SPECIAL REPORT: Biafra: American Secret Cable Exposes The Untold Story! Part 1
Posted by: Our Reporter on February 26, 2013 in Exclusive Leave a comment


Confidential US dispatches on the Nigerian Civil War yield a wounding portrait of Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was painted by those who knew him as a man that experienced rejection as a child, a megalomaniac, demagogue and one who once threatened to shoot his own father In a broadcast to the German people on Bayerischer Rundfunk Muchen (Bavarian Broadcasting, Munich) on 11 September 1967, Klaus W. Stephan, the West African correspondent of the service for many years, said Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu had harboured an ambition to “alter the political constellation of power in Nigeria by means of the army one day”. Ojukwu, said Stephan, was a supporter of the 15 January 1966 coup, the first in the country’s history. “He sympathised with the January 1966 plot makers, but was careful enough to avoid any overplayed attachment to them. Ojukwu told me later that it had been him who had requested General (Aguiyi) Ironsi to crush the coup and that he had stopped the General from being arrested.” On 8 April 1967 in Enugu, while meeting with Suzanne Cronje, author of The World and Nigeria: The Diplomatic History of the Biafran War, 1967-1970, Ojukwu said: “On January 15, I was the one who advised Ironsi to stand as the head of the army, call for support and then organise the various units that would immediately support, so that the rebels, who were bound to be few and already committed, would suddenly find that the whole thing was phasing away.” For this support, Ironsi rewarded Ojukwu with an appointment as governor, reckoned Stephan. “Obviously on the grounds of thankful feelings, the General (Ironsi) made him Military Governor of the Eastern provinces. I know Ojukwu as a man of more than average intelligence, extraordinary versatility, high eloquence and remarkable personal charm. But there are two characteristics in that man that are not realised by many people for a long time: his greed for power and his ability to charm and enchant the masses: a demagogue,” Stephan told the German people in the broadcast. A similarly unflattering verdict on Ojukwu’s personality was delivered by Chief Richard Akinjide, the man who later became Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation. A US document of 11 September 1969 quoted Akinjide as telling Mr. Strong, American consul in Ibadan, that “he (Ojukwu) suffers from Hitler-like megalomania”. Akinjide explained to Strong that as a child, Ojukwu was rejected because his father strongly denied that he was solely responsible for the pregnancy that led to him, arguing that other mysterious force or forces may have been at work as well. His mother, claimed Akinjide, was a mistress his multimillionaire father, Sir Louis Ojukwu, acquired on one of his business trips to the North. Being a devout Catholic, Sir Louis refused to keep the boy in his house in Lagos, preferring to send him back to the North, where he was born and where his mother made a living as a trader. Ojukwu, like Nnamdi Azikiwe, was born in Zungeru, in the present day Niger State. As the boy grew up, friends of the business mogul prevailed on him to recognise him as a son. According to Akinjide, Sir Loius agreed to do so, but the boy became something of an embarrassment to him, the reason for which he sent him to school in England, where he made it into Oxford University. Akinjide, a member of the Nigerian National Democratic Party, NNDP and federal minister in the First Republic, said: “When Ojukwu returned to Nigeria, he tried to get a job with the Nigerian Tobacco Company, NTC, but was turned down.” Akinjide speculated on how Nigerian history might have panned out if NTC had given Ojukwu a job. “Instead, he drifted into the civil service and was given a post as Assistant District Officer at a bush post in the East. He was unhappy in this position,” claimed Akinjide, because he felt his talents undervalued.



Seeking a surer road to power and influence, he joined the army. And because of the top-tier education he had acquired in England, he was soon sent to the elite Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK. Akinjide believed Ojukwu’s career and personality could be explained as an endless effort to gain the recognition he was denied early in life and to show his father and the society that rejected him how wrong they were. “Ojukwu was subconsciously seeking revenge for his early rejection. A man so driven is not subject to rational dissuasion from the course on which he has set himself,” he told Strong. In another document dated 19 September1969 and titled Psyching Out Ojukwu, Strong narrated the story he and Colonel Adeyinka Adebayo, Military Governor of Western State, were told over lunch by Nnamdi Azikiwe. Azikiwe said the reason he was hated by Ojukwu was because “at one point, he (Azikiwe) had settled a dispute between Ojukwu and his father, which had already reached the proportion where Ojukwu had threatened to shoot his father.” Azikiwe told the private gathering that Ojukwu’s father was a very good friend of his and he prevailed on Ojukwu not to carry out his threat. Since then, Azikiwe said, Ojukwu had been very unfriendly towards him. According to Chief N.U. Akpan, Ojukwu’s secretary before and during the war, the first orders Ojukwu gave when he resumed as military governor on 19 January 1966 were to “remove Azikiwe as the Chancellor of University of Nsukka, cut off all incomes accruing to him from his properties in Nsukka and order African Continental Bank to recover forthwith all overdrafts or loans outstanding against Azikiwe or any companies and business establishments with which he might have been associated”. Azikiwe told the American consul: “Perhaps, I offended him by preventing him from shooting his father.”
Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s assessment of the Biafran leader was not very dissimilar to Akinjide’s view of him as a man who sought to control everything around him. Reviewing his own efforts, undertaken at considerable personal risk to find an accommodation with Ojukwu before he declared the secession in May 1967, Awolowo told US Ambassador Elbert Matthews on 24 August 1967 in Lagos that he was convinced it was impossible to negotiate with Ojukwu, who was seeking to bring the whole of southern Nigeria under his control. He described Ojukwu as being committed to conquest, not secession. According to the Periodic Intelligence Note complied on the Nigerian situation by Thomas L. Hughes, Director of Intelligence and Research, submitted to US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, the “chief target” of Ojukwu’s “seizure of Midwest” was the Yoruba. “Should this large tribe, numbering eight million or more, choose to join Ojukwu in a move to oust northerners from southern Nigeria, the rump Nigerian federation would come apart…The Yorubas, riven by past divisions and in no mood to pull Ojukwu’s chestnuts out of the fire (rescue Ojukwu), are undecided. They have tended to side with the Gowon government ever since their principal spokesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, agreed to join it last June. At the same time, the fear of northern domination remains strong…Awolowo rallied towards the Federation when Gowon, himself a northerner, showed he meant to break up the once monolithic North by decreeing several newstates there,” the US intelligence estimate stated.



On 12 September, Radio Biafra broadcast attacks on Awolowo and Anthony Enahoro for being in “the rebel government of Gowon”. The radio station referred to the recent arrest and detention of “Wole Soyinka, that patriotic Yoruba son” and the arrest and interrogation of Tai Solarin, the well-known Yoruba educator and writer. It thought it “significant” that these “Yoruba freedom fighters” should be threatened by a government of which “Chief Awolowo himself a Yoruba is a deputy head.” It reminded its listeners that “Awolowo and Enahoro have not only succumbed to northern pressure, but have also teamed up with Gowon to supress Solarin and Soyinka, whose ebullient enthusiasm for Yoruba freedom is threat to their security, but they have substituted private interest for commonwealth.” The radio station, confirming the findings of the US intelligence estimate, then recommended that “all Yorubas should waste no time in responding to call by one of their own sons, Brigadier Victor Banjo, commander of liberation forces. It is such young men as Brigadier Banjo, Wole Soyinka and Tai Solarin that will provide effective but selfless leadership that Yorubas badly need at this moment”. On Biafrans sounding more Yoruba than the Yoruba themselves, the American ambassador noted in a confidential document of 15 September 1967: “In fact, the Eastern effort to tell Yorubas who their leader should be as well as not to follow Awolowo could cause opposite reaction among majority of people in Yorubaland.” It did. With troops blazing with Biafran agenda already at West’s door at Ore, it became clearer to Awolowo that Ojukwu was not interested in secession, but actually in conquest. Awolowo proceeded to rally the Yoruba, who had hitherto been lukewarm to Gowon’s government with a powerful “I am absolutely and irrevocably committed to the side of Nigeria” press release on 12 August 1967. It was Awolowo’s first statement defending the Federal Government since the Civil War began on 6 July. Unlike many of Awolowo’s speeches and public statements, this one derived its forceful elocution from the use of adverbs and intensifiers. There were no “could,” “might” and other hedge-betting modal verbs. It was all “must,” “will” and other commanding auxiliary verbs.


“It is imperative that the unity of Nigeria must be preserved and the best judge of what to do now is the Federal government, which Yorubas must continue to support. The Yorubas have never set out to dominate others, but have always resisted, with all the energy in them, any attempt, however slight or disguised, by others to dominate them.…Indeed it is for these reasons that they must now be ready to resist any attempt by the rebel forces from the East and the Mid-West to violate their territory and subjugate them.…To these ends, therefore, all Yoruba people, particularly those in the Western and Lagos states, which now face the threats of invasion, must not only be as vigilant as ever, but must also lose no time and spare no efforts in giving every conceivable support to the Federal troops in defence of their homeland and of the fatherland,” Awolowo said. He was not only rallying the Yoruba people, he was sending a powerful message to the Biafran High Command in Enugu. Victor Banjo, on 11 August, had sent a secret note to Governor Adebayo, the man who, according to the Biafran High Command, was slated for assassination by Banjo’s gun. In the letter, amongst other things, Banjo asked for “clarification of the Western position.” Adebayo promptly passed the letter to Awolowo in Lagos. S.G. Ikoku, an Awolowo loyalist in the East and Secretary-General of his Action Group, who was in exile in Ghana, said Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna told him when he escaped to Ghana, their plan in the January 1966 coup was to free Awolowo from Calabar prison and install him as Prime Minister. Awolowo was serving time for treason. In reality, there was no army unit heading to Calabar to spring Awolowo from jail. Receiving the secret note, Awolowo publicly pledged his allegiance to the federation and called upon special adverbs, forceful intensifiers and commanding modal verbs to elicit and consolidate the patriotism of his fellow Westerners. The statement split the Action Group and the West down the middle. They had not forgotten the monstrosity of northern hegemony; they had not forgotten how the North colluded with Igbos to forment trouble in the West. They had not forgotten how the North-East coalition had excluded Yoruba from key posts and grassroots recruitment policies.
On 7 August 1967, the American consul in Ibadan, Strong, wrote: “An old line of supporters, including more mature intellectuals like Professor Hezekiah Oluwasanmi (Ife University Vice Chancellor) and S.O. Ighodaro (lecturer at the University of Lagos) support the statement. They said Awolowo has always been a minorities man and the Eastern takeover of Midwest and continued occupation of Eastern minority areas is an indication of continued Ibo desire to dominate southern Nigeria.” On the other hand, Strong continued: “AG (Action Group) activists and the man in the street are convinced Awolowo made the statement under duress…They say Awolowo’s true position was indicated in the Leaders of Thought resolution in May, which said if any region seceded or forced out, the West would automatically become independent. The activists feel that Awolowo missed the opportunity to bring the present conflict to close by coming to Ibadan and make a Western Declaration of Independence speech supported by Victor Banjo and his National Liberation Army.” Mr Strong provided another dimension. “Since ‘there are no secrets in Yorubaland,’ it is very likely Awolowo was aware of coup talk here and issued the statement to forestall Western coup attempt and try and keep the tenuous peace in the West,” he wrote. On the night of 11 August, Mr Smallwood, British Deputy High Commissioner, came to inform his American counterpart that “decision has been taken by a group of AG activists to support efforts to stage a Midwest type coup here in the West. Timing uncertain but could happen anytime from 12th. Planners supposedly do not include top members of AG hierarchy, but certain young activists who hope present AG leaders with fait accompli consistent with their own sympathies.”


Strong was sceptical of the success of the coup not because of Awolowo’s rallying call, but as he wrote: “In the West, several ingredients for successful coup are lacking. There is, for example, no real counterpart of Ibo officers here.” And that was the coup for which Victor Banjo, confident of its success, received Ojukwu’s bullets with his head raised high and his chest pumped out at the firing squad in Enugu. Odumosu, Secretary to the Western government, was to later tell the consul in a secret document of 11 October 1967 that Bola Ige and Bisi Onabanjo, both commissioners, were suspected to be involved in the plot to make Banjo replace Adebayo once he invaded the West. Strong also noted that Alhaji Busari Obisesan, the former NNDP speaker of the Western House of Assembly, had been heavily involved in the plot to assassinate the pro-AG and pro-Awolowo Governor Adebayo since November of the previous year. The NNDP was a traditional ally of the North in its will to dominate. The consul noted: “Their plans in the past, traditionally, involve use of Northern troops for NNDP ends.” That was the 4th Battalion. This North-based battalion was moved over to Ibadan in 1957, it was said, to quell the political restiveness engulfing the streets of Ibadan. Soon it became a repressive machine made available by Ahmadu Bello to Akintola for use against his opponents and critics. The self-loading rifle Akintola used on the night he was murdered by Captain Nwobosi and his men was given to him by the 4th Battalion commander, Lt-Col Abogo Largema.


He personally supervised Akintola’s target practice in his barracks. It was some members of this notorious battalion that Major TY Danjuma also used to capture and murder Ironsi and the Western Region Governor, Adekunle Fajuyi. As part of Gowon’s effort to secure the support of the West, he pulled the notorious battalion back from Ibadan, stationing it in Jebba. As Captain Hamza, Ahmadu Bello’s chief body guard said to an expatriate friend, who then informed the British Deputy High Commission who, in turn informed the American consulate, Busari Obisesan had gone to the North to ask Hassan Katsina for help on 10 August. NNDP, he said, was “plotting their own measures to counter the AG threat of takeover” in the light of a pro-AG governor. Meanwhile on the streets of Ibadan, there was massive anger. On the morning of 15 August 1967, Adebayo told the American consul that “the trouble in Ibadan in the last three days were caused by some Hausas, including some Hausa soldiers hunting out and beating up Ibos. They wanted to kill them. This started sporadically, but when the situation got worse yesterday. He decided firm action was necessary to bring it under control.




Part 2 To Follow Shortly

Wat is d purpose of dis thread i see no real reason for opening dis thread is it to start another inter-tribal exchange of words here even dis topic has been posted here b4 SMH

Wat is d purpose of dis thread i see no real reason for opening dis thread is it to start another inter-tribal exchange of words here even dis topic has been posted here b4 SMH unfollow thread

ninja4life: Wat is d purpose of dis thread i see no real reason for opening dis thread is it to start another inter-tribal exchange of words here even dis topic has been posted here b4 SMH

It is a living testament to an aspect of nigerian history needed to dispel rumours,half-truth,paranoid fantasies and outright lies. It is even better that it is coming from an outsider or should I say a third party.

KEEP THEM COMING.POPCORN AT THE READY. A massive dump would be appreciated

Una nor dey taya? Biafra this, awolowo that. Oya now, go read!

so we should believe its true just because its supposedly American ?

propaganda to agitate Nigerians to split: it wont work. reasonable people will wonder why this is coming to the fore now? reason is the CIA prophecy about 2015.

D vultures are already hovering over ds thread to devour d carcasses of victims of d ensuing tribal fight.
A ppl dat refuse to learn from their past shall keep repeating d mistake.