FEATURE ARTICLE


Femi OlawoleFriday, April 11, 2003
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Delaware, USA


RE: GOWON’S APOLOGY TO THE IGBOS LACKS SINCERITY


’ve just read through the article titled Gowon’s Apology To The Igbos Lacks Sincerity by Dr. Nnaemeka Luke Aneke as published on the nigeriaworld on April 9, 2003. As a writer, I do appreciate the painstaking efforts that must have gone into the writing of the well-articulated article. I must also, in view of my witnessing the war (on the federal side) as a youngster, empathize with him on the account of the travails suffered by his family during the unfortunate war. And above all, I must acknowledge the maturity, decorum and decency that were very much on display throughout the entire piece. I wish to make the following observations on the said article:

  1. The apology credited to Gen. Gowon was directed at the Asaba people of Delta State and not to the Igbo. As far as many of our Igbo brothers (including my own very close Igbo friends) are concerned, the Delta State Igbo will always be simply known and referred to as fake Igbo. Just like bats, they are neither rats nor birds to the Igbo.

  2. In the late 60s while the country was inching dangerously towards a civil war, some of my schoolmates in Lagos who were from the East and Midwest were among those whose parents dragged them along on the journey back home. And shortly after the war, the different people regaled us the Yoruba with different tales of tribulations. On the one hand, my Igbo friends recounted tales of atrocities committed by the federal forces.

    And on the other hand, my other friends from the now South-South and Midwest narrated their own sufferings from the hands of both the Igbo and the federal forces. At each of these encounters, the confrontations between the Igbo and the Midwesterners/South-southerners were always a sight to behold.

  3. Reading through Aneke’s bitter view over what he referred to as the genocidal instincts of Col. Mohammed, the genocidal campaigns of Col. Shuwa and the genocidal atrocities of Col. Adekunle, I could only wonder what else he expected in a war. Did he expect the various war commanders to issue orders to their troops to hug the enemies? He devoted almost the entire article to the atrocities committed by the federal forces. Yet, like many commentators in recent times, he conveniently omitted all the atrocities committed by the Biafran forces while the war lasted.

    In the Midwest, there were reports (confirmed by returning schoolmates) of several cases of rapes, arsons, and cold-blooded murders committed by th! e invading Biafran troops. If my friends were merely lying to attract pity from us Yoruba after the war, what about the many sad narrations by public figures confirming these ugly incidents? In fact professor Omoruyi, an Edo man shed some lights on those Biafran atrocities in some of his recent writings.

    Some friends from the present-day Delta (Asaba, Agbor and others) did narrate how they felt some sentimental kinship with the Bifrans and indeed admitted their people’s assistance and collaborations in thwarting the advance of the federal troops into Onitsha.

    Ironically, when the Biafrans came, they branded these same Deltans as fake Igbo while unleashing on them a reign of terror that included rapes and murders. Unfortunately, for these Deltans, the federal forces did not only liberate them but dealt with them ruthlessly under the pretext of searching for and punishing those among them who were considered to have collaborated with the Biafrans. It was under this ugly circumstance that some innocent people suffered with the guilty. That must be the crux of Gen. Gowon’s apology to the Deltans.

  4. The people of the present day South-south also have their own tales of horror at the hands of the Biafrans who branded them as saboteurs. One did not only hear from the horses’ mouths (school mates) but also some other indigenes of that part of the country who have since been stating their own cases (see My Side of The Story by N.H. Ibanga on the nigeriaworld.com of January 20 2003).

  5. As for the federal war commanders, a huge percentage of Col. Mohammed’s troops and equipments were lost when the Biafrans bombed the Niger Bridge. He had decided on crossing the bridge against the directive of the war office in Lagos, which was relying on gathered intelligence about the activities of the Biafrans and their collaborators. After the suffered carnage, a badly rebuked and humiliated Mohammed and his men were therefore a grieving and terribly bitter command by the time they finally captured the elusive Onitsha. Now, what did you expect these soldiers to do on getting to Onitsha……..give a warm embrace to the Biafrans?

    The same thing happened to Col. Adekunle while en route the Owerri sector. Many Calabar people were slaughtered as saboteurs by the Biafrans who accused them of not only passing intelligence information to the federal troops but also jubilating in anticipation of liberation by the federal troops. Col. Adekunle, whose mother was from Calabar, was livid with rage by the time his troops captured Owerri. These military commanders were humans too.

    And one should also remember the type of pressure under which these various commanders were operating all through the war. While one clique of power brokers in Dodan Barracks, for commercial gains, was pleading with the commanders to slow their advance into Biafra, another powerful group, with conscience, was barking orders at them to advance quickly so as to end the war as soon as possible.

  6. As for the statement credited to Chief Enahoro, Col. Mohammed was never withdrawn from his sector of the war. The only commanders who were withdrawn were Col. Adekunle, replaced by Col. Obasanjo and Col. Shuwa, replaced by Lt. Col. Danjuma. Both Col. Mohammed and Col. Obasanjo were made federal high commissioners for communications and works respectively only after the war had ended.

  7. And lest we forget the many innocent victims including children of the Casino cinema bombing disaster in Yaba. A similar atrocity was averted in Race Course when a Biafran bomber plane was shot down. Now, since when did civilian enclaves such as these become military targets? In war, atrocities can barely, if ever, be curtailed and in the case of our country, it happened on both sides of the civil war. When our Igbo brothers complain in their writings about the deaths of innocent civilians in their part of the war, I wonder what they thought about the innocent civilians on the federal side. Like a boxing bout, no participant goes without a bruised face.

Unlike the thinking of a great number of our Igbo brothers, many of us, especially kids on the federal side who were resident in Lagos, were not immune to the brutality of the war. Three sad examples will forever remain indelible in my own mind.

We were watching the television in our part of Lagos (Ebute Metta) one day when the Biafran propaganda machine paraded some federal prisoners of war. Incidentally, among the P.O.Ws was the son of one of our neighbors. The following day, the public execution of the same man and the other federal P.O.Ws. were also shown on the television. Anyone can imagine the effect of this action on the people. The entire street was practically thrown into grieve.

Apart from what we were seeing on the television, reading in the Daily Times and the occasional moments when we Lagosians would be forced to lie in gutters while a bomb siren screamed, the Casino cinema bombing in Yaba which was very close to our neighborhood was to be my own real personal exposure to the horrors of the civil war. In a very sharp reaction to this horrible incident, the military police and officers of the special branch descended on Yaba and Ebute Metta residents. They were searching for Biafran sympathizers.

One could not really blame the then federal government for suspecting the people of Yaba/Ebute Metta of aiding and abetting the Igbo agents who planted the Casino cinema bomb. There were Yoruba army officers such as Col. Banjo, Major Ademoyega, Major Alele and Lt. Oyewole who were fighting on the side of the Biafrans. There were also people like professor Wole Soyinka, Dr. Tai Solarin, Fela Anikulapo and some other Yoruba civilians who were sympathizing with the Igbo brethren. If one may digress a little, all these Yoruba who put their lives on the line for the cause of Biafrans rarely (if mentioned at all), have their roles highlighted in various recent commentaries on the civil war by the same Igbo brethren. Incidentally and without gainsaying the fact, it was the Casino cinem! a bombing, the bombing attempt on Race Course and the ill-fated attempts of the Biafrans to invade Yoruba land through Ore in the then Midwest that actually turned all of the Yoruba against them. The slogan then became Go On With One Nigeria.

One early morning, some of these military police officers came to wake us up and began to search the house as they did other houses in the whole of Ebute Metta and Yaba. They soon came upon some pieces of iron in a box. Incidentally, the irons looked very much like bullets and one overzealous officer began to yell, demanding explanations from my father. The man’s prompt response that those irons were just some play stuff of one of his sons did actually aggravate the situation for us. It finally took the intervention of a superior officer to confirm that those irons were harmless. But that was after my father had been embarrassed with threats of arrest and he in turn had given me some terrib! le slaps.

The bottom line of this rejoinder is that no war is a picnic or party. War is brutal and it’s a very terrible state of affair. It’s so terrible that it brings out the worst in humans. That innocent people die in wars is nothing new. They are referred to as collateral damage. This is therefore all the more reason why people should exercise restraints in every situation and never consider war as being inevitable. I’ll not want to go into the merits and the non-merits of the Igbo’s decision to go to that war even in spite of the pogrom in the North. My own personal view since the war ended has always been that the Igbo didn’t have to loose so much. Yet, it’s quite unrealistic for anyone to keep expecting apology from Gen. Gowon or any of the leaders of the then federal government who had the huge responsibility for keeping the country one. It might interest the callers for apology to know that there are indeed some people outside the Igbo land who are also expecting the former Biafrans to apologize for their rebellion.