nkem360@googlemail.com
1968 NAF Napalm air raid on Aba General Hospital
On
May 18, 2013, the US-based online media outfit Sahara Reporters granted an
interview to the Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka. The interview was done a
few days to the burial date of the late legendary writer, Professor Chinua
Achebe, who passed on on March 21, 2013 in the US. Apparently, it was scheduled
to provide Professor Soyinka an opportunity to offer his thoughts on the
stature of Professor Achebe, recently reckoned by the US President Barack Obama
as somebody who “shattered the conventions of literature”. Aside from Soyinka speaking
on Achebe’s place in his calling, Soyinka also made statements on the late Biafran
leader Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and the Nigeria-Biafra War and, of
course, the genocide visited on the Igbo people before and during that war
under Yakubu Gowon’s watch.
Reaching
a decision on the appropriate time to write this piece delayed the article from
being written until now. One did not want one’s thoughts to divert attention
from the literary duels which Professor Soyinka’s controversial interview
provoked between some of the ‘successor writers’ on the social media. Having
read views on the interview such as one adduced by Mr. Ikhide R. Ikheola,
someone I have come to regard as a master of witticism, I did not feel any pressure
in getting it out there, which would have necessitated at least a passing
comment on Soyinka’s perception of who Achebe is. Besides, my hands were full
at that time. So, why waste time on such words likened to what Igbo elders
would say is water poured on a spherical grindstone when it comes to Professor
Soyinka’s perception and the global perception of the departed Achebe and
Achebe’s art?
Therefore,
statements like, “Yes, there was only one word for it- genocide” and “The Igbo
must remember, however, that they were not militarily prepared for that war. I
told Ojukwu this...” came with words that deserve one’s attention. These
statements deserve one’s attention because there are so many young people in
the contraption called Nigeria who were not born before the Nigeria-Biafra War.
Some of these young people have not taken time in the past to read books written
by unbiased Nigerians and foreign authors about the war. However, with the internet
and its social media component, these young people are now interested in
reading about the war. Many of them are still not reading books about the war
but rely on snippets they get on it through the social media to form their
impression about the war. Therefore, it is incumbent on opinion moulders with
the stature of Professor Wole Soyinka to inject the critical facts into their
thoughts when they talk about the war.
To
begin with, the decision to declare the former Eastern Region a sovereign state
to be known and called the Republic of Biafra was not single-handedly made by Dim
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The weighty decision to pick up arms to defend the
declared republic, the only secure space Easterners had at the time, after
being hounded out of other parts of Nigeria and still being hunted down across
Nigeria, was not single-handedly made by Dim Ojukwu. Dim Odumegwu-Ojukwu did
not make the decision for the uncritical-minded Yakubu Gowon to repudiate the
landmark Aburi Accord and engage in other untoward acts that led to the war,
including the unilateral creation of states and declaration of war against the
young republic. Our young people need to know about the Aburi Accord. They need
to know that at Aburi an all-embracing agreement was reached and signed by
representatives of all the components of the crisis-ridden Nigeria to restore
normalcy in the country, after Gowon failed to keep his word as Ojukwu bowed to
persuasion and asked Easterners to go back to their former stations only to be
cut down in a second wave of killings, all in a bid to stave off war. Yakubu
Gowon quite dishonourably abandoned the all important Aburi agreement on the
advice of his foreign masters and some ‘super’ permanent secretaries in Nigeria.
The greatest burden Dim Ojukwu bore till his death was caving in to that
persuasion and allowing his people who miraculously escaped the first wave of
massacre to return to their stations only to be so gruesomely killed.
There
are five possible reasons why this sort of reductionist mindset of blaming Dim
Ojukwu for the war persists, in spite of the facts that abound. These are
ignorance; deliberate attempts to malign the leaders of Eastern Nigeria made up
of some of the best brains of their time; convenient amnesia; living in denial,
and deliberate attempt to hide the real issues from our young people.
On
ignorance, anyone with the basic knowledge of who the Easterners are,
especially the Igbo people, knows that they are neither feudal nor monarchical and
therefore not servile to the extent of one individual enjoying a central
authority. Perhaps, nothing captures the essence of who they are than what the
Igbo elders say: Otu onye adighi a bu nna mu oha/An individual can never be
everyone. According to Professor Aluko, whom Soyinka also cites, Ojukwu had
been asked by his Igbo people to choose between leading them or bowing out. It
is well recorded how a student of University of Nigeria, Nsukka set himself ablaze
over Ojukwu’s reluctance to secede. Ojukwu admitted that one of his greatest
mistakes was delay in declaring Biafra. Everything paints a picture of what
played out in the case of the declaration of Biafra and implicitly the decision
to defend Biafran territorial integrity after Yakubu Gowon ordered his military
to proceed to the next phase of the genocide through the attack at Gakem on
July 6, 1967.
The
fact remains that there were bodies, the Eastern Region Consultative Assembly
and the Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders, representing all the peoples
of Eastern Nigeria that mandated the then young military governor of Eastern
Nigeria, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, to declare Eastern Nigeria a
sovereign state, the Republic of Biafra. Our young people need to know this. They
should be informed that the Ijaws, according to Chief Melford Okilo, would have
sided with Biafra, if Ojukwu had requested for a referendum. But would Gowon
let that kind of process take place when he had already repudiated the Aburi
Accord and unilaterally restructured Nigeria into 12 states? The youth need to
know that a 67-year-old Dr. Alvan Ikoku whose wisdom and erudition was widely
known, was the chairman of the Eastern Nigeria Consultative Assembly.
If
it is not ignorance that is responsible for the sort of mindset that fuels this
‘blame Ojukwu for the war,’ then, it is a clear case of deliberate attempt to
malign the leaders of Eastern Nigeria, consisting of dogged nationalists who
were in the forefront of the struggle to free Nigeria from British colonialism.
There were world-class academics cum astute university administrators, prudent
and meticulous civil servants, brilliant unionists and notable chiefs. People
must understand that when they engage in ‘blame Ojukwu for the war’
reductionist approach to the genocidal war, they are maligning outstanding individuals
like Dr. Alvan Ikoku, Dr. M. I. Okpara, Dr. Akanu Ibian, Chief M. T. Mbu, Chief
Eyo Bassey Ndem, Chief Jereton Mariere, Dr. K. O. Dike, Professor Eni Njoku,
Mr. N. U. Akpan, I. S. Kogbara etc. for a thoughtful decision they reached,
having weighed the options - extermination or slavery.
We
are dealing with those struck with convenient amnesia, remembering only what
they choose to remember, a choice, which is quite prevalent in Nigeria. Of
course, there are those living in denial, and others making deliberate attempts
to hide the real issues from our young people. Anyone who is willing to talk
about advising Dim Ojukwu against the war, and willing to talk about the
genocide should have known the importance of bringing the Aburi Accord into
that mix as well as mentioning the indifference of Yakubu Gowon’s government to
the first and second phases of the genocide, especially in Northern Nigeria
that left 50,000 Easterners mainly Igbo people dead. Bringing the Aburi Accord
into that mix has become quite important particularly now there seems to be
intensification of the calls for a Sovereign National Conference, for obvious
reasons.
Perhaps,
it is this reductionist approach that made Professor Soyinka to believe that
the elimination of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and Yakubu Gowon by the
so-called Third Force scheme was the best way of solving the Nigerian crisis at
the time rather than mobilizing for the implementation of the Aburi Accord. In a
4-part article written by Dr. M. O. Ene titled, ‘Who is the brain behind
January 15?’ that was published on www.kwenu.com
on January 15, 2007, Dr. Ene tried to probe and locate the proverbial route
through which water entered the pipe of the pumpkin-leaf. Dr. Ene states thus, “From
his own words and writings, on [one] can deduce that Soyinka was in the midst
of pro-Awolowo and anti-Akintola forces in the ‘wild, wild West’ era and he was
in Banjo-Ifeajuna Third Force scheme that tried to eliminate both
Odumegwu-Ojukwu and Gowon.”
We
should not forget that Pepper Clark, Wole Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo, Segun
Awolowo, Victor Banjo and Emmanuel Ifeajuana were part of an Ibadan circle of
young hot heads who were aggrieved by what was happening in Ibadan. This led
Soyinka to occupy the Western Broadcasting Corporation in 1965, to prevent the
airing of a speech by Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa. In effect, Soyinka’s action
and the January 15, 1966 coup plot and the killing of Balewa weren’t
unconnected.
In
the same vein, Pepper Clark’s name comes up in discussions on the coup, as
Clark it was who smuggled a helpless Ifeajuna out of Nigeria when the Lagos
operation of the January 15, 1966 coup failed. To blame Ojukwu on whose laps
this misconduct was thrown, and who was more cautious than the Soyinkas, who
were playing ideological games, is quite puzzling.
Reading
through Dr. Ene’s interrogatory piece one is left with the impression that
there might have been a force or forces outside the military that consciously
or unconsciously provided the poetic and militant spark that lit up the night
of January 15, 1966. Young people need to explore this side of the war
narration too to understand fully the events that led to the Biafra genocide.
Professor
Soyinka in the past did acknowledge the inevitability of the war and did
underscore the fact that what was going on was the implementation of, as he
puts it on pages 21 to 22 of his book The Man Died “the doctrine of justifiable
genocide”. In the same book, he expresses the fear that the situation may
degenerate into “downright genocidal epidemic”.
Now,
if someone, due to his human instinct could be moved to write the above
haunting expressions, pray, why should the leaders of the former Eastern Region
and later Biafra, fold their arms and wait for their people to be murdered en
mass without making any attempt to defend themselves in their own homeland?
In
relating the story of one Ibo [Igbo] photographer, Emmanuel Ogbona [Ogbonna],
who was brutally murdered and thrown into the bush around September 1966, after
being abducted from his studio at Odo Ona, Ibadan, with his known killers not
being brought to book, and contrasting this with the sentencing to death of one
man and giving various terms of imprisonment to eight others in Sokoto for mistakenly
murdering Ojibo Uche asleep, a little brother of Mr. Joseph Uche, an Igala,
thinking he was Igbo, after raiding his home and not finding him, Professor Soyinka
had no problem in reaching the right conclusion and stating that:
The
juxtaposition of these two sample events, even without the reminder of its
large-scale horror context, the most comprehensive, undiscriminating savaging
of a people within memory on the black continent, destroys the hypocritical
disclaimers of the regime. It states one simple truth: that at the very least
the machinery of justice existed all through and after the Northern massacres and
that lack of the prevention of their exercise was a deliberate, selective
decision of Yakubu Gowon’s government (The Man Died , 24).
The
questions that should agitate the mind of anyone reading this at this point is,
why do people always find it convenient not to blame Yakubu Gowon for the war,
seeing this kind of fact and Gowon’s disavowal of the Aburi Accord? Why are
people in the habit of exonerating the thief by blaming the victim for not
securing his door properly when it comes to the Nigeria-Biafra War, as Olayinka
Sule would ask? As our Igbo elders say, it is only a tree that will be told
that it is going to be cut down and it will remain where it is.
It
is worth quoting Professor Soyinka’s The Man Died elaborately here to present
the deepness of the scar Easterners, especially the Igbo people, bore and still
bear, which made them to feel secure only in the East and believe in Aburi, the
only instrument that could keep them in their region at least for a period of
time. I am quoting Soyinka elaborately so that people, especially young people,
can appreciate why our parents needn’t have to have loads of arsenal before
deciding to defend their right and those of their offspring to exist. Professor
Soyinka writes:
The
following fact is therefore stated merely as a matter of record: in
September/October 1966, another ATROCITIES did take place all over Nigeria including
Lagos, the seat of Yakubu’s government. But where it really manifested in grand
style was in the North. The ATROCITIES were so public even in the South (Lagos)
that delegates to a Constitutional Conference which had been launched by Yakubu
Gowon were physically man-handled by Gowon’s Army right in view of the House of
Assembly buildings where these constitutional talks did take place. Man-hunts
publicized by machine-gun stutters, took place around Ikoyi where Gowon lived,
and the executions and torture games that went on in his official residence,
Dodan Barracks, on civilians who were simply arrested on the public road-
Ikorodu checkpoint was the favourite kidnap point- were common daylight
occurrences known to Yakubu Gowon. As for the events in the North- let us
simply sum it up and say that ATROCITIES did take place on a scale so vast and
so thorough, and so well-organized that it was variously referred to as the
Major Massacres (as distinct from the May rehearsals), genocide and sometimes
only as disturbances and this gem is by Ukpabi Asika- a state of anomy! Yakubu
Gowon himself went far enough to put it under the broad sphere of ATROCITIES in
his appeal. The word itself, appeal,
is significant. It tells much about Mr. Gowon (119-120).
The
appeal Professor Soyinka is referring to here was a short unserious speech
Gowon made to fellow Northerners in which Gowon never failed to mention that
‘God in his power has entrusted the responsibility of this great country of
ours, Nigeria, to the hands of another Northerner...’
In
the interview referred to earlier, Professor Soyinka agreed that genocide was
committed against the Igbo before the war. He said that genocide was committed on
both sides during the war; he also said that the scale was more on the Nigerian
side. I know that during the war, the Nigerian Air Force strafed markets in
full session, sometimes killing up to 500 people in just one raid. I know that the
Nigerian Air Force and their Egyptian collaborators strafed churches and
schools that became refugee centres in Biafra. I know they flew so low and
targeted homes; they bombed hungry refugees clogging main roads and moving wearily
to the next town, which was yet to fall into the hands of the Nigerian forces. I
know that the Nigerian Army summoned all males in Asaba and adjoining towns,
and massacred them in cold blood.
I
know that the Nigerian government used starvation as a weapon of war to send
millions of children, women and the aged to a slow and pitiable death. I know that
the Nigerian military shot down Red Cross and other relief airplanes bringing
food and medicines to Biafran babies. And all these were directed at an ethnic
group, the Igbo people.
Also,
I know that the Biafran Air Force did successfully bomb power stations,
petroleum product storage tanks and several Nigerian Air Force bases and took
out some evil birds supplied by the then USSR, thus degrading their air
capability for a while. I never knew the Biafran Air Force targeted any
concentration of civilian populations. I never knew that the Biafran Army summoned
all males in any town or group of towns and massacred them in cold blood.
According
to the Encarta Dictionary, “genocide is the systematic killing of all the people
from a national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this.”
Professor Soyinka records several incidents of genocide in his book, The Man Died,
which took place under Yakubu Gowon’s watch. On page 23 of the book, Soyinka is
of the opinion that those responsible for the genocide “must be named,
denounced and forced to stand trial some day”.
More
than four decades after these acts of genocide were committed no one has been
brought to book. I think it is about time Professor Wole Soyinka capped his life
of activism by calling on the international community to try Yakubu Gowon and
his cohorts for genocide. Certainly, bringing the long awaited justice to the victims
of Biafra genocide would be more like it for a Nobel laureate than defending
and celebrating a mass murderer.
