Fred Cuny, a foreign pilot, said:

  All sorts of political agendas were being played out through this. Our discussions came down to one thing that is if you keep your aircraft going you save lives, if you don’t the country’s going to collapse … but everybody was worried if the airlift stopped, the Nigerian forces who carried out a number of atrocities at the time would either seal the area off and let the country starve to death, or they would swiftly move in and there would be masses of massacres throughout the area and fear of retaliation. The Federal Government began hiring mercenaries to fly. They used Egyptians. They used some Brits, some South Africans and others were called to fly. And there were a few guys who were really willing to go out and shoot down people because they knew the pilots on the other side. It was actually a bizarre situation. There were times when our pilots would go over to Nigeria, to the Bristol Hotel, and meet their pilots in the lobby, have a few drinks and work out the rules of engagement. And the basic rule was, ‘you shoot us down you’ll be out of business and you’re getting a nice lucrative contract so wouldn’t it be better for you just to miss the interceptions and claim the radar sent you to the wrong place and whatever.’ Often we’d be intercepted by MiGs on the daylight runs and they’d make passes and shoot like mad and then of course never shoot anything or whether these were the mercenaries who didn’t want to hit anything … firing off stuff and making claims on the radio, so that ground controllers would think that they were actually engaging the aircraft. 364

  In the middle of 1968 General de Gaulle confirmed his support for Biafra, stating that it had a right to self-determination, but, crucially, he did not give his official endorsement for the country. However, as discussed earlier in the chapter, French support and sanction for arms supplies to Biafra, although having no official endorsement, seems to have been condoned through the offices of the Secretaire-General aux Affaires Africanes et Malgashes aupres de Presidence, Jacques Foccart, whose brief by President De Gaulle was to look after the well-being of at least a dozen African presidents, and to keep them supportive of France and her colonial interests. 365 France had unofficially provided currency support with which to provide arms, and by mid-1968, was regularly supplying arms through Gabon into Biafra’s Uli airport. By August 1968 two flights were made each night from Libreville. Each flight contained arms, ammunition and food supplies for the Biafran army. The aircraft were piloted by Frenchmen and their contents were funded by France. 366

  Personalities were also involved in supporting Biafra and although they might not have had much influence on the war’s outcome, at the time they did have a limited effect on its longevity. The effect of support for Biafra from a new source in mid-1969 was to have a morale-lifting effect on Biafra as well as upsetting Federal oil supplies. This source was through the support of Count Von Rosen:

  Flying from a secret strip carved out of the jungle, a rejuvenated Biafran air force led by Sweden’s most celebrated aviator now poses a significant military and economic threat to the war effort and the Nigerian Federal Government. Count Carl Gustav von Rosen and a small cadre of Swedish volunteers and Biafran airmen have carried out three raids on Nigerian airfields without any losses. Their aircraft are five small, 100 horse-power Swedish M.F.I. ‘Minicoms’ specially adapted for counter-insurgency operations. More are reported to be on the way …. Although no bigger that a Piper Cub, the Minicom has a formidable punch. Each can carry a dozen 76mm rockets or a combination of bombs and machine guns. ‘The rocket sights we’re using are fantastic,’ said the Count after leading the first raid on Port Harcourt airport in which two Nigerian MiGs and an Ilyushin bomber were destroyed. Although 59 years old and near retirement as a commercial pilot, Count von Rosen flies the lead plane in each raid … Neither the Swedes nor the Biafrans believe the new air force will tip the military balance in Biafra’s favour. But the Biafrans … are convinced that they can hurt Nigeria from the air far more than Nigeria air attacks have hurt Biafra. 367

  As Wing-Commander George Ezielo, the head of Biafra’s Air Force, commented:

  There are really no easily identifiable targets left in Biafra that are worth bombing, except Uli airfield where the night-time relief flights land, and after a year of trying, the Nigerians have yet to knock Uli out. Our Government is now completely decentralized. Our industries and refineries are all well concealed in the bush.

  In contrast, the number of military and strategic targets in Nigeria is said to be almost endless, by striking at Federal airfields the Biafrans have begun an effort to paralyse Nigeria’s civil air traffic. Federal ports are thought to be vulnerable, as are the American and European oil rigs and pipelines in the Mid-West region. Any cutback in the flow of Nigerian oil exports could seriously imperil the Federal Government’s chief source of foreign exchange. 368

  Von Rosen had been an active humanitarian, flying first for the Red Cross in Ethiopia and then in Biafra. His belief was that right lay with Biafra and he was a keen supporter of Ojukwu. He went so far as to claim that if his plans for more frequent and ambitious attacks on Lagos’ Apapa oil terminal and docks, and the Jebba road and rail bridge, the South’s sole link with the North, had been implemented, he would have forced the Federal Government to make peace, presumably on Biafra’s terms. As he commented: ‘Once you have seen something like Biafra you cannot turn your back on it. It is really fantastic what they have done. The Biafran struggle will go down in history like Thermopylae. I am proud to have been associated with men who fought as they did.’ This was a sentiment shared with the Welsh South African Taffy Williams, mentioned in chapter 4 . 369

  It is interesting to note that none of Von Rosen’s aircraft were destroyed, and although he and his planes were of limited value and did not appear until the later part of the war they did cause some oil-supply disruption and damage to Federal aircraft.

  The writer Frederick Forsyth was another person who unashamedly supported Biafra’s cause, mainly because he did not agree with Britain’s support for the Federal authorities and the biased attitude of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC):

  The BBC World Service was funded by the British Government, and I was in Nigeria at the time, reporting on behalf of the BBC. As soon as I tried to balance the picture by giving Biafra’s position, problems and issues, I was reprimanded by the Corporation and eventually recalled to London. Once back in London I was effectively demoted and sent to the House of Commons as an assistant reporter. Added to which I discovered that in my absence my London flat had been broken in to, and although I found nothing missing, I did discover that some boarding alongside a wall had been disturbed. I am convinced to this day that the security services had entered my home looking for evidence to incriminate me. Because of this break-in and my effective demotion I resigned from the BBC, and with my severance pay I booked a flight back to Nigeria and presented myself to Ojukwu, in Enugu. Ojukwu welcomed me and offered me the use of a caravan, as a home and a place to work, parked near to Ojukwu’s home, state house, a car and driver and a commission in the Biafran army as a captain. I think the offer of a commission was to allow me the opportunity to freely move round the country in a protected way, so that I could report events as I saw them. I readily accepted this generous offer and for the following thirty months I stayed in Biafra, trying to give the outside world a picture of the country’s condition and plight. 370

  Propaganda and genocide

  Propaganda showing starvation and genocide was used by Biafra throughout the war to convince the international community that it should support Biafra. As a result, international journalism, describing life in Biafra and giving snapshot pictures of malnutrition, starvation, genocide and indiscriminate bombing of innocent civilians by Federal Government aircraft, led the Federal authorities to invite an international observer team to look into these descriptions and accusations.

  All Biafrans live in real danger from being annihilated by the Nigerians, only yesterday my wife’s half brother was killed. 371

  If the Nigerians come across anybody with any level of education they will be killed, this has happened before - anybody who can talk will be killed. 372

  An emergency debate in parliament shows growing, if belated, concern about the bloody tribal war in which Britain is simultaneously professing neutrality while supplying arms to the Federal Government. 373

  Not only was the press able to sensationalise the apparent atrocities carried out on the Biafran people, but the politicians from all political parties in Britain and other western countries sided with Biafra essentially for humanitarian reasons; Ojukwu was only too pleased to encourage and support this. At the time there was very little objective enquiry into the reality of the reported atrocities. Ojukwu was not prepared to disabuse the perception by many in Britain of the situation, and even politicians who visited Biafra often came away with a narrow, biased picture of the situation. However, the Federal authorities, backed by the British Government, continued to support positions which lacked foundations, or at best were assumptions, notwithstanding the fact that the Biafran authorities held contrary views. It became almost impossible to ascertain a relatively objective picture, and arguably these opposing views fostered divergent and opposing western opinion which unfortunately helped to sustain the war’s longevity. A British newspaper reported:

  It has become common practice for reports from Biafra – whether from journalists, relief organisations or the churches – to be dismissed as ‘Biafran propaganda’. In many ways more disturbing have been some misconceptions that have been current in Lagos, which do not accord with what one sees on a visit to both sides.

       1.  ‘Only three and half million people live in what remains of Biafra’ … The colonial office put the figure at seven million.

       2.  ‘Deaths from starvation have been grossly exaggerated by the relief agencies’ … Few of those on the spot, including senior officials of the relief agencies, put the figure at less than one million. There are some who estimate it at one and a half million. It would be interesting to know what information sources of their own the British Government have.

       3.  ‘Ojukwu seceded out of political ambition and greed for oil.’ These were no doubt factors, but certainly the massacres in 1966, the failure to implement the Aburi Agreement, and the decision of the Federal Government to declare unilaterally the creation of twelve states … played their part.

       4.  ‘The Ojukwu clique’ – From the Biafran side the war has all the aspects of a people’s war.

       5.  ‘Our side [sic] is winning, it will only be a matter of weeks now.’ – I understand from journalists who preceded me to Lagos that this has long been a popular misconception shared by both the Federal Government and substantial sections of the diplomatic corps in Lagos.

       6.  Reports of the bombing of civilians by the Federal Nigerian air force are ‘just not possible’, pure Biafran propaganda.

       7.  ‘There is no starvation in Biafra today. Dr Lindt, head of the international Red Cross relief operations, said so himself when he came through Lagos a week ago.’ I was told this toward the end of January, but Dr Lindt has since assured me that he did not say this, and that anyway it would be incorrect.

       8.  ‘Reports that the rebels have been eating seed yams cannot be true. There is no such thing as seed yam’… The normal practice is to eat about half of a small size yam, the other half is used to sustain the new shoot until its roots are developed. 374

  Many of these comments prevalent at the time, and depending on which side the report favoured, determined that view. Undoubtedly they created misconceptions and misapprehensions which led both sides to determine that their course of action was correct and honourable, however incorrect and biased were the facts at their disposal. For example, statements that bombing of civilians by the Federal Air Force were ‘just not possible’ were countered by Gowon:

  I agree that there were incidents of indiscriminate bombing and accidental killings of civilians, but all pilots were under direct instructions from me that all civilian targets were to be avoided at all costs. I put these most unfortunate incidents down to the inexperience of many of our pilots and sometimes their desire to jettison their cargo of arms with little consideration for aiming their bombs on pre-determined military targets. 375

  Even a Commonwealth Office report to Lagos stated:

  It becomes progressively harder to go on releasing ammunition in the face of reports of the bombing of hospitals. A reliable British witness who was in Umuahia until the 1st March has told us that to his personal knowledge four hospitals have been bombed (the Mary Slessor hospital and the hospitals at Itigide, Itukmban and Arochuku). 376

  Only four months earlier the British Government had been arguing:

  Given our interest in a quick Federal victory, therefore, and the fact that Ojukwu is now implacably hostile to us, I think we should be justified in relaxing our policy on arms supply to allow FNG to buy from us items which seem to us to have importance in increasing their ability to achieve a quicker victory, particularly the quick capture of Port Harcourt. 377

  The argument of genocide was one which Biafra also used to help achieve an objective. Ojukwu’s exaggerated claim that in excess of 50,000 Igbos had been mercilessly slaughtered in 1966 in the North was sustained by him and his government until the end of hostilities. 378 The numbers had grown from a notional 5,000 to this popular figure, purely to confirm in the Biafran population’s minds that the Federal Government and her army was intent on genocide of the Igbo race, as well as fostering and maintaining this idea with the international community. A forceful article appeared in the British press articulating the notion of genocide:

  ‘If the Ibos want to commit suicide’, a Nigerian Federal commander is reported to have said, ‘We will help them commit suicide.’ This is just about what has happened. Western hopes that victorious Federalists will behave with 18th-century gallantry towards the fallen foe seem unlikely to be gratified. The Ibos put it to the touch and lost, and must pay the price of defeat.

  This will not be genocide in the sense of mass extermination. What has been exterminated is the Ibo hope of self-determination and freedom. Gen. Gowon’s plan to split Nigeria into 12 regions in the place of the former four will now be put into practice. Biafra will cease to be a rich and potentially powerful region, but three states, of which only one will be unequivocally Ibo. The plan will strip them of most of the oil fields, of Port Harcourt, and of their hegemony over four million non-Ibo now to be distributed between the new Rivers and South-Eastern States.

  This is General Gowon’s solution to the deep ancient enmity between the Hausa/Fulani mainly Moslem people of the North and the predominately Negro Southerners of bush and forest …. Along with material rewards they [Igbos] earned a heavy charge of envy and resentment which is now exploded in their faces, together with the British-made bombs.

  Everything now depends how genuine are the good intentions expressed by Gen. Gowon not to seek revenge but reconciliation. And not merely how genuine, how possible to carry out … and quite another to prevent Hausa soldiers from raping Ibo women in the bush and shooting down fugitives. 379

  Gowon was sensitive to detrimental reports of his regime and was conscious of world opinion and support by the international community for his determined objectives. Therefore, arguably, it was unfavourable reports by the international media which encouraged him to invite a group of international observers to report on the adverse charges made to the Federal Government about the conduct of its troops in the war:

  These included extensive looting, brutality to the population which would eventually lead to the destruction of the Igbo people. In essence, the terms of reference asked that the observers should examine the following accusations:

       1.  That of genocide: whether this strong word is in any way justified.

       2.  To examine the attitude of the Federal troops to the Igbo population and in particular to find out whether the assertion that the Federal army was intent on destruction of all Igbo property is, or is not, correct. 380

  Gowon’s strong Christian sensibilities, as he said, made him react to detrimental comments in the international press that inferred that his regime was focused on genocide: ‘I was deeply distressed that people thought that I even considered genocidal action towards the Igbo people. It never even entered my thought process.’ Even forty years later, during the course of interviewing him, he became very agitated that his Christian spirit and sensibilities should be sullied with a hint in the conversation that it might even be thought that he had considered genocide against the Igbo people. As he said: ‘It was not the Igbo people I was fighting but the small group of leaders who had led the East out of the Federation.’ 381

  The international press’s outpourings, often gained from Biafra’s public relations company Markpress, were extremely vociferous, especially in Britain:

  In an ITN bulletin on Monday viewers saw the Biafran, who declared he was looking for his parents, bound hand and foot and shot by Nigerian Officer, Lt. Macaulay Lanurde. 382

  Col. Scorpion’s [Adekunle] men attack refugee camp: Biafra women and children ‘massacred’

  Biafra last night accused Federal Nigerian troops of massacring more than 2,000 women and children at Owazza and Uguaku. The killings, Biafran Radio said, came as the Federal army crossed the Imo River during their advance on Biafran stronghold of Aba. Federal troops also killed 374 people at a refugee camp in the area. 383