his title was nominated by Ojukwu himself during a press interview; fed up the plethora of downright lies and inventions by sundry parties Ojukwu declared "I am the final Biafran truth". Few could doubt what Ojukwu said in this regard. Unlike many who wrote from several self-interested positions, Ojukwu alone saw the whole picture. The events of 1966 - 1970 have spawned a lot of literature as befits a nation like Nigeria. I have however found two books of superior quality compared to the others - General Alexander Madiebo's The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War [Published September 5th 2000 by Fourth Dimension Publishing Company ISBN 9781561173 (ISBN13: 9789781561177)] and Bernard Odogwu's No place to hide: crises and conflicts inside Biafra (Published 1985 by Fourth Dimension Publishers, ISBN978156198X, 9789781561986) stand out for their content and style. Whereas the army commander, the ex-Umuahian, General Madiebo gave a logical and by inference accurate factual account of the military campaign, Barrister Bernard Odogwu (now deceased) from his vantage position as Biafran intelligence supremo gave a good insight into the happenings in the background and the tempo and psychology of Biafra during those fateful days. The superior quality of these two books lies in the objectivity and candour of the authors. As direct participants in those events they were undoubtedly affected by and influenced by those events yet they maintained objectivity, accuracy and above all a respect for truth in their observations.
But Ojukwu represents not simply the accurate rendition of what happened in Biafra but also the reasons for Biafra. As an event done and gone it is easy to dismiss Biafra but in understanding that epochal event in our national history we are able to sign post the future more accurately. If Ojukwu has written any memoirs we soon should find out but if not we can infer certain judgements from his already published books and other speeches and interviews which he gave in his lifetime.
THE TRUTH ABOUT BIAFRA
The saying goes that truth is the first casualty of war and the Nigeria-Biafra war was no different. Amidst the lies, inventions, half-truths, stories told by knaves to make a trap for fools, innuendo, gossip and sundry crackling of thorns under a pot, let it be clear that Biafra was more about Nigeria, what sort of Nigeria we could have, how that Nigeria would come about and how we would organise that Nigeria; rather than about Igbo, Ojukwu and his perceived personal ambition! The final truth is that Biafra was, then as it is now, about how we can have a balanced, fair, equitable, just, secular, all-inclusive construct with aspirations as an industrialising democracy offering opportunities to all its citizens with a tacit guarantee of their human rights; and in concert with other like-minded countries providing leadership within the comity of nations. The final Biafran truth is that the search for this new national paradigm for Nigeria was the cause for the crises and the subsequent civil war. Contiguous and integral to this truth is also the pertinent observation that the crises of Nigeria and the trouble with Nigeria (apologies to Professor Chinua Achebe) is the perennial struggle between the progressive forces that would shape our society and the reactionary forces that have shaped our country so far.
A CORDON OF LIES
To obscure the final Biafran truth it was necessary to throw a camouflage, a smokescreen of mendacity over the Nigerian situation and to cast Nigerians as an agglomeration of warring 'tribes'. This congregation of errant warring tribes needed civilising(control) by a superior race. With this Eurocentric interpretation of Nigeria it was easy for the departing British to manipulate Nigerian national affairs even after flag independence in 1960. The failure of the Anglo-Nigerian Defence Pact meant that the young turks in the Nigerian Army led by Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu could lead the 15 January 1966 coup unfettered. Like Job the very thing the British feared had overtaken them. The events of 1966 gave the British, as the arrowhead of western capital and finance, the opportunity to reassert their threatened hegemony over sub-Saharan Africa through Nigerian proxies. So the first lie was that the January 15 1966 was an Igbo coup; this laid the foundation for establishing the necessity for the July 1966 coup, but if that was tit-for-tat then it would have been honours even?
BRITISH GRAND DESIGN IN NIGERIA
It was necessary for the violence against Nd'Igbo to continue as part of the long term aim as the grand design of western capitalist interests was the subordination of any apparently progressive African interests so that African resources whether mineral or even human could be harvested at will to serve exclusively the interests of western finance. Anyone or group who stood in the way of this long-term European objective would be ruthlessly smashed and disposed of. The Berlin conference (Kongokonferenz or "Congo Conference") of 1884-85 had given European powers carte blanche to treat Africa as virgin territory to be carved up and used as their own and for the benefit of the European peoples in much the same way as the Americas were opened up and exploited. The European powers had seen how the Dutch started opening up the east from 1596, later establishing the Dutch East India Company and by 1800 the government of the Netherlands established the Dutch East Indies as a nationalised colony. They had seen one tiny European country benefit and prosper by emptying the wealth of Indonesia for its own development. That pattern would be repeated withThe Belgians in the Congo, the British in India, Portugal in Brazil etc. Before this conference international trade between European city states and the middle east was well established. However, the rise of the Ottoman Empire gradually reduced the ability of European traders to engage in commercial activities far from home and forced them to seek territory closer to Europe. This combined with improvements in cartography gave the Portuguese but not exclusively the interest in explorations further afield.
But it was the difficulty experienced with the Moors of north Africa, the blockade of their sea faring routes that led to the military conquest of Cueta (in present day Morocco) in 1419. From then on the trade between Europe and west Africa grew but was mainly conducted through Arab-Muslim middlemen. The kings of Portugal wanted to find a sea route that by passed the Sahara to enable them trade direct with west Africa. Indeed it was Portugal in the pursuit of its commercial interests and by this time under attack from the superior maritime powers of Britain, France and the Netherlands that called for the Berlin Conference in order to ensure an orderly dismemberment of Africa for western commercial interests and thereby avoid an economically damaging and inelegant squabble over African commercial opportunities.
If India was the brightest jewel in Britain's imperial crown then Nigeria was no less a shinning diamond to be treasured and used for collateral as needed. On 29 July 1966, it was the persuasive British High Commissioner in Lagos who prevented Northern Nigeria from seceding. Sir Francis Cumming-Bruce along with the American Ambassador in Lagos, Elbert Matthews, laid bare before Lt-Col Yakubu Gowon and Temporary Major Murtala Muhammed the advantages of retaining control over the entirety of Nigeria and in the long run serving the interests of the north rather to leaving the federation in anger. These sentiments were there for all to see, read and hear from Lt-Col Yakubu Gowon's first speech on 3 August 1966.
WAR BECAME INEVITABLE
From then on, it was clear that the Nigeria-Biafra war was a matter of when not if; the impending war would represent an opportunity for the upstarts in Nigeria to be put in their place. This was not as straightforward as it appears but the British played a long and patient game. Britain had before independence succeeded in using the manipulated census figures, the Foster-Sutton Commission of Inquiry and the 1959 Federal Elections to ensure a malleable government in Lagos. The political crises in Western Nigeria in 1962, coupled with the Coker Commission of Inquiry and the subsequent fitted job of the treasonable felony trial and the subsequent jailing of Chief Obafemi Awolowo gave the British the type of government they preferred to see in Africa; but now this acceptable face of African independence they sought in sub-Saharan Africa was forcibly ejected by the January 15, 1966 coupists! The reaction to that coup and the subsequent civil war would enable the British to conclude their stranglehold with a government 'friendly' to western trading and strategic interests.
The coup of 29 July 1966 was followed by further massacres of Nd'Igbo throughout northern Nigeria and in the case of Major IE Ekanem, that was at Carter Bridge responding to a call from Lt Col Gowon to come to Dodan Barracks. The continued killings of August and September 1966 coupled with failure to faithfully implement the Aburi Accord would ultimately place the East in the situation where on 30 May 1967 Colonel Odumegwu-Ojukwu said:
"Having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf, and in your name, that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic, now, therefore I, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above, do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall, henceforth, be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of The Republic of Biafra."
According to Professor Sylvanus Cookey in his interview with HENRY CHUKWURAH (Sunnews Online 27 February 2012), the late Ikemba worked hard to preserve the unity and corporate existence of Nigeria. "All that he wanted was a restructured Nigerian nation that guarantees security, equity and equal development of its component parts. Had the federal structure canvassed at the aborted Lagos Conference and stipulated in the Aburi Accord been faithfully adhered to, Ojukwu would not have proclaimed Biafra and the civil war could have been averted."
Professor Cookey may be a lone voice but the recollection of that eminent historian tallies with the views of many others. Indeed by 1968 Biafra had lost so much territory that the war was no longer a feasible option for Biafra and Ojukwu intended to use the Addis Ababa Peace Conference to seek terms for and eventually offer Biafra's surrender. That opportunity was frustrated because as I recall General Yakubu Gown either attended and left before Ojukwu arrived or did not attend at all.
My conclusion is that there was an unseen hand behind orchestrating the machinations of the Nigeria-Biafra war with the sole objective that only a decisive Federal Government victory enabling the Federal side to dictate the terms of any post-war settlement would be acceptable to enable the interests of the western financiers to be adequately served.
The final Biafran truth which is also the ultimate Nigerian truth is that Africa mattered to western interests only as much as the ledger entries in their trading accounts and balance sheets at the end of a financial year! Nigeria's tragedy is not so much the lives lost as the failure of successive leaders to grasp this fundamental truth about Africa and the west.
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