SURVIVING IN BIAFRA BOOK EXCERPTS

PartIII

PartII    

Part 1

In Lagos Nigeria, 1966

It irks me to the bone every time I hear people suggest that the Biafran experience should not be discussed because it reopens old wounds. When I hear such ill-informed advice, I usually respond with the age-old saying that those who shy away from history are doomed to repeat it.

On the 7th of December 2001, America commemorated the 60th anniversary of the bombing of the Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. As painful as that experience was, America still chose to remember it, why? They used the occasion to honor those who lost their lives in the defense of this great country, America. Also, remembrance of what happened on that fateful day, helps ensure that measures are put in place to avoid a repeat. This is the hallmark of an advanced and civilized society; you forgive, but do not forget.

The Biafran war, which took the lives of more than one million innocent people, should not be an exception. The men, women and children who lost their lives as a result of that conflict, must not be forgotten. The harrowing experience of those who survived the war, must not be forgotten; the experience must be kept in the forefront of our national discourse, to serve as a constant reminder of the catastrophic results of the war and in a way, help prevent a repeat of events that led to that tragic episode in Nigeria's history.

This is the first part of a multi part series I wrote about the war; it is the story of survival in Biafra. We have read several books authored by men who prosecuted the war or witnessed the events directly as they unfolded. They saw the war through the eyes of adults; some authors like Col. J.O.G Achuzia talked about their heroics while others like General Madiebo pointed out things they felt were inimical to the effective prosecution of the war. Other authors like Frederick Forsythe characterized Biafra as an entity that would have risen to become a great nation.

My account on Biafra is however not about heroic feats because I neither witnessed nor performed any. I was just 7 when the war commenced and by the time it officially ended in 1970, I was a 10-year old boy. This is very significant though because it means that more than 3 years of my childhood, were spent in Biafra, under siege by the Federal troops. My account therefore is about survival in Biafra seen through the eyes of a kid; hopefully it will provide an insight into what other kids felt which no one has ever reported or bothered to try. Here we go:

In 1966, as a six-year-old living in Lagos, I was aware of some of the political rumblings in the north, yet I saw life as normal because in my mind, political upheavals were part of normal occurrences in life.

I loved Lagos then for several reasons, for one, we had access to the "silima"(cinema) shows they always had in the grounds of Yaba College of Technology - my father was then the Social Welfare Officer for the College and we lived inside the college compound. I also had a lot of friends to play with in Lagos and most importantly, I loved the conveniences in Lagos like electricity, which I did not see when we visited my hometown earlier. During that visit to Nnewi, it bothered me that once darkness fell, everywhere turned pitch black with an eerie silence enveloping the village like something of a vice. For lighting during that visit, we used what we called "tili lamp" or "gas lamp" which was always turned off after 9:00PM and in the event that one had to get up at night, as a kid, it was always frightening.

The many ghost stories about Lagos however scared me somewhat: my sister told us the story of Bisi, a girl that died in Lagos, but several months later, she was spotted at the bus stop around Obalende by someone who knew her. Of course like any other lad of my age, I believed those stories. There were also stories of abductors or "ndi nto" as they were called in Ibo. They were said to be in every part of Lagos looking for little kids to abduct and sell to people with diabolical disposition who mummified them and used them as moneymaking objects! For that reason, venturing out of the house alone, was always a no no. In our house, kids had instructions not to talk to or follow strangers and always go out in groups.

This was the time of General Ironsi; it seemed like he was always in the news then. Radio broadcasts would go like this: " the head of state and supreme commander in chief of the Nigerian armed forces, Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi…". I always wondered why the General had so many names and it intrigued me even more, that broadcasters seemed compelled to always call out all his names during newscasts. All these added to the enigmatic disposition that was always associated with the name of the Supreme Commander.

Story went around amongst the kids that the General was invincible; there was this famous photograph of him as he was leaving the peacekeeping mission in Congo, waving goodbye with one hand and clutching a small crocodile replica in the other hand. I believe he was standing on the step of an aircraft. Legend had it that the crocodile was alive; it was credited to have saved his life during the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo. We were told that the crocodile made him invincible and therefore no amount of bullets could harm him. It is worthy of mention here that the name crocodile translates into "Aguiyi" in Ibo dialect; it is therefore conceivable that the General just had the crocodile replica as a symbol that depicted his middle name. Given all these stories about Ironsi's invincibility, we were shocked beyond belief therefore, when it was reported that he had been killed!

As the situation in the country continued to deteriorate both as a result of Ironsi's murder and the uprisings in the North, I could no longer go to school on a daily basis. I was in kindergarten at the Ladi-Lak Institute, Yaba Lagos. Pa-Bukola (as we called him) - a friend of my dad who used to bring Bukola and I back from school, no longer showed up. We later concluded that as tension heightened between the Ibos and Hausas and as hostilities against the Ibos grew, he decided to keep away to avoid being branded an Ibo lover and therefore penalized. This was also true of my father's army buddy; we called him "Sajin mejor" - I believe he was a Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) in the Nigerian Army. He was a tall, dark and heavily accented Hausa man who I thought was very pleasant by all standards. During Christmas celebrations, my father would send gifts to him and during Moslem holidays when Moslems broke their fast, he always reciprocated. As the pogroms and genocide in the north continued to gather momentum and as stories of clandestine and nocturnal abduction of Ibos in Lagos and environs started, my father got wind of the fact that "sajin mejor" had suddenly become a turn coat and wanted to make him an abduction statistic! At first, my father could not believe this and simply attributed it to the handiwork of rumormongers and people of their ilk. Later on, evidence got even stronger that "sajin mejor" was ready to implement his evil plan but my father still elected to do nothing until my mother and my maternal cousin - Edith interceded and nightly hiding places for my father where established. He started alternating sleeping in his office with sleeping in my cousin's place at Ebute Metta!

One night, according to what we were told later, sometime before midnight, three stern-looking men came to our house and demanded to see my father. They got angry with my mother when she told them my father was away. Even though these men never came back to our house, this singular incident strengthened our resolve that my father should continue to sleep in his office at night and this continued for the duration of our stay in Lagos. I found all these developments incredulous; sajin mejor was my father's friend I thought, why would he want his blood spilled, I wondered? Whether "sajin mejor" was guilty or not, his subsequent actions portrayed the actions of a guilty man because as those events unfolded, he never showed up in our house again. That was sad.
All kinds of rumors pervaded the nation about the manner in which Ironsi died; some said he was confronted by some soldiers at the state house Ibadan and shot. Others said he was tied to the back of a jeep, dragged along until his body decapitated. Whatever the real story, these were stories kids told one another. The issues were always discussed in hushed tones by adults and I do know that the period in question must have been filled with bad news because every time my father read the newspaper, one could see sad expressions written all over his face.
Anyhow, I never realized the gravity and implications of what was unfolding in Nigeria in those tumultuous days of 1966. I had accepted the fact that I could not immediately go back to my school every weekday because of safety concerns but I was unprepared for what happened the next time we went to Sunday school. Sunday school was always fun, a lot of other Ibo children attended that church; after Sunday school, we would play for a while before heading back to our different homes. It was enjoyable.

There was something ominous about that particular Sunday; as I walked into the church premises with my siblings, the usual hustle bustle of activities was absent, the little girls that would normally be playing "oga" and "suwe" were no where to be found. Even inside the church, only a handful of children were present. At the end of the Sunday school class, the Sunday school teacher explained to us that many families had either gone back to the East, or were in hiding because of the uncertainties engendered by the pogroms in the north. He also cited the increase in harassment of Ibos in Lagos and outlying areas as another reason for the mass exodus. . He noted that many Ibos were also leaving the north in droves and returning to the East. Then as if he had not elicited the desired reaction from us, in a slow but deliberate tone he somberly added, " many more of the families in Lagos would probably be leaving for the East before the next Sunday school class"

We narrated what transpired in the church to my mother when we got back home and for the first time, she expressed apprehension about our continued stay in Lagos and stated that she had told our father to resign from Yaba College so we would all go back to Nnewi. She stated that some of our family friends and neighbors had already left or were getting ready to leave; the Ngwubes, the Ikems, and the Unegbus. Even Mr. Igwilo - the college grounds keeper (students called him Kekere) from Oraifite, near Nnewi had either left or was getting ready to. That did it for me! I could not go to school regularly any more for safety reasons, Sunday school was no longer going to be fun because most kids would have left Lagos by the next Sunday and now I had no friends left to play with. I knew I could never enjoy Lagos again, not with the Ikem family - Irene, Nwamu, "Boy"(as we called him) and Jenny gone. From then on, sheer misery set in. I was ready to go back to Nnewi, which I had only visited once but figured that I would at least have relatives there to play with.

To compound an already terrible situation, for safety reasons, our movement was restricted to just walking around our house in response to increased rumors of abductions of Ibos we were hearing. Infact there was a story then that there were some Ibos who pretended to be Yorubas when unknown persons accosted them. To verify their true identity, they were asked to pronounce "Obalende." The story had it that a true Yoruba would say "OBALENDE" but an Ibo would for some reason pronounce it as "OBALANDE". Note the emphasis on the "A" between the letter "L" and "N". It was said that when the Ibos failed to pronounce Obalende properly, they were taken away.

The whole atmosphere at that time was replete with fear; it was even made worse when my father was told point blank that his safety could no longer be guaranteed at the Yaba College of Technology. This became a double whammy; he no longer slept in the house at night because of "sajin mejor" and now his safety could no longer be guaranteed. Life became exceedingly unbearable. We wanted to go back to Nnewi but my father was the obdurate type, he seemed to believe that we could wait things out in Lagos and soon things would return to normalcy- a decision he later regretted! We were literally begging him to send us to Nnewi, to send us out of harm's way.

PartIII

PartII