive destruction of economic trees like palm trees, pea-trees, orange-trees
and coconut trees by the advancing federal soldiers. There
is no doubt that serious strain was put on the environment as the number of inhabitants increased tenfold from
what it used to hold following the refugee influx at the beginning of the war. This led obviously to massive exploitation
of hitherto virgin forests and small streams dried up due to frequent and increased consumption.
Economic Losses
In the midst
of the total chaos and excruciating situation that characterised the sudden flight of the Easterners from all parts
of Nigeria, there was no doubt that preservation of dear life ranked highest on their priority list. Consequently,
they left behind belongings and investments painstakingly acquired over the years. In spite of the difficulties
in ascertaining the accurate statistics of the economic losses incurred by the Biafrans during the war especially
with regard to cash, property looted, vandalised or burnt, a conservative estimate of losses was still very high.
In a sampling survey of 5,000 persons conducted by the Onyiuke Tribunal of Inquiry, a total number of losses estimated
at over 9 million (Nigeria) Pounds were recorded. Of this amount, landed property such as houses numbering 2,607 amounted
to £4,154,652, while the cost of 586 vehicles amounted to £435,851.
Added to
this figure is the cost of stock-in-Trade valued at £2,046,522, cash worth £741,784 and personal effects
estimated at £1,644,709. In Kano alone, where the highest number of Easterners lived, about 2,000 houses situated in Sabon
Gari � strangers'
quarters with an average value of £4,000 each amounted to 8 million Pounds. The loss of personal effects
in the same Kano was estimated at £3.2 million. Documented evidence also shows that Easterners owned 7 large
chemist shops valued at £70,000. The value of hotels including stock and equipment were valued at £180,000.
Off License Beer Parlours and over 150 provision stores were valued at £50,000 and £75,000, respectively.
Furthermore, according to documented evidence taken from Traders' Union Membership in Kano, about 10,000 stalls valued at £30
million were also lost.
The losses
mentioned above, are only those incurred by the people who lived in Kano; it does not include losses in small railway stations and other places where the Easterners worked
and earned their living. If the pre-hostility losses are high, they would in no way be compared to the incalculable
losses incurred by the Easterners when they were pursed into their own land. There were instances of looting of
property by federal soldiers and this looting continued even after the war had ended. In Afikpo for instance, destruction
of houses and looting by federal soldiers were said to have continued as they removed bricks and zinc from the
remaining houses. However, the federal soldiers were said to have taken such measures for fear that Biafrans might
resort to guerrilla warfare. This reason is hardly satisfying when one considers the fact that no incident of guerrilla
activities was recorded anywhere after the war. The looted property ended up in the military barracks where the
federal soldiers inhabited and from where, they moved out at will and mounted illegal check-points and terrorised
the returning refugees.
The figure given above though conservatively
put, is only a tip of the iceberg of the colossal loss incurred in the big cities such as Enugu, Aba, Owerri, Port Harcourt,
Onitsha, Umuahia etc. Before the war started, Onitsha was the largest market in West
Africa. As mentioned in the first
part of this essay, Eastern Region had a very extensive number of hospitals, schools and other higher institutions.
Added to these are industries, bridges, markets and other landed properties. All these were reduced to rubble.
As if the
damage and expropriation suffered during the war was not enough, properties owned by Easterners were declared 'abandoned'.
This meant that the surviving owners were by law, barred from reclaiming them. This happened in spite of the assurances
given by the federal government as was contained in the Blueprint for post-war reconstruction issued as early as
1967. It is to be noted that the 'abandoned' property issue was a federal legislation apparently aimed at inciting
the Easterners against one another. The issue generated a lot of heat and led to litigations in law court. Dee
Sam Mbakwe (former Governor of Imo State) of blessed memory fought tirelessly against the abandoned property law.
In some places such as Port Harcourt � originally known as Igbo city since the Slave Trade era, where the Igbos had invested heavily
in landed property, the state government promised to compensate the victims instead of handing back their properties
to them. As the controversy intensified, the Rivers State government credited the federal government�s account with the sum of 23 million Naira as compensation
for the owners. However, some of these properties were recovered most often through the 'benevolence' of the new
occupants and/or friendly ties with neighbours or business associates established prior to the war.
The final
blow to the economic impoverishment of the Igbos came with the £20 flat rate compensation given to every
single Igbo man and woman irrespective of the amount each person had deposited in the bank prior to the war. A
few years after the war, came the Obasanjo Indigenisation Policy, which nationalised many foreign companies and
handed the greater percentage of their share-holdings to Nigerians. It was at this time that the government of
Olusegun Obasanjo in its 'Indigenisation Decree' nationalised lucrative businesses such as the African Petroleum,
AP, which replaced British Petroleum BP etc. The timing of this decree practically meant strangling the Igbos economically
for they had, at this time, no purchasing power at all when one considers the fact that only £20 was given
to an insignificant number among them to begin life anew. Edmund Schwarzenbach quoted a statement credited to a
commissioner in the Nigeria government as follows: "The war ... properly speaking of the entire problem, was
to discriminate against the Igbos in the future in their own interest."
Dislocation of Political and
Psycho-Social Life
As pointed out in the first part of this
write-up, it would be considered normal that more emphasis is laid on tangible losses such as houses and other
landed property for these are easily calculable and more perceptible. However, the ravages of the war brought about
intangible losses, which, by their nature, cannot be mathematically calculated or valued in monetary terms. These
include the disruption of political, religious, moral and other psychosocial aspects of life. Andre Aletta, lamenting
some of these intangible losses says:
Gone are the days when men gathered in moonlight
nights to wrestle. Gone are the times when children went to school or gathered round the fire on cold nights to
tell tales and munch roasted corn. Holding sway, are the tortuous pangs of hunger, the heart-sinking din or war,
and the rich harvest of tolling death (Chinua Achebe et al, 1971).
Comparatively,
the intensity of the social dislocation engendered by the war is reminiscent of the social upheaval that bedeviled
the Igbos during the British conquest, which was beautifully described by Chinua Achebe in his Things
Fall Apart.
For Ndigbo, the war was a cataclysmic event � a pivotal point that literally tore apart the fabrics that held them
together. To paraphrase Achebe � adapting it to the context, the foundation of their lives turned and turned in
a whirling gyre; the centre could no longer hold and their society fell apart. The psycho-social effects were even
more agonising for those children flown out to safety in Ivory Coast and
other African and European countries. In spite of the fact that they lived thereafter in a somewhat comfortable
environment, they will however, never forget that they have lost their homes, their roots, their identities and
had to sojourn in foreign countries with the social stigma and discriminatory tendencies attendant in such sojourning.
Although some of them are economically prosperous, they and their children face psychological alienation both in
their place of abode and even in their first homes as long absence from this sweet home had estranged them from
their kith and kin and consequently from their culture and tradition. That distinctive mark which language, tradition
and culture accord to each individual is missing. Having stayed away for a long time, adaptation in their first
homes becomes difficult and this exacerbates their alienation.
Not only
the political and social aspects of life that were dislocated; disruption of psycho-social well-being occurred
at the intra- but also at the inter-ethnic level. This means that although the Igbos were the hardest hit in the
war, other Easterners also suffered this social dislocation. On the inter-ethnic pedestal, it engendered a much
more strained relationship between the Igbos and their neighbours. On the intra-ethnic level, the neighbouring
ethnic minorities suffer from antagonisms and acrimonies arising from shifting allegiances during the war. Those
ethnic minorities who supported the Biafran secession and those who did not still have strained relationships.
The war created leadership tussle in many communities as displaced educated elite returned and tried to supplant
the home-based leaders. Struggle for chieftaincy or traditional leadership is still a very delicate and distablising
factor in many Igbo communities today. The Kalabaris till date still see themselves as Nigerians and Biafrans as
a result of the two sides of the fighting lines the groups found themselves during the war. The dethroning of some
traditional Chiefs in this area who fled their homes to safety and thereby were accused of having sold out by showing
allegiance to Biafran still causes squabble and social tension among the local inhabitants.
As A. E.
Afigbo (1987) notes, early accounts of the relationship between the ethnic groupings in Nigeria painted a one-sided picture of incessant
wars and barbarous acts of unparalleled nature. On the contrary, Afigbo, as he tries to reconstruct the events
of those early times, fully demonstrates that trade and inter-ethnic relationship including inter-marriages actually
thrived on a large scale in the pre-colonial times. The war did not only revive antagonism and enmity where they
existed but at the same time, it strained cordial interrelationship that existed between various segments in Igboland
prior to the war.
The war also
brought an unprecedented increase in social maladies such as prostitution, armed-robbery, fraud such as Four-One-Nine
('419') and depreciation in moral values with its spiraling consequences such as bribery and corruption engendered
by the survival instinct etc. The federal soldiers had forced a number of women into prostitution. The womenfolk
bore the brunt of the war in many ways. First, whenever any Biafran town or city fell into the federal hands, women,
especially young girls, were targets for rape, torture and abduction. Federal soldiers sent out messengers, bribed
young boys to fetch women from their husbands houses and, if the men objected, they risked being killed or subjected
to torture until they surrendered to the obnoxious and humiliating demand of the unscrupulous soldiers. According
to Axel Harneit-Sievers et al,
[t]he days immediately following the end of
the war in January 1970 were very traumatic for women, particularly those in areas that had remained under Biafran
control throughout or for most of the war. For such women the end of the war brought them face-to-face for the
first time with federal troops and their tendency to sexually abuse women. Reports about cases of rape come from
all the areas that had finally fallen under Federal control.
She reported
that in Eket, Akwaibom State in southeastern Nigeria, parents had to resettle their girls and women in a thick swampy forest to prevent them from being
abducted or raped by soldiers. For women in federal held territories, marriage with the federal soldiers was a
lesser evil to incessant sexual harassment. As many of the men had fallen in the war, there were surplus women
much more than natural demography would have permitted immediately after the war. It is arguable whether this imbalance
has been filled adequately.
Generally, the war to a great extent impacted
more adversely on the societal values of the Igbos. The age-long barriers that sustained the social fabric epitomised
in traditional safeguards of communal life disappeared. On the religious level, the damage may not be so apparent
but the psycho-spiritual trauma suffered by those whose dead ones could not be buried properly and who had no time
and the conducive atmosphere to mourn their deceased ones was a crushing anguish. The Igbos had strong belief in
life after death even before Christianity came. Ancestral shrines and deities were also destroyed. Children born
during this war period were terribly affected as their early childhood and normal growth were stunted as a result
of the brutalising social condition.
For the Igbos,
just like the Jews in the Nazi era, the war threatened their physical existence and although a certain level of
prosperity appears to be returning after many years of neglect and devastation, the debilitating effects of the
war still haunt them everywhere. The Igbos still have to contend with sporadic riots in which they are always the
victims even when the clash is between other ethnic groups. They are still hunted and victimised in the one Nigeria they were forced to join. In the 11
violent riots recorded between 1980 and 1999, all occurred in the same Northern Nigeria where the Igbos met their waterloo in the pogroms of 1966 (Ohaneze, 2001).
Conclusion
If the foregoing
has been a litany of woes, it is because the main aim of this retrospect is to bring out once more to the fore,
the calamities and the ripple effects of the war. Inversely, from these woes, a lot of positive things have also
emerged. Biafran technological breakthrough remains one of the most remarkable things the black race has achieved
even when the story is distorted or the books containing them are allowed to rot away on the floor in Nigerian
libraries. It has gone into the annals of history and, as the story is told from one generation to another, those
monumental ideas and the ingenuity of those heroes who produced them may one day resurrect and be harnessed to
free the black race from the shackles of economic slavery imposed on it since the white man set foot in the black
nation. According Prof. Ikenna Nzimiro (1982), part of the lessons from the war consisted also in the fact that
international observers testified to the ingenuity of the Biafran engineers who built Uli Airport. The Biafran Directorate of Propaganda
led by Uche Chukwumerije was described by Harold Wilson the then British Prime Minister as �success unparalled
in the history of communication in modern societies� (John Stremlau, 1977).
The Research
and Production Directorate (RAP) produced 56% of arms used in Biafra. The �Ojukwu Bunker� in Umuahia also demonstrates that it is possible to build underground tunnels
to decongest traffics in Nigerian cities. Biafra also refined crude oil using only local materials. Refineries built at Uzuakoli and Amandugba were
capable of refining 50,000 gallons of fuel per day. Yet today, Nigeria imports refined fuel because none of
her refineries is working at full capacity. Biafran chemists also produced 10 tons of pure salt per month. It was
estimated to increase up to 50 tons if production continued. In the area of consumer goods, items which were usually
imported such as toilet soaps, face-creams, Vaseline, biscuits, liquor, dyes, protein extracts and engine oil were
all produced by Biafran scientists and engineers. Biafran engineers in the United Kingdom were also able to design plastic housing
units for refugees. In fact, with regard to the principle of self-reliance which is what Africa so badly needs today, Biafra was a pace-setter. If this breakthrough
were integrated and harnessed by Nigeria after the war, her crushing external debt would have been contained at least to a certain extent.
The Igbos
have also learned a lot from the war. They now know that no matter how much money they make and keep outside, home
is still home and that if the worst case scenario arises again, they have kept some sizable reserve to fall back
on. Axel Harneit-Sievers et al
point out that "it was common for successful Igbo migrants to invest in property at the places where they
had spent most of their lifetime, today more investment is directed to home areas". Another positive lesson from the war
is a sense of 'cooperation and self-help' it instilled in the people. The illusion of self-sufficiency and narrow
sectionalism was shattered by the war. S. O. O. Ogazi sums it up in this way:
[The war] thought many people exactly how we
are. We are not the rich people that we think we were. We discovered that without Hausa nama [cow], we couldn�t get meat. We thought that we are self-sufficient in food and in the end we discovered
that we depended so much on outsiders. Not that it has altered their way of life as such, but they were now more
conscious of the dependence upon others.
The self-help
syndrome of the Igbos became more prevalent when it became clear to them that the federal government rehabilitation
and reconstruction plan was a political propaganda. With the help of the then East Central State government social clubs and age-grades
in virtually every town or community began to reconstruct their damaged amenities and built new ones. The early
1970s and 1980s witnessed a boom in social clubs, which rendered help to needy members such as during funerals,
marriages, and setting up of businesses etc. Unfortunately, the level of cooperation among Ndigbo in the early
post-Biafran period is waning very rapidly; this will not augur well for Ndigbo at all. The survival of Ndigbo
in a contemporary Nigerian society consists in a coalition of forces to rebuild eroded social capital and networking,
to re-energise, harness and re-channel Igbo spirit and ingenuity for a total integration into the mainstream of
Nigerian affairs and/or a peaceful parting of ways.
See also
Biafra
in Retrospect: Still Counting the Losses (I)
To be continued�