Flag of the secessionist
state of Biafra
January 15th
is a significant date in Nigerian history. On that day in 1966, a group of
middle-ranking army officers staged a mutiny which overthrew the civilian
government that had ruled Nigeria since it had been granted independence from
Britain in October 1960. It began a concatenation of violence which led to a
30-month civil war that formally ended on January 15th 1970.
Tracing a
line from 1966 to 1970 is clear enough: the mutiny which was led by officers
drawn mainly from the Igbo ethnic group came to be viewed as an attempt to
establish a form of ethnic hegemony over the rest of the country, a perspective
which was consolidated by the Unification Decree announced by
the Igbo Head of State, Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi in May 1966. The
decree abolished Nigeria’s federal structure and created a unitary system of
governance. The reactions came in the form of anti-Igbo pogroms in the Northern
Region in May and September, as well as a counter-coup in July 1966
which led to the murders of Igbo army officers and soldiers. The frustration of
peace efforts, notably that of the meeting in Aburi of members of the Supreme
Military Council and Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the
military governor of the Igbo-dominated Eastern Region who disputed the
legitimacy of the successors to Aguiyi-Ironsi, led to the secession of the
Eastern Region and the creation of the Republic of Biafra in May 1967. This
paved the way for the civil war which officially commenced on July 6th 1967.
But Nigeria’s
drift towards regional and ethnic violence did not begin in 1966. A
conglomerate state put together by imperial draughtsmen in the early part of
the 20th century, the country was composed of over 250 ethnic groups who spoke
over 500 different languages. The Northern Region was largely Islamic while the
south, with its Western and Eastern regions (a Mid-West Region was carved out
of the West), was largely Christianised. The south also led the north in terms
of economic development and educational attainment. Thus, the stability of this
artificially created multi-ethnic state was always certain to be tested.
The multiple
elements of the Nigerian polity have often meant that a multiplicity of
perspectives are in perpetual competition. For instance, the hegemony feared by
sections of the country in the wake of the Igbo-dominated first coup was one
effectively practised by the leaders of the Northern Region over the rest of
the country. And violence related to the desire of the leaders of the North to
ensure northern domination occurred in the Western Region as well as in the
mainly Christian ‘Middle-Belt’ of the Northern Region. Corruption among the
political elite, a fraudulent census, electoral fraud and trade union strikes
created the requisite tinderbox which ultimately led to a bloody civil
conflict.
Ojukwu’s
declaration of independence was a measure undertaken with widespread support
among the Igbos who dominated the Eastern Region. Most felt that they had been
chased out of the federation and had been left with no alternative. The federal
position enunciated by Gowon also resonated. If the Eastern Region was allowed
to split from the rest of the federation, there was every reason to believe
that Nigeria would chaotically splinter into smaller parts and that foreign
powers would become involved in backing each of the warring entities.
The Biafran
propaganda machinery driven by Mark Press, a Geneva-based public relations
company, was skillful in setting out the grievances of the Igbos. The themes
disseminated began by positing the rationale of the creation of Biafra as one
that was predicated on the need for tribal emancipation. It also portrayed the
Igbo cause as one based on a religious conflict between a feudal-minded Muslim
leadership hell-bent on continuing the pre-colonial Sokoto Caliphate which
intended to expand southwards, routing the animist and Christian peoples, until
euphemistically, they would dip the Koran into the Atlantic Ocean. And as the
war developed, Biafran propaganda utilised the images of starvation as a means
of emphasising the claim that they were being purposefully subjected to a
policy of genocide.
The evidence
assembled appeared to back up the claims. The series of pogroms against Igbo
civilians, the massacre of Igbo soldiers, the rise of northern Muslim soldiers
to positions of military and political power, as well as the mass starvation
symbolised by Kwashiorkor-afflicted children all offered strong corroborative
evidence.
But this
presented a one-sided and uncomplicated view.
Many of the
minority groups within the Eastern Region, as well as in the Mid-West Region
which was invaded by Biafran troops early in the war, did not want to live
under what they perceived as Igbo domination. And many minority communities were
subjected to brutal occupation by Biafran forces. The conflict was also
not simply a case of Muslims waging a jihad against Christians. Many of the
soldiers involved in the counter-coup of July 1966 were Christians from the
Middle-Belt, and, indeed, the man who emerged as the Head of State after that
coup, Gowon, was himself a Christian. Also the claim that the blockade mounted
by the federal government was inflexible towards the idea of relief supplies
being allowed into Biafran territory was not true. The federal side wanted such
relief to pass through Nigeria while the Biafran government asserted their
belief that such supplies would be tainted by poison deliberately introduced by
the Nigerian side.
As military
and civilian casualties mounted dissent arose within Biafran ranks. Some saw
what some in the international community saw: that the starving millions were
being used as part of a high-stakes political game through which the Biafran
leadership hoped foreign military aid or even intervention would materialise. The
leadership of Ojukwu was also seen as having a malign affect on the interests
of his people. As Ralph Uwechue put it:
In Biafra,
two wars were fought simultaneously. The first was for the survival of the
(Igbos) as a race. The second was for the survival of Ojukwu’s leadership.
Ojukwu’s error, which proved fatal for millions of (Igbos), was that he put the
latter first.
Divisions
within the Biafran military led to the development of two factions: the ‘Port
Harcourt Militia’ and the ‘National Militia’. Internal sabotage, one fruit of
this division, severely undermined morale, as well as the effort of national
self-defence. The early memoirs of the likes of Uwechue and N.U. Akpan, as well
as later ones by Alexander Madiebo laid bare the divisions existing within
Biafra: the civil servant against the intellectual, the soldier against the
mercenary, the Igbo against minority groups, and the ‘Nnewi clique’ against the
others; a dynamic based on the allegation that Ojukwu promoted nepotism in
regard to his Nnewi kinsmen.
Added to this
was the gap in knowledge between the elites and the masses, with the latter
being manipulated by a highly efficient propaganda machinery and according to
Uwechue possessing “neither the facts nor the liberty to form an independent
opinion” about the option of seeking a negotiated peace with the federal side.
The skillful
use of propaganda by the Biafrans, which included the organising of relief
concerts, the use of Igbo celebrities such as the writer Chinua Achebe and Dick Tiger, the world
boxing champion, was successful to a good degree in projecting Igbo pleas for
self-determination to a global audience. But decisive help from the major world
powers save for an infusion of a limited amount of French arms in the later
stages of the war, eluded them. They had been subjected to a blockade and
encircled early in the war. While Gowon continued to insist that Biafra had to surrender unconditionally, Ojukwu attempted to rouse his people whose ill-equipped army began to
increasingly rely on what would be contemporarily termed child soldiers. After
much delay, Nigeria began a final offensive on December 23rd 1969,
using the Third Infantry Division.
The end was
soon in coming.
At a meeting
of his cabinet held in Owerri on January 8th 1970, Ojukwu presented what he
would describe as the “grim hopelessness of continued formal military
resistance.” He left Biafra soon after,
claiming that he was going in search of a peaceful settlement. His deputy,
Philip Effiong, previously a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Nigerian army, took over
the reins of leadership and sued for peace. The surrender was arranged on the
ground with Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo, the commander of the Third Infantry
Division, and a formal ceremony of surrender took place before General Gowon at
Dodan Barracks in Lagos. Dressed in civilian attire, Effiong made the following
declaration:
I, Philip
Effiong, do hereby declare: I give you not only my own personal assurances but
also those of my fellow officers and colleagues and of the entire former
Biafran people of our fullest cooperation and very sincere best wishes for the
future.
It is my
sincere hope the lessons of the bitter struggle have been well learned by
everybody and I would like therefore to take this opportunity to say that I,
Major-General Philip Effiong, officer administering the government of the
Republic of Biafra, now wish to make the following declaration:
That we are
firm, we are loyal Nigerian citizens and accept the authority of the federal
military government of Nigeria.
That we
accept the existing administrative and political structure of the Federation of
Nigeria.
That any
future constitutional arrangement will be worked out by representatives of the
people of Nigeria.
That the
Republic of Biafra hereby ceases to exist.
Ojukwu’s
final statement as leader
released through Mark Press to Reuters reiterated the claim that the there had
been no alternative other than to have declared a Biafran state. He emphasised
the valour of its people in fighting against tremendous odds while enduring
enormous privations and criticised what he termed the “international conspiracy
against the interest of the African”, which he felt had played the biggest part
in Biafra’s demise.
That demise,
it was feared in some quarters, would be accompanied by mass killings of Igbos.
From the Vatican, the Pope was quick to call for concerted efforts to prevent
“massacres of a defenceless population exhausted by hardship, hunger and the
lack of everything.” Such fears, stoked by Biafran propaganda were repeatedly referred
to by Ojukwu in his statement who wrote that the aim of the Nigerian government
had been to “apply the final solution to the Biafran problem away from the
glare of an inquisitive world”.
It did not
happen.
Gowon’s post-war
speech emphasised the need for national reconciliation via the rhetoric of “No
Victor, No Vanquished”. It was a claim backed by the fact that no medals were
awarded to federal soldiers. Some Igbo officers were reabsorbed into the Nigerian
military as where civil servants. And Igbos gradually returned to the north and
other parts of the country.
The
reabsorption of Igbos has over the decades nonetheless been accompanied by
claims of marginalisation. This has often centred on two main issues: the
amount of money allocated for the development of states composed of Igbo
majorities and the fact that no Igbo has been allowed to lead Nigeria in the period
since the end of the war.
In recent
times movements have been created that have called for the resurrection of a
Biafran state, the most prominent being the now proscribed Indigenous People of
Biafra (Ipob) and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of
Biafra (Massob). But protests organised by these groups have been violently put
down and their leaders hunted down by Nigeria’s security forces.
In July 2017,
a specially convened meeting of Igbo leaders consisting of state governors,
legislators, traditional and religious leaders issued a statement giving their
“full support” to a “united Nigeria”. It was a gesture aimed at diffusing
mounting tensions, but their call for a restructuring of the country in order
to achieve a “just and equitable society” underlined the sense of grievance
many feel decades after the civil war.
Renewed
agitation for separation has also served to reopen fears among minority groups
of the former Eastern Region who alarmed at the inclusion of their territories
in various versions of maps of a new Biafran state felt compelled to issue
statements of their own. For instance in July 2017 the Efik Leadership
Foundation, after impliedly disavowing their previous incorporation into
a historical entity known as Biafra, accused the leaders of Ipob of attempting
“to annex or conscript us surreptitiously or use our people, land and territory
as (the) basis for bargaining” an exit out of the federation.
Aside from the
persistent and widespread misgivings of neighbouring minority groups are doubts
over the historical existence of a kingdom of Biafra for which no records, archaeological
or other, can be offered as evidence. There is no oral chronology identifying
who its rulers were, no accounts as to how it was formed or of its system of
laws.
Today, there
appears to be a generational divide on pressing for a separate Biafran entity
with much of the rhetoric coming from younger people with little or no memory
of the civil war. And with other parts of the federation implacable in their
resolve to maintain the territorial unity of Nigeria, the catastrophic failure of
the war commenced over fifty years ago must serve as a cautionary note for
those intent on pursuing the path of secession.
© Adeyinka
Makinde (2019)
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
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