There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (23 page)

The Question of Genocide

I will begin by stating that I am not a sociologist, a political scientist, a human
rights lawyer, or a government official. My aim is not to provide all the answers
but to raise questions, and perhaps to cause a few headaches in the process. Almost
thirty years before Rwanda, before Darfur, over two million people—mothers, children,
babies, civilians—lost their lives as a result of the blatently callous and unnecessary
policies enacted by the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria.
¹

As a writer I believe that it is fundamentally important, indeed essential to our
humanity, to ask the hard questions, in order to better understand ourselves and our
neighbors. Where there is justification for further investigation, then I believe
justice should be served.

In the case of the Nigeria-Biafra War there is precious little relevant literature
that helps answer these questions: Did the federal government of Nigeria engage in
the genocide of its Igbo citizens through their punitive policies, the most notorious
being “starvation as a legitimate weapon of war”? Is the information blockade around
the war a case of calculated historical suppression? Why has the war not been discussed,
or taught to the young, over forty years after its end? Are we perpetually doomed
to repeat the mistakes of the past because we are too stubborn to learn from them?

We need not get into the prickly thicket of diagnosing the reasons for the federal
government’s attempts to fool the world about what happened in Biafra. However, it
may be helpful to start by defining the term genocide. Robert S. Leventhal provides
this description:

The term genocide derives from the Latin (
genos
= race, tribe;
cide
= killing) and means literally the killing or murder of an entire tribe or people.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines genocide as “the deliberate and systematic extermination
of an ethnic or national group. . . .” By “genocide” we mean the destruction of a
nation or an ethnic group. The UN General Assembly adopted this term and defined it
in 1946 as “ . . . a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.”
²

The Arguments

Throughout the conflict the Biafrans consistently charged that the Nigerians had a
design to exterminate the Igbo people from the face of the earth. This calculation,
the Biafrans insisted, was predicated on a holy jihad proclaimed by mainly Islamic
extremists in the Nigerian army and supported by the policies of economic blockade
that prevented shipments of humanitarian aid, food, and supplies to the needy in Biafra.
¹

The argument extended by Harold Wilson’s government in defense of the federal government
of Nigeria is important to highlight:

The charges of Jihad have also been denied by British officials who assert that more
than half the members of the Federal Government are Christian, while only 1,000 of
the 60–70,000 Federal soldiers are Muslim Hausas from the North. (House of Commons
Debate, cited earlier.)
²

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, professor of history and politics and an expert on genocide, reminds
us that supporters of the Biafran position point not only to the histrionic pronouncements
of the leaders of the Nigerian army—often dismissed as typical outrageous wartime
rhetoric—but to an actual series of atrocities, real crimes against humanity, that
occurred on the battlefield and as a result of the policies of the federal government
of Nigeria.

The International Committee in the Investigation of Crimes of Genocide carried out
exhaustive investigation of the evidence, interviewing 1082 people representing all
the actors in the dispute (the two sides of the civil war and international collaborators).
After a thorough painstaking research, the Commission concludes, through its Investigator
(Dr. Mensah of Ghana): “Finally I am of the opinion that in many of the cases cited
to me hatred of the Biafrans (
mainly Igbos
) and
a wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor
.” [Emphasis in original.]
³

In his well-researched book
The Brutality of Nations
, Dan Jacobs uncovers a provocative paragraph from an editorial in the
Washington Post
of July 2, 1969:

One word now describes the policy of the Nigerian military government towards secessionist
Biafra: genocide. It is ugly and extreme but it is the only word which fits Nigeria’s
decision to stop the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other relief agencies,
from flying food to Biafra.
⁴

Jacobs also reveals the lamentations of Pope Paul VI over the Nigeria-Biafra War:

The war seems to be reaching its conclusion, with the terror of possible reprisals
and massacres against defenseless people worn out by deprivations, by hunger and by
the loss of all they possess. The news this morning is very alarming. . . . One fear
torments public opinion. The fear that the victory of arms may carry with it the killing
of numberless people. There are those who actually fear a kind of genocide.
⁵

The distinguished American historian, social critic, and political insider Arthur
M. Schlesinger provides this contribution on the dire situation in Biafra:

The terrible tragedy of the people of Biafra has now assumed catastrophic dimensions.
Starvation is daily claiming the lives of an estimated 6,000 Igbo tribesmen, most
of them children. If adequate food is not delivered to the people in the immediate
future hundreds of thousands of human beings will die of hunger.
⁶

In what is likely to be the most compelling statement of the era from an American
president, Schlesinger provides this powerful extract from Richard Nixon’s campaign
speech on September 10, 1968:

Until now efforts to relieve the Biafran people have been thwarted by the desire of
the central government of Nigeria to pursue total and unconditional victory and by
the fear of the Ibo [
sic
] people that surrender means wholesale atrocities and genocide. But genocide is what
is taking place right now—and starvation is the grim reaper. This is not the time
to stand on ceremony, or to ‘go through channels’ or to observe the diplomatic niceties.
The destruction of an entire people is an immoral objective even in the most moral
of wars. It can never be justified; it can never be condoned.
⁷

Two distinguished Canadian diplomats, Mr. Andrew Brevin and Mr. David MacDonald (members
of the Canadian Parliament), “reported that genocide is in fact taking place [and]
one of them stated that ‘anybody who says there is no evidence of genocide is either
in the pay of Britain or being a deliberate fool,’” following a visit to the war-torn
region.
⁸
New York Times
journalist Lloyd Garrison, who covered the conflict, submitted harrowing accounts
of genocidal activity on the part of the Nigerian troops: “The record shows that in
Federal advances . . . thousands of Igbo male civilians were sought out and slaughtered.”
⁹

Supporters of the Nigerian federal government position maintain that a war was being
waged and the premise of all wars is for one side to emerge as the victor. Overly
ambitious actors may have “taken actions unbecoming of international conventions of
human rights, but these things happen everywhere.” This same group often cites findings
from groups (sanctioned by the Nigerian federal government) that sent observers to
the country during the crisis that there “was no clear intent on behalf of the Nigerian
troops to wipe out the Igbo people, . . . pointing out that over 30,000 Igbos still
lived in Lagos, and half a million in the Mid-West.”
¹⁰

The British government, wary of the morally bankrupt position that Harold Wilson had
toed from the onset of the conflict, sought to explain away their reckless military
adventure in Africa. There were real excesses to account for: If the diabolical disregard
for human life seen during the war was not due to the Northern military elite’s jihadist
or genocidal obsession, then why were there more small arms used on Biafran soil than
during the entire five-year period of World War II?
¹¹
Why were there one hundred thousand casualties on the much larger Nigerian side compared
with more than two million—mainly children—Biafrans killed? The government of Harold
Wilson proffered what it called a “legitimate strategy” excuse in which it postulates
that the indisputable excesses seen during the war were due to the Nigerian military’s
“excellence”—clearly making it the strongest candidate for an all-time foot-in-the-mouth
prize.
¹²

The Case Against the Nigerian Government

It is important to point out that most Nigerians were against the war and abhorred
the senseless violence that ensued as a result of the conflict. Gowon���s wartime
cabinet, it should also be remembered, was full of intellectuals like Obafemi Awolowo
and Anthony Enahoro and superpermanent secretaries like Allison Akene Ayida among
others who came up with a boatload of infamous and regrettable policies. A statement
credited to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and
unfortunate:

All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we
should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder.
¹

It is my impression that Chief Obafemi Awolowo was driven by an overriding ambition
for power, for himself in particular and for the advancement of his Yoruba people
in general. And let it be said that there is, on the surface, at least, nothing wrong
with those aspirations. However, Awolowo saw the dominant Igbos at the time as the
obstacles to that goal, and when the opportunity arose—the Nigeria-Biafra War—his
ambition drove him into a frenzy to go to every length to achieve his dreams. In the
Biafran case it meant hatching up a diabolical policy to reduce the numbers of his
enemies significantly through starvation—eliminating over two million people, mainly
members of future generations.

If Gowon was the “Nigerian Abraham Lincoln,”
²
as Lord Wilson would have us believe, why did he not put a stop to such an evil policy,
or at least temper it, particularly when there was international outcry? Setting aside
for the moment the fact that Gowon as head of state bears the final responsibility
of his subordinates, and that Awolowo has been much maligned by many an intellectual
for this unfortunate policy and his statements, why, I wonder, would other “thinkers,”
such as Ayida and Enahoro, not question such a policy but advance it?
³

The federal government’s actions soon after the war could be seen not as conciliatory
but as outright hostile.
⁴
After the conflict ended

the same hard-liners in the Federal government of Nigeria cast Igbos in the role of
treasonable felons and wreckers of the nation and got the regime to adopt a banking
policy which nullified any bank account which had been operated during the war by
the Biafrans. A flat sum of twenty pounds was approved for each Igbo depositor of
the Nigerian currency, regardless of the amount of deposit.
⁵

If there was ever a measure put in place to stunt, or even obliterate, the economy
of a people, this was it.

After that outrageous charade, the leaders of the federal government of Nigeria sought
to devastate the resilient and emerging Eastern commercial sector even further by
banning the importation of secondhand clothing and stockfish—two trade items that
they knew the burgeoning market towns of Onitsha, Aba, and Nnewi needed to reemerge.
Their fear was that these communities, fully reconstituted, would then serve as the
economic engines for the reconstruction of the entire Eastern Region.

The Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1974, also known as the Indigenization Decree,
was ostensibly pushed through by the leaders of the federal government in order to
force foreign holders of majority shares of companies operating in Nigeria to hand
over the preponderance of stocks, bonds, and shares to local Nigerian business interests.
The move was sold to the public as some sort of “pro-African liberation strategy”
to empower Nigerian businesses and shareholders.

The chicanery of the entire scheme of course was quite evident. Having stripped a
third of the Nigerian population of the means to acquire capital, the leaders of the
government of Nigeria knew that the former Biafrans, by and large, would not have
the financial muscle to participate in this plot.
⁶
The end result, they hoped, would be a permanent shifting of the balance of economic
power away from the East to other constituencies.
⁷
Consequently, very few Igbos participated, and many of the jobs and positions in
most of the sectors of the economy previously occupied by Easterners went to those
from other parts of the country.

Ironically, and to the consternation of Lord Wilson and the British cabinet in England,
the Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1974 also meant that the British/Dutch conglomerate
Royal Dutch/Shell BP and other holdings valued at $720 million at the time, would
have to share ownership of oil investments with the federal government—the very development
Wilson was trying to avoid by backing Gowon in the first place.
⁸

For those who would defend Gowon’s cabinet, suggesting that at times of war measures
of all kinds are taken to ensure victory, I will counter by stating that the Geneva
Conventions were instituted after the Holocaust to make sure that human rights are
still protected in times of conflict.

There are many international observers who believe that Gowon’s actions after the
war were magnanimous and laudable.
⁹
There are tons of treatises that talk about how the Igbo were wonderfully integrated
into Nigeria. Well, I have news for them: The Igbo were not and continue not to be
reintegrated into Nigeria, one of the main reasons for the country’s continued backwardness,
in my estimation.
¹⁰

Borrowing a large leaf from the American Marshal Plan that followed World War II and
resulted in the reconstruction of Europe, the federal government of Nigeria launched
an elaborate scheme highlighted by three Rs—for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, and
Reconciliation. The only difference is that, unlike the Americans who actually carried
out all three prongs of the strategy, Nigeria’s federal government did not. The administrator
of East Central state, Mr. Ukpabi Asika, announced that Eastern Nigeria required close
to half a billion pounds to complete the reconstruction effort. None of us recall
that he received anything close to a fraction of the request.

What has consistently escaped most Nigerians in this entire travesty is the fact that
mediocrity destroys the very fabric of a country as surely as a war—ushering in all
sorts of banality, ineptitude, corruption, and debauchery. Nations enshrine mediocrity
as their modus operandi, and create the fertile ground for the rise of tyrants and
other base elements of the society, by silently assenting to the dismantling of systems
of excellence because they do not immediately benefit one specific ethnic, racial,
political, or special-interest group. That, in my humble opinion, is precisely where
Nigeria finds itself today!