Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara was the Premier of Eastern Nigeria and leader of the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), known at its birth as the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon. He and Chief Dennis Osadebay of the Mid-West were the only Regional Premiers who survived the army revolt of January, 1966, in which two other premiers were killed.

An Ibo from Ohuhu, near Umuahia-Ibeku in the then Eastern Nigeria - Nigeria's first military ruler, Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, also came from Umuahia - Dr. Okpara was at 46 the country's youngest Premier. The son of a laborer, he was born in December, 1920. After attending mission schools, he went to the Uzuakoli Methodist College, near his village, and won a scholarship to the then Yaba Higher College, Lagos, to study medicine. Completing his medical studies at the Nigerian School of Medicine, Dr. Okpara worked briefly as a government medical officer before setting up private practice in Umuahia. While

.carrying on his practice, Dr. Okpara showed great interest in the Zikist Movement (named after Dr. Azikiwe), the militant wing of Dr. Azikiwe's NCNC which brought the independence struggle to a head in the late 'forties. After the shooting of rioting workers at the Enugu coal mines (1949), Dr. Okpara was one the Zikists arrested by the government for allegedly organizing the workers for political ends. He was later released. Following the granting of internal self-rule by Britain, Dr. Okpara was elected to the Eastern House of Assembly in 1952 on an NCNC ticket. Between then and 1959, when he took over from Dr. Azikiwe as Premier of the East, he held various Cabinet posts from Minister of Health to Agriculture and Production.

When in 1953, NCNC legislators in the Eastern House of Assembly and the Central Government in Lagos revolted against the party leadership, Dr. Okpara was among party loyalists who joined forces with Dr. Azikiwe. It was not until November, 1960, when Dr. Azikiwe finally left active politics to become Nigeria's first African Governor-General, that Dr. Okpara was elected leader of the NCNC. Very forceful and outspoken, Dr. Okpara is uncompromising on vital national issues. This in 1963 led to severe strain in relations with the ruling Northern Peoples' Congress of the late Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, with which the NCNC formed the country's first post-independence Government.

A strong advocate of what he calls 'pragmatic socialism', Dr. Okpara believes the country's salvation lies in agricultural revolution. He owns a large farm in his hometown and thus inspired many Eastern Nigerian leaders to take and interest in farming.

Dr. Okpara was one of the politicians detained soon after the military coup of January, 1966, which brought an end to civilian rule. He was released in July after a second coup swept General Ironsi out of power. He received the award of GCON (Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger), the country's highest decoration, in 1964 in recognition of his services to the country.


Another great son of Nigeria which people hurriedly 4got, some say he lived under the shadow of Zik but under his reign as premier, eastern Nigeria(Including the present day niger delta) thrived basically on agriculture which was his fulcrum for socio economic empowerement.

Would like to hear various views,

And? 

We are talking about the living and how to feed and clothe them in Nigeria and you are still fixated on the dead.

JUST TO COUNTER THE SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA, IGBOS ALWAYS SECOND TO YORUBAS.
HOW MANY OF YOU IBOS EVEN HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT HIM

^^
Thought u had changed. . .

seanet02:

JUST TO COUNTER THE SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA, IGBOS ALWAYS SECOND TO YORUBAS.
HOW MANY OF YOU IBOS EVEN HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT HIM

There is something called personal opinion, i think this is it

Aloy_Emeka:

And? 

We are talking about the living and how to feed and clothe them in Nigeria and you are still fixated on the dead.

 
U're right but i don't think remembering people who served this nation selflessly is out of place, something our present day politicians lack and may never have.

obiem:

There is something called personal opinion, i think this is it



U're right but i don't think remembering people who served this nation selflessly something i'm afraid our present day politicians lack and may never have.

AND HOW DID HE SERVED NIGERIA? HE SERVED THE EAST

seanet02:

AND HOW DID HE SERVED NIGERIA? HE SERVED THE EAST

With ur written english and ur footnote, it's easy to conclude. In the same way Awo/Akintola served the west.

This man desserves praise and monuments throughout the East. When I get enough money, I will definitely build a monument in this man's honor. He was ahead of his time and one of his kind. And a man who lived a simple life. He cared not only for the Igbo, but the East in general.

He did not care if the person was Igbo, Ibibio, Ijaw, Efik, Idoma etc. The man just wanted to improve the East.

I wonder what he meant by 'pragmatic socialism'?

^^
Igbo Kwenu!! 

ziddy:

^^
Igbo Kwenu!!

Guy you dey laugh my tagbon abi? .

Seanet02
How did Akintola and Awo serve Nigeria? They served Yorubaland, except for Awo that negatively served humanity via his Biafran kids starvation tactics

Nchara:

Seanet02
How did Akintola and Awo serve Nigeria? They served Yorubaland, except for Awo that negatively served humanity via his Biafran kids starvation tactics

Very well said Nchara,

MaziUche0:

This man desserves praise and monuments throughout the East. When I get enough money, I will definitely build a monument in this man's honor. He was ahead of his time and one of his kind. And a man who lived a simple life. He cared not only for the Igbo, but the East in general.

He did not care if the person was Igbo, Ibibio, Ijaw, Efik, Idoma etc. The man just wanted to improve the East.

I can't agree more with u more mazi uche, Okpara was truly ahead of his time.

seanet02:

JUST TO COUNTER THE SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA, IGBOS ALWAYS SECOND TO YORUBAS.
HOW MANY OF YOU IBOS EVEN HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT HIM

You are a dirty loudmouthed simpleton who neither read history nor understood the value of recorded events. At least, Dr M I Okpara gave Nigeria the famous Mobile Police Unit. The police unit has performed admirable services that benefited not only Nigerian but other Western Africans.  Do not mention the names of your tribally tinted leaders such Awo or Akintola when Dr M. I Okpara’s name is praised.

seanet02:

JUST TO COUNTER THE SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA, IGBOS ALWAYS SECOND TO YORUBAS.
HOW MANY OF YOU IBOS EVEN HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT HIM

Blood
we don't need this; we don't have to make incendiary comments especially when they are not justified. It leads to unnecessary mudslinging which denigrates the memories of past leaders.

One small correction, NCNC was not Zik's, quite a group of people "owned" NCNC. I will like to get more information on this man as most of the time it is either Ojukwu or Zik that we read about on Nairaland.

seanet02:

JUST TO COUNTER THE SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA, IGBOS ALWAYS SECOND TO YORUBAS.
HOW MANY OF YOU IBOS EVEN HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT HIM

It is very delightful to see you make silly begot out of your ignorant and dilapidated brain. I suggest you submerge your lazy physic into environ of academic vitality. When Awo and Akintola chickened out to campaign in northern region because of threats to create hell on earth by politicians from northern region, Dr. M Okpara did not only show up in Kaduna and Kano as he promised but informed Ahmadu Bello the date and time of his arrival.   

Northern regional government tried to get certain entrepreneurs to deny services to Dr M. Okpara’s political entourage but almost all the four stars hotels in Kaduna and Kano were owned by Igbo business men.

He should be given more praise. Now he needs a huge monument and mausoleum for what he was able to do for Eastern Nigeria. Igbos we need to do something for this man!

What Port-Harcourt is today should be credited to Okpara. Yet he is not from P.H but from Umuahia.

Thanks!
[img]http://s07.flagcounter.com/count/DymW/bg=FFFFFF/txt=FFFFFF/border=FFFFFF/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=0/[/img]

MaziUche0:

Now he needs a huge monument and mausoleum for what he was able to do for Eastern Nigeria. Igbos we need to do something for this man!

Sure, so it can end up like Zik's grave when lazy Ibos decline to tend to it and instead cry that the Yourbas should come help them clean it!

seanet02:

JUST TO COUNTER THE SAMUEL LADOKE AKINTOLA, IGBOS ALWAYS SECOND TO YORUBAS.
HOW MANY OF YOU IBOS EVEN HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT HIM

@Dede1 and Mazi Uche, tanks for proving this imbecilic 'homo sapien' wrong!


Okpara made his mark as premier and as a pre independence nationalist. Despite his agrarian initiatives which turned the economy of the eastern region into one of the fastest growing economies at that time, his role in the impasse between the locals and the colonial masters at the coal mine in Enugu is also of note. This earned the mine it's present name 'Okpara mine' in present day enugu state.

To think that Pat Utomi once confessed on a program i was watching that he and some of his colleagues in UNN where making jokes against Okpara's son when they were students that Okpara's son was not living like the son of a premier of a region ie not flambouyant.

Dede1:
[b]
It is very delightful to see you make silly begot out of your ignorant and dilapidated brain. I suggest you submerge your lazy physic into environ of academic vitality. When Awo and Akintola chickened out to campaign in northern region because of threats to create hell on earth by the northern region politicians, Dr. M Okpara did not only show up in Kaduna and Kano as he promised but informed Ahmadu Bello the date and time of his arrival.

Northern regional government tried to get certain entrepreneurs to deny services to Dr M. Okpara’s political entourage but almost all the four stars hotels in Kaduna and Kano were owned by Igbo business men.

seems you are out of this world when okpara admitted that the GREATEST MISTAKE HE MADE IN HIS LIFE WAS NOT TEAMING UP WITH AWOLOWO YOU ARE REALLY A GREAT DISSAPOINTMENT ON YOUR FAMILY!!! slowpoke JUST READ THIS BY THE VERY MAN FIGHTING BIAFRAS CAUSE

Why Biafra failed –Chief Raph Uwechue
By ONUOHA UKEH

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Being excerpts from the book: Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War – Facing the Future, written, by Chief Raph Uwechue, president-general, Ohanaeze, the pan-Igbo socio-cultural organization.


Chief Raph Uwechue


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It is a sad but instructive irony that Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwn, one of Africa’s one-time most brilliant political promises, was the man who led his own people with such a lack of ingenuity into what was clearly a foreseeable disaster. This agonizing paradox is resolved only by an understanding of the man.

There are scholars who hold the view that the personality of Adolf Hitler was the factor, which, more than any other, determined the destiny of Second World War Germany, as much indeed, as they argue that Winston Churchill’s determined that of Great Britain. Leaning a little on the basic hypothesis of this school of thought, it can be said for the Nigerian Civil War that the personality of Odumegwu Ojukwu, more than any other single factor, determined much of the course and certainly the character of the end of the Biafran adventure.

Avid for power, he paid more attention to the politics of the war than to the one basic question of security. Biafra’s efforts were trimmed to his size and through much of the conflict reflected his own strength as well as his own weaknesses. This personification of the struggle and the lethal cloud of illusion, which it created around him, were to persist until the end. Thus on the same day as his more down-to-earth successor, General (Phillip) Effiong, signed the formal act of Biafra’s surrender, General Ojukwu was still declaring: “While I live, Biafra lives. If I am no more, it would be only a matter of time for the noble concept to be swept into oblivion.”

Ojukwu’s political genius was, therefore, at once, his making and his undoing. Because he was an extremely able politician and knew this fact too well, he tended to trust only his own judgment. This fact, coupled with an exaggerated personal ambition blinded him to the sickening realities of Biafra’s last days. In Biafra, two wars were fought simultaneously. The first was for the survival of the Ibos as a race. The second was for the survival of Ojukwu’s leadership.

Ojukwu’s error, which proved fatal for millions of Ibos, was that he put the latter first. A good deal of the war effort was diverted into promoting Ojukwu and his leadership. Be it the question of starvation and relief or other vital matters affecting the population at large, propaganda considerations took precedence over cold realities. Calculation as a method was replaced by hopeful interpretations of ambitious wishes. Personal ambition thus adroitly grafted onto the genuine grievances of an injured people produced a mixture, which lacked the purity and sanity that the Ibos needed badly in so unequal a fight. The result was that in the end Biafrans secured an undisputed head but not the body of their state.

Right from the start the problem that faced the Ibos in Nigeria was one of security. Sovereignty was only a means to attain this end. As the struggle progressed, it became evident that the chosen means was obstructing progress towards the desired end-security. When this fact became clear, many friends inside and outside Biafra began to urge a compromise solution that would recognize Nigeria’s territorial integrity but at the same time grant to the Biafrans adequate local autonomy and security. The failure of Biafra’s leadership to acknowledge the absolute necessity for a compromise, even in the face of overwhelming odds, not only prolonged the war but also ensured that it ended the way it did.

At the beginning of the struggle, the Ibos had a very good chance, if not of winning against the authorities in Lagos, certainly of avoiding a humiliating defeat. Politically, Ojukwu inherited considerable assets. The political alignment in Nigeria just before the introduction of military rule was by no means unfavourable. Up until the eve of the civil war, Nigerian politics were dominated by the three big tribes: the Hausa-Fulani of the North, the Ibos of the East and the Yorubas of the West. In this triangular fight, the key to victory was the combination of any two sides. It did not matter which two.

Only the then Northern Region, led by the NPC (Northern People’s Congress) appeared to have fully appreciated and exploited this golden rule. After the inconclusive results of the 1959 eve-of-independence federal elections, the NPC brilliantly out-manoeuvered its two Southern rival, the NCNC (National Council for Nigerian Citizens) then led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and the AG (Action Group) under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Thwarting a coalition of the two Southern progressive parties, the NPC tinkered out an incongruous alliance with the NCNC in a lop-sided federal coalition government. This move allowed it to rule the country riding on the back of a docile NCNC when, two years later, the strain of the burden began to tell on the latter the sensitive rider sought to change horses. The only alternative was the AG. But strong-willed Awolowo was an obstacle.

An attempt to circumvent his rigid political hostility to the NPC led to the vigorous wooing of his deputy, Chief S. L. Akintola, and in turn to the split in the AG. Backed by the NPC controlled Federal Government, Akintola succeeded in installing himself and his faction in power in Western Nigeria. Soon, Chief Awolowo and his ablest aides, including Chief Anthony Enahoro, were politically liquidated – incarcerated allegedly for treason. But as events were soon to prove, the people of the West did not want Chief Akintola. Thus, despite an impressive sleight of hand, the NPC succeeded in pulling with it the headship but not the populace of Western Nigeria.

The less sensitive NCNC dominated by undisciplined, individualistic and greedy federal ministers woke up too late to appreciate the full political import of the battle for Western Nigeria. Nevertheless, the struggle itself revealed to it the risk of isolation involved in its passivity. It set to work for an East-West alliance to fight the federal elections scheduled for 1964.

The result was the UPGA (United Progressive Grand Alliance), uniting the two powerful Southern parties – the NCNC now led by the dynamic Dr. Michael Okpara and Chief Awolowo’s Action Group, led, in his absence, by Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro. UPGA represented by far the bulk of the population in Eastern, Western, and Mid-Western Nigeria, as well as articulate minority elements in the North, all of whom found common cause in opposing the domination of the conservative and feudal NPC.

The military coup of January 1966 swept civilians out of power and dissolved political parties but the undercurrent of East-West solidarity represented by UPGA remained. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was still serving his 10-year prison sentence. The majority of the Yorubas supported him and his Action Group continued to enjoy abundant popularity in Western Nigeria. His friendship with Dr. Michael Okpara, the Ibo leader of the NCNC, continued to sustain the Southern solidarity. When the counter-coup of July 1966, which brought General (Yakubu) Gowon to power occurred, the spirit of that solidarity was still high. The coup itself not only killed the Eastern Ibo leader, General (Johnson Thomas) Ironsi, but also the popular Yoruba military governor of Western Nigeria, Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi. In this setting, it was clear that the Yorubas of the West were potentially more inclined to ally with the Ibos of the East against the power of the North from which both had suffered so recently.

General Gowon sensed this mood and acted swiftly. Not only did he release Chief Awolowo immediately from prison, he wooed him with the unprecedented flattery of welcoming him, with a guard of honour, at Ikeja airport. Gowon’s clever release of Chief Awolowo had the effect of reducing but not eliminating Yoruba dislike for the North. This fact soon became evident. In March 1967, Chief Awolowo, now free and still the undisputed leader of the Yorubas, made a public statement, which reflected very clearly his sympathy for Col. Ojukwu’s Eastern Region. In an open letter to the government, he demanded that the two battalions of northern troops stationed in the West should be withdrawn from that region which, according to him, was being treated by the northerners as an occupied territory.

He went further to threaten that if “the Eastern Region was pushed out of the federation, Western Nigeria would quit the federation as well.” Faced with this threat of an alliance between the Yoruba West and the Ibo East, the Northern controlled Federal Military Government became visibly alarmed.

The seeds of Biafra’s failure took root from this point. Eastern Nigeria’s leadership failed to appreciate what Gowon saw so clearly – the vital necessity of securing the alliance of Chief Awolowo and the Western Region. Was General Ojukwu simply and innocently overconfident? Or, too anxious for his own position, did he feel that an alliance with Chief Awolowo, already a towering national figure, would dwarf his own fledgling personality and jeopardize his chances for supreme leadership? The fact remains that too little or nothing was done to woo Chief Awolowo. When on 7th May 1967 the Yoruba leader came to Enugu at the head of a reconciliation committee, Ojukwu had a handsome opportunity to play his card. He missed. Dr. Michael Okpara who still enjoyed popular support in Eastern Nigeria and whose friendship with Chief Awolowo had sustained the UPGA alliance was not even invited to meet Chief Awolowo. After a hurried reception, Chief Awolowo’s delegation left Eastern Nigeria. Ojukwu saw fit to describe the mission as an “ill-conceived child.”

General Gowon, on the contrary, studiously drew Chief Awolowo closer to himself. He offered him the highest civilian post in the Federal Military Government – the vice-presidency of the Federal Executive Council – with the unspoken understanding that Nigeria was his as soon as the war was over and the army withdrew.

By this act, the East-West alliance foreshadowed by UPGA was destroyed and a new North-West axis was born. From this moment on, Ojukwu’s Eastern Nigeria was isolated and when war broke out she had to fight it alone. Eastern Nigeria’s political choice of secession completed the region’s isolation. The struggle was no longer between the so-called Christian East and Moslem North. That decision united all shades of opinion in Nigeria, giving to them a sense of oneness – and to the Northern-dominated Federal Government an invaluable instrument-in the common fight to defend Nigeria’s unity.

Within Eastern Nigeria (Biafra), General Ojukwu’s tactics led to a quick alienation of many talented Ibos. From the very beginning, he set out to establish his authority with a heavy hand. Under his orders Dr. Michael Okpara, the popular former civilian Premier of Eastern Nigeria, was clamped in jail. So were a number of his ministers. The only notable exception was the former Attorney General, Mr. C. C. Mojekwu, Ojukwu’s kinsman, whom he retained and made Biafra’s Minister of Interior. Inspired insinuations went round accusing Dr. Azikiwe, Nigeria’s former President, of mismanaging the affairs of the University of Nsukka of which he was the founder-chancellor. These political figures were to remain out of favour and far from the corridors of power, except for their occasional utility as window dressing, such as posing for photographs with General Ojukwu or flanking him on ceremonial occasions. Their rich political experience was practically unused and they were called in to participate in the Biafran government in any effective way only when the first signs of collapse had appeared. This was late in September 1967, when Biafra experienced its first military reverses, which led rapidly to the fall of Enugu.

Within the army, General Ojukwu adopted the same tactics of eliminating his opponents. I have already related in the chapter on secession the trend of the struggle for power between Ojukwu and the Biafran army leadership. The result of his success was a timid army tamed to unquestioned obedience. Thus, only two days after General Ojukwu’s escape from Biafra, his Chief of Staff, regaining his freedom, was able to declare: “We have always believed that our differences with Nigeria should be settled by peaceful negotiations.”

On the diplomatic plane, events were not different. General Ojukwu rejected advice time and again on the need for timely compromise.

When the war began to drag on and the suffering of the masses increased steadily, a number of prominent Ibos began to advise General Ojukwu to ask for a confederal arrangement, which, while it kept Biafra within Nigeria, would nevertheless, leave her room for adequate local autonomy. The climax came on the 7th of September 1968, just before the OAU summit meeting in Algiers. A number of anxious Ibos, including Dr. Azikiwe, former President of Nigeria; Dr. Michael Okpara, former Premier of Eastern Nigeria (Biafra); Dr. K. O. Dike, former rector of Ibadan University, and myself, made a formal recommendation in which we told General Ojukwu that as Africa was sympathetic to the Ibo cause, but at the same time opposed to secession, he should use the opportunity of the Algiers meeting to seek OAU guarantees for a confederal arrangement, such as was agreed at Aburi (Ghana). General Ojukwu not only rejected this advice outright but also asked some of us to recant or resign. Dr. Azikiwe left Paris in disgust and went to London in voluntary exile.

I myself chose to resign.

It is here perhaps, that the question of the responsibility of a timid lbo elite comes in. The Biafran masses, enslaved by an extremely efficient propaganda network and cowed by the iron grip of a ruthless military machine, had neither the facts nor the liberty to form an independent opinion. The case of the elite was different. Biafra’s choice was clear after the double losses of (a) territory, with the fall of Biafra’s major towns, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Onitsha, Aba and Umuahia and, (b) war funds, with the exhaustion of Biafra’s treasury in February 1968 caused by Nigeria’s switch to a new currency, which suddenly rendered practically valueless some 30 million Pounds in Biafran hands. Those who had access to the facts knew that the time had come to seek a realistic way to end the war and save million of defenseless Ibos and innocent children from disaster. In private, they expressed this view but proved too cowardly to take a stand and tell Ojukwu the truth. On the contrary, they allowed themselves to be used for the public denunciation of those who took the risk of calling for a halt. Yet, when their cherished handiwork was threatened with collapse, these frontline advocates of “fighting to the last man” were the first men to flee.

One particular episode has since stuck in my mind. In June. 1968, I paid my first of two visits that year to Tunis, as a member of an official delegation headed by Dr. K. O. Dike and including Mr. Francis Nwokedi, to present Biafra’s case to the Tunisian government. During our discussion, President Bourguiba twice referred to a loose federal arrangement and at the end of that conversation, asked directly what we thought of such an arrangement. Dr. Dike looked up. Mr. Nwokedi, a one-time lronsi confidant and General Ojukwu’s private eye on the delegation, signalled disapproval. The answer came: “It is too late, Your Excellency, to think of a confederation or anything like that at this stage. That was agreed at Aburi, but Lagos rejected it. After so much sacrifice we are not prepared to go back to it.” President Bourguiba sat back in his chair. We missed the cue. Back to Tunis, Hilton. I reopened the matter at the dinner table. I suggested that we were wrong to have given so direct an answer rejecting a confederal arrangement . I thought the right step was to have simply made a note of President Bourguiba’s question and relayed it with our recommendations to General Ojukwu. Mr. Nwokedi was infuriated. “You mean we should surrender,” he asked through a choking mouthful of caviar. Dr. Dike rushed to my defence: “That’s not what Raph said; he is merely giving his opinion.” I left the table and my meal. I had had enough.

The termination of the conflict in Biafra’s unconditional surrender was, by no means, inevitable. Despite the ultimate advantages that lay with the federal side in military superiority and international support accruing to a widely recognized sovereign state, the struggle hung in the balance long enough to give the Biafran leadership ample room for fruitful diplomatic manoeuvre. It was its stark refusal to take timely advantage of a prolonged military stalemate that spelt Biafra’s doom.

The Commonwealth-sponsored peace talks in Kampala (May, 1968) were an important watershed in the development of the Nigerian conflict. Although their failure closed the door for good to Commonwealth initiative, it opened it wider for active African diplomatic intervention. That courageous but abortive attempt awakened the dormant and timid OAU Consultative Peace Committee to the consciousness that after all there were two sides to the conflict, even though both sides formed one Nigeria. It was thus that, for the first time, serious direct approaches were made to the Biafran leadership and in mid-July 1968, General Ojukwu was invited to address the committee in Niamey, capital of the Niger Republic.

From this moment on, the key to victory lay in the diplomatic rather than in the military field. Neither Nigeria nor Biafra produced its own arms in any serious sense of the term. Both were fed – one lavishly, the other meagerly – through umbilical cords leading from the exterior – from the big powers. Because the interest of these powers in Africa is largely a global one aimed at winning the maximum of influence in the continent, it was evident that none of them could knowingly go seriously against any clear trend of African opinion, especially on such a matter with momentous implications for the entire continent. In spite of the widespread sympathy for the Ibos provoked by the massacres of 1966, Biafra’s secession, like its Katangan predecessor, found very limited sympathy among the ruling classes in Africa. The OAU stuck faithfully throughout the struggle to the principle of settlement “within the context of one Nigeria.”

Though lacking military might, this organization provided a preponderant moral force, which, in turn, sustained Nigeria’s international support. The two big powers – Britain and Russia – who backed Lagos used the smokescreen of massive African approval to promote their own interests. The United States drew solace from it for its neutrality. France, whatever might have been her secret wishes, could not, in her own interest, advance beyond a certain point to help le pauvre petit Biafra. Throughout much of the war, Biafra’s lone powerful backer was France.

Her active and wholehearted intervention was the only real chance Biafra had to “make it.” Yet by 9th September 1968, General de Gaulle had made it abundantly clear that “in this matter France has aided and aids Biafra within possible limits. She has not taken steps to accomplish the final decisive act – the recognition of the Biafran Republic – because she considers that the matter is above all the affair of Africans.” (author’s italics).

In such an assisted tournament, the determining factor was the relative strength of the seconds. General Ojukwu saw the opponent in front but ignored his powerful backer. Realistic planning based on timely concessions was replaced by virulent but ineffectual invective against “co-colonialist Britain” and “revisionist Russian imperialism.” Yet all that “was needed to avoid disaster was a timely placation of the humbler and more accessible African opinion – African fears about secession – by abandoning the demand for sovereignty for the substance of security in a loose Nigerian union.

The guarantee of support for such a moderate stand existed. While few African heads of states were prepared to go as far as Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Gabon in giving full international recognition to Biafra, there were nonetheless many who were not enthusiastic supporters of the rigid and sometimes arrogant federal line. What mattered most to the bulk of African opinion was that the principle of secession should be dropped. The leaders in Senegal, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda and Dr. Busia’s Ghana were clearly among those in this middle position. By refusing to take the initiative to abandon secession, Biafra refused to help these potential allies within the OAU to come more effectively to her aid.

Thus did an insensitive group clinging to sovereignty at all costs succeed in taxing to exhaustion the resources of one of Africa’s most gifted races. The cause for which the Ibos fought and died – to ensure their inalienable right to a decent life in adequate security – was and still remains a just one. It was the leadership’s inability to distinguish between its own limited interests and those of the Ibos as a race that brought them disaster.

In contrast with the unrealism of Biafran leaders, General Gowon clearly appeared to have grasped the crucial importance of African support as indeed, as I mentioned earlier in this chapter, he had foreseen the vital need for alliances within the country itself. This was in connection with the flattering attention he paid to Chief Awolowo and his tactful attitude, which ultimately secured for him the alliance of the “leader of the Yorubas.” From the start, he wooed the OAU with the same assiduity. The different attitudes paid off accordingly. At the Algiers Summit Conference in September 1968, President Kaunda, who led his country’s delegation, made an impassioned plea for Biafra’s cause. Biafra not only received the direct support of the four countries that had recognized her, two countries, Burundi and Rwanda, refused to take sides by abstaining. A year later, at the Addis Ababa Summit (September 1969), President Julius Nyerere came fully prepared to press Biafra’s case for sovereignty. He lobbied delegates actively and distributed a prepared statement aimed at convincing his colleagues that they were wrong in supporting the Federal Government’s case. He was categorical: “The break-up of Nigeria is a terrible thing. But it is less terrible than that cruel war. Thousands of people are being shot, bombed or seeing their homes and livelihood destroyed; millions, including the children of Africa, are starving to death. (It is estimated that possibly more people have died in this war in the last two years than in Vietnam in the last 10 years).

“We are told that nothing can be done about this. It is said that the sufferings of the Biafrans in the war are regrettable, but that starvation is a legitimate war weapon against an enemy. Yet by this statement you have said that these people, the Nigerians and the Biafrans, are enemies, just as Britons and Germans, in Hitler’s war, were enemies. If that is the case, is it rational to imagine that, once a federal victory is obtained, they can immediately be equal members of one society, working without fear? Or is the logic of being enemies not a logic, which leads to conquest and domination when one side is victorious? Let us reject the internal domino theory in relation to the Nigerian question , For it assumes that the people now in the Federation of Nigeria are, and wish to be, imperialists. I cannot believe that.

“I still believe that they are capable of recognizing the tragedy which has caused one part of the federation to break away, and of acknowledging that very different tactics are necessary if the old Nigeria is ever to be recreated. For surely they could decide to leave the Biafrans to go their own way and, by the kind of Nigeria which they create, to show the Biafrans what they are losing by remaining separated from their brethren. For if the other peoples of Nigeria decide to work together, they will continue to be a strong and powerful force in Africa; they really have the opportunity to build a good nation of which every Nigerian –indeed every African – can be proud. Then it may be that at some time in the future the Biafrans will wish to rejoin the peoples from whom they now wish to part; if this happens, it will be the accession of a free people to a large and free political.”

In the face of this “provocation,” Gowon’s response was characteristic. Against the advice of his hawks who regarded Nyerere’s action as a slap in the face, he sought an interview with the Tanzanian president “to explain how reluctant he was to continue the war.” He also met the leaders of the three other delegations from the countries that had recognised Biafra. The result of his “humble” initiative was predictable. At the close of the meeting, the case for Biafra’s sovereignty did not have a single direct supporter. Of the 41 countries attending, all but five voted in support of Lagos, for settlement “within the context of one Nigeria.” Only Sierra Leone joined Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon and the Ivory Coast in merely abstaining. The echoes of that meeting went beyond the membership of the OAU. In early October 1969, when President Nyerere paid an official visit to Canada, the following report underlined the extent of his conversion: “Tanzania is one of the four states that have recognized Biafran statehood and Canada is very emotionally involved at the moment in this issue. It is believed that President Nyerere feels that the Canadian government should concentrate on relief efforts to Biafra rather than on overt political action, although he would no doubt welcome any pressures by Ottawa on Whitehall to stop supplying arms to the Lagos government (author’s italics).”

Seeking an explanation for the source of the impulse behind Ojukwu’s undoubted personal domination of the Biafran situation, Nelson Ottah, former editor of Drum and a high ranking member of the Biafra’s elite Directorate of Propaganda during the war, commented as follows: “Perhaps Emeka, were he born to another father; might not have aimed so high and fallen so low. But being the son of his father and his mother, he had too wide a lee-way to make up. His father was too rich and of high standing in the estimation of the Ibos. Emeka craved for a heroic act that would make him greater than his father. His mother has children to another man, and Emeka himself was born out of wedlock.

Emeka craved for an achievement that would force his admirers to forget his birth. What turned Emeka into a bedroom Napoleon , was a complex of inadequacy.”

The above probably is an oversimplification, which tends to debase the issue somewhat by reducing it to a mere craving on Ojukwu’s part to overcome a complex resulting from the ordinary accident of birth. It was not his birth; it was his upbringing that exercised the decisive influence on Ojukwu, shaped his early life and conditioned his reactions when he found himself later in power. Frederick Forsyth, a close war-time friend with a strong pro-Biafran bias, records the following about Ojukwu’s early life: “The story of his second, but favourite son, can hardly be described as a rags-to-riches tale.

The family dwelling where the young Emeka Ojukwu played before going to school was a luxurious mansion. Like most wealthy businessmen, Sir Louis kept open house and his mansion was a meeting place for all the moneyed elite of the prosperous colony. In 1940, the young Ojukwu entered the Catholic Mission Grammar School, but soon moved to King’s College, the smart private academy modelled closely on the lines of one of Britain’s public schools. Here he remained until he was 13; when his father sent him to Epsom College, set amid the rolling green hills of Surrey. He recalled later that his first impression of Britain was a sense of being completely lost ‘amid this sea of white faces.’ The isolation of a small African boy in such a totally strange environment caused the first moulding of the character that was to follow. Driven in on himself he developed a private philosophy of total self-reliance, an unyielding internal sufficiency that requires no external support from others.”

To this special development of his ego and the feeling of self-sufficiency was added the confidence acquired from an Oxford University milieu and from the fact of his father’s great wealth. Back to Nigeria, Ojukwu soon joined the army, where, as an officer, he got more accustomed to giving orders and receiving prompt obedience than meeting opposition and arguments. Furthermore, as one of the first and very few indigenous graduate officers of his time, he enjoyed an immense prestige even among his fellow officers. Once again he found himself more often at the ‘giving’ rather than at the ‘receiving’ end. Such a combination of circumstances could hardly have failed to leave its mark on his character and bearing. By keeping Ojukwu constantly enveloped in an atmosphere of superiority, it made him, as a matter of habit, distrustful and disdainful of other people’s judgment, impatient with their opinions and finally simply authoritarian.

The extent of Ojukwu’s anxiety and determination to control the most minute detail of the action, of even his ablest and most “trusted” lieutenants perhaps, well illustrated by the following routine query he sent on 5th July 1968 to Dr. Eni Njoku, former vice-chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who was then leading the Biafran delegation to the preliminary peace talks in Niamey, capital of Niger Republic: “BBC report this morning, member of the Biafran delegation, apparently the leader, as coming out from the conference hall hugging a Nigerian. Would like clarification of this report which, if it is true, is a breach of my instructions that there should be no fraternization between us and the enemy.”

The above analysis of Biafra’s failure has evidently put strong emphasis on the rule of Ojukwu’s personal leadership. Such an approach, no doubt, raises the following important question: How is it possible for one man – a young and largely inexperienced soldier at that – to impose his will for so long on some 14 million people among who is to be found one of the highest concentrations of the intelligent and educated elite of black Africa?

Perhaps the following testimony from Philip Effiong, the 44-year-old veteran to whom Ojukwu handed power, will throw some light on the answer to this question. In an exclusive interview published in the monthly magazine, Drum of April 1970, we find the following questions and answers:

Drum:

One would expect that those army officer who did not approve of secession, would give Ojukwu showdown. Why did you not remove him by organising a bloodless coup d’etat?

Effiong:

“It wasn’t easy. Make no mistake about it. The sentiment of the people was very strong in favour of the ideas and ideals propounded by Emeka. I hate to say this because it makes me feel like a coward. Ojukwu was a dictator, you know. It wasn’t always safe or easy to oppose his ways or will. The best you could do was to point out the dangers to Ojukwu. But if you didn’t know when to stop shooting your mouth, he could easily throw you in detention.”

Drum:

What virtues did you find in Ojukwu?

Effiong:

“He was no devil. Everybody admires his personal courage, his infinite ability for hard work (because that man could go on from morning almost indefinitely). He was quite courageous, although in the end he escaped. But he had one weakness – he did not know when to apply the brakes. But it’s purely because he was ambitious. He was a very able chap.”

Indeed, for anyone close to the scene and who saw the mechanism of power at work in Biafra, the answer to that question holds no mystery. Ojukwu inherited three major assets, which worked in his favour and which he exploited to the full to ensure for himself ultimately an almost hysterical support from the Biafran masses. As the son of one of Nigeria’s wealthiest men, he belonged to the establishment, whose confidence and respect came naturally to him. As an Oxford-educated young man, he found easy acceptance among the intellectual elite – in the civil service and especially concentrated in the University of Nsukka, which provided most of the intellectual force behind the Biafran revolution. Then finally, the masses of aggrieved Ibos gave him their unconditional support because they saw in him a leader with the necessary toughness and the will to challenge Lagos and avenge them for their bitter experiences and the massacres of 1966 – acts for which they held the old Northern region and the then Northern-controlled Federal Military Government re [/b]

READ THE BOLDED PART MY IGBO ATTACKERS SEE AWOLOWO LOVED YOU BUT YOUR SILLY ojukwu FUMBLED
Why Biafra failed –Chief Raph Uwechue
By ONUOHA UKEH

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Being excerpts from the book: Reflections on the Nigerian Civil War – Facing the Future, written, by Chief Raph Uwechue, president-general, Ohanaeze, the pan-Igbo socio-cultural organization.


Chief Raph Uwechue


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It is a sad but instructive irony that Lt. Col. Odumegwu Ojukwn, one of Africa’s one-time most brilliant political promises, was the man who led his own people with such a lack of ingenuity into what was clearly a foreseeable disaster. This agonizing paradox is resolved only by an understanding of the man.

There are scholars who hold the view that the personality of Adolf Hitler was the factor, which, more than any other, determined the destiny of Second World War Germany, as much indeed, as they argue that Winston Churchill’s determined that of Great Britain. Leaning a little on the basic hypothesis of this school of thought, it can be said for the Nigerian Civil War that the personality of Odumegwu Ojukwu, more than any other single factor, determined much of the course and certainly the character of the end of the Biafran adventure.

Avid for power, he paid more attention to the politics of the war than to the one basic question of security. Biafra’s efforts were trimmed to his size and through much of the conflict reflected his own strength as well as his own weaknesses. This personification of the struggle and the lethal cloud of illusion, which it created around him, were to persist until the end. Thus on the same day as his more down-to-earth successor, General (Phillip) Effiong, signed the formal act of Biafra’s surrender, General Ojukwu was still declaring: “While I live, Biafra lives. If I am no more, it would be only a matter of time for the noble concept to be swept into oblivion.”

Ojukwu’s political genius was, therefore, at once, his making and his undoing. Because he was an extremely able politician and knew this fact too well, he tended to trust only his own judgment. This fact, coupled with an exaggerated personal ambition blinded him to the sickening realities of Biafra’s last days. In Biafra, two wars were fought simultaneously. The first was for the survival of the Ibos as a race. The second was for the survival of Ojukwu’s leadership.

Ojukwu’s error, which proved fatal for millions of Ibos, was that he put the latter first. A good deal of the war effort was diverted into promoting Ojukwu and his leadership. Be it the question of starvation and relief or other vital matters affecting the population at large, propaganda considerations took precedence over cold realities. Calculation as a method was replaced by hopeful interpretations of ambitious wishes. Personal ambition thus adroitly grafted onto the genuine grievances of an injured people produced a mixture, which lacked the purity and sanity that the Ibos needed badly in so unequal a fight. The result was that in the end Biafrans secured an undisputed head but not the body of their state.

Right from the start the problem that faced the Ibos in Nigeria was one of security. Sovereignty was only a means to attain this end. As the struggle progressed, it became evident that the chosen means was obstructing progress towards the desired end-security. When this fact became clear, many friends inside and outside Biafra began to urge a compromise solution that would recognize Nigeria’s territorial integrity but at the same time grant to the Biafrans adequate local autonomy and security. The failure of Biafra’s leadership to acknowledge the absolute necessity for a compromise, even in the face of overwhelming odds, not only prolonged the war but also ensured that it ended the way it did.

At the beginning of the struggle, the Ibos had a very good chance, if not of winning against the authorities in Lagos, certainly of avoiding a humiliating defeat. Politically, Ojukwu inherited considerable assets. The political alignment in Nigeria just before the introduction of military rule was by no means unfavourable. Up until the eve of the civil war, Nigerian politics were dominated by the three big tribes: the Hausa-Fulani of the North, the Ibos of the East and the Yorubas of the West. In this triangular fight, the key to victory was the combination of any two sides. It did not matter which two.

Only the then Northern Region, led by the NPC (Northern People’s Congress) appeared to have fully appreciated and exploited this golden rule. After the inconclusive results of the 1959 eve-of-independence federal elections, the NPC brilliantly out-manoeuvered its two Southern rival, the NCNC (National Council for Nigerian Citizens) then led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and the AG (Action Group) under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Thwarting a coalition of the two Southern progressive parties, the NPC tinkered out an incongruous alliance with the NCNC in a lop-sided federal coalition government. This move allowed it to rule the country riding on the back of a docile NCNC when, two years later, the strain of the burden began to tell on the latter the sensitive rider sought to change horses. The only alternative was the AG. But strong-willed Awolowo was an obstacle.

An attempt to circumvent his rigid political hostility to the NPC led to the vigorous wooing of his deputy, Chief S. L. Akintola, and in turn to the split in the AG. Backed by the NPC controlled Federal Government, Akintola succeeded in installing himself and his faction in power in Western Nigeria. Soon, Chief Awolowo and his ablest aides, including Chief Anthony Enahoro, were politically liquidated – incarcerated allegedly for treason. But as events were soon to prove, the people of the West did not want Chief Akintola. Thus, despite an impressive sleight of hand, the NPC succeeded in pulling with it the headship but not the populace of Western Nigeria.

The less sensitive NCNC dominated by undisciplined, individualistic and greedy federal ministers woke up too late to appreciate the full political import of the battle for Western Nigeria. Nevertheless, the struggle itself revealed to it the risk of isolation involved in its passivity. It set to work for an East-West alliance to fight the federal elections scheduled for 1964.

The result was the UPGA (United Progressive Grand Alliance), uniting the two powerful Southern parties – the NCNC now led by the dynamic Dr. Michael Okpara and Chief Awolowo’s Action Group, led, in his absence, by Alhaji Dauda Adegbenro. UPGA represented by far the bulk of the population in Eastern, Western, and Mid-Western Nigeria, as well as articulate minority elements in the North, all of whom found common cause in opposing the domination of the conservative and feudal NPC.

The military coup of January 1966 swept civilians out of power and dissolved political parties but the undercurrent of East-West solidarity represented by UPGA remained. Chief Obafemi Awolowo was still serving his 10-year prison sentence. The majority of the Yorubas supported him and his Action Group continued to enjoy abundant popularity in Western Nigeria. His friendship with Dr. Michael Okpara, the Ibo leader of the NCNC, continued to sustain the Southern solidarity. When the counter-coup of July 1966, which brought General (Yakubu) Gowon to power occurred, the spirit of that solidarity was still high. The coup itself not only killed the Eastern Ibo leader, General (Johnson Thomas) Ironsi, but also the popular Yoruba military governor of Western Nigeria, Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi. In this setting, it was clear that the Yorubas of the West were potentially more inclined to ally with the Ibos of the East against the power of the North from which both had suffered so recently.

General Gowon sensed this mood and acted swiftly. Not only did he release Chief Awolowo immediately from prison, he wooed him with the unprecedented flattery of welcoming him, with a guard of honour, at Ikeja airport. Gowon’s clever release of Chief Awolowo had the effect of reducing but not eliminating Yoruba dislike for the North. This fact soon became evident. In March 1967, Chief Awolowo, now free and still the undisputed leader of the Yorubas, made a public statement, which reflected very clearly his sympathy for Col. Ojukwu’s Eastern Region. In an open letter to the government, he demanded that the two battalions of northern troops stationed in the West should be withdrawn from that region which, according to him, was being treated by the northerners as an occupied territory.

He went further to threaten that if “the Eastern Region was pushed out of the federation, Western Nigeria would quit the federation as well.” Faced with this threat of an alliance between the Yoruba West and the Ibo East, the Northern controlled Federal Military Government became visibly alarmed.

The seeds of Biafra’s failure took root from this point. Eastern Nigeria’s leadership failed to appreciate what Gowon saw so clearly – the vital necessity of securing the alliance of Chief Awolowo and the Western Region. Was General Ojukwu simply and innocently overconfident? Or, too anxious for his own position, did he feel that an alliance with Chief Awolowo, already a towering national figure, would dwarf his own fledgling personality and jeopardize his chances for supreme leadership? The fact remains that too little or nothing was done to woo Chief Awolowo. When on 7th May 1967 the Yoruba leader came to Enugu at the head of a reconciliation committee, Ojukwu had a handsome opportunity to play his card. He missed. Dr. Michael Okpara who still enjoyed popular support in Eastern Nigeria and whose friendship with Chief Awolowo had sustained the UPGA alliance was not even invited to meet Chief Awolowo. After a hurried reception, Chief Awolowo’s delegation left Eastern Nigeria. Ojukwu saw fit to describe the mission as an “ill-conceived child.”

General Gowon, on the contrary, studiously drew Chief Awolowo closer to himself. He offered him the highest civilian post in the Federal Military Government – the vice-presidency of the Federal Executive Council – with the unspoken understanding that Nigeria was his as soon as the war was over and the army withdrew.

By this act, the East-West alliance foreshadowed by UPGA was destroyed and a new North-West axis was born. From this moment on, Ojukwu’s Eastern Nigeria was isolated and when war broke out she had to fight it alone. Eastern Nigeria’s political choice of secession completed the region’s isolation. The struggle was no longer between the so-called Christian East and Moslem North. That decision united all shades of opinion in Nigeria, giving to them a sense of oneness – and to the Northern-dominated Federal Government an invaluable instrument-in the common fight to defend Nigeria’s unity.

Within Eastern Nigeria (Biafra), General Ojukwu’s tactics led to a quick alienation of many talented Ibos. From the very beginning, he set out to establish his authority with a heavy hand. Under his orders Dr. Michael Okpara, the popular former civilian Premier of Eastern Nigeria, was clamped in jail. So were a number of his ministers. The only notable exception was the former Attorney General, Mr. C. C. Mojekwu, Ojukwu’s kinsman, whom he retained and made Biafra’s Minister of Interior. Inspired insinuations went round accusing Dr. Azikiwe, Nigeria’s former President, of mismanaging the affairs of the University of Nsukka of which he was the founder-chancellor. These political figures were to remain out of favour and far from the corridors of power, except for their occasional utility as window dressing, such as posing for photographs with General Ojukwu or flanking him on ceremonial occasions. Their rich political experience was practically unused and they were called in to participate in the Biafran government in any effective way only when the first signs of collapse had appeared. This was late in September 1967, when Biafra experienced its first military reverses, which led rapidly to the fall of Enugu.

Within the army, General Ojukwu adopted the same tactics of eliminating his opponents. I have already related in the chapter on secession the trend of the struggle for power between Ojukwu and the Biafran army leadership. The result of his success was a timid army tamed to unquestioned obedience. Thus, only two days after General Ojukwu’s escape from Biafra, his Chief of Staff, regaining his freedom, was able to declare: “We have always believed that our differences with Nigeria should be settled by peaceful negotiations.”

On the diplomatic plane, events were not different. General Ojukwu rejected advice time and again on the need for timely compromise.

When the war began to drag on and the suffering of the masses increased steadily, a number of prominent Ibos began to advise General Ojukwu to ask for a confederal arrangement, which, while it kept Biafra within Nigeria, would nevertheless, leave her room for adequate local autonomy. The climax came on the 7th of September 1968, just before the OAU summit meeting in Algiers. A number of anxious Ibos, including Dr. Azikiwe, former President of Nigeria; Dr. Michael Okpara, former Premier of Eastern Nigeria (Biafra); Dr. K. O. Dike, former rector of Ibadan University, and myself, made a formal recommendation in which we told General Ojukwu that as Africa was sympathetic to the Ibo cause, but at the same time opposed to secession, he should use the opportunity of the Algiers meeting to seek OAU guarantees for a confederal arrangement, such as was agreed at Aburi (Ghana). General Ojukwu not only rejected this advice outright but also asked some of us to recant or resign. Dr. Azikiwe left Paris in disgust and went to London in voluntary exile.

I myself chose to resign.

It is here perhaps, that the question of the responsibility of a timid lbo elite comes in. The Biafran masses, enslaved by an extremely efficient propaganda network and cowed by the iron grip of a ruthless military machine, had neither the facts nor the liberty to form an independent opinion. The case of the elite was different. Biafra’s choice was clear after the double losses of (a) territory, with the fall of Biafra’s major towns, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Calabar, Onitsha, Aba and Umuahia and, (b) war funds, with the exhaustion of Biafra’s treasury in February 1968 caused by Nigeria’s switch to a new currency, which suddenly rendered practically valueless some 30 million Pounds in Biafran hands. Those who had access to the facts knew that the time had come to seek a realistic way to end the war and save million of defenseless Ibos and innocent children from disaster. In private, they expressed this view but proved too cowardly to take a stand and tell Ojukwu the truth. On the contrary, they allowed themselves to be used for the public denunciation of those who took the risk of calling for a halt. Yet, when their cherished handiwork was threatened with collapse, these frontline advocates of “fighting to the last man” were the first men to flee.

One particular episode has since stuck in my mind. In June. 1968, I paid my first of two visits that year to Tunis, as a member of an official delegation headed by Dr. K. O. Dike and including Mr. Francis Nwokedi, to present Biafra’s case to the Tunisian government. During our discussion, President Bourguiba twice referred to a loose federal arrangement and at the end of that conversation, asked directly what we thought of such an arrangement. Dr. Dike looked up. Mr. Nwokedi, a one-time lronsi confidant and General Ojukwu’s private eye on the delegation, signalled disapproval. The answer came: “It is too late, Your Excellency, to think of a confederation or anything like that at this stage. That was agreed at Aburi, but Lagos rejected it. After so much sacrifice we are not prepared to go back to it.” President Bourguiba sat back in his chair. We missed the cue. Back to Tunis, Hilton. I reopened the matter at the dinner table. I suggested that we were wrong to have given so direct an answer rejecting a confederal arrangement . I thought the right step was to have simply made a note of President Bourguiba’s question and relayed it with our recommendations to General Ojukwu. Mr. Nwokedi was infuriated. “You mean we should surrender,” he asked through a choking mouthful of caviar. Dr. Dike rushed to my defence: “That’s not what Raph said; he is merely giving his opinion.” I left the table and my meal. I had had enough.

The termination of the conflict in Biafra’s unconditional surrender was, by no means, inevitable. Despite the ultimate advantages that lay with the federal side in military superiority and international support accruing to a widely recognized sovereign state, the struggle hung in the balance long enough to give the Biafran leadership ample room for fruitful diplomatic manoeuvre. It was its stark refusal to take timely advantage of a prolonged military stalemate that spelt Biafra’s doom.

The Commonwealth-sponsored peace talks in Kampala (May, 1968) were an important watershed in the development of the Nigerian conflict. Although their failure closed the door for good to Commonwealth initiative, it opened it wider for active African diplomatic intervention. That courageous but abortive attempt awakened the dormant and timid OAU Consultative Peace Committee to the consciousness that after all there were two sides to the conflict, even though both sides formed one Nigeria. It was thus that, for the first time, serious direct approaches were made to the Biafran leadership and in mid-July 1968, General Ojukwu was invited to address the committee in Niamey, capital of the Niger Republic.

From this moment on, the key to victory lay in the diplomatic rather than in the military field. Neither Nigeria nor Biafra produced its own arms in any serious sense of the term. Both were fed – one lavishly, the other meagerly – through umbilical cords leading from the exterior – from the big powers. Because the interest of these powers in Africa is largely a global one aimed at winning the maximum of influence in the continent, it was evident that none of them could knowingly go seriously against any clear trend of African opinion, especially on such a matter with momentous implications for the entire continent. In spite of the widespread sympathy for the Ibos provoked by the massacres of 1966, Biafra’s secession, like its Katangan predecessor, found very limited sympathy among the ruling classes in Africa. The OAU stuck faithfully throughout the struggle to the principle of settlement “within the context of one Nigeria.”

Though lacking military might, this organization provided a preponderant moral force, which, in turn, sustained Nigeria’s international support. The two big powers – Britain and Russia – who backed Lagos used the smokescreen of massive African approval to promote their own interests. The United States drew solace from it for its neutrality. France, whatever might have been her secret wishes, could not, in her own interest, advance beyond a certain point to help le pauvre petit Biafra. Throughout much of the war, Biafra’s lone powerful backer was France.

Her active and wholehearted intervention was the only real chance Biafra had to “make it.” Yet by 9th September 1968, General de Gaulle had made it abundantly clear that “in this matter France has aided and aids Biafra within possible limits. She has not taken steps to accomplish the final decisive act – the recognition of the Biafran Republic – because she considers that the matter is above all the affair of Africans.” (author’s italics).

In such an assisted tournament, the determining factor was the relative strength of the seconds. General Ojukwu saw the opponent in front but ignored his powerful backer. Realistic planning based on timely concessions was replaced by virulent but ineffectual invective against “co-colonialist Britain” and “revisionist Russian imperialism.” Yet all that “was needed to avoid disaster was a timely placation of the humbler and more accessible African opinion – African fears about secession – by abandoning the demand for sovereignty for the substance of security in a loose Nigerian union.

The guarantee of support for such a moderate stand existed. While few African heads of states were prepared to go as far as Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Gabon in giving full international recognition to Biafra, there were nonetheless many who were not enthusiastic supporters of the rigid and sometimes arrogant federal line. What mattered most to the bulk of African opinion was that the principle of secession should be dropped. The leaders in Senegal, Tunisia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Liberia, Burundi, Rwanda and Dr. Busia’s Ghana were clearly among those in this middle position. By refusing to take the initiative to abandon secession, Biafra refused to help these potential allies within the OAU to come more effectively to her aid.

Thus did an insensitive group clinging to sovereignty at all costs succeed in taxing to exhaustion the resources of one of Africa’s most gifted races. The cause for which the Ibos fought and died – to ensure their inalienable right to a decent life in adequate security – was and still remains a just one. It was the leadership’s inability to distinguish between its own limited interests and those of the Ibos as a race that brought them disaster.

In contrast with the unrealism of Biafran leaders, General Gowon clearly appeared to have grasped the crucial importance of African support as indeed, as I mentioned earlier in this chapter, he had foreseen the vital need for alliances within the country itself. This was in connection with the flattering attention he paid to Chief Awolowo and his tactful attitude, which ultimately secured for him the alliance of the “leader of the Yorubas.” From the start, he wooed the OAU with the same assiduity. The different attitudes paid off accordingly. At the Algiers Summit Conference in September 1968, President Kaunda, who led his country’s delegation, made an impassioned plea for Biafra’s cause. Biafra not only received the direct support of the four countries that had recognized her, two countries, Burundi and Rwanda, refused to take sides by abstaining. A year later, at the Addis Ababa Summit (September 1969), President Julius Nyerere came fully prepared to press Biafra’s case for sovereignty. He lobbied delegates actively and distributed a prepared statement aimed at convincing his colleagues that they were wrong in supporting the Federal Government’s case. He was categorical: “The break-up of Nigeria is a terrible thing. But it is less terrible than that cruel war. Thousands of people are being shot, bombed or seeing their homes and livelihood destroyed; millions, including the children of Africa, are starving to death. (It is estimated that possibly more people have died in this war in the last two years than in Vietnam in the last 10 years).

“We are told that nothing can be done about this. It is said that the sufferings of the Biafrans in the war are regrettable, but that starvation is a legitimate war weapon against an enemy. Yet by this statement you have said that these people, the Nigerians and the Biafrans, are enemies, just as Britons and Germans, in Hitler’s war, were enemies. If that is the case, is it rational to imagine that, once a federal victory is obtained, they can immediately be equal members of one society, working without fear? Or is the logic of being enemies not a logic, which leads to conquest and domination when one side is victorious? Let us reject the internal domino theory in relation to the Nigerian question , For it assumes that the people now in the Federation of Nigeria are, and wish to be, imperialists. I cannot believe that.

“I still believe that they are capable of recognizing the tragedy which has caused one part of the federation to break away, and of acknowledging that very different tactics are necessary if the old Nigeria is ever to be recreated. For surely they could decide to leave the Biafrans to go their own way and, by the kind of Nigeria which they create, to show the Biafrans what they are losing by remaining separated from their brethren. For if the other peoples of Nigeria decide to work together, they will continue to be a strong and powerful force in Africa; they really have the opportunity to build a good nation of which every Nigerian –indeed every African – can be proud. Then it may be that at some time in the future the Biafrans will wish to rejoin the peoples from whom they now wish to part; if this happens, it will be the accession of a free people to a large and free political.”

In the face of this “provocation,” Gowon’s response was characteristic. Against the advice of his hawks who regarded Nyerere’s action as a slap in the face, he sought an interview with the Tanzanian president “to explain how reluctant he was to continue the war.” He also met the leaders of the three other delegations from the countries that had recognised Biafra. The result of his “humble” initiative was predictable. At the close of the meeting, the case for Biafra’s sovereignty did not have a single direct supporter. Of the 41 countries attending, all but five voted in support of Lagos, for settlement “within the context of one Nigeria.” Only Sierra Leone joined Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon and the Ivory Coast in merely abstaining. The echoes of that meeting went beyond the membership of the OAU. In early October 1969, when President Nyerere paid an official visit to Canada, the following report underlined the extent of his conversion: “Tanzania is one of the four states that have recognized Biafran statehood and Canada is very emotionally involved at the moment in this issue. It is believed that President Nyerere feels that the Canadian government should concentrate on relief efforts to Biafra rather than on overt political action, although he would no doubt welcome any pressures by Ottawa on Whitehall to stop supplying arms to the Lagos government (author’s italics).”

Seeking an explanation for the source of the impulse behind Ojukwu’s undoubted personal domination of the Biafran situation, Nelson Ottah, former editor of Drum and a high ranking member of the Biafra’s elite Directorate of Propaganda during the war, commented as follows: “Perhaps Emeka, were he born to another father; might not have aimed so high and fallen so low. But being the son of his father and his mother, he had too wide a lee-way to make up. His father was too rich and of high standing in the estimation of the Ibos. Emeka craved for a heroic act that would make him greater than his father. His mother has children to another man, and Emeka himself was born out of wedlock.

Emeka craved for an achievement that would force his admirers to forget his birth. What turned Emeka into a bedroom Napoleon , was a complex of inadequacy.”

The above probably is an oversimplification, which tends to debase the issue somewhat by reducing it to a mere craving on Ojukwu’s part to overcome a complex resulting from the ordinary accident of birth. It was not his birth; it was his upbringing that exercised the decisive influence on Ojukwu, shaped his early life and conditioned his reactions when he found himself later in power. Frederick Forsyth, a close war-time friend with a strong pro-Biafran bias, records the following about Ojukwu’s early life: “The story of his second, but favourite son, can hardly be described as a rags-to-riches tale.

The family dwelling where the young Emeka Ojukwu played before going to school was a luxurious mansion. Like most wealthy businessmen, Sir Louis kept open house and his mansion was a meeting place for all the moneyed elite of the prosperous colony. In 1940, the young Ojukwu entered the Catholic Mission Grammar School, but soon moved to King’s College, the smart private academy modelled closely on the lines of one of Britain’s public schools. Here he remained until he was 13; when his father sent him to Epsom College, set amid the rolling green hills of Surrey. He recalled later that his first impression of Britain was a sense of being completely lost ‘amid this sea of white faces.’ The isolation of a small African boy in such a totally strange environment caused the first moulding of the character that was to follow. Driven in on himself he developed a private philosophy of total self-reliance, an unyielding internal sufficiency that requires no external support from others.”

To this special development of his ego and the feeling of self-sufficiency was added the confidence acquired from an Oxford University milieu and from the fact of his father’s great wealth. Back to Nigeria, Ojukwu soon joined the army, where, as an officer, he got more accustomed to giving orders and receiving prompt obedience than meeting opposition and arguments. Furthermore, as one of the first and very few indigenous graduate officers of his time, he enjoyed an immense prestige even among his fellow officers. Once again he found himself more often at the ‘giving’ rather than at the ‘receiving’ end. Such a combination of circumstances could hardly have failed to leave its mark on his character and bearing. By keeping Ojukwu constantly enveloped in an atmosphere of superiority, it made him, as a matter of habit, distrustful and disdainful of other people’s judgment, impatient with their opinions and finally simply authoritarian.

The extent of Ojukwu’s anxiety and determination to control the most minute detail of the action, of even his ablest and most “trusted” lieutenants perhaps, well illustrated by the following routine query he sent on 5th July 1968 to Dr. Eni Njoku, former vice-chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, who was then leading the Biafran delegation to the preliminary peace talks in Niamey, capital of Niger Republic: “BBC report this morning, member of the Biafran delegation, apparently the leader, as coming out from the conference hall hugging a Nigerian. Would like clarification of this report which, if it is true, is a breach of my instructions that there should be no fraternization between us and the enemy.”

The above analysis of Biafra’s failure has evidently put strong emphasis on the rule of Ojukwu’s personal leadership. Such an approach, no doubt, raises the following important question: How is it possible for one man – a young and largely inexperienced soldier at that – to impose his will for so long on some 14 million people among who is to be found one of the highest concentrations of the intelligent and educated elite of black Africa?

Perhaps the following testimony from Philip Effiong, the 44-year-old veteran to whom Ojukwu handed power, will throw some light on the answer to this question. In an exclusive interview published in the monthly magazine, Drum of April 1970, we find the following questions and answers:

Drum:

One would expect that those army officer who did not approve of secession, would give Ojukwu showdown. Why did you not remove him by organising a bloodless coup d’etat?

Effiong:

“It wasn’t easy. Make no mistake about it. The sentiment of the people was very strong in favour of the ideas and ideals propounded by Emeka. I hate to say this because it makes me feel like a coward. Ojukwu was a dictator, you know. It wasn’t always safe or easy to oppose his ways or will. The best you could do was to point out the dangers to Ojukwu. But if you didn’t know when to stop shooting your mouth, he could easily throw you in detention.”

Drum:

What virtues did you find in Ojukwu?

Effiong:

“He was no devil. Everybody admires his personal courage, his infinite ability for hard work (because that man could go on from morning almost indefinitely). He was quite courageous, although in the end he escaped. But he had one weakness – he did not know when to apply the brakes. But it’s purely because he was ambitious. He was a very able chap.”

Indeed, for anyone close to the scene and who saw the mechanism of power at work in Biafra, the answer to that question holds no mystery. Ojukwu inherited three major assets, which worked in his favour and which he exploited to the full to ensure for himself ultimately an almost hysterical support from the Biafran masses. As the son of one of Nigeria’s wealthiest men, he belonged to the establishment, whose confidence and respect came naturally to him. As an Oxford-educated young man, he found easy acceptance among the intellectual elite – in the civil service and especially concentrated in the University of Nsukka, which provided most of the intellectual force behind the Biafran revolution. Then finally, the masses of aggrieved Ibos gave him their unconditional support because they saw in him a leader with the necessary toughness and the will to challenge Lagos and avenge them for their bitter experiences and the massacres of 1966 – acts for which they held the old Northern region and the then Northern-controlled Federal Military Government re

seanet02 you should be banned as well.

Why bring your filth into this thread?

We are not talking about Biafra you buffoon. We are talking about[b] Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara[/b], the former Premier of the Eastern Region who was a great man.

Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara was the Premier of Eastern Nigeria and leader of the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC), known at its birth as the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon. He and Chief Dennis Osadebay of the Mid-West were the only Regional Premiers who survived the army revolt of January, 1966, in which two other premiers were killed.

An Ibo from Ohuhu, near Umuahia-Ibeku in the then Eastern Nigeria - Nigeria's first military ruler, Major-General J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, also came from Umuahia - Dr. Okpara was at 46 the country's youngest Premier. The son of a laborer, he was born in December, 1920. After attending mission schools, he went to the Uzuakoli Methodist College, near his village, and won a scholarship to the then Yaba Higher College, Lagos, to study medicine. Completing his medical studies at the Nigerian School of Medicine, Dr. Okpara worked briefly as a government medical officer before setting up private practice in Umuahia.

While carrying on his practice, Dr. Okpara showed great interest in the Zikist Movement (named after Dr. Azikiwe), the militant wing of Dr. Azikiwe's NCNC which brought the independence struggle to a head in the late 'forties. After the shooting of rioting workers at the Enugu coal mines (1949), Dr. Okpara was one the Zikists arrested by the government for allegedly organizing the workers for political ends. He was later released. Following the granting of internal self-rule by Britain, Dr. Okpara was elected to the Eastern House of Assembly in 1952 on an NCNC ticket. Between then and 1959, when he took over from Dr. Azikiwe as Premier of the East, he held various Cabinet posts from Minister of Health to Agriculture and Production.

When in 1953, NCNC legislators in the Eastern House of Assembly and the Central Government in Lagos revolted against the party leadership, Dr. Okpara was among party loyalists who joined forces with Dr. Azikiwe. It was not until November, 1960, when Dr. Azikiwe finally left active politics to become Nigeria's first African Governor-General, that Dr. Okpara was elected leader of the NCNC. Very forceful and outspoken, Dr. Okpara is uncompromising on vital national issues. This in 1963 led to severe strain in relations with the ruling Northern Peoples' Congress of the late Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, with which the NCNC formed the country's first post-independence Government.

A strong advocate of what he calls 'pragmatic socialism', Dr. Okpara believes the country's salvation lies in agricultural revolution. He owns a large farm in his hometown and thus inspired many Eastern Nigerian leaders to take and interest in farming.

Dr. Okpara was one of the politicians detained soon after the military coup of January, 1966, which brought an end to civilian rule. He was released in July after a second coup swept General Ironsi out of power. He received the award of GCON (Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger), the country's highest decoration, in 1964 in recognition of his services to the country

MaziUche0:

seanet02 you should be banned as well.

Why bring your filth into this thread?

We are not talking about Biafra you buffoon. We are talking about[b] Dr. Michael Iheonukara Okpara[/b], the former Premier of the Eastern Region who was a great man.

FOOL, THEN BAN ME IF YOU CAN, SEEMS YOU ARE FROM THE ISOLATED AND DESERTED EROSION RIDDEN EAST.
slowpoke

seanet02:

FOOL, THEN BAN ME IF YOU CAN, SEEMS YOU ARE FROM THE ISOLATED AND DESERTED EROSION RIDDEN EAST.
slowpoke

Do us all a favor and put a pistol to your head and shoot. That is one less ignorant mouth to feed you failure in life. On second though, maybe you should jump off a cliff. Either way will be fine.

One less buffoon makes the world a better place.

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Time to get back on topic.  My fellow Easterners, what else can we do to improve this man's legacy that is often overlooked?

MaziUche0:

Do us all a favor and put a pistol to your head and shoot. That is one less ignorant mouth to feed you failure in life. On second though, maybe you should jump off a cliff. Either way will be fine.

One less buffoon makes the world a better place.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time to get back on topic.  My fellow Easterners, what else can we do to improve this man's legacy that is often overlook?

A TYPICAL ARMED ROBBER AND KIDNAPPERS GROANING.
DUDE DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME LIKE YOU DID TO FAJUYI,
CLASSICAL FOOL

MaziUche0:

Do us all a favor and put a pistol to your head and shoot. That is one less ignorant mouth to feed you failure in life. On second though, maybe you should jump off a cliff. Either way will be fine.

One less buffoon makes the world a better place.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Time to get back on topic.  My fellow Easterners, what else can we do to improve this man's legacy that is often overlooked?

SO YOU KNEW HIS ACHIEVEMENT IS BEING OVERLOOKED? THE REASON IS HE HAS NONE OF THE GOOD ACHIEVEMENT YOU CLAIM HE HAS