There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (15 page)

The Biafran State

I would like to say something about the structure of the Biafran state. The Republic
of Biafra took its name from the Bight of Biafra, the vast expanse of water covering
the continental shelf into which the Niger River empties before flowing into the Gulf
of Biafra. After Biafra’s surrender that body of water was renamed the Gulf of Guinea.
The origins of the word “Biafra” are difficult to trace, although historical records
point to Portuguese writings from the sixteenth century that it may have been derived
from.

The republic’s capital was initially Enugu, a metropolis of over one hundred thousand
at the time. It was also known as the coal city, a reference to the nearby Onyeama
Coal Mines and other coal deposits that once served as the fuel that drove a large
part of the Nigerian economy. Enugu was also the old administrative capital of the
Eastern Region. A well-planned, sedate capital, it had a pleasant climate and the
advantages of all the amenities of an important urban center without the pathologies
of a large conurbation.

When Enugu fell to the Nigerian army on October 4, 1967, the administrative capital
of Biafra was moved to Umuahia. Following the capture of Umuahia on April 22, 1969,
Biafra’s capital was moved once again, to Owerri, the last administrative seat before
the end of the war in January 1970.
¹

The population of Biafra in June 1967 was just under fifteen million people, and it
was home to a large number of ethnic groups in addition to the Igbo, who made up about
65 percent of the population. The other major groups were the Efik, Ibibio, Ijaw,
and Ikwerre. Others included the Andoni, Agbo, Degema, Egbema, Eket, Ekoi, Ibeno,
Ikom, Iyalla, Kana, Mbembe, Uyanga, and Yako.
²

Biafra was divided initially into eleven administrative provinces with as many administrators.
Later that number was expanded to twenty.
³

Once secession was declared it became clear that the war effort required a great deal
of military equipment—artillery, planes, boats, tanks, guns, grenades, mines, bombs,
etc. Biafra needed a means to access foreign exchange and a legal tender for commerce.
One of the first things the new government did was to establish the Bank of Biafra.

The Bank of Biafra was located in Enugu until the city fell in October 1967, and then
it was moved several times to different locations all over Igbo land, with the seat
of government. The bank’s first governor was Dr. Sylvester Ugoh.
⁴

The legal tender produced by the institution in January 1968 was designed by Simon
Okeke and other talented local artists.
⁵
The first denominations were the five shilling and one pound notes. About a year
later, the ten, five, and one pound as well as the ten and five shilling notes were
issued. The currency was widely accepted in Biafra, although it was unavailable in
large quantities, which quickly made it a prized possession. Despite its usefulness,
it was not a recognized legal tender beyond Biafra’s borders and could not be used
for foreign exchange. This dilemma produced a number of challenges for the Biafran
government, which, we were told, used private bank accounts of wealthy Biafrans to
perform transactions abroad.

T
HE
B
IAFRAN
F
LAG

The flag of the Republic of Biafra was based on the Pan-Africanist teachings of Marcus
Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
(UNIA-ACL)
.
Garvey was a towering and controversial figure, a major Pan-Africanist thinker and
civil rights pioneer at the beginning of the twentieth century, and his philosophy,
known as Garveyism, was widely admired by many Africans. It was Garvey’s organization
that first came up with the tricolored morphology of the Pan-African flag, with three
horizontal bands, red, black, and green, to symbolize the common ancestry and political
aspirations of all black people around the world. Kenya, St. Kitts and Nevis, and
Malawi are just some of the many African and Caribbean nations that adopted variations
of this flag.

The red in Garvey’s conception highlighted the blood that links all people of African
ancestry, as well as blood shed during slavery and liberation struggles around the
globe. In the Biafran context it was used to represent blood shed during the pogroms
and the quest for independence.

The black was seen as the affirmation of “an African nation State” by the UNIA-ACL.
In Biafra, it was a symbolic ancestral connection to souls of years past. The green
in both Garvey’s and Biafra’s concepts stood for Africa’s abundant natural wealth
and resources, and its radiant future. The Biafran flag also highlighted these aspirations
with a rising golden sun and rays representing the eleven original provinces in the
republic.
⁶

T
HE
B
IAFRAN
N
ATIONAL
A
NTHEM

The Nigeria-Biafra War led to an explosion of musical, lyrical, and poetic creativity
and artistry. Biafra’s founders tapped into this energy and commissioned a number
of regimental drills, duty songs, and cadences
⁷
that they hoped would “spur armies to victory and excite the populace to political
and economic vitality.”
⁸

The Biafran national anthem, “Land of the Rising Sun,” was based on a powerful poem
by Nigeria’s first president, Nnamdi Azikiwe, called “Onitsha Ado N’Idu: Land of the
Rising Sun.”
⁹
Laced with irony, the poem contained several phrases that would become all too prophetic:
“But if the price is death for all we hold dear, / Then let us die without a shred
of fear. . . . / Spilling our blood we’ll count a privilege; . . . / We shall remember
those who died in mass; . . .”
¹⁰

The anthem was set to the beautiful music of the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius
¹¹
—
Finlandia
(Be Still My Soul)—a personal favorite of, and calculated choice by, Ojukwu, “in
reference to the Nordic country’s resistance to foreign domination.”
¹²

Later, after Azikiwe withdrew his support for the breakaway republic, we would learn
that there was some controversy over the adaptation of Azikiwe’s poetry. According
to Zik, Ojukwu had used his work without permission, a charge the Biafran head of
state vigorously denied.
¹³

The Biafra National Anthem

LAND OF THE RISING SUN
¹⁴

Land of the rising sun, we love and cherish, beloved homeland of our brave heroes;
we must defend our lives or we shall perish,

We shall protect our hearth from all our foes; but if the price is death for all we
hold dear,

Then let us die without a shred of fear.

Hail to Biafra, consecrated nation,

Oh fatherland, this is our solemn pledge: Defending thee shall be a dedication, spilling
our blood we’ll count a privilege;

The waving standard which emboldens the free shall always be our flag of liberty.

We shall emerge triumphant from this ordeal, and through the crucible unscathed we’ll
pass;

When we are poised the wounds of battle to heal, we shall remember those who died
in mass;

Then shall our trumpets peal the glorious song of victory we scored o’er might and
wrong.

Oh God, protect us from the hidden pitfall, Guide all our movements lest we go astray;
Give us the strength to heed the humanist call:

“To give and not to count the cost” each day; Bless those who rule to serve with resoluteness,
to make this clime a land of righteousness.
¹⁵

T
HE
M
ILITARY

Biafra had only two thousand troops at the beginning of the war. Most of the soldiers
were former Nigerian army soldiers—Easterners who were based in Enugu and other former
Nigerian military bases in the east. General Philip Effiong, Biafra’s chief of general
staff, quickly recruited an additional twenty thousand men and created a separate
Biafran militia of civilian volunteers, who received on-the-spot training. The Biafrans
were devoid of any heavy military equipment apart from that of the former Nigerian
battalion stationed in Enugu, Saracen armored cars, and 105 millimeter howitzers.
¹⁶
Federick Forsyth recalls in an excellent BBC documentary,
Biafra: Fighting a War Without Guns
, that Biafran soldiers marched into war one man behind the other because they had
only one rifle between them, and the thinking was that if one soldier was killed in
combat the other would pick up the only weapon available and continue fighting.
¹⁷

The Biafrans were completely outgunned compared to the Nigerians. The Soviet Union
and Britain not only supplied Nigeria with brand-new MIG-17 and II-28 Beagle (Ilyushin)
jets but also with Soviet T-34 battle tanks, antiaircraft guns, AK-47 rifles, machine
guns, grenades, mines, bombs, etc.
¹⁸

In light of this imbalance of resources, international support for Biafra was crucial.
Arguably the most notable of all the Europeans that came to the aid of Biafra was
Carl Gustaf von Rosen. He was a Swedish nobleman and World War II veteran. Von Rosen
became a legend in the 1930s when he volunteered to fly Red Cross relief supplies
into Ethiopia and fight for Emperor Haile Selassie against the Italians.
¹⁹
He again came into the world’s consciousness as the pilot of the much admired United
Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld, who was widely regarded as a “dove of
peace.” Hammarskjöld “mysteriously” died in an air crash while serving as the chief
mediator of the Congo crisis of the 1960s, unfortunately at a time when his much trusted
pilot, von Rosen, was ill.

It was von Rosen’s Biafran involvement, however, that truly catapulted him to worldwide
recognition. Von Rosen was outraged by the injustice of the war and Nigeria’s imposition
of an economic blockade on the Republic of Biafra, and he was moved to come to the
aid of the suffering. It was in part because of this brave man’s involvement that
the world was motivated to pay attention to this conflict in a heretofore forgotten
part of the world. Von Rosen bore witness to the atrocities and humanitarian emergency
in Biafra, and his public statements and influence propelled a number of Western relief
agencies to respond to the crisis.
²⁰

He led multiple relief flights with humanitarian aid into Uli airport—Biafra’s chief
airstrip. Fed up with Nigerian air force interference with his peaceful missions,
he entered the war heroes hall of fame after leading a five-plane assault on Nigerian
aircraft in Port Harcourt, Benin City, Ughelli, Enugu, and some other locations. He
took the Nigerian air force by total surprise and destroyed several Soviet-supplied
aircraft in the process.
²¹

The Biafran air force was composed of a B-26, a B-25, and three helicopters
²²
until Carl Gustaf von Rosen
²³
came to the republic’s assistance in 1968. By year’s end the government of Biafra
had procured a moderate amount of military ammunition from the neighboring former
French colonies of Ivory Coast and Gabon.

Indeed, Paris’s ambassador to Gabon at the time of war, Maurice Delauney, worked with
Jacques Foccart’s deputy, Jean Mauricheau-Beaupré—described by French journalist Pierre
Péan as the “chief conductor of clandestine French support to the Biafran secessionists”—to
supply arms to Ojukwu’s army.
²⁴

Uli airport was the major airport in Biafra for military and relief goods at the height
of the war, and it was described by various authorities as one of the busiest airports
in Africa, with more than 50 flights a night.
²⁵

Uli airport, originally part of a major highway, had been cut into the countryside
in the middle of a tropical rainforest and operated mainly at night. I recall the
airport’s traffic control terminal, passenger facilities, and hangars were constructed
in such a manner that the entire runway and all of the planes on the ground could
be heavily camouflaged with palm leaves and raffia fronds during the day, disguising
it from Nigerian army aircraft reconnaissance missions and radar.
²⁶
At night the airport became a beehive of activity. Incoming flights carrying relief
supplies, particularly from international locations such as São Tomé, Abidjan in Ivory
Coast, and Libreville, Gabon, were given the airport’s coordinates after appropriate
background checks were done. Pilots who were involved in the airlifts of relief supplies
provided a compelling story:

In the middle of the vast expanse of tropical rainforest, we would be told to descend
from our cruising altitude to about two thousand feet to avoid enemy fire, barely
atop the forest in the pitch dark. All of a sudden, bright floodlights appeared from
nowhere, illuminating the forest floor. Right before us was a breathtaking sight—an
entire airport appearing from nowhere!
²⁷

O
GBUNIGWE

The economic blockade enforced by Gowon led to great ingenuity and some unprecedented
innovations. Biafran scientists from the research think tank RAP—the Biafran Research
and Production unit—developed a great number of rockets, bombs, and telecommunications
gadgets, and devised an ingenious indigenous strategy to refine petroleum.
²⁸

Still, some of these innovations deserve particular attention, though in doing so
I would like to make it crystal clear that I abhor violence, and a discussion of weapons
of war does not imply that I am a war enthusiast or condone violence.

Perhaps no more important instrument of war lay at the disposal of the Biafrans than
the bomb called “Ogbunigwe.” Gordian Ezekwe, Benjamin Chukwuka Nwosu, and the less
well-known technician Willy Achukwe were among the group of originators of this notorious
weapon. Ogbunigwe would later become widely adopted and manufactured by the RAP engineers.
The bomb was a complex three-chamber apparatus that often included delayed action
devices containing a propellant, an explosive substance—often gunpowder in an igniting
base—and scraps of metal for maximal effect. Ogbunigwe bombs struck great terror in
the hearts of many a Nigerian soldier, and were used to great effect by the Biafran
army throughout the conflict.
²⁹
The novelist Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike captures the hysteria and dread evoked by it
in a passage in his important book
Sunset at Dawn: A Novel about Biafra
: