the Biafra Story (1969) (33 page)

With the Biafrans also close to Azumini, fourteen miles southeast of Aba, the geographical position indicated they were adopting the same tactics that led to the encirclement of Owerri - a twin-pronged drive down both flanks leading to a final inward attack towards the main road and supply line. Further north things had not gone so well for them. In the six months since 30 September 1968 the Federal concern had been to build up not the prestigious Third Division but the more quiescent First Division based on Enugu, and the Second Division at Onitsha.

In early March the Second Division attacked simultaneously westwards from Awka and eastwards from Onitsha and succeeded in closing the ten-mile gap of roadway that had previously eluded them for twelve months. The Biafrans counterattacked and regained control of a section of that road. At the end of the month possession of this last section of the 68-mile long main road from Enugu to Onitsha was still fiercely in dispute. In the last week of March, the First Division threw in an enormous attack based on Okigwi, apparently in an attempt to drive down on Umuahia. It seemed probable the attack was timed to coincide with the visit of Mr. Wilson to Nigeria, but there was another equally likely reason for it the coming onset of the rains. Towards mid-April the annual monsoon breaks over the landscape in a drenching downpour lasting until October. It was on the monsoon that Colonel Ojukwu was counting to impede the'Nigerians' nightly bombing of Uli airport; to prevent the air drops keeping alive the 4,000 weary Federal troops in Owerri; and to wash out the myriad earth-roads capable of supporting the Nigerian Army's spearheads of British armoured cars in the dry season, but impassable in the wet season. The Nigerians were no less conscious of the race against the rains, which the Biafrans love since they favour the defender and which the Nigerian infantry, exposed miles from home, have come to loathe.

These same hundred days also saw another of the periodic upsurges in parliamentary, press and public interest in Britain, and the addition of a large number of allies in all three fields to those few journalists who had hitherto maintained in beleaguered isolation the view that warfare was not a feasible solution to the Nigeria-Biafra problem. The 'credibility gap' was (unwittingly] widened by Mr. Winston Churchill. With a commission from The Times for a series of news reports and articles he went first to Nigeria and later to Biafra. After returning from the latter visit, he admitted that after visiting Nigeria he had become wholly convinced that Biafran civilian and refugee centres were not being repeatedly bombed and that the famine victim figures were being grossly exaggerated. These convictions, he said, had been primarily induced by assurances from the British High Commissioner in Lagos, Sir David Hunt, and the British Military Attach6, Colonel Bob Scott. A few days in Biafra came as a jolt. Mr. Churchill came to the view that nobody in official British circles had much idea of what was really going on. He was the first journalist to have the courage to say (in his first news report) that he was 'ashamed' to admit that he had fallen for the misinformation fed to him in Lagos.

His articles caused a stir in Britain, engendering a spate of articles, letters and reports. They sparked off the first counterattack from Fleet Street to the smearing by the British High Commission in Lagos and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall of individual journalists who had reported from Biafra what they saw and the conclusions they, and many others, had come to. In an editorial on 12 March, The Times complained of a 'niggling campaign' against Mr. Churchill and concluded by condemning 'an attempt to cover over the facts of starvation, bombing and death by resorting to personalities'.

The following day, in a letter to the editor of The Times, Mr. Michael Leapman related how a Commonwealth Office official had taken the liberty of ringing a provincial newspaper assistant editor to warn him against believing what Mr. Leapman, after three visits to Biafra and one to Nigeria, had got to say. Mr. Leapman further intimated that he had heard that the suggestion- had been put about that he had taken money from Ojukwu to write as he did.

One of the upshots of the concern in Britain, over Mr. Churchill's reports - although the latter were. mainly concerned with the bombing, which was a continuing process and had been reported many times before - was increased concern in Parliament, culminating in the third debate held on the subject, which took place on 20 March. It was another exercise in futility. The major argument against present British policy of sending arms to a civil war or supporting a military dictatorship to inflict suffering on the Biafran scale was avoided. Ile Conservative Party, to judge from the somewhat uninformed nature of its spokesman, did not seem to have any policy, or to be prepared intelligently to oppose the Government on the one major issue on which it could command some support from Mr. Wilson's own backbenches.

But in the wake of the debate, Mr. Wilson announced that he himself would go to Nigeria. Scepticism of the value of such a personal appearance, and of its practical usefulness, was manifest in press and Commons. But since correspondents hinted on the eve of the visit that Mr. Wilson might not be averse to flying on from Nigeria to Biafra to see Colonel Ojukv/u (and the other side of the coin), a glimmer of hope arose that perhaps at last the British Government might be prepared to examine the whole story, and not just those parts that supported its own preconceptions. Apparently in this hope Colonel Ojukwu issued an invitation to Mr. Wilson to visit Biafra, an offer that cost him great effort in overcoming internal opposition to the idea of entertaining a man whom the Biafran populace loathes so heartily.

The optimism was as premature as Colonel Ojukwua, offer had been disconcerting to British officialdom. It was known that Mr. Wilson wished to return to London to report to the Commons his eyewitness impressions. Following Ojukwu's invitation it became difficult to imagine how Mr. Wilson could go to Biafra, see what he would undoubtedly see, and report what he had seen, and at the same,time keep what he had to say commensurate with his own previous policy and his colleagues' utterances. The problem was knotty, but soon solved.

PostScript In the Sunday Telegraph of 30 March Mr. H. B. Boyne, accompanying the Premier's party through Nigeria, set puzzled readers' minds at rest. 'Incidentally,' he wrote, 'Mr. Wilson never had any intention of going into secessionist territory now.'

In the Sunday Times of the same date, Mr. Nicholas Carroll gave his readers what could well be construed as the explanation of his colleague's brief aside. 'Still, superficial though Mr. Wilson's visits have had to be, he did see quite enough to confirm what he had already heard both from his hosts and from his own advisers!

1 April 1969,