Michael Nicholson of Independent Television News had told us about a nearby hospital, in Biafra, which looked after sick children. So we visited the hospital looking for a story and possible pictures. With the help of some of the nurses we were able to photograph sick children suffering from degenerative diseases, particularly kwashiorkor. I admit that some of the pictures were posed, which added to the emotive issues, but which also strengthened our case for the serious issue of starving children in this little-promoted African war. Because of the way reports and photographs were sent for publication in those days we were able to get our story and photographs into our newspapers before similar television accounts appeared. 193

  Added to this Leslie Kirkley, director of Oxfam had visited Biafra on a fact-finding mission in June 1968. He reported that unless food relief came to Biafra in six weeks, up to 400,000 children would die of kwashiorkor. 194 Finally film crews weighed in with newsreels of the brutality and human cost of this war, for public consumption in the west. The international community did not seek confirmation of any facts and images. Imagery was sufficient to confirm in the American and western public’s mind that this must be stopped and an end put to this savagery and human misery. Unfortunately these reports were a major contributory factor in helping maintain the war for a further eighteen months, and arguably why it proved impossible for either side to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SECOND PART

  OF THE WAR

  From Mid-1968 to January 1970

  When you have finished,

  And done up my stitches,

  Wake me near the altar,

  And this poem will be finished.

  (Limits, Christopher Okigbo, Biafran poet, killed in

  action on the Nsukka front in July 1967)

  The Biafran War falls into two distinct time frames. The second period is from the middle of 1968 until Biafra’s collapse in January 1970. The characteristics of the second period were an ebb and flow of battles and skirmishes, which saw both sides on the ascendant and on the descendant. At times it appeared, especially to the outside world, that Biafra would succeed in her attempts at self-determination, and at others that Federal forces would subjugate her enemy and achieve victory. However it included a number of features which made it difficult for either side to assume that it would achieve its objective.

  The first was Ojukwu’s campaign to market Biafra’s cause effectively to the outside world. His unashamed use of the foreign press to report on his country’s privations, especially starving and malnourished children, undoubtedly gave Biafra an ascendant position over the Federal Government and arguably gave it moral superiority. Added to this was Biafra’s innate ability to infiltrate into the Federal army through recruiting young men, for ‘attack markets’ and her extensive intelligence network. Ojkwu’s style of exercising power, and the control and influence the civil executive had over the army, led to excessive and unecessry shortages. This was also true with regard to Gowon’s lax style and control over his generals. Arms supplies also proved problematic for both sides. Topography and the climate also became a factor which constrained the Federal forces to achieve ascendancy over Biafra. Finally, January 1970 saw the end of the war which, circumstantial evidence shows, occurred in conditions of reluctant resignation. There is, also, evidence to show that by the end of 1969, not only had Biafra lost much of her territory but many ethnic groups who made up the territory of Eastern Nigeria had long given up support for an independent Biafra; indeed it is debatable whether many of these people had really supported the breakaway state in the first place. It is probable that they had simply gone along with the initial general euphoria that an independent Eastern state would free them from Northern oppression, especially in the light of corroborated reports of genocide. There is some unsubstantiated evidence to support this view. However the fact remained that by January 1970 only a determined few in authority were prepared to continue the war. With Ojukwu and his entourage effecting their escape, in the guise of seeking a peaceful compromise, and with limited territory under its control, Biafra as a state had become unsustainable.

  Propaganda and the international press

  With the fall of Enugu and only three months into the war, Biafra had effectively lost two thirds of her territory and Gowon was determined: ‘I am resolved this crisis won’t continue for long … and end it by 31 March 1968’, 195 raising false hopes for the Federal Government and the people of Nigeria.

  It is certainly true that there is much merriment about the perpetual announcement of an imminent finale. ‘We were finished forty-eight hours after the war started’, said one captain, ‘Then it was three weeks, three months, six months, a year, July, August, September. By October first, Gowon was supposed to be drinking palm wine in Umuahia.’ 196

  Such was the confidence in Federal circles that it was only a matter of time before the rebels were defeated, that as early as October 1967 Dr Ukpabi Asika, an Igbo lecturer at Ibadan University, who had elected to stay at his post and not flee to the East, was appointed as civilian administrator for Enugu and the recaptured areas of East-Central State. However, despite Gowon’s prediction, by the middle of 1968 the war had reached a stalemate, neither side having given or lost ground since the success of the Federal forces in the initial stages following Biafra’s retreat from the Mid-West region. After Biafra had failed in sustaining its invasion of the Mid-West, due to Banjo’s ignominious behaviour at Benin, it had endured an ignoble retreat east across the river Niger to Onitsha. His perfidiousness resulted in the loss of determined military leadership, and led to Biafran troops making their own disorganised way back to the river Niger, not because they were pursued by Nigerian forces, but because they were following rather chaotic orders to retreat. 197 It never attempted to mount such an opportunistic offensive operation again, and its military policy from then on was one of defence, together with small-scale offensive attacks. Ojukwu argued that it was much better to utilise limited national resources in defending its boundaries and seeking international recognition for its status as an independent nation, than to launch strident offensive operations against Federal forces even if it had been in a position so to do. 198 It might be argued that this was Biafra’s way of saying that it recognised the ultimate superior forces of the Federal Government, and its only hope for independence was the support of the international community. 199 However, although the Federal army was gaining in strength and had overrun the Biafran capital, Enugu, and was on the ascendant and many in the breakaway state felt that it was only a matter of time before Biafra collapsed, the Federal forces had chronic logistic and manpower problems. 200 These factors led to a lull in the fighting, giving both sides the opportunity to regroup, rearm, and recruit and train more people for their armies. 201 Although from this time Biafra’s army became a defensive force, it arguably placed it in the much stronger position of defending its territory rather than launching dubious military adventures to win allies or to subjugate the rest of the country. Biafra’s prime objective was to create a sustainable independent and sovereign state, and it is interesting to note that from this period on this indeed became its focus. The promotion of the Biafran state to the outside world became a priority, to persuade other nations to recognise its sovereignty and to convince them that Biafra had the right to an independent existence. By appointing Markpress, a Geneva-based publicity company, Biafra was able to show the outside world its condition and her determination to remain an independent country.

  This was one of the first wars to be sold by public relations companies on both sides. William Berhardt, who had been involved with Biafra from 1967, through his Geneva-based company Markpress, started to send his press releases from Biafra in February 1968. He later explained that when he was first approached by Biafra he thought it a kind of toothpaste. Under his banner of Markpress he projected the world’s conscience and exerted a powerful force in keeping the world aware of Biafra throughout the war. At the height of the agency’s effectiveness it was distributing communiqués to five major news agencies as well as briefing Britain’s parliament and America’s congress. Even Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, was impressed with Markpress’s reports and they were regularly featured in cabinet meetings. 202

  Ojukwu however was also intent on showing the world how indiscriminate the Federal army was in its efforts to overrun Biafra by its uncontrolled bombing of hospitals, schools and markets, which was leading to the deaths and maiming of innocent civilians, especially children.

  He was also intent on showing the world how the effects of the Federal forces surrounding Biafra were creating conditions of extreme hardship, leading to starvation and malnutrition. As described at the end of Chapter 3 , British correspondents and cameramen intent on obtaining sensational headlines inadvertently promoted this position. They had been invited by Biafra to tour the front lines and report back to their readers a true appraisal of conditions in Biafra. One of the newsmen and his team was invited to report and film conditions in a front-line hospital. When they arrived at the hospital conditions were not as critical as they had been led to believe and they had to look round the hospital for examples of maimed and desperately ill people. Finding a child who was obviously suffering from kwashiorkor, a disease caused by malnutrition which is endemic on the west coast of Africa, they arranged for him to pose looking pathetic and desperate. Because of the way press photography was processed round the world in the 1960s, it took some days for the report and pictures to be published in the international communities’ national newspapers.

  When Gowon was asked about supposed indiscriminate bombing by Federal planes he said:

  I personally ordered all pilots to avoid bombing civilians, markets, churches, schools and hospitals and any other areas where civilians might assemble. But we had a major problem in so far as the Nigerian Air Force was a young and inexperienced organisation and it was hamstrung by its inability to attract trained pilots from overseas and its limited ability to train Nigerian pilots. This all happened at the time when we thought Biafra was able to build an air force. The problem for us was that Britain had refused to even contemplate supplying us with planes and so we found ourselves looking around for willing suppliers. The Russians came to our resue, not that we even considered the international political implications, and offered to supply fighter aircraft, but refused to offer pilots. We eventually found that we could recruit Egytian pilots, but they were a mixed blessing because many of them did not know how to fly the Russian planes. We also found that they had no loyalty to the Federal cause and were only interested in earning their large fees. We found that these pilots’ tendencies were to fly into the war zone and drop their bombs from great heights, where they had no control over bombing intended targets, and with no contact with enemy aircraft. I feel that it was because of this type of indiscriminate bombing which led to tragic consequences of some civilian areas being struck. However I want to to put on record that nobody on the Federal side ordered that civilian sites should be attacked, but it is to my lasting regret that I did not ban all indiscrimate bombing. 203

  In his interview Michael Leapman was disparaging about the excessive claims made by Biafra at the time.

  I felt that both sides used the international press to promote their causes in extremely manipulative ways. At the time we were all young ambitious reporters anxious to find dramatic stories and get them back to our editors and to the attention of our readership. One example of this was my colleague Michael Nicholson, of Independent Television News, who was invited to witness and film the execution of a young Nigerian Army lieutenant. Michael insisted on holding up the execution until his cameraman and his equipment had arrived, in order for the whole grisly business to be filmed, and so that Michael could record the affair in detail for his viewers’ consumption.

  Arguably the Federal Authorities allowed this for international consumption to show the world that Federal forces were not above the law and that justice should be seen to be done. The soldier concerned had been accused and convicted of shooting an unarmed Biafran prisoner of war at Port Harcourt in September 1968. 204

  Its appearance caused an immediate sensation in Britain, Europe and America. These accounts were quickly followed by televised reports of the same incident, which in turn were followed by further examples of atrocities supposedly carried out by the Federal forces. The effect of these reports was to create awareness in the homes of western society, especially the middle classes, of a devastating and barbaric war in a remote part of a little-known country on the west coast of Africa. ‘A terrible bloody war is going on. Why do we hear little or nothing about it in the press or on the radio? … But the need must be known. The strange silence in Britain about this war must be broken.’ 205

  Until this time the war had progressed with little awareness by the public of western democracies. The Vietnam War was in progress and its atrocities had been proclaimed by the press, creating an international awareness. Suddenly the world was confronted with the horrors of another war. Because of this, there were mass efforts to help, primarily through large donations of cash to the international aid agencies. The British Foreign and Commonwealth official report states:

  Partly because of the encouragement given by the rebels to western television teams, the most obvious immediate effect of the propaganda campaign was to focus international attention on the civilian Biafran victims of the civil war. Starving babies seen repeatedly on television came to symbolise the Nigerian conflict for millions of people in Britain, Western Europe and North America. Because the communications media, prone in any case to sensationalism and superficiality, had more than their fair share of Biafran sympathisers, much press and television reporting was partial, slanted and even mendacious. But even without rebel propaganda and television or press bias the sharp television images of human distress would almost certainly have been enough to arouse an irresistible demand for remedial action. As it was, humanitarian concern for the victims of the war in Biafra often became hopelessly intertwined with political partisanship on behalf of the rebels; and the pressure of public opinion in almost all western countries forced governments into active intervention in relief matters as the price for holding aloof from political involvement with one side or the other. The symbol of this urge to intervene was Joint Church Aid. 206

  As Tim Brierly, Oxfam’s director in Nigeria at the time, pointed out: ‘ The allocation of funds under my jurisdiction for Nigeria and Biafra, from June 1968, expanded at a disproportionate rate.’ 207

  Not only did mass communication create awareness and support for Biafra’s maimed, ill and starving children but it also moved governments’ positions on arms supply. By May 1968, Czechoslovakia put an embargo on arms sales to Nigeria. It was quickly followed by Holland, Italy, France and Belgium. 208 By its unashamed use of the media Biafra gained a certain moral superiority over the Federal Government in the eyes of the world’s communities. And it could be argued that it led Gowon to counter what in his opinion was Biafra’s false moral stance 209 by appointing a team of independent international observers to counter allegations of indiscriminate killing and genocidal attacks on Biafran civilians. 210 The observers spent a considerable amount of time ascertaining the truth of Biafra’s claims and eventually, even after exhaustive research, could find very little evidence to support Biafra’s charges. It should however be said that that the observer team was restricted in its access to certain areas and was severely constrained in its efforts to uncover evidence of atrocities to civilians within Biafran territory. So although it did much to disabuse Biafra’s claims, the perception remained with the public in the west that Federal troops were intent on killing innocent civilians.

  Two unfortunate incidents which gave substance to this perception were the unlawful killings of civilians by Federal troops when they reached Benin and Asaba, in the light of Biafra’s retreat through the Mid-West:

  Witnesses were able to testify that, in the Mid-Western region, where there was a big concentration of Biafrans residing, mass exterminations took took place in the towns of Benin and Asaba. In Asaba I was informed that all males of Biafran origin were told to gather together in the market-place to welcome the advancing Federal troops. What resulted was that all these people were razed to the ground by machine-gun fire. The witness who gave this statement was in the Mid-Western region at the time of the incident, and he states that about 700 people were killed on this day of ceremonial welcome. The witness referred me to the Observer newspaper of 21st January, 1968, where this incident was reported.

  In Benin, the Federal capital of the Mid-West, evidence was given that all Biafran residents in this town were called out into the open where they were also exterminated. 211