A chat with the author of The Untold Story of Nigeria–Biafra War
Dr. Luke Nnaemeka Aneke is a physician, a lawyer and a Minister but some 40 years ago, he was unsure he would make it till the end of the Biafran war. Many kids of his age never made it. Recently, he wrote the book, The Untold Story of the Nigerian-Biafra War. In this chat with Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo, Dr. Aneke threw light on his motivation, his discoveries and his startling conclusions.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: What made you decide to write this book and what made it stand out in an already crowded Biafran war literature?
Dr.
Aneke: The purpose of the book is to present an independent account of
the war, devoid of emotions and personal interest. Most of the books already
written on the Nigerian-Biafra War were written by participants in the war,
who, wittingly or unwittingly, have been affected by the intense war
propaganda on the side they fought.
But the “Untold Story of the Nigeria-Biafra war” is an account from independent third parties that have no real stake in the outcome or propaganda of the war. These include missionaries, relief workers, mercenaries, pilots, arms dealers, journalists and others who spoke in real time.
Also, most people that wrote about the war did so after anytime from one to twenty years after the war, making their accounts susceptible to problems of memory and recollection.
But the “Untold Story” are accounts recorded by journalists and war correspondents in real-time and preserved in Western archives from where the materials were taken. They are not subject to memory problems and are referenced to their sources and their dates of occurrence, in case of any doubts or questions.
Finally, the “Untold Story” contains untold stories in the real sense. It contains information that even Ojukwu or Gowon may not know. For instance, Ojukwu, after he left Biafra, does not know the last pilots that flew out of Uli and Uga airports before Nigerian artillery put them out of use. My book not only contains the identity of those pilots but contains also their immediate post-Biafra interviews.
Gowon, on the other hand, probably does not know how many tons of relief material came into Biafra in a typical night, or the details of certain things he told newsmen in an airport or at Dodan barracks. Well, in the book, they are there. Most of the information are new and virgin, in the real sense, and the purpose of the book is to bring them to light.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: You said the book contains independent account from news organizations? Does that include the BBC? Knowing that even New York Times was a target of protest by pro-Biafrans who feel its news report was bias, how truly independent were these sources?
Dr. Aneke: Of course, we know that newspapers, like individuals, have biases and opinions, and these influence their editorial opinions and viewpoints. It is not a secret that New York Times was against Biafra and that opposition reflected repeatedly in their editorials and in their editorial hostility towards friends of Biafra. But that bias not withstanding, most commentators and coverage by other news organization show that their editorial bias did not compromise their objectivity in news coverage.
Also, if I may recollect, most anti-New York Times demonstrations were against editorial positions and biases, not factual news coverage. I can not point out anywhere in the entire research where their ability to gather and report objectively was effectively proven to be compromised.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: What did you learn in the process of writing the book?
Dr Aneke: As late General Efiong said in his foreword to my book, the war was not a deliberate scheme of one man, as back-and-forth propaganda during the war said, but a classical case of events unfolding at a faster rate than the real actors could control.
From the research, in a nutshell, I found that a lot of Nigerians did not know what happened during the war, especially on the other side of the war from where they were.
In terms of the war itself, Biafra fought with gallantry and dexterity not anywhere matched by the Nigerians. But because Nigeria had overwhelming superiority in military hardware and Biafra essentially no answer to those hardware, Biafra lost territory steadily and irreversibly. If it were today that anti-tank weapons like RPG (rocket propelled grenades) are everywhere, and a ten year old can operate one, the outcome of the war would probably be different. But I believe there is God’s timing in everything.
Because of Biafra’s superiority in gallantry and military dexterity, Nigerian soldiers relied mainly on their heavy equipments and will usually subject a city to anywhere between four and to seven days of unrelenting artillery barrage before they approach it to engage the Biafrans. This phenomenon is documented over and over and over by war correspondents.
For instance, when on October 2, 1968, the Nigerians took Okigwe, Colonel Achuzia, the commander of Biafra’s 15th infantry. Division promised the people of Okigwe that he will return them back within their homes within 48-72 hours. But when on October 5th, he tried to use his 5000-man Biafran Division to dislodge the 12000-man Nigerian Division in Okigwe, the Nigerians used several days of continuous artillery barrage to make Achuzia’s expedition a non-starter and a mission impossible. An Associated Press reporter whom Achuzia allowed to accompany his division during the failed retake attempt has a report reproduced on page 345 of the book.
Again, unlike Nigeria that had solid backing from Britain, Soviet Union and Egypt, Biafra had no major backer and bought arms in the black market, mostly through Arthur Wharton, a world renowned arms dealer, at very expensive rates. One man that seemed to have had Biafra’s fate in his hands was President Charles De Gaulle of France. For some reason, he was ambivalent towards Biafra. He liked Biafrans and gave them moral and diplomatic support, but his military support was rather erratic and inconsistent, and devoid of anti-tank hardware which Biafra desperately needed.
The war would have ended around October 1968 when Nigerians, in a space of three weeks, took Aba, Owerri and Okigwe from Biafrans and was poised to deliver Biafra a Coup de Grace at Umuahia. But a small amount of French supplies, allowed by De Gaulle into Biafra, turned the table on the Nigerians and they lost a victory they had in their grips. Had De Gaulle’s support been consistent militantly, the situation would have been utterly different. But again, I believe it was not the will of God.
One of the few instances when Nigerian troops had to fight Biafrans without their usual dependence on massive artillery support, was in Owerri, in April 1969, when Biafra’s Colonel Ogbugo Kalu’s 14th infantry Division, trapped a brigade of Nigeria’s 3rd Division between Owerri and the town of Avu.
In the fierce battle for the town of Owerri, the Biafrans completely wiped out the three thousand men of the brigade, who had no recourse to their usual superior artillery power. A report by one of the foreign journalists invited by Col. Kalu to witness the retake of Owerri is reproduced on page 465 of the book.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: You said that a lot of Nigerians did not know what happened during the war especially on the other side of the war from where they were. As someone on the Biafran side, what surprising thing did you discover in researching your book happened on the other side – i.e. the Nigerian side during the war beside knowing that many were partying in Lagos while those in Biafra were starving?
Dr. Aneke: The fact that at a point during the war, Britain abandoned hope of Nigerian military victory over Biafra and also subsequently, Nigeria also lost hope of military victory over Biafra, (see pages 37 (Dec. 4,1968)and page 412 (Feb. 3, 1969) respectively.
These were golden opportunities for the Biafran government and negotiators to extract tangible and immensely favorable conditions from the Nigerian government in exchange for compromise on Biafra’s sovereignty. But unfortunately, Igbos were so divided that an effective strategy for negotiations could not be fashioned out. We allowed a humiliating defeat, that by most accounts, should, and certainly could, have been avoided.
Also, Nigeria was having serious problems keeping support for the war. There were student protests at UI, violent anti-tax demonstrations in Abeokuta and increasing opposition in the British House of Commons for military aid to Nigerian. Furthermore, there were signs of leadership irritability, like the adversarial exchanges between Chief Awolowo and Col. Mobolaji Johnson, the Lagos governor, in open media.
Finally, the final offensive that broke the backbone of Biafra was in preparation for seven months and Biafra knew it in the works. As a matter of fact, Ojukwu, at some point told Biafrans, that they were ready for the expected offensive. However, it turned out to be a fatal miscalculation, which should have been replaced by serious and meaningful obligations. It is possible that Biafra’s ability to neutralize several previous Nigerian offensives gave it a false sense of security at a time it had been badly weakened and compromised.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: Where were you doing the Biafran war and how did the war impact your life?
Dr. Aneke: The impact of the war on me, personally, can make a whole book, but I will be as brief as I can. I was twelve years old in January 1966, when the army took over the Balewa government and I was in first year of high school at College of Immaculate Conception (C.I.C) Enugu when the war broke out, in June 1967. Most of us who managed to finish high school after the war did so 2-3 years behind our counterparts in Nigeria.
After the war started, we evacuated Enugu in early October 1967 to my hometown, Amokwe, in Enugu State. Then, to escape the volcanic rumble of Col. Murtala Mohammed’s 20,000-man 2nd division which passed through my town as it rolled towards Onitsha from the north, we also evacuated my town in the first week of January 1968 to Aba, where we stayed with my mother’s uncle.
We fled from Aba in the first week of September 1968 to Uzuakoli, where my family stayed for a good while. We finally left Uzuakoli, due to an almost daily air raid on civilians. After staying with my mother’s uncle at Aba, my family lived in refugee camps for the rest of the war, a period of almost two years. We (as kids) ate between once and twice a day, but most adults went through the day with just one meal. Hunger, starvation and malnutrition were all over. The chaos, pandemonium, confusion, horror, uncertainty and fear that accompanied each evacuation, whether Enugu, Aba or Amokwe is something you don’t want to witness.
After the war ended, it took about six months before my Daddy was called back to his former job, a period of another nightmare and survival distress for my family. Although schools resumed skeletal functions about three months after the war, many students could not return to school for lack of school fees, and many who came back had to leave because they could not sustain themselves.
Because of money problems, I left high school about three times for what I thought was the end of my education, but one way or another, God made a way for me to return, as my father struggled to cope with the school fees and still put food on the table. University education was completely out of the question because I was not sure that I was going to be sustained through high school by my father, a carpenter with the Railway corporation.
At the beginning of each school term, you could be told to forget about going back to school because of lack of fees and this happened to a whole lot of my classmates at CIC. But as I said, it’s not over until God says it is. Finally and miraculously, we not only finished high school, but God made ways for graduate and post-graduate studies. God sent a major reprieve to my family, when, from my high school, WAEC and London GCE performances, I got a full scholarship to University of Nigeria College of Medicine covering tuition boarding and books for six years. And here we are today. Who says that God is not good or he does not exist?
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo:: There continues to be an agitation for Biafra despite the experience of 1967-1970. As someone who has gone to a great extent to document the events of that period, how do you see the current agitation and what advice do you have for those asking for a return to Biafra?
Dr. Aneke: The continuous wave of Neo-Biafranism that has continued to plague the country is a symptom of unfulfilled promises. During the war, Gowon consistently told the world that in a united Nigeria, the Igbos will be treated well and will be given what he repeatedly called their “rightful place” in Nigeria. From my recollection during my research for my book, he said that at least on six different occasions during the war, and the British government, particularly, Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, helped convince the world to believe Gowon. This was an effective anti-Biafran tool during the war, as most governments felt it was unnecessary to support Biafra’s succession if they have security guarantees inside Nigeria.
But after the war, those security and fairness guarantees went with the wind. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Igbos had to endure unnecessary starvation, because the Nigerian government refused to use Uli airport to flood Biafra with relief food, so that people starving for the last 30 months could eat. The decision to use Lagos airport for relief and then truck the relief about 400 miles to the heart of Biafra, meant death for many of those who had already survived the war, as evidenced by many independent accounts in the book.
Then, this was followed by the property of Igbos being declared “abandoned” in many parts of the country, coupled with the general disenfranchisement of exchanging twenty pounds for whatever an Igbo man had before the war. So, it was clear that Gowon’s assurances to the world of giving Igbos fairness and their “rightful place” in Nigeria was either a hoax or that, in fairness, Gowon meant it, but faced forces unanticipated, after the war. Either way, the promises were empty, and the British Government that helped convince the world to believe Gowon had since looked the other way.
To make matters worse, Gowon’s era was followed by a combined eleven years of Obasanjo(with interlude), a man who hates Igbos with the last drop of bile in his gallbladder and has continuously worked overtly and surreptitiously to shackle and castrate them, if it were possible.
The solution to the pro-Biafran (and other parallel) agitations is simple: fairness and equity. Nobody is asking for more than that. Injustice and deprivation are the oxygen and kinetic energy of pro-Biafran and other agitations. Hence, as General Efiong said, in part, in his foreword to my book, “political stability will endure only when economic security can be built on equity and made the cornerstone of our national planning, development, survival and growth.”
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo::You said that Nigeria did not give Igbo people their rightful place as Gowon promised and Prime Minister Wilson guaranteed. Instead, the Igbo were subjected to greater suppression in the form of abandoned property, failure to deliver immediate relief through Uli airport, the 20 pounds exchange for whatever an Igbo person had before the war. Did you find out in your research Nigerian government officials who were responsible for these policies?
Dr. Aneke: Well, the Nigerian Federal Government had three governing bodies at the time that made and ratified decisions. You have the Supreme Military Council(SMC) and the Federal Executive Council(FEC) created by General Ironsi, and then, the Federal War Cabinet(FWC) which Gowon created shortly after the civil war started.
The three foregoing bodies made decisions, but when it comes to the generalized pauperization of Igbos by exchanging 20 pounds for peoples’ pre-war worth, both the research and the general knowledge, at that time showed that Chief Obafemi Awolowo, as finance minister, controlled the monetary policy of the government and therefore rightly or wrongly was seen as the moving force in the decision. This belief was also supported by the fact that Awo was the brain and power behind the indigenization program and its timing to coincide with the Igbo pauperization period.
In the immediate post-war period, this ensured that while the military came under complete northern control, the economic base of the country was transferred to the south-west, as Igbos who could barely put food on their tables, were reduced to onlookers during the indigenization program.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: In Cambodia, the leaders of the Khmer Rouge are currently undergoing trials for crime against humanity for their roles in the killings of over 3million people between 1975 -1979. One of the lingering issues after the Biafran war has been when will those who killed millions before and during the war be tried for crime against humanity? Do you think that will ever happen and did you book unearth new evidences of such atrocities?
Dr. Aneke: In a way, this is a difficult question but I will attempt to answer it to the best of my ability. Of course, if I were to speak just as an Igbo man, I will say that we suffered genocide and should be compensated, and the perpetrators punished.
However, from the research I have done, I have come to see that genocide (or crime against humanity) has both an academic and political meaning and stakeholders can manipulate their positions around their definitions.
In the case of Biafra and the Igbos, academicians and scholars of genocide are unanimous in agreement that the Igbos suffered genocide. Not only do they hold this agreement, but they classify Igbo genocide as the third worst of the twentieth century, behind Jewish Holocaust in Germany and Armenian slaughter by the Ottoman empire at the turn of the 20th century. (See “The Etiology of Genocide” by Barbara Harff, 1987)
However, the political definition is a different matter. Does the United Nations recognize the Igbo Holocaust as a genocide? Unfortunately, the answer is not as clear cut. For some reason during the war, the United Nations Secretary General, U’ Thant, was openly and dedicatedly against Biafra, from day one. As such, even if he perceived it as a genocide, he (and the UN) lacked the will and objectivity to so declare.
As my book shows, U’Thant’s dishonesty against the Igbos was exposed after the war. Soon after the war, he made a visit to Nigeria, ostensibly to ensure that relief is getting to the hungry and dying Biafrans. But when he came to Nigeria, he limited his visits to the Lagos area and did not bother to go to the East to see the starving Biafrans, he claimed he came to see. Then, back in Geneva, instead of telling reporters the truth, that he had no time to go to the East, he told them that Biafrans were being well feed and that food was plenty.
This prompted a severe condemnation and rebuke from Harvard University professor of Journalism, Anthony Lewis, who, in January 1970, was a New York Times reporter, covering Biafra’s capitulation and based in Awo-Ommama, Imo State. (See page 629 of the book)
To recap, in the case of Cambodia, in contrast, both the academic and political definitions of genocide are recognized. Otherwise, in both, there were killings that were massive and aided either by government activity or passivity.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: Is the failure of the Igbo to win the argument for the political genocide not because those who led the genocide continued to govern Nigeria? Did your book unearth those behind this genocide? For instance, it is generally believed that Y. T. Danjuma murdered Aguiyi Ironsi. Did your book provide proof of such atrocities?
Dr. Aneke: Well, the research made it abundantly clear that most of the genocidal expeditions were either carried out by government forces, or government passivity allowed it to thrive.
For example, in pages 69 and 70 of the book, both the Time magazine and the New York Times correspondents in Kano documented that the massacre of two to three thousand Igbos in Kano on September 29,1966, was started by a northern soldiers of the Kano-based 5th battalion, who started shooting at Igbos workers and passengers at the airport. Then, they were later joined by civilians, but it was the soldiers (government forces) that started the massacre.
Also, genocidal activity encouraged by government passivity was also documented. In page 73 of the book, six Swiss businessmen who fled the violence from Nguru to Kano told newsmen that the massacre of Igbo’s went “completely unchecked". Hence, there is abundant documentation of both government activity and passivity in furtherance of the massacre of Igbos in the North.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: “The Federation of Nigeria is today as corrupt, as unprogressive and as oppressive and irreformable as the Ottoman Empire was in Eastern Europe over a century ago. And in contrast, the Nigerian Federation in the form it was constituted by the British cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered an African necessity. Yet we are being forced to sacrifice our very existence as a people to the integrity of that ramshackle creation that has no justification either in history or in the freely expressed wishes of the people.” Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Ahiara Declaration, June 1, 1969 .What is different between now and then?
Dr. Aneke: Well, the difference, if any, is that now, (under Yar’Adua) at least, the nation is facing the right direction, in terms of combating societal ills and promoting growth and social welfare. The pace may be slow, but when the nation is, at least, facing the right-direction, then there is hope it will get to the right destination.
In contrast, when government, or a nation, is facing the wrong direction, it will never get to the right destination, no matter how fast it moves, because it is facing the wrong direction. And this was how Nigeria was reflected in the Ahiara declaration.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo: What gives you the impression that Yar’Adua has got the nation in the right direction? Is it the tinted mandate, his lackluster performance so far, his inability to rein in on his corrupt godfathers like Odili and Ibori, or is it the torpedoing of the fight against corruption by his Attorney General? What vision has he manifested and what signs have you seen that he has in him the capacity to see any vision through?
Dr. Aneke: Well, direction, the way I look at it, is both absolute and relative. Hence, when I say(or other people say) that Yar’Adua is moving in the right direction, it is, supposedly, relatively to his immediate predecessor, OBJ.
Take, for instance, a cardinal point with North, South, East and West. If the right direction or destination is eastward, then someone who is traveling west or southwest has no chance of ever going to the right destination. On the other hand, if east is the right destination and someone is traveling southeast, although he is not going directly eastwards, his southeast direction gives him a reasonable probability that he will end up in the right direction and destination, which the previous example has no chance.
The Yar’Adua administration is experiencing, growing pains, teething problems and challenges. But it has, nonetheless, shown a clear divergence from Obasanjo’s penchant for lawlessness, political gangsterism, judicial disdain, area boy mentality and unprovoked belligerence and pugnacity that know no boundaries.
For example, Yar’Adua has obeyed judicial decisions (without picking and choosing like OBJ); has returned Lagos state money that OBJ seized for years, re-opened the Ibeco cement factory shut down by OBJ and has not called anybody an “idiot” to the hearing of the whole world. Hence, there is no doubt that, compared with OBJ, he’s moving in the right direction.
In mathematics, we say that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. Yar’Adua may not be following the shortest distance; he may be zigzagging or taking two steps forwards and one backwards, but he seems to be headed in the right direction.
His main blemish now, and indeed a serious one, is his ambivalence to the war on corruption, which appears to be losing momentum. His choice of a peevish and phlegmatic Attorney General, who is clearly a square peg in a round hole and whose actions have subjected the war on corruption to a counter-current, is the one place where he is moving in the wrong direction.
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo:: If you could find almost 800 pages of Untold Stories about Biafra, how much of the Biafran story is still untold and why?
Dr. Aneke: A great deal is still untold, but research is a continuous process. As I compiled research materials for my book, a major concern is being able to contain the outcome of the research in a readable and manageable single volume. If I had tried to incorporate all or most of the material unearthed, you will be taking over three-thousand pages and no single book can contain that. Hence, there was a lot of summarizing and concising for readability and handling.
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Dr. Luke Nnaemeka Aneke can be reached at Lukeaneke@msn.com. To obtain a copy of the book order at www.nigeriabiafrawar.com, or please contact Triumph Publishing at www.triumphpublishing.net or call --917-627-9146