By Obi Nwakanma
MY attempt this week is to bring some attention to the subject of the Asaba massacres, one of the haunting ghosts of Nigeria’s last civil war. I pay particular tribute to Emma Okocha – Onye Amuma Cable – author of Blood on the Niger, the chilling account of the Asaba massacres of October 7, 1967.
More than any other individual, Okocha has pursued the Asaba story with the temerity of a survivor, and the hardnosed instincts of a well-trained journalist. He has brought attention to the great evil that Nigerians love to forget: the attempt at selective annihilation of a people through acts of terrible war crimes.
Asaba has become Okocha’s life work; an obsession. He says it is to bring closure, and give final rest to those who perished that day in Asaba. But I suspect something much deeper and personal. Of course it is up close and personal for Emma Okocha. He is from Asaba; he survived the massacres; but his entire family perished.
The Igbo name their children, “Echezona/Echezola”- never forget, and “Odoemene/Ozoemena”- May this never happen again. These are names in recoil from harsh memory.
These I think are the profound sentiments that propel Okocha’s pursuit to reopen the case of the Asaba mass killings, compel the official acknowledgement of war crimes by the Nigerian government, and force a visible war memorial in honour of the dead of October 1967 – the “Asaba Memorial.”
Happily, Emma Okocha’s work is drawing attention to one of modern Africa’s darkest war crimes. Last week, the University of Southern Florida, Tampa, convened the Asaba Memorial symposium to reopen the issue, and unveil “the long-buried tragedy” led by the anthropologists Elizabeth Bird and Erin Kimmerle and Fraser Ottanelli, chairman of the department of history, in collaboration with the USF Libraries Holocaust and Genocide Studies Centre.
They have also recruited a Tampa Police homicide detective Charles Massucci to gather documents, record oral histories and to examine mass graves and recover evidence of the Asaba genocide.
Let me briefly place the Asaba tragedy in context for those who may either have forgotten, or who may not know about it, especially many contemporary Nigerians who may have been born after the war, and who ought to know the many evils that haunt Nigeria.
In May 1967, Eastern Nigeria declared secession from the old federation of Nigeria and declared itself the republic of Biafra. Eastern Nigerian secession naturally culminated in the Nigerian political crisis leading to the January 15, 1966 coup led by Emma Ifeajuna that overthrew the government of the first republic, and the July 29, 1966, led by Murtala Muhammed, and directed by Yakubu Gowon who subsequently took over as military head of state.
The July coup spiraled into the selective annihilation of all Igbo military officers and snowballed into a pogrom of the Igbo.
The Aburi agreements reached to stem the slide collapsed, and the Gowon administration in Lagos peremptorily dissolved the regions and created the twelve states on May 27, 1967, thus subverting as the government in the East saw it, the fundamental authority and rights of the regional governments, and complicating the East’s capacity to offer security to its people who had fled to it.
Odumegwu-Ojukwu, military governor of the Eastern region, on advise from the Eastern Nigerian Consultative Assembly declared secession, and announced the independent republic of Biafra three days later, on May 30, 1967.
The stage was set for an epic conflict. The government in Lagos declared war and attacked Biafra on July 6, fighting from Ogoja and Nsukka. By September, the Biafran capital was threatened.
That September, however, Biafra launched its own attack, a diversionary and tactical move through the Midwest; brilliant in conception, but poor in execution.
Brigadier Victor Banjo, leading the “Liberation Army” from Onitsha, made a lightning move into Benin City and was close to taking Lagos and Ibadan, in what then seemed a cake walk, when he suddenly lost the will to fight.
Old Biafra intelligence sources hint that Banjo had been told in unmistakable terms, in his meeting with the deputy British high commissioner in Benin, that the Brits might be forced to provide logistical support to Gowon from the sea, and attack Lagos with its special forces already nearby, off the coasts.
The prospects of the Brits bombing Lagos and turning “Yorubaland” into a bloody battle field forced Banjo to stymie the Liberation Army in Benin City, and order a hasty withdrawal. It also allowed the federal troops led by Murtala Muhammed to reorganize and retake the Midwest. Asaba was doomed from that moment.
The massacre of Igbo civilians began from Benin City with the arrival of the federal forces. Folks in Benin went house by house identifying and killing their Igbo neighbours. Murtala’s Army already war drunk thus arrived Asaba with bloodlust.
The account of what happened in Asaba is well documented in Emma Okocha’s Blood on the Niger. It is also the subject of my poem, The Horsemen, an elegy to that era.
But to put it quite simply, the troops under Murtala Muhammed and the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, both of whom also ironically met death on the same day in 1976, supervised the killing of the adult males of Asaba.
They had ordered them to dance at the town square, separated the men from the women, and killed them.
Ironically, one of those killed was Sydney Asiodu, a potential Olympic medalist and undergraduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His brother, Philip Asiodu was then a super permanent secretary in Gowon’s administration in Lagos.
Even then, Asaba was only one of the places where the Nigerian military committed war crimes of such horrendous magnitude during that war, and have sought to cover it up and even erase them.
Many of those who have strutted about as Nigeria’s military heroes indeed ought to be brought to account for their war crimes.
It is the legacy of impunity that continues to haunt Nigeria, and continues to breed the kind of viciousness that would lead to the mindless destruction of people be it at Umuechem, Odi or Gboko because no one yet has been brought to account for such horrendous acts.
The Asaba memorial will be an important first step towards full disclosure and possible restitution.
Effiong, you feel you have all the answers to the genocide, therefore you can pass rash judgment the Igbos. Keep your personal judgment to yourself. It is arrogant of you to claim you know Banjo’s motives or to say if only Ojukwu had kept his ambition in check Nigeria would be alright today. These were the stupid aspersions Nigerians used to cast during the genocide. That time we used to hear stupid phrases like “Ajukwu’s inordinate ambition, federal troops have liberated Obollo Eke, etc” on Radio Kaduna.
How can a sensible person blame Ojukwu for trying to defend his people under extermination all over Nigeria? Ojukwu did not want war. He went to Aburi and other mediation forums only to be rebuffed by Jack Gowon. What was the crime of Igbos that were daily slaughtered outside Igbo land? Igbos did not start the war. When Murtala Mohammed, Adekunle, Shuwa, and Obasanjo attacked Igbos from the 4 corners what was Ojukwu’s choice? To hold his ambition according to you. We know that if we did not have a sensible leader like Ojukwu the enemy would have wiped us out.
In the same vein, it is people like that blames the Israelis for defending themselves against jihadists. My prayer for you is that God grant you the opportunity to experience oppression from others based on your race. Only then will you know how to pass rash judgment others.
So much has been written and much of it true especially by those with first hand accounts. So I will comment briefly:
1. Brig. Banjo did not lose his will to fight as the author claims. That comment is a disservice to the name and memory of such a brilliant officer and a patriot. He might have stopped believing in what he was fighting for, when it dawned on him that his vision of what he was fighting for and Ojukwu’s vision did not match. Nobody can fault him that his assessment was wrong. The overall operational blame for the offensive grinding to a halt at Ore can only be placed at the foot of those at Enugu, not with the commanders in the field. Ojukwu should have controlled himself and kept his personal ambitions in check until the operation was successful. As it was, my cousin, a 22 year old L/Cpl had to make his way on foot from Ore back to Biafra, through the bushes, all the while avoiding Nigerian soldiers. No commanding officer would put his troops through that, let alone Banjo. I suspect when he was recalled back to Enugu, he did not suspect that it would mean the disintegration of the offensive.
2. I hope people still remember that after the declaration of the Republic of Biafra, there was a declaration of the Republic of Benin and talk of the Republic of Oduduwa. These other republics were never going to be ruled by the Igbos.
3. The January coup never was an Igbo coup. It only became viewed as an Igbo coup when Col. David Ejoor failed to carry out his assignment in Enugu, his protestations after the fact not withstanding.
4. The pogrom was not only against the Igbos. My first cousin in Ida only escaped because of the intervention of his muslim neighbors who secretly guided him out of town to safety and also perhaps due to the fact that he looked Kanuri.
5. With the pogrom and forced repatriation, the cessation was inevitable. Those looking for the root of the failure of the cessation should look no further than the current state of politics in Anambra State.
6. In my opinion, the Biafra experiment failed not merely because of the tactical superiority of the Nigerian forces, but because the leadership was unsuccessful in assuring the non-military component of its COR (Calabar, Ogoja and Rivers) underbelly that they will not be second class citizens in Biafra.
7. A scholarly history of these events by Nigerians, even if aided by a truth commission is long overdue for posterity sake. A history unencumbered by partisanship, selective recollections or calls for revenge.
The tragedy of it all is that none of the 5 majors wanted to break up Nigeria. They just wanted a better Nigeria. If anything, they were starry-eyed 30 year-old, patriotic nationalists unschooled in intrigue and absolutely lacking in personal ambition. I suspect if they had known what lay in store for the country in the coming 18 months, they would not have been so ready to hand over control to the personally ambitious and the incompetent. If we fault them, we should fault them for this for the country has been living with the consequences of their naivete these past 43 years.
johnson, you are still blaming the victims. Are you still blaming Igbos for 1929 jihad, 1947 massacres, 1956 massacres, and 1966 pogroms? You laid the 1966 coup squarely on the Igbo name but failed to mention that that the coupists comprised mainly Tiv and Yoruba officers. Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was not completely Igbo. His mother who passed on recently was Hausa, his uncles are Hausa. Kaduna Nzeogwu spoke no Igbo.
Dr Obi Nwakamma must be commended for his scholarly work. Somebody must remind Igbos of their history, their friends and enemies. We cannot brush aside the first scandalous genocide in Africa to please the Johnsons. If the Israelis folded their hands and accommodated their oppressors they would have been wiped out of the surface of the earth.
Those who have accounts of the genocide must come up and document them, as is done in Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia and elsewhere. How can one gloss over an ugly event like that. Gowon, Adekunle, Mobalaji Johnson, Obasanjo and whole host of the war criminals are still alive. They are not denying their actions because there are still witness, wounds and all kinds of physical evidence of the genocide. The Hausa/Fulani and Yoruba soldiers are getting ready to do the same thing in the Niger Delta as soon as the blood-thirty Fulani leader gives the marching order.
The point is that we are not going to keep quiet over these atrocities until they stop.
There can be no justificatio for the Asaba massacre.
But scholars like Obi have a duty to bear faithful rather tha partial witness.
Igbo officers led the coup in which Northern and yoruba officers were selectively killed. Ironsi set up an Igbo-dominated governmegt. Igbos in the North taunted the Hausas, thrustig in their faces a picture of coup leader Nzeogwu sitting triumphantly on the body of the slain Northern premier. The picture,, by the way, was from a magazine edited by Nelson Ottah, an Igbo. The invasion of the Midwest was facilitated by treacherous officers of Igbo origin based in loyalist Midswetern Nigeria. It was no lighting strike.
Nothing i all this justifies the Asaba massacre.
But selective condemnation serves no useful purpose.
The annihilation plans of the Igbo race by Hausa/Fulani Yoruba hegemony are too many to enumerate. Col Mobolaji Johnson, the then criminal governor of Lagos State once ordered the execution of Ika Igbos in Lagos bragging that “an Ibo man is an Ibo man no matter from what state”.
One inhumane incident I can never forget in my life is an air raid that happened near my neighborhood on a market day in 1968. Around 12:30 at the peak of our local market Afor Umuohiagu 2 mig fighters circled around the market and its vicinity and disappeared. 15 minutes later another British Camberra medium-sized plane dived low at the center of the market and did an acrobatic summersault in the air, the crew of two white men were seen laughing and waving at the people. As soon as the plane disappeared a heavy bomber with earth-shaking noise circled the market and dived low releasing series of bombs in and around the market place. When the heavy bomber left another one came repeating the act of the first plane.
When the raid was over there was wailing and uncontrollable cries within the place. As the news of the massacre spread around the towns and villages, people rushed in to look for their dead or wounded relatives. Body parts were scattered here and there, the market looked like a pool of blood. That day many children were orphaned while many other victims either got amputation or serious wounds.
After so many years I still have nightmares of the ethnic cleansing called civil war. Since then I see the idea of one united Nigeria as a death trap for Igbos.
My fear of Nigeria is made stronger for the fact that the war criminal are still alive and many of them ruling Nigeria and deploying JFT very close to our borders. It troubles me also that the chief militants of our neighbors in the Niger Delta trust the Hausa/Fulani Yoruba soldiers. Perhaps they were either too young or not born during the genocide. Besides these soldiers cannot differentiate an Igbo from Ibibio, or Ijaw for that matter.
let us not open old wounds, Ali Chukwuma once said, if you consider the devastation that took place in Onitsha, he did not believe he will ever see Onitsha again. Let us forgive all the blood suckers who deprived us of the company and contributions of our siblings.
Their reward awaits them.
My first encounter with the Asaba genocide story was from our neighbor in my childhood days. She always sang this soul-touching song every morning of how innocent Asaba youths were murdered during the Biafran war in Asaba. She lost all her siblings in that genocide.
While the Asaba genocide is yet to be acknowledged, Gowon moves around with a facial grin and like a psychadelic in his Nigeria prays talk-show. But deep inside him, I know Gowon must be a very sad man for the blood on his head and how he was used and dumped by the people he thought he was working with. And with the recurrent religious crises in Jos, Plateau, no one need to tell Gowon where he belongs in the ugly history of Nigeria.
As an eye witness of 1966 coupe in Kaduna; the Northern Araba progrom;
another at Makurdi bridge. On the break of the conflict, I saw genocide
from Ubolo Eke, Ubolo Afor at Nsukka and the death of late Col.Chukwuma
Kaduna Nzogwu at the Nsukka university campus. Personally met with
Brig. Banjo and Ifeajuna, crossed to Asaba from Igbariam, advanced to
Ore and were asked to withdraw. Witnessed actions in the Rivers from
Borri, Bony, Degema, Abonima, etc; and moved to Calabar where SS Nigerian ship shelling could not stop. Then to Abakaliki, Ogoja, Obubra
Ikom; setting stage on city defences like Enugu, Port Harcourt, Owerri;
Aba, Umuahia; Onitsha and Abagan Junction cum Post Office (Anambra).
Fought against Col.Adekunle’s (Black Scorpion) at Port Harcourt before being replaced by Brig. Olusegun Obasanjo’s (Otopus).; Murtula Muhammed (Div.), at Onitsha. Asaba is not the only spot massacre of civilians and war crimes were numerous. For instance, Col. Adekunkle
was charging civilians safety fees arround Port Harcourt sector., and not
all captured Biafrans were handed over to the International Red Cross
alive. Possibly, there might be some Biafran children sent over to Gabon for medical attention that have not been accounted for.
There were other areas innocent civilians were deliberately lined-up especially males suspected as Biafran soldiers and women suspected
to be spying for Biafrans were killed. Some women were captured by the
Nigerian soldiers, raped and kept as sex-slaves with them in the trenches.
There were reports of civilians who refused to leave their homes were
deliberatel locked-up in the same house and set ablaze by Nigerian
soldiers simply for being Igbos. Churches and market places including
hospitals were bombed . Patients were bionetted in some hospitals
especially orthopedic patients whose limbs were suspended for mere
suspicious of being Biafran soldiers. There were war crimes and lootings.
Typical evidence of lootings were the interceptions at Nsukka, Enugu and Oghe in Enugu state ;Abagana, Umuahia, Abriba, Calabar ,Obubra;
Port Harcourt and Afikpo areas. There were trully evidence of genocide
committed during the Biafran war upon which evidences might be hard
to assemble as a result of post war reconstructions, (ie. erecting building
on a war mass-grave site out of ignorance, adversely distorts evidence).
Obasanjo for some reason installed discipline when he took over from
Adekunle in Port Harcourt sector. Sympathetic nations were not allowed
to ship food to Biafra unless handed over to the Nigerian government. first.
Catholic (CARITAS) who insisted on night flights at make-shift strips at
Uli and Okigwe, were regularly bombed and many volenteers killed. Nigerian planes were predominantly manned by Egyptian and Arab pilots. Some Nigerian troops were also led by foreign mercenaries as “Field Advisers”.
Yoruba men are never to be trusted, the yorubas are double-headed, thats excatly what Banjo exhibited. ‘May the souls of my Asaba brothers rest in perfect peace’.Amen.