Benjamin Adekunle's civil war letters
By Reuben Abati
I HAVE just finished reading a thoroughly engaging and historically relevant book entitled The Nigeria-Biafran War Letters: A Soldier's Story (Vol. 1), compiled and edited by Abiodun Adekunle. The title of this book immediately tells the story of its content. Benjamin Adekunle, or The Black Scorpion as he came to be known, as leader of the Third Marine Commando Division of the Nigerian Federal Army was easily the most controversial, celebrated and mythologised figure in the war of attrition that laid the foundations for Nigeria's contemporary crisis; and threw a wedge into the national fabric. Adekunle led the Third Marine Commando Division with such great panache and determination, and the foreign media, in looking for human angle stuff about the war found Adekunle a ready source of news.
It is instructive that up until now, The Black Scorpion had not yet written about his role in that war; whatever he had said about the war merely existed in bits and pieces in a number of interviews, and references in the significantly large bibliography on the civil war. Benjamin Adekunle's voice and angle to that story are desirable even if they do not constitute the end of this perpetually continuing tale. Reading this book which has been dutifully put together by Benjamin Adekunle's son, there is no mistaking the fact that the compiler/editor, collaborating obviously with his father, has set out to correct certain perceived misconceptions about his father; document The Black Scorpion's angle to the story, define his legacy and throw a challenge to other characters in the drama.
The declaration that this is only the first volume is a clever way of telling those who may wish to controvert The Black Scorpion that they may not be allowed to have the last word. The book is constructed in turns, as a piece of biography, history, essay, social commentary and war memoir, with father and son switching batons in a long narrative that is further strengthened by the reproduction of historical documents, details about the men and material that made up the Third Marine Commando under the then Col. Benjamin Adekunle, as well as the subject's personal letters and photographs.
In terms of his editorial objectives and the overall import of the publication, Abiodun Adekunle deserves commendation for his deft management of material and emphasis. The only caveat is that The Black Scorpion's version of the highlights of the civil war is to be read alongside other versions; even if in telling the story of the civil war, every perspective or reconstruction, and narration has been presented as the gospel truth. I am struck by three main preoccupations in this particular instance.
Benjamin Adekunle's civil war letters is from the outset, a response to General Olusegun Obasanjo's My Command. When this book appeared in 1980, Brig-General Benjamin Adekunle had taken exceptions to it, and it is not difficult to see why. Obasanjo had taken over the Command of the Third Marine Commando from Adekunle in 1969. In My Command, he pays no tribute to Benjamin Adekunle's efforts as leader of the Third Division; instead he describes how he met a demoralised, disunited, quarrelsome troop, which he had to re-organise into an effective fighting machine which subsequently recaptured Owerri, and the Federal troops under Obasanjo's command went on to win the war. Obasanjo shines like gold in My Command as the war hero who brought the civil war to an end. And the book races towards this denouement after Obasanjo had done a good job of suggesting that all former commanders of the troops were either distracted, or incompetent().
Throughout the Adekunle publication, Obasanjo understandably receives hard knocks. Abiodun Adekunle, being his father's true son fires the first shot in his "Introduction" when he writes, tellingly as follows: "It is legitimate to ask what role may fairly be attributed to my father in bringing the war to its conclusion. Nigerians and more particularly the Yorubas have been fortunate that Obasanjo has always been available to fill the roles of other fallen comrades, such as my father after his loss of command, Murtala Mohammed after his assassination and again, MKO Abiola, after his premature death. Over the length of his career, from the very start until the present, General Obasanjo seems to have displayed an uncanny ability of reaping where others have toiled". (pp. 20-21).
The father fires his own shot on page 42 when he gloats over Obasanjo's failure to make a good grade at the Mons Officer Cadet School in the UK, on account of which he could not go on to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He and Obasanjo were coursemates. And now, The Black Scorpion writes: "In later years, I attributed some of the actions of my former course mates in the national arena, especially with regard to their colleagues to the need to assuage feelings of inferiority which may have sprung from having been publicly adjudged and labeled inadequate in the midst of their cohorts". The book is full of such other swipes at Obasanjo, particularly in subsequent sections where Ojukwu's comments on Obasanjo are used for illustration.
What follows this putting-Obasanjo-in-his-place, is a fairly detailed documentation of Colonel Adekunle's leadership of the Third Marine Commando Division. Written by Adekunle himself, this section of the book is a study in the art of war, with The Black Scorpion functioning as a strategist. He comes across as a professional soldier who was motivated by an overriding sense of patriotism. He takes us through the beginnings of the civil war, the issues at stake, and the strategies on both sides, and how from the first shot, Biafra was bound to lose the war. But Adekunle is not necessarily a war-monger, he draws attention to the options which if they had been taken, would have set Nigeria on a different path. The narrative is spiced up with histrionic reports about Benjamin Adekunle in the foreign press, and his historical location as the soldier who built the Third Marine Commando Division into an effective team, and as the mind that made the Federal victory of 1970 possible.
The second, central issue in this book is the personality of The Black Scorpion. Thirty-four years after the war, there are still surviving myths about this legend of the civil war. He is portrayed conveniently as a rabid, psychopathic war-commander who slaughtered both Ibos and his own troops, smoke marijuana, and behaved like a blood-thirsty fiend. The Black Scorpion's refusal to hug the limelight since his retirement from the military in 1971, at the age of 35, and his self-effacing nature, has allowed the myths to grow into accepted notions. He is perhaps responding 34 years late.
But in this book, Biodun Adekunle has produced an account which humanises his father. In his own words, The Black Scorpion tells the story of his life. Born to a Yoruba father, and a Northern-Bachama mother, The Black Scorpion is married to a Kalabari woman. He tells us about his background, his military training, his posting to the Congo, and his participation in Nigeria's civil war, as a soldier, and as a Senior Officer of the Nigerian Army. The Adekunle that is presented before us in the process, is a well-trained, professional soldier, a patriot, a courageous fighter who inspired the men under his command with his bravery, and personal example, as a rugged, independent-minded strategist.
He also comes across as a devoted family man. Indeed, one of the more memorable sections of this book can be found on pp.109-110 where The Black Scorpion narrates how, in the thick of the war, he had to go with troops to Peterside village in Bonny, to rescue his wife and three children who had been trapped there. The unasked questions in moments such as this are: How can a man with such human feelings be described by anyone as cruel How can he, with tentacles in three different parts of Nigeria, be classified an enemy of Ibos Benjamin Adekunle's war exploits convey in full measure, the complexities and ironies of military adventures, as a necessary human enterprise, and yet a moral and personal task in which men, territory, and material become pawns in a chessboard of politics and economy.
The third point to be borne in mind is how this effort ends up as a valuable text for students of military warfare, and researchers into the circumstances of the Nigerian civil war. This is indeed a soldier's account of war. In My Command Obasanjo had concentrated mainly on the movement of the troops; and the personalities involved. The Black Scorpion concentrates mainly on the strategy of war, and the human mind as the chiefest theatre for the inevitable conflict. But what stands out even more memorably is the picture of the Nigerian Army that is painted. Much effort is devoted to the creation of the impression that for all his brilliance and commitment, Adekunle was a victim of the envy and back-stabbing that had overtaken the Nigerian military in 1969.
His correspondences with Army Headquarters, and other senior officials in the later part of the book reveal that although he may have been popular with his troops, he had serious problems with both his superiors and colleagues within the Army. The letters are reproduced unedited, and we have to thank Abiodun Adekunle for this. Without any doubt, the politicisation of the Nigerian military posed a threat to espirit de corps and collective discipline, and fostered the growth of ethnic sectionalism which proved fatal. Again, Benjamin Adekunle might truly have been a victim. But his letters as presented say a lot about him. Diplomacy was obviously not one of his strongest points. In one letter after another, he harangued his targets, calling them names, and telling them to go to Hell.
When he was accused of "rudeness", he wrote even more vitriolic letters. This abrasive, unconventional style was bound to get him into trouble. Notably, as Aide-de-Camp to Sir Francis Ibiam, the first Governor of the Eastern Region, Adekunle walked away from his duty post because he could no longer stand what he considered to be Ibiam's ethnic jingoism in virtually every affair, as well as his religious hypocrisy. The reader is bound to pay special attention to details such as this, especially as the foreign press covering the war had predicted that Adekunle showed tremendous promise of emerging as a major political figure in Nigeria's post-civil war years. This did not come to pass. Instead, The Black Scorpion was pushed out of the military. Today, he remains one of those characters from the past.
This is, to add the obvious, inescapably a book about Nigeria. Benjamin Adekunle and his son, take us on a tour of the beginning of the Nigerian crisis. The father writes as a direct witness to history; the son brings the story up-to-date, and laments the abortion of the dreams that his father's generation had, and how elite conspiracy has destroyed the legacy of our heroes past. Biodun calls for responsible leadership and concrete action, but in so doing, he merely reflects the despair of all young Nigerians of his generation. The Black Scorpion fought the civil war in order to keep Nigeria one; there are more persons today who are questioning the basis for any form of patriotism.
This book further enriches the existing bibliography on the Nigerian civil war (1967-70). Even if the second volume that is promised never gets published, Benjamin Adekunle should be grateful to his son who has helped to tell the story that his father needed to tell. The book is full of memorable passages, but too many spelling errors which more careful editing could have taken care of. The writing is precise and logical, but there are both The Black Scorpion and his son should be prepared for robust reactions from the children of Francis Ibiam, Olusegun Obasanjo, Shittu Alao, E.O. Ekpo, Alfred Diette-Spiff, Robert Adebayo and Hassan Katsina. The battle of the sons and daughters defending their fathers, would be quite interesting.
