The man that gave history a meaning, believer and martyr of justice and truth; a man whose achievements and efforts to ensure the unity of Nigeria was guaranteed, who laboured effortlessly to erase the festers of division that beclouded the country in the events to the civil war, he is the man this article talks about.

The narrative of the role Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Ezeigbo Gburugburu, Ikemba Nnewi Nke Mbu, the people's General played in ensuring the civil war was averted and the unity of Nigeria was ensured gives us the balance we have for long, been denied.

Read on...

"Despite the fact that I have serious deadline challenges let me struggle to finish what I started.

For people who still believe Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu was just an ambitious young man who wanted a country to rule, hence luring or forcing the Igbos into the Civil War as Biafra, let’s carefully go through these…

1. Emeka Ojukwu was a scholar, who went to one of the best public schools in England, Epsom and of course the best university in the world, Oxford where he obtained both bachelors and masters degrees. Then most Nigerian soldiers hardly attended secondary schools…most were recruited after primary school and concentrated their trainings in combat and related studies. Ojukwu knew the Nigerian Army then was ill-equipped for leadership and believed his dear country was starring doom on the face if the military ever took over the fledging nation.

2. The above reason was why he contributed over 70% in fouling Major Kaduna Nzeogwu’s coup. Again Ojukwu was coming from an enlightened and humane background. Murdering the Emir of Kano and other politicians in Kano in cold blood as Nzeogwu demanded was never part of his orientation. So, he called Nzeogwu’s bluff, contacted General Ironsi in Lagos, advised him to do what he had already done with the fifth infantry battalion in Kano – disarm them, lock up the armoury firmly, keep the keys safely out of reach and confine the soldiers to the barracks. Ironsi took to the advice and firmly secured Lagos just like Ojukwu did Kano. Nzeogwu held only Kaduna…and then later surrendered and was duly put in prison.

3. When Lt. Murtala Mohammed struck in the counter-coup that claimed Ironsi and many Igbo officers the excuse was that the North retaliated against the Igbos for killing mainly Northerners during Nzeogwu’s coup. Murtala, a close friend of Ojukwu, who Ojukwu personally saved from court-martial and dismissal from the Nigerian army while in Congo on a mission, refused to acknowledge the fact that it was still two IGBO officers in Ojukwu and Ironsi that fouled Nzeogwu’s coup.

4. Ojukwu supported Gen Ironsi to take over pending returning the country to civilian rule as quickly as possible. He supported Ironsi not because both were Igbo men but rather that Ironsi was the highest ranked Nigerian Army officer. And he was always quarreling with Ironsi for not taking appropriate steps. In charge of the Eastern region, Ojukwu twice threatened to resign from Ironsi’s government. Major bone of contention was Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Ojukwu wanted Ironsi to immediately release Awo, who was then being held in Calabar prisons. But Ironsi delayed that he was killed without signing the papers which were ready, thanks to Ojukwu’s pressure. So why would Ojukwu want Awo released ? – to usher speedy return to civilian rule. He had then built an enviable career in the army and wouldn’t have participated in such transition.

5. When Ironsi was murdered, Britain immediately put Col Gowon, who they had been cultivating and saw as a willing puppet, in charge. Britain craftily made Gowon inherit the fruits of Murtala’s coup, which got Ojukwu incensed. Brigadier Ogundipe was the next in rank to Ironsi and should have taken over. Even if Ogundipe chickened out, the SMC should have met to agree on the choice of Gowon. Contrary to mischievous tales, planted by the British propaganda machine, Ojukwu never wanted himself to be in charge. Ever foresighted Ojukwu knew his country was toeing destructive paths if the Nigerian Army became tribalised. Already politicians were aligning along ethnic lines. Three major parties before the coup were based in the North, East and West. The Nigerian civil service was regional-ized that personnel only worked within the regions of origin. Ojukwu saw the Nigerian Army as the only entity that could unify the country. He further reasoned that if a Westerner benefited from a Northern coup that chances were the army wouldn’t disintegrate. But Britain, Gowon and the North refused to listen and took over.

6. Gowon, as weak as he was, was only studying the scripts prepared by Britain when the massacre of Igbos erupted in the North. Ojukwu pleaded and pleaded to Gowon to enforce conditions to stop the killings. But Gowon, either intentionally did nothing or was too weak to do something. The killings were mounting in Kano…and Ojukwu tried many times to force his friend the Emir to intervene but nothing came out of it.

7. When the issue of the chancellor of University of Nigeria, Nsukka came up, Ojukwu, as the administrator of the Eastern Region, immediately went for the Emir of Kano. In that ceremony and after the decoration and speech by the Emir, Ojukwu took over. There were many Igbos who fled from the North that trooped the occasion. They went there to hear their leader speak based on the dangerously fragile atmosphere in the country. Ikemba looked at gloom faces and talked to them with the most persuasive voice he could muster. He appealed to them to get back to their bases in the North and resume their normal businesses that Nigeria was not going to crack. He urged them to take the human loses, even though extremely painful, as sacrifices made in course of nation building. With the Emir of Kano nodding nearby in resonance, umu Igbo, including those that were not present, went back to Kano and other parts of the North. Most of them never came back. Till he died one of Ojukwu’s saddest memories is that speech that sent his dear people to their untimely deaths, clobbered and butchered to cruel ends in all manners of brutality known to man.

8. Ojukwu called Gowon and proposed a meeting of the representatives of the four military governors ASAP. Gowon agreed and on August 9, 1966, the meeting held. They came up with one important agreement – that troops be returned to their respective Regions of origin to allow matters to cool down. Ojukwu, a man used to abiding by any agreement mutually reached, escorted all Northern troops in the East to the North, with all their arms. Those arms under the agreement were supposed to be returned. They never were. Eastern troops outside the East never got such favours. They were let loose without arms to make their way home as best as they could, or brought out from their cells and shot.

9. The killing of the Igbos in the North had not truly stopped, making, Ojukwu increasingly restless. He started all manners of talks for a conference to make stern and workable policy statements to restrain the barbaric acts. Gowon, basking in Britain’s rudder dithered. But there was one flicker of hope – the Ad Hoc Constitutional Conference, proposed under Ironsi, was to meet on September 12. Ojukwu hoped this Conference would fast-track the return to civilian rule via a new constitution and the re-democratisation of Nigeria. At that time it was fragile but then two military regimes in six months had done far more damage to Nigeria than the civil run ever did in six years.

10. On the evening of September 11, all Eastern delegates assembled in Enugu, ready for morning take-off to Lagos. But reports started coming in of an outbreak of resumed killings of Easterners in the North. The delegates, with events of May and July/August fresh in their minds, lost their nerves and refused to fly to Lagos the next day. Ojukwu summoned them them to the State House, spent hours and hours going all over again the importance of the conference. For once his power of oratory and conviction failed. Not one delegate agreed to fly to Lagos. Finally exhausted, Ojukwu retired to his private quarters and told his father, who was then back in the East, what happened. Sir Louis Odumegwu, the most influential Igbo in Nigeria left the room. That night, the man went from house to house, urging, exhorting, cajoling the men to change their minds. At midnight he returned to the State House triumphant – he had persuaded them, they would fly to Lagos in the morning. After a last drink with his overwhelmed son, Sir Odumegwu drove same night to Nkalagu, where he was spending the night with friends. At 3.00 a.m, the phone by Ojukwu’s bed rang – his father was seriously ill, possibly dying. Ojukwu left immediately, driving to Nkalagu and arrived just in time to hold his father’s hand for last blessing. Ten minutes later the great man died. Stricken with grief, Ojukwu was at the airport to see the delegates fly off. By midday reports were confirmed that sporadic killing of the Igbos by roving mobs had started again.

11. While the Conference was sitting in Lagos, the killings resumed in fiercer proportions…all parts of the North – Makurdi, Minna, Gboko, Gombe, Jos, Sokoto and Kaduna…then quickly spread to Kano, Zaria, Oturkpo, Bauchi, Zungeru and elsewhere. The message was the same – kill them all. While Igbos were the main targets, others of Eastern origin were not spared. In the main centres like Sabon Gari, hideous massacres took place as mobs but clearly led by soldiers and native police officers…they raged through the streets, hacking, spearing, cutting, chopping and shooting any Easterner they came across. On September 29, Gowon made a broadcast apparently intended to bring the violence to an end. It had exactly the opposite effect – that same day the killings exploded from a brush-fire into an all-consuming conflagration. From early October bodies piled so high in some Northern towns and cities that dustcarts were used to shovel them up and bury them in mass graves outside the city walls. Also the killing of the Easterners started in the West, leading to the inevitable adjournment of the Constitutional Conference on October 3.

12. From now what followed was horrible and difficult for a writer to pen. The Igbos were horrendously so massacred in the North that it was simply a pogrom. Over a million refuges left the North and crammed into the East for Ojukwu to manage. He did, with everything in him but only just. Still he did not go to war. He still sought for dialogue that eventually landed Gowon, Ojukwu and the whole SMC in Aburi, Ghana. The Aburi Accord would have saved Nigeria but Britain, rewrote and gave Gowon the script he put on broadcast, reneging from every agreement reached in Aburi.

13. By now the Igbo professionals, civil servants and business men were urging Ojukwu to declare for war but he deterred. He insisted he would only lead his people to war if Nigeria attacked her. But Gowon blockaded the East, declared a state of emergency in the East as well as divided Nigeria into 12 states all on his own, with Britain, of course. On May 26, 1967 the 335-man Consultative Assembly in Enugu gave Ojukwu mandate to pull the East out of Nigeria. On May 30, the East pulled out of Nigeria.

14. On July 6, 1967, the first shells from the Nigerian artillery landed on the small border town of Gakem. The Civil War had begun.

Complete reading: http://igbobia.com/?q=real-revelation-of-the-efforts-of-ojukwu-before-during-and-after-the-civil-war-facts-you-definitely

Liepods