By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
The Nigerian civil war also known as the Biafran war, took place from
July 6, 1967 to January 15, 1970. In this interview, Professor Alphonsus B C Nwosu recalls his experience as an undergraduate who left the university to join the Biafran army. He tells the story of how he was injured during the war which has made him to have one and a half lungs. He says that young men including undergraduates begged to join the army and that if the accord reached at Aburi in Ghana had been kept by the Nigerian authorities, the war would have been averted. The former Minister of Health also says that the leader of the then Eastern Region, Gen. Odumegwu Ojukwu would have been killed if he had failed to declare the war. Ojukwu, he says, had mandated him and a few actors in the war to write a book on what led to the war and its execution.Excepts:
You had promised that a book would come out on what led to the Nigerian civil war. How soon do we expect the book?
We’re expecting a major book, not on one coup, but coups; the July coup, the May 29 pogrom, the Aburi accord, the meeting between Ojukwu and Chief Awolowo in Enugu and how two conditions cost the war. Worst things have happened. When you have two or three groups ganging up against one group, a war would look like a walkover. Biafra became possible because some groups ganged up against one in spite of the fact that one group was so wronged, with dead bodies all over the place and they thought the pogrom would be a walkover, but it wasn’t. Nigeria is a beautiful place that God intended to be the starting point for African Renaissance. We prepared a paper for President Olusegun Obasanjo when he asked me as political adviser to put up a group to give focus to his administration and the title of the paper was “African Renaissance”, not even Nigeria. But we’ve now deviated from the centre point of Nigeria’s purpose in the world. Nigeria’s purpose in the world is to give meaning and value to the black skin, not to carry all the bags of money in the room to your ethnic group. Nigeria should be the one to lead Africa not Rwanda. But you see now that almost every country wants to go to Rwanda, they want to invest in Rwanda because Nigeria has abdicated its responsibility. If you go to most of the top universities, at least in the Western world and you get all the African students together, the largest number will always be Nigerians.
The only time there was an effort to assemble these experts was when Babangida picked experts like Omoh Omoruyi, Chu Okongu.
Then Obasanjo came in and also started picking up some experts and we should continue on that trend. Back to the book on the January 1966 coup, when Babangida said that it was not an Igbo book in his book, it made me to reassure myself that Babangida was a different kind of human being and I doff my hat for him. I salute him for his courage to say that it was a group of human beings holding the kind of discussions that some of us do hold now, lamenting why Nigeria is still standing where it is standing, that we can do better.
So when are we expecting the book, the one that will be very detailed?
Actually, the book has been written, I am the lead author and it is the book which Ojukwu said that if we don’t produce, we should pass it on to a team that can produce it. Seven of us started the book which includes people like Clement Ebri, it includes one of the oldest of us, Prof. Silvanus Kuki, who was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Port Harcourt. The book contained some of the documents which have never been seen before.
There’s no timeline?
It will come out in two years. Most of it have been put together. Do you know when Babangida started writing his own book? A book like that, Ojukwu said to us, must be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth because lives depend on it especially young people so that they will not be misguided. But I can give you five facts.
From the word go, it was known that it was not an Igbo coup, it was not an Nzeogwu coup, it was an Ifeajina coup, Nzeogwu was only recruited. There was also his classmate, Chris Anuforo and when they found nobody to handle the western operations, they took another old boy of St. John, Nwobosi, who was a Captain. They did not want to kill anybody at the beginning. But, still on that one, let’s find out, let people strive to get the book. There was a report by M.D. Yusuf, head of the special branch of the Police, a thoroughbred police officer. Bako was a police commissioner, well trained, but with a born to rule attitude. They investigated and discovered that Nzeogwu joined the coup. Some betrayed them and they had to postpone the coup.
Second fact is that there was no crisis in the East, there was no crisis in the North. The crisis was only in the West. We were wobbling with governance and playing this politics of trying to corner much of the country’s resources, so, each time we did a census, there was a problem.
And if you look at the elections, especially in the West, you can imagine what would have happened then, if we went on and proceeded to use power the way we are using power now. Apart from this report, the most important book you should get is “Why We Struck”, by Adegboyega. “The five Majors” by Ben Gbulie was clear. He wasn’t one of the Five Majors, he operated under Nzeogwu and that was his assignment. I have mentioned Nzeogwu, Anuforo, Nwobosi who were all classmates at St John. That is to show that you don’t let somebody you can’t trust with your life to watch your door when you are sleeping. Ifeajina went to Denis Memorial Grammar School, Onitsha, his second in command, Humphrey Chukwuka, also went to the same school, so you can’t rule out the school influence. Sometimes, given the way how certain people were close, you wonder whether they knew or didn’t know about the coup. Those ones will come under unanswered questions and I’m sure some people coming after can ask those questions and then they’ll see.
The third fact is that there would not have been a Nigeria-Biafra war. The cause of the Nigeria-Biafra war was simply the inability of Nigeria, or the attempt by Nigeria to rewrite the Aburi Accord. Without that, there would have been no war, even if you had a gang-up of 30 tribes against one. I was a student at the University of Ibadan then. I fled. All of us knew that the war cry was “on Aburi we stand” and that was it. And then when the war started, it changed from police action of 48 hours to full-scale war, involving mercenaries, huge supplies of arms, and it lasted 30 months. That’s why I said let people not underrate their brothers and sisters in Nigeria
How did you join the Biafran Army, what led to the war and tell us how you were wounded
Anybody who tells you that he was conscripted into the Biafran army in my group is a liar. We voluntarily begged to join the Biafran Army. And after Aburi, if Ojukwu had failed to respond once the shots rang out at Gakem, people would have got rid of Ojukwu, they would have killed him. The war was a very popular war on the Biafran side. If you were a man, you would join. So, I joined the Biafran Army. I was an officer in the Biafran Army and if anybody tells you that it was Ojukwu’s war, it is arrant nonsense. It was the Biafran people’s war in response to being shot at by the Nigerian troops and ‘Operation-do-or-die’. There was a brigade, which I believe was led by the elder Yaradua, he was adjutant at the battalion at Enugu. So, he knew his terrain and he was going but we were then trying to cut him off. From St. Philip, Ogidi to Ogidi Water Tank to Nwansike, people know the terrain and Iyenu, that was our battalion. It was called the Fearless Infantry Battalion. So we targeted them but we didn’t know they got to where we were. So, it was a mortar attack. The other officers died, I had my own injury and I’m still carrying the wound throughout. Fortunately, I went to the best hospitals in Britain.
How did you manage to get out of that place when the attack happened?
My boys surrounded me. If you are good to your boys, they will die for you.
How did you fight back at your camp?
We didn’t lose that place. We didn’t lose that battle. But I was a casualty.
Were there casualties also from the enemy camp?
There were times they nearly lost the war and there were times we nearly lost the war, not the last one. There were officers who were incredible and there were officers who were incompetent.
When the book comes out, you will see that among those I listed as terrific, they were not Igbo. There’s one Akwa Ibom man, I will not forget him, he’s still alive, he’s called Col. Afahang Nsudo. The Biafrans were not pushover at all. We had the Biafra 1 and Biafra 2, who were watching the corridor.
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