₦airaland Forum

micktoxin:
I don't know about you, but I can't ignore a comment that wished more harm were done to the other tribe. I need to understand the context behind that comment.
Anyways, I am happy to let this topic continue as long as tribalism is kept to a minimum otherwise I have no choice but to request a closure of this thread.

juicee1:
reduce the rate at which you show hate for progress.

I guess you are just trying to push the yorubas out cos you can't stand their pace.

Rawani:
Did you not read what I wrote? No one asked you to ignore a comment; open a thread if you need understanding as you stated. The mods are up to task and it's their prerogative to decide what threads to close, not yours.

micktoxin:
Of course I did and my decision still holds. Use your brain will you, I said "I will 'request a closure" if further tribalism are being spewed.
So far, you haven't made a contributionto the topic posted, so how about you stick to the development of south West? Not too hard is it?

Rawani:
Glad you agree to stick to the topic. Cheers.

NewNigeriaMind:
God please support the south west governors with knowledge and your fear.

Give them the will to do what is right for Yoruba people.

Bless Yoruba people

Amen

micktoxin:
Let me help you out. What do you make of this rail project? Not too hard to comprehend I would've thought.

truefact:
.why are yorubas afraid of being their own? Yorubas claim to be progressive and sophisticated, they claim to love each other, yet they coward enough not want to be on their own and have the most wonderful country in Africa..
Yorubas if you are all the goodies you claim to be, I bet you will be the one fighting for secession

Yoruba learn to stand on your own after all you could have been the first Africans to have independence. ..you claim to be first in every thing. ...at least you can be the first to secede and have a progressive country

micktoxin:
To be honest, I didn't know the history of Nigeria and was beginning to dislike Awolowo.
Thanks for clearing this up. I am sure Igbos too will have their own view on the war, which I will be glad to know.

Blockade
To talk about a blockade on Biafra is to concede that the control of Biafra’s borders was already in Awolowo’s hands. The control or defence of borders is the main aim of any war since the beginning of war making all over the world. But the 34-year-old Ojukwu led Biafra to secede based on 2,000 professional soldiers and extremely few artillery; they did not have enough to defend their borders. “If the Nigerian side had known the state of Biafran troops including their morale, they would have pursued them even on canoes across the River Niger. Had the Nigerians taken up such pursuit, they might have taken Onitsha, Awka and Enugu that same day.” That is Achike Udenwa, who was a Biafran soldier and later became the governor of Imo State, writing about the federal defeat of Biafra in the Midwest during the early weeks of the war in his own recollection, Nigerian/Biafra War. Even, the so-called January boys, Nzeogwu and Ifeajuna, both voiced their concern that the Biafran soldiers were vastly underprepared for any kind of war. Achebe writes: “Biafran soldiers marched into war one man behind the other because they had only one rifle between them, and the thinking was that if one soldier was killed in combat the other would pick up the only weapon available and continue fighting(pg 153).”

Therefore, even before the first bullet was fired, the secession was not only a failure but was an epic humanitarian catastrophe waiting to happen. Awolowo told Ojukwu one of the reasons the West was not keen to join the secession was because the region already occupied by northern troops did not have enough loyal men in the Nigerian Army to defend it. Weaned on the hermeneutics of Yoruba history, Awolowo was not persuaded by the seductive but flawed logic that the Nigerian forces would lose because they would be incapable of prosecuting war on two fronts if the West joined the East in seceding. At one point during the Kiriji war in the 19th century, Bashorun Ogunmola (Omoarogundeyo), the Kingdom of Ibadan’s generalissimo, was simultaneously warring with five neighbouring and far-flung kingdoms. Ibadan never lost. To defeat Ibadan you did not have to defeat even its retreating soldiers only, you had to defeat those dull-looking hills surrounding it. In fact, one of the reasons Ibadan was so belligerent in its history was that those mighty hills allowed it to spend little resources defending and more on attacking.

But Biafra was not surrounded by hills, literally or figuratively. Its borders were so porous that they fell easily into the opponent’s hand. Days after declaration of secession, the sea boundary of Biafra was already being manned by Nigeria’s battleships and boats. By the sixth week all the boundaries of Biafra were already under the control of Nigerian government. What remained was zooming in. In fact, had only Awolowo’s Western Region seceded, the strategy to recapture it would not be a variance with the one used against Biafra because the West is geographically an enantiomer of the East. It was the same blockade Nzeogwu used to capture and kill their targets, Sardauna and his senior wife; Ademulegun and his wife, Latifa, who was eight months pregnant, in the presence of their two children, Solape and Kole. As Solape recollected years later, Nzeogwu, who shot her mother, was a family friend that regularly visited to eat pounded yam and egusi soup. The little girl was even calling him uncle while he shot her mother in the chest in their bedroom. It was the same blockade Captain Emmanuel Nwobosi used to capture Remi Fani-Kayode and kill S.L Akintola, the Western premier. It was the same blockade American Navy Seals used to capture and kill Osama bin Laden.

What about Cameroon? Whose side was it on? Of course, Cameroun was firmly on the Nigerian side, yet it had a sizeable Igbo population and Azikiwe’s party was NCNC – National Council for Nigerian and the Cameroons. But Ojukwu had stepped on their toes: he had stolen enough of their goods and supplies that they helped the federal side to take Calabar and cooperated with the Naval blockade of Biafra. As the US State Department’s cable of 29 November 1968 discloses: “GFRC [Government of the Federal Republic of Cameroon] continues to support FMG [Federal Military Government] and recently ordered the dissolution of newly formed Cameroon Relief Organisation (CAMRO) which was being organised to receive Biafran children in west Cameroon.”



Starvation Policy
In Achebe’s book one could see several places where Biafrans violated the basis of the Geneva Convention. You could see where villagers who were non-combatants and should have been protected under Geneva Convention were taking machetes to federal soldiers, hence becoming legitimate targets of war themselves. Another striking instance was when Achebe was with his extended family and overnight their compound was turned into military base without their consent (pg 172). Heavens forbid the Nigerian side bombed the base. Yes, the Biafran propaganda machine would go to work that an innocent illustrious family had been eradicated by the “genocidal Nigerian army” and may even use it as an evidence of war crime. But it was the Biafran army that compromised Achebe’s household.

As part of security preparation for the last Olympics, the British Army commandeered a strategic high-rise residential building and placed surface-to-air missiles at the top. The residents protested and went to court. Let us assume a war broke out and the enemy flattened the whole building. He would not have committed a war crime because it was the British Army that made the civilian residents legitimate targets in the first place. Unfortunate though it may sound, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, relief centres become legitimate targets once military activities begin to go on there in the event of a war. Check for instance the current Hamas tactics against Israel or the bombing of University of Nigeria, Nsukka, when it allowed itself to become headquarters of local Biafran Army, with several professors joining in expedition force to hunt down lost federal soldiers in the bush and their wives back on campus took care of wounded Biafran soldiers and students were going for daily drills and rifle shooting practice under Prof. John C. Ene, Dean of Faculty of Sciences and Commander, University Defence Corps, as revealed in the US secret cable of 16 June 1967. Or the federal raid on the Catholic Cathedral of The Most Holy Trinity, Onitsha, when it was discovered Biafran snipers were operating from there.

When a plane or ship is designated as flying relief supplies to war sufferers, it must not be used to supply arms. Once it does, it is no longer covered by Geneva Convention. There was an Austrian Count, Carl Gustaf von Rosen, whom Achebe praises a lot for his humanitarian assistance in flying relief efforts to Biafra. This is what the Count’s wife had to say: “He told me he was going to Biafra, but he didn’t say he would be bombing MIGs (pg 300).” Achebe writes of von Rosen: “He led multiple relief flights with humanitarian aid into Uli Airport – Biafra’s chief airstrip. Fed up with Nigerian Air Force interference with his peaceful missions, he entered the war heroes hall of fame after leading a five-plane assault on Nigerian aircraft in Port Harcourt, Benin City, Ughelli, Enugu, and some other locations. He took the Nigerian Air Force by total surprise and destroyed several Soviet-supplied aircraft in the process.” That was someone flying humanitarian aid. How would the federal side begin to see other humanitarian flights that were supposed to be carrying food and medical supplies to war-ravished children? Cyprian Ekwensi, writer and head of external publicity for Biafra, admitted in his post-war reminiscences that the relief materials had arms built into them. The American documents too confirmed. The same Hank Warton, who the relief agencies were using to fly food into Biafra, was the one Ojukwu was using to deliver arms.

Of course the Nigerian side knew this and mandated all relief flights to Biafra to submit themselves for inspection at the Port Harcourt Airport. That was the interference Achebe claimed von Rosen was fed up with. In any event, he never claimed such in that 6 July 1969 interview he gave the London Observer. Those planes that passed their inspection delivered their relief. Those that did not were shot down. One particular case was the Swiss Red Cross DC7 Flight heading towards the Uli Airstrip (pg 101). After repeated warnings to change course and land for inspection, it was shot down, disgorging its arms and ammunition. The Biafran propaganda went to work, saying it was part of the genocide policies of Nigerian military to destroy food supplies meant for the kwashiorkor-stricken children.

It is also a fact that some of the relief supplies meant for the children were either ambushed by soldiers or ended up on the black market. Ekwensi again: “People were stealing and selling the food. You could buy it in the market, but you couldn’t get it in the relief centres.” But why would Biafra rely on food from thousands of miles away when their normal antebellum route of supply was merely tens of miles nearby in the Midwest and Northern Nigeria? It was because of the supply of arms and ammunition.

In a memorandum to the White House, Benjamin Read, the Executive Secretary of US State Department, writes: “Because of the absence of other airlines willing to make hazardous flights into Biafra, the ICRC [International Committee Of The Red Cross] has been forced to charter planes from Henry Wharton, an American citizen, who is widely known to be Biafra’s only gun runner. In engaging Wharton, the ICRC is risking its good relations with the FMG, which has long feared that ICRC flights might provide opportunity for gun running.” When Awolowo offered to re-open the usual food corridors, Ojukwu flatly refused. Achebe writes: “Ojukwu like many Biafrans, was concerned about the prospect that Nigerians could poison the food supplies (pg211).” Awolowo let in the food supplies for the children anyway, working with the cover of Caritas and Red Cross. “In America, the Nixon administration increased diplomatic pressure on the Gowon administration to open up avenues for international relief agencies at about the same time, following months of impasse over the logistics of supply route,” writes Achebe on pg 221. There was neither pressure nor its increment.

Independent evidence from the US declines to support this. “The problem of disaster relief in Biafra is not the lack of supplies or means of transport but the lack of access, particularly by a land corridor to Biafra. The authorities [Biafran] on the spot, under the conditions of civil war have given a higher priority to politico-military considerations than to arranging food to be delivered to Biafra. In early November 1968, the Nigerian government told the ICRC that it would agree to daylight relief flights to the major airstrip now held by Biafra if the ICRC could give assurances that the strip would handle only relief flight in daylight hours. We welcome this step by the Federal Government (FMG), which would substantially increase the flow of relief. So far, however, the Biafran authorities have refused to agree. We find it incomprehensible that despite the millions of Biafran lives at stake, the Biafran leadership has not yet given its agreement. The Nigerian government has also offered to cooperate in efforts to open a land corridor to Biafran-held territory. We hope that the Biafran authorities will respond positively to this but heretofore they have alleged they fear the food may be poisoned while transiting FMG territory,” William B. Macomber, Jr, Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations wrote in a letter dated 20 December 1968 to Congresswoman Florence Dwyer, when she sought clarification on the plight of Biafran refugees she kept seeing in the media.

Later when Awolowo visited the battlefronts and saw the kwashiorkor-ravaged children, he asked about the food supplies, only to discover that soldiers were ambushing the supplies, feeding themselves and the top hierarchy so as to continue the war. Awolowo decided this “dangerous policy” must stop.

If Awolowo was a devil as contemporary Igbo folklore and Achebe’s private demonology have him, he would have arranged for the food supplies to be poisoned, knowing they were going to the soldiers. To protect those children, who were suffering because of the war, he asked for a stop to the food supply that was inevitably going to the soldiers and the Biafran plutocrats unnecessarily elongating a war they would never win.

Once Cameroon too realised that to the Biafran authorities, the suffering children existed for show business and arms trade, they not only refused to take them into their country, they disbanded the newly formed relief agency dedicated to their welfare. What is more, Achebe boasts of Biafran prowess in manufacturing Ogbunigwe and the Biafran imaginative refinement of petroleum that kept Biafran vehicles on the road throughout the war without western technological help, but the most basic of human necessities – the production or the supply of food – they had no clue. And the farmers that were supposed to grow food, as the US documents noted, were conscripted into the Biafran Army during planting season of 1967. The fertilisers that could have been used to better their lands were used to make Ogbunigwe. And so the starvation was Awolowo’s fault.

On The Mythical £20 Policy
Throughout the war, as the US State Department’s confidential files disclose, there was no shortage of people and “isms” to blame for the failure of war. At different times and to different audiences, Biafrans blamed racism, neo-imperialism, colonialism for the war. When Ojukwu sent Pius Okigbo to the mainly Latin American countries to solicit for funds and arms for Biafra, he blamed the war on “the desire of Arab Muslims who saw Biafra the only obstacle to the spread of Islam in Africa”. Okigbo noted to his audiences that “Biafra is 60% Catholic and 40% Protestant.” Also, during several of his radio addresses, Ojukwu blamed the war on the British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, who supplied 15% of Nigeria’s arms. He called the kwashiorkor afflicting Biafran children Harold Wilson Syndrome or Herod Disease. Like the biblical King Herod, Ojukwu said, Wilson wanted to exterminate the children of Biafra.

While the blame-Arabs/Hausa/Islam narrative, blame-Wilson/racism/imperialism narratives, that were so potently alive during the war are now safely dead, the blame-Awolowo-for-starvation narrative is well alive, going from generation to generation. To the Americans, who monitored and documented everything about the war, there was no time Awolowo was blamed for the starvation or deaths on any of these 21,000 pages. However, after the war, it was through the £20 policy that the blame-Awolowo narrative began. To develop it, they seized on this policy and worked their way back to include what Awolowo may have said or done, and mixed it together to form a narrative.

The £20-for-every-Igbo was a myth. What happened then was a currency crisis. On 30 December 1967, Awolowo decided to change the Nigerian currency in circulation in order to render useless the £37 million Ojukwu had for buying foreign weapons. The Biafran leadership quickly took the loot, mopped up the ones they could get in circulation and headed to Europe to exchange them for hard currencies. Eventually, they introduced Biafran notes as the only legal tender. There was around 149 million Biafran pounds in circulation by the end of the war–an average of £10 per every Igbo. After the war, there was a general scramble to exchange these notes for the new Nigerian notes. As Awolowo explained, he didn’t know on what basis these notes were produced. It is like someone bringing a single 50 billion Zimbabwean dollar note to the bank and expecting to be given N50 billion. The exchange rate should be known to determine the worth of the Zimbabwean dollar.

Currently, 39 billion Zimbabwean dollars is worth 1 US dollar. In the case of Biafra, the worth of the currency was unknown; they were produced out of desperation, with lax security features to boot. In his statement of 1 February 1968, Dr. Okigbo, Biafra’s Commissioner of Economic Affairs, said “the lack of international acceptance and lack of a commensurate exchange rate was immaterial since the currency was intended only for circulation in Biafra.” In other words, it was worthless outside Biafra. After the war those that had this money were carting them to Nigerian banks, hoping to get the equivalent in new Nigerian notes. No banker or economist worth that description would approve that. Awolowo, in his bid to rehabilitate the Igbo and restore economic normalcy, approved the payment of 20 Nigerian pounds flat rate for every Biafran notes depositor. It was never £20 for every Igbo. Twenty pounds for every Biafran? That would have been around £300 million, when Nigeria’s annual budget before the war was £342.22 million, for a population of 57 million.

CSTR2:
Sorry for the personal attacks.
I don't think a sit-down is possible again.
Before the civil war maybe, but not now.
Millions of biafrans died due to highly unconventional tactics unbefitting a civil war and awolowo who is still revered as a god in the SW was a huge part of it.

Dollyak:
That's just heartbreaking. The rivalry has brought out ugly hatreds from both sides. One person called me a bastard and told me I am not better than a goat just because my Mum married a Yoruba. Yorubas too are just as bad if you criticise their behaviour toward Igbos.
How I wish both side can sit down, be logical and constructive for the best of both parties.

truefact:
.why are yorubas afraid of being their own? Yorubas claim to be progressive and sophisticated, they claim to love each other, yet they coward enough not want to be on their own and have the most wonderful country in Africa..
Yorubas if you are all the goodies you claim to be, I bet you will be the one fighting for secession

Yoruba learn to stand on your own after all you could have been the first Africans to have independence. ..you claim to be first in every thing. ...at least you can be the first to secede and have a progressive country

truefact:
.why are yorubas afraid of being their own? Yorubas claim to be progressive and sophisticated, they claim to love each other, yet they coward enough not want to be on their own and have the most wonderful country in Africa..
Yorubas if you are all the goodies you claim to be, I bet you will be the one fighting for secession

Yoruba learn to stand on your own after all you could have been the first Africans to have independence. ..you claim to be first in every thing. ...at least you can be the first to secede and have a progressive country

Dollyak:
That's just heartbreaking. The rivalry has brought out ugly hatreds from both sides. One person called me a bastard and told me I am not better than a goat just because my Mum married a Yoruba. Yorubas too are just as bad if you criticise their behaviour toward Igbos.
How I wish both side can sit down, be logical and constructive for the best of both parties.

truefact:
[s]I said what is still holding you...seeing how progressive you are? To me, it is act of foolishness and cowardice that you are yet to start seceding[/s]

truefact:
.why are yorubas afraid of being their own? Yorubas claim to be progressive and sophisticated, they claim to love each other, yet they coward enough not want to be on their own and have the most wonderful country in Africa..
Yorubas if you are all the goodies you claim to be, I bet you will be the one fighting for secession

Yoruba learn to stand on your own after all you could have been the first Africans to have independence. ..you claim to be first in every thing. ...at least you can be the first to secede and have a progressive country

Dollyak:
Yorubas were never this tribalistic, what happened? Yorubas are one of the most friendly and accommodating people in Africa. Some of the comments here is now making me think otherwise. My dad and most peoole I know are not like this. I hope they are not the odd one.

Dollyak:
I am aware both side are partly to blame. There is surely a reason Igbos don't like Yoruba and vice versa.
What I just want it peace.
I chose to ignore the idiot because I felt trufact should know better. He sounds more intelligent than him so why engage him and make it worse.
In addition, my comment were directed at him because of the recent agressive behaviour from some Igbo on this forum.

Dollyak:
Yorubas were never this tribalistic, what happened? Yorubas are one of the most friendly and accommodating people in Africa. Some of the comments here is now making me think otherwise. My dad and most peoole I know are not like this. I hope they are not the odd one.

Ayus34:
How i wish i was alive to be in awo's position then....i would ve been so brutal and merciless aganinsf d ibos and awo will need to learn from my tactics!

tochstorm:
mofos tryimg to put rail through mud house ogun state.... shakes head... sey na like this we go dey dey? bidding for project started 2008 now this is 2015 and the project will till 2020 to complete jona vision whilst i watch sh!!t unfold in HD-3D.

superstar1:
Amen oooooo.

Some clowns will now be telling us how they left their land to build another man's land.

NewNigeriaMind:
God please support the south west governors with knowledge and your fear.

Give them the will to do what is right for Yoruba people.

Bless Yoruba people

Amen

paabakp:
It is sad to see alot of people fighting for a cause they know nothing about.
One question for the Biafra fanatics is should Awolowo wait for the SE then to enter his region before facing them head on? Because if we actually read our history books which most of us don't, we would know that Biafrans actually took another region (mid western region) which does not belong to then during the war and were virtually at the door step of the western region (Ore) heading for Lagos the then capital of Nigeria. This is when and where Awolowo mobilized soldiers to defend his territory and unavoidably joined the war.

Finally, the war is over we shud come together and forge a new path ahead together. The enemies of our country is out there and within us. They are always looking for aw to divide us and also loot our country dry. The same method they have been using for years.