There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (35 page)

“[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about
its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Source
: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?moduleId-10007043.

The Arguments

1.
The American Jewish Congress suggests that compounding this overwhelming evidence,
according to the Biafrans, is:

The Federal government has refused to discuss peace . . . unless and until Biafran
leaders renounce their proclamation of secession. Biafrans have refused this demand
because they believe they can gain their aims through conventional or guerrilla warfare,
and also because
they are
convinced that Nigerian military commanders intend to perpetuate genocide against
the Ibos [
sic
] people.

Source
: Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968.

2.
Ibid.

3.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe,
The Biafra War: Nigeria and the Aftermath
(Lampeter, Ceredigion, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). As quoted in “The Violations
of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria (1966–1999),” October
1999.

4.
Jacobs,
The Brutality of Nations
.

5.
Ibid.

6.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger,
Dynamics of World Power: A Documentary History of U.S. Foreign Policy
,
1945–1973
,
Volume 1
(New York: Chelsea House, 1983).

7.
Ibid.

8.
Baum, American Jewish Congress, “Memorandum,” December 27, 1968.

9.
Ibid.

10.
Ibid.

11.
Biafra
, BBC documentary (1995).

12.
Ibid.

The Case Against the Nigerian Government

1.
Jacobs,
The Brutality of Nations
.

2.
With just the right kind of inflection bound to mesmerize his admirers, Gowon played
that role to the hilt, quoting Lincoln in speech after speech and talking about “binding
up the nation’s wounds.”

Source
: Luce, “General Gowon.”

3.

Nigerian leader Allison Ayida produced his viewpoint on starving children . . . :
“Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war, and we have every intention of using it
on the rebels.”

Source
: Forsyth,
The Biafra Story
.

Also see: Thierry Hentsch,
Face au blocus: histoire de l’intervention du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge
dans le conflit du Nigéria, 1967–1970
(Geneva: Droz, 1973); Ekwe-Ekwe,
Biafra Revisited
; Ojukwu,
Biafra
.

4.
Stanley Diamond’s extensive reporting from Biafra around this time has preserved
his observations for posterity:

Direct reports from the former Biafran enclave (East Central State) indicate the following:

1) No systematic distribution of food and relief supplies is taking place; indeed
no adequate effort is being made. This was already evident by the end of January,
1970. On the 24th the London
Observer
had reported that only eighty food distribution centers remained in the enclave;
before the surrender there had been 3,000. . . .

2) Biafran currency has not been converted, nor is it accepted as legal tender. This
works a particular hardship on the majority of impoverished peasants who must buy
seed yams for the current growing season. A new cycle of hunger and dependency seems
to have begun.

3) The more than 60,000 federal troops are billeted in secondary schools and private
homes throughout the former Biafran enclave. Most if not all secondary schools are
so occupied, prolonging the educational crisis.

4) Foreign correspondents are barred from Eastern Nigeria. Dispatches filed from Lagos
on the situation in former Biafra are confused and contradictory.

The general policy seems to be one of attrition and isolation of the Ibo-speaking
[
sic
] peoples in particular, with the promise of reward being held out for certain minority
groups.

In the notes to his reply, Diamond quotes from K. W. J. Post’s article, “Is There
a Case to Be Made for Biafra?”
International Affairs
44 no. 1 (January 1968), pp. 26–39:

Post states further that with the failure of Biafran secession, “a restoration of
the old spoils system is certainly on the cards. Similarly the northern leaders may
emerge again, heading an axis of the six new states [in the north]; the old NPC [Northern
Peoples’ Congress] was always something of a coalition of local interests and there
is no reason why this should not emerge again under some of the old leaders, probably
those from Kano and Bornu.”

Diamond further quotes in his notes from Dr. E. C. Schwartzenbach, S
wiss Review of Africa
(February 1968):

The [Nigerian] war aim and solution of the entire problem was to discriminate against
the Ibos [
sic
] in the future in their own interest. Such discrimination would include above all
the detachment of those oil-rich territories in the Eastern Region which were not
inhabited by them at the beginning of the colonial period, on the lines of the projected
twelve-state plan. In addition, the Ibos’ movement would be restricted, to prevent
their renewed penetration into the other parts of the country. Leaving them any access
to the sea, the Commissioner declared, was quite out of the question.

He also cites in the notes an unpublished “memorandum on the background, cause, and
consequences of the Nigerian civil war issued in November 1968 by more than sixty
British subjects, including Sir Robert Stapledon, the last British governor of the
Eastern Region (1959–60)”:

Each medal has its reverse. But, whatever the verdict, there can be no conceivable
justification for what happened to the Ibos [
sic
] in the North in 1966. No objective consideration of their case can avoid the fact
that, as rational and sentient human beings, they were made to feel themselves rejected
by the most brutal possible means from the North and from Nigeria as a whole. The
irony for Biafra was to be that, having seen her people driven out by the rest of
Nigeria and hunted back to their homeland, she found Nigeria at war with her to preserve
the integrity of a Federation where her people could no longer live.

Source
: Reply by Stanley Diamond to Sara S. Berry, George A. Elbert, and Norman Thomas Uphoff,
“Letters: An Exchange on Biafra,”
New York Review of Books
, April 23, 1970.

5.
“The Violations of Human and Civil Rights of Ndi Igbo in the Federation of Nigeria
(1966–1969),” October 1999; Achebe,
The Trouble with Nigeria
, p. 45–46; Jane Guyer and LaRay Denzer,
Vision and Policy in Nigerian Economics: The Legacy of Pius Okigbo. West African Studies
(Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 2005).

6.
Ibid.

7.
Guyer and Denzer,
Vision and Policy in Nigerian Economics
.

8.
“Twin Stalemates,”
Time
.

9.
This school of thought is exemplified by the well-regarded scholar Martin Meredith,
who believes: “The aftermath of the war was notable for its compassion and mercy,
and the way in which the memories of Biafra soon faded.”

Source
: Meredith,
The Fate of Africa
, p. 205.

Gowon, expectedly, gives himself high marks for the role of his government following
the conflict:

What you should remember about the time—and, at least, give us some credit for it—is
that we did not take what would be considered normal action under such circumstances.
In such an instance, all the senior officials involved—politicians as well as in the
military—would have been strung up for their part in the war. This is what happened
at the end of the Second World War in Germany; it happened in Japan at the end of
the campaign in that part of the world. This is the civilized world’s way of doing
things. But we did not do even that. We did set up committees to look into cases such
as where rebel officers had been members of the Nigerian armed forces, and their loyalty
was supposed to be to the federal government. When the war ended, we reabsorbed practically
everyone who was in the army. But there were officers at a certain senior level that
we insisted had to accept responsibility for their role in the secession. It was the
only thing to do. Probably I could have given pardon; however, I was not the one who
gave pardon to Ojukwu.

Source
: Chinua Achebe Foundation interview: Gowon in conversation with Pini Jason, 2005.

10.
I shared my views about reintegration with
Transition
magazine during the war period, and they reflect the mind-set of a lot of Biafrans
following the war:

The Nigerians say, “You come back; we will integrate you.” This is nonsense—we know
they will not—there is so much bitterness on both sides. This talk of integration
is so much eyewash and is intended for foreign consumption. The point I am making
is that it is not so much what the crimes are of the people persecuted—they may have
committed crimes, but the point is they have been persecuted, and on a scale that
is almost unbelievable. For a month or two the people were in a state of shock, a
sort of total paralysis. It is really no use talking of unity; you don’t unite the
dead, you only unite the living, and there must be a minimal willingness on the part
of those who are to be united.

Source
: Achebe, “Chinua Achebe on Biafra,”
Transition
, pp. 31–38.

Gowon Responds

1.
Chinua Achebe Foundation interview: Gowon in conversation with Pini Jason, 2005.

Part 4

Nigeria’s Painful Transitions: A Reappraisal

1.
Robert I. Rotberg,
Nigeria, Elections and Continuing Challenges
(New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2007).

West Africa
, iss. 4321, iss. 4328–31 (London: West Africa Publishing, 2002) reports:

The Nigerian elections are shaping up as a possible contest of ex-military leaders
seeking to recycle their personal relevance, and they all appear to have substantial
followings among the civilian political elite.

The News
, vol. 28 (Lagos: Independent Communications Network, Ltd., 2007): noted:

Nigerian politics is becoming more disappointing by the day. Instead effacing issues
and ideology, our leaders are busy fighting among themselves to be in power just to
satisfy their bloated ego and retain their loot.

2.
Osita G. Afoaku, “The Politics of Democratic Transition in Congo (Zaire): Implications
of the Kabila ‘Revolution,’”
Journal of Conflict Studies
XIX, no. 2 (Fall 1999), published by the Gregg Center for the Study of War and Society,
University of New Brunswick; Smith,
Genocide and the Europeans
, p. 71; interviews and discussions with several African and French historians and
intellectuals; Pfister,
Apatheid South Africa
, pp. 52–53.

3.
In a House of Commons speech made on November 11, 1947; cited at http://wais.stanford.edu/Democracy/democracy_DemocracyAndChurchill%28090503%29.html.

4.
The data on the scale of corruption in Nigeria is for the forty years since independence,
1960–2000. Daniel Jordan Smith,
A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 131; Chinua Achebe, “Open Letter
to President Olusegun Obasanjo Rejecting the Commander of the Order of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria (CFR),” October 15, 2004; Virginia Baily and Hoskins, Veronica,
eds.,
Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social, and Cultural Series
42 (2005–2006); Felix Ukah,
Anambra Political Crises: Eye-Witness Account
(Anambra, Nigeria: Computer-Edge Publishers, 2005).

5.
Elie Wiesel,
The Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences
(New York: Random House Digital, 2011).

State Failure and the Rise of Terrorism

1.
“The Failed States Index, 2011,”
Foreign Policy
(July/August 2011); http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failedstates.

2.
Quotation of Professor Robert Rotberg in James J. F. Forest,
Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century: International Perspectives.
Combating the Sources and Facilitators, Vol. 2
(Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), p. 97.

3.
Ibid.

4.
R. Borum, “Understanding the Terrorist Mind-set,”
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
(July 2003), pp. 1–10, and as discussed in Michael A. Bozarth’s PowerPoint presentation,
“Genesis of Terrorism: An Exploration of the Causes of Terrorism and of the Conditions
That Produce Them,” Department of Psychology, University of Buffalo. Copyright 2006

5.
A Hausa term that is loosely translated into English as “Western education is a sin.”

6.
Farouk Chothia, “Who Are Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists?” BBC Africa Service, January
11, 2012; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13809501.

A
FTER A
W
AR

1.
Chinua Achebe,
Collected Poems
(New York: Anchor Books, 2004).

Postscript: The Example of Nelson Mandela

1.
Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s third-largest oil producer, after Nigeria and Angola.
It has the highest per capita income on the African continent and is ranked twenty-eighth
in the world. According to the Organization for Economic Development (OECD): “[A]
household survey for poverty evaluation (EEH) carried out by Equatorial Guinea in
2006 [found that] 76.8 percent of the population is poor, which translates into a
head-of-household poverty ratio of 66.4 percent. This is a very poor ratio for a country
where average income per capita was greater than USD 20 000.” The scale of corruption
in that country is staggering. This story should be particularly enlightening: Angelique
Chrisafis, “France Probes Africa’s Big Spenders,”
Mail and Guardian
, February 10, 2012, http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-10-france-probes-africas-big-spenders/.