PART C
These massive arms exports were being secretly supplied – indeed, massively stepped up – at a time when one could read about the actions of the recipients in the newspapers. After the Biafran withdrawal from the mid-west in September 1967 a series of massacres started against Ibo residents. The New York Times reported that over 5,000 had been killed in various towns of the mid west. About 1,000 Ibos were killed in Benin city by local people with the acquiescence of the federal forces, the New York Review noted in December 1967. Around 700 Ibo males were lined up and shot in the town of Asaba, the Observer reported in January 1968. According to eyewitnesses the Nigerian commander ordered the execution of every Ibo male over the age of ten.

Nigerian officials informed the British government that the arms were ‘important to them, but not vital’. More important than the actual arms ‘was the policy of the British government in supporting the FMG’.

This support was now taking place amid public and parliamentary pressure for a halt to British arms to Lagos, with 70 Labour MPs, for example, filing a motion for such an embargo in May 1968. Yet the real extent of arms supplied by Britain was concealed from the public.

Throughout 1967 and 1968, Ministers had been telling parliament that Britain was essentially neutral in the conflict in that it was not interfering in the internal affairs of Nigeria but simply continuing to supply arms to Nigeria on the same basis as before the war. As the declassified files, referred to above, show, this was simply a lie. For example, Wilson told the House on 16 May 1968 that: ’We have continued the supply… of arms by private manufacturers in this country exactly on the basis that it has been in the past, but there has been no special provision for the needs of the war’.

One British file at this time – mid-1968 – refers to deaths of between 70,000-100,000 by now as ‘realistic’. The Red Cross was estimating around 600,000 refugees in Biafra alone and was trying to arrange desperately needed supplies to meet needs, estimated at around 30 tons a day.

Humanitarian suffering, especially starvation, was severe as a result of the FMG’s blockade of Biafra. Pictures of starving and malnourished children went around the world. The FMG was widely seen as indulging in atrocities and attacks against civilians, including apparently indiscriminate air strikes, in an increasingly brutal war in which civilians were the chief victims.

The files show that Wilson told Gowon on several occasions in private letters that he had successfully fended off public and parliamentary criticism in Britain, in order to continue to support the FMG – clearly showing where the government’s priorities and sympathies lay. As in Vietnam at the same time, Wilson was not going to be deflected by mere public opposition from backing ongoing aggression by key allies, whatever the level of atrocities and casualties.

With federal forces in control by mid-year of Port Harcourt, the most important southern coastal city, British officials noted that ‘having gone this far in supporting the FMG, it would be a pity to throw away the credit we have built up with them just when they seem to have the upper hand’. Britain could not halt the supply of arms since ‘apart from other considerations, such an outcome would seriously put at risk about £200m of British investments in non-Biafra Nigeria’, George Thomson explained to Harold Wilson.

It was also at this point that British officials sought to counter widespread opposition to the Nigerian government by conniving with it to improve the ‘presentation’ of its policies – another example of Britain’s past ‘information operations’ described in earlier chapters. Britain urged the FMG to convince the outside world that it was not engaged in genocide or a policy of massacre and to make public statements on the need for a ceasefire and humanitarian access to Biafra.

High Commissioner Hunt suggested to Gowon that the federal air force be used for ‘psychological warfare’ and to drop leaflets over the Ibo towns which would help the FMG score a ‘propaganda point’. Officials noted that their support for the FMG was under attack and that ‘our ability to sustain it… depends very much on implementing enlightened and humane federal policies and securing public recognition for them’. What was needed was ‘good and well-presented Nigerian policies which permit that support to continue’. Wilson therefore urged a senior Nigerian government official, Chief Enahoro, ‘to make a greater effort to ensure that their case did not go by default’.

The files indicate that these ‘presentational’ issues were much more important to British officials than any actual suffering of the Biafrans themselves. London never did anything significant to press the FMG. British officials ruled out threatening to cut off, or reduce, arms exports to force the FMG to change policies. The issue that most concerned the government at the time was that it would be forced to withdraw or reduce its support for Gowon in the face of public pressure. This, therefore, had to be countered, and the FMG needed to make greater efforts.

By mid-1968 British officials had still had no contacts with Ojukwu and other Biafran leaders; offers from the latter had been refused. So supportive was Wilson of the FMG that he even asked the Nigerians in advance whether they would have ‘any difficulties’ if a British official met a Biafran representative. Chief Enahoro replied that this would be acceptable provided the contacts were ‘strictly private and had no formal character’.

In early August FMG forces had retaken the whole of the southeastern and Rivers states and the easterners were now confined to a small enclave, blockaded from the outside world. Commonwealth Minister Lord Shepherd minuted Harold Wilson saying, that 14 months since Biafran secession: ‘Our support for the FMG finds us in the position in which we are on comparatively good terms with the side which is in an overwhelmingly advantageous position… It is important, therefore, that we should not be manoeuvred by pressure of opinion inspired by Ojukwu’s publicity, into abandoning at this late stage all the advantages which our policy so far seemed likely to bring us’. The same month, the Red Cross estimated 2-3 million people ‘in dire need’ and a similar number were facing shortages of food and medical aid.

Wilson did not succomb to public pressure. The following month he told Gowon that: ‘The British government for their part have steadfastly maintained their policy of support for Federal Nigeria and have resisted all suggestions in parliament and in the press for a change in that policy, particularly in regard to arms supplies’. The Foreign Office argued that ‘the whole of our investments in Nigeria and particularly our oil interests in the south east and the mid-west will be at risk if we change our policy of support for the federal government’.

In November, Lord Brockway and his committee for peace in Nigeria met Wilson and urged him to halt arms sales and to press for a ceasefire, estimating that there could be two million deaths from starvation and disease by the end of the year. Wilson not only rebuffed this plea; the files reveal that two days later he agreed to supply Nigeria with aircraft for the first time in a covert deal.

The Nigerians had been pressing Britain to supply several jet aircraft, specifically to attack the runways used by Biafran forces (and which also needed to be used to deliver humanitarian aid). Wilson said that Britain could not supply these directly but there were such aircraft in South Yemen and Sudan previously supplied by Britain. The Nigerians, he said, should procure the aircraft from them which ‘would not directly involve the British government’. The company to deal with in those two countries was Airwork Limited, which was later to be again used by the British government to conceal its involvement in its covert dirty war in Yemen. The British government also agreed to put the Nigerians in touch with ‘suitable pilots’.

British arms supplies were stepped up again in November. Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart said the Nigerians could have 5 million more rounds of ammunition, 40,000 more mortar bombs and 2,000 rifles. ‘You may tell Gowon’, Stewart instructed High Commissioner Hunt in Lagos, ‘that we are certainly ready to consider a further application’ to supply similar arms in the future as well. He concluded: ‘if there is anything else for ground warfare which you… think they need and which would help speed up the end of the fighting, please let us know and we will consider urgently whether we can supply it’.

Other supplies agreed in November following meetings with the Nigerians included six Saladins and 20,000 rounds of ammunition for them, and stepped up monthly supplies of ammunition, amounting to a total of 15 million rounds additional to those already agreed. It was recognised by the Defence Minister that ‘the scale of the UK supply of small arms ammunition to Nigeria in recent months has been and will continue to be on a vast scale’. The recent deal meant that Britain was supplying 36 million rounds of ammunition in the last few months alone. Britain’s ‘willingness to supply very large quantities of ammunition’, Lord Shepherd noted, ‘meant drawing on the British army’s own supplies’.

At the same time the Foreign Office was instructing its missions around the world to lie about the extent of this arms supply. It sent a ‘guidance’ memo to various diplomatic posts on 22 November saying that ‘we wish to discourage suggestions’ that the Nigerians, in their recent meetings with British officials, were seeking ‘to negotiate a massive arms deal’. Rather, ‘our policy of supplying in reasonable quantities arms of the kind traditionally supplied’ to Nigeria ‘will be maintained but no change in the recent pattern of supplies is to be expected’. So great is the culture of lying at the Foreign Office, it appears that policy is even to keep its own officials in the dark.

By the end of 1968 Britain had sold Nigeria £9 million worth of arms, £6 million of which was spent on small arms. A quarter of Nigeria’s supplies (by value) had come from the Soviet Union, also taking advantage of the war for its own benefit and trying no doubt to secure an opening into Nigeria provided by this opportunity. British officials consistently justified their arms supply by saying that if they stopped, the Russians would fill the gap. It was Britain’s oil interests, however, that was the dominating factor in Whitehall planners’ reasoning.

By the last two months of 1968, with hundreds of thousands dead by now, the fighting had reached a stalemate. The FMG had taken all Biafran territory apart from a small enclave within it consisting of 3 million people in an area the size of Kent. Biafrans were now dependent on two airstrips for outside supplies which were limited by both Gowon’s and Ojukwu’s refusals to allow sufficient numbers of aircraft to land. Humanitarian agencies were continuing calls for a ceasefire as suffering, especially starvation, had reached crisis proportions. ‘We shall continue to maintain our present policy, despite these heavy pressures on us’, Wilson told Gowon in November. Foreign Secretary Stewart instructed Lord Shepherd, on a visit to Lagos, to tell Gowon of the extraordinary steps Britain was taking to support him. Gowon should realise, Stewart said, that opposition to British policy ‘cuts right across the normal political or party divisions in the country and is especially strong in the various churches’. He also interestingly said that ‘similar feeling is also expressed within the Cabinet itself’ – such was the extremely thin base on which British support for the FMG was being provided. (One wonders about similar memos being written by Tony Blair to George Bush in 2003).

The Wilson government was keen to present itself as engaged in the search for peace – the files show that officials did so knowing that without appearing to be active they would not have been able to justify their support for the FMG. British government activity in peace negotiations invariably sought to avoid the involvement of the United Nations and was intended to support the FMG to maintain a united Nigeria and to achieve a solution on its terms only.

In public, British statements consistently blamed only the Biafrans, not the FMG, for obstructing peace negotiations and the delivery of humanitarian aid. On the latter, there were numerous proposals and counter-proposals made by both sides on the issue of night or dayflights, and river or land routes into Biafra, which obstructed the delivery of humanitarian aid to millions of suffering people. The FMG feared that the Biafrans would use the cover of humanitarian aid supplies to slip in arms deliveries; while the Biafrans believed the FMG would poison the supplies. There is no doubt that Ojukwu and the Biafran leadership were partly responsible for the failure to deliver adequate humanitarian aid, yet so were the FMG. Starvation of the Biafrans was no accident or simply a by-product of the war; it was a deliberate part of the FMG’s war policy.

Several memos by British officials that reached Wilson and other ministers painted a more accurate picture than the one pushed in public. These said that it was as least as much the FMG that were to blame as the Biafrans. Yet this never upset British policy to side unequivocally with Gowon’s FMG.

In March 1969 Wilson gave a public interview and lied that ‘we continue to supply on a limited scale arms – not bombs, not aircraft – to the government of Nigeria because we have always been their suppliers’. Not only was this untrue as a result of the agreements late the previous year; on the very same day as this interview, the government approved the export of 19 million rounds of ammunition, 10,000 grenades and 39,000 mortar bombs – bombs, that is, that Wilson had said Britain was not supplying at all, still less on a vast scale.

A day before the Wilson interview, a Foreign Office official had written that ‘we have over the last few months agreed to supply large quantities of arms and ammunition’ to Nigeria ‘to assist them in finishing the war in the absence of any further [peace] negotiations’. He also noted that ‘we have flown small arms ammunition to Nigeria… using Manston airport in Kent without attracting unfavourable press comment’.

It was therefore perhaps no surprise that Gowon could write to Wilson in April saying that ‘of all the governments in the Western world, yours has remained the only one that has openly maintained its policy of arms supplies to my government’. France, Belgium and the Netherlands, among others, had all announced a halt while the US continued its policy of not supplying arms to either side.

Two senior British RAF officers secretly visited Nigeria in August 1969 to advise the Nigerians on ‘how they could better prosecute the air war’. The main British interest, the files make clear, was to provide better protection of the oil installations, but the brief for the two officers stated that this impression should not be given to the Nigerians. The officers subsequently advised the Nigerians on a variety of tactics on ‘neutralisation of the rebel airstrips’. It was understood that destruction of the airstrips would put them out of use for daylight humanitarian relief flights. It is not clear whether such advice was put into action.

Britain armed the federal government all the way. In December 1969, just before the FMG’s final push that crushed the Biafrans, Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart was calling for stepping up military assistance including the supply of more armoured cars. These supplies by Britain, he wrote, ‘have undoubtedly been the most effective weapons in the ground war and have spear-headed all the major federal advances’.
Biafran resistance ended by mid January 1970. Wilson then sent another message to Gowon saying that ‘your army has won a decisive victory’ and has achieved ‘your great aim of preserving the unity and integrity of Nigeria’, adding: ‘As you know I and my colleagues have believed all along that you were right and we have never wavered in our support for you, your government and you policy, despite the violent attacks which have been made on us at times in parliament and in the press as well as overseas’.

The Deputy High Commissioner in Lagos added: ‘There is genuine gratitude (as indeed there should be) for what Britain has done and is still doing for this country, and in particular for Her Majesty’s Government’s courage in literally sticking to their guns over Biafra’.

The toll of the war was counted in a report for the British High Commission at the end of the month. It referred to a relief agency report estimating 1 1/2-2 million people were being fed with food relief supplies, around 700,000 of whom were refugees in camps dependent entirely on food aid. Three million refugees were crowded into a 2,500 square kilometre enclave in which not only food but medicine, housing and clothing were in short supply. The Biafran economy was shattered, cities were in ruins and schools, hospitals and transport facilities destroyed.

My people suffered

Another main reason why we must say #NO to ELECTORAL VIOLENCE
Nobody wants war lets prove to our enemies that Nigeria unlike their speculations would not be disintegrated by 2015

Some empty flat head will be shouting Biafra

Each time I read the war history, the only thing running in mind is vengeance on all party that dealt with the Biafra's.
Also bring my mind back why the Muslim or Arab world relate to west with vengeance.
Please burying these Biafra war history will help unifying the country better as it does more harm publishing it online.

.

I don't think it is good hiding this stories. We need to see it. We need to appreciate our mistakes, learn from our deeds and reconcile properly.

.

.

Biafra people good info

Biafra still exist in most ibos mind. There was a country.

Wilson n Britain.

Interesting read, the British, Egyptian, USSR and Arab nations support for Nigeria made them win the war. You are as powerful as the number of allies you have fighting for you. That was the main reason Germany lost both world war 1 and 2 and also the main reason for US posturing as world leader. As said by Putin, Russia has so many powerful enemy but very few powerful friends. Lessions to be learnt, make sure you have alot of allies next time so that our people would not perish without achieving our main objective. Presently, i am not pro-massob because what would happen after succession, how would the so call new country stand. So many issues that has not been addressed. Therefore, i don't think we need any succession now.

We Igbos love Biafra cos is the only country wev got dough a fool will say were is it and we are proud of our heroes who lost thier lives to this brutal nation-immiscibly mixed as one nation...brothers are naturally built not by force mind u.

Our resolve to go home to Biafra is non negotiable.

We can all see the work of slave traders who created and preserved Nigeria.

One day we must go back to our dream home BIAFRA,is a must

Too bad

They want to exterminate us from the surface of the Earth and yet, we are still standing tall, prosperous and resilient after passing through hell of a life. Also the Nigeria government carried out policies to cripple the economy activities of the Igbo's after the war and i can't really comprehend what our fathers encountered through all these sufferings. Every Igbo man and woman should glamour for our own country at all cost. This is the time and we should enroll in a peaceful dialogue to embark on this great journey. The land of the sun shall rise again.

Nigeria is a fake state. It's time the nations within Nigeria go their separate ways.

Let me save this, will definitely read it later.

Interesting, will read this later. As far as Britain being shady and lying about things; well, there's nothing new under the sun.

[color=][/color]

Just look at the amount of arms and ammunition Britain gave Nigeria for the war! We are not even talking about the one Russia have them. In addition, British warships blockaded Biafra. Nigeria never won the war, Britain won it for them.

It was all about oil and it is still about oil.