Africa
Page 30
THE SECOND COUP 29 JULY 1966
On 29 July 1966 a group of Northern soldiers arrived at the Western Region military headquarters in Ibadan where Ironsi was staying with Colonel Fajuyi, the West’s Military Governor, at Government Lodge. The two men and an aide were taken outside Ibadan, tortured and then killed. The revolt then spread to Ikeja barracks outside Lagos and the rebels seized the international airport. Brig. B. Ogundipe, the most senior officer after Ironsi, tried to prevent the coup spreading and sent a detachment of troops from Lagos to quell the mutiny but they were ambushed and suffered heavy losses. The Northern garrisons supported the revolt although no coup was attempted in the Eastern Region. This counter-coup of 29 July, which followed riots in the Northern Region, had two aims: revenge upon the East by the North for the first coup; and the breakup of Nigeria by Northern secession. The Northern soldiers soon found themselves in effective control in Lagos, the West and Mid-West but not in the East. It did not take long for cooler heads in the North to reject secession as a solution to their problems since it would make the North landlocked and dependent for communications upon the South and cut it off from the country’s new oil wealth. Revenge killings of Ibos were to continue through August. Brig. Ogundipe sent Col. Yakubu Gowon to parley with the mutinous troops at Ikeja barracks. Ogundipe, a Yoruba, was an old soldier who, like Ironsi, had worked his way up through the ranks and could expect to find little support in an army split on tribal lines – there were few Yoruba in the army. He summoned whoever was available of the Supreme Military Council to a conference at police headquarters where those who met were in a state of shock. Meanwhile, the rebel soldiers came out of Ikeja barracks and proceeded to kill Eastern soldiers or civilians. The Hausa soldier Lt-Col. Murtala Muhammed emerged as the principal spokesman of the mutineers whose immediate demands were the renunciation of the unity decree and the total separation of Eastern and Northern soldiers then in the army. They then demanded secession and the creation of a Republic of the North. Ogundipe broadcast a state of emergency.
The coup-makers were unwilling to surrender power to Ogundipe, the Chief of Staff, and now the highest-ranking officer in the army. They felt he did not ‘belong’. He therefore, gracefully in the circumstances, gave way to Gowon and was subsequently appointed Nigerian High Commissioner to London. Gowon was the most senior officer of Northern origin although he came from the small Angas tribe of the Middle Belt of the northern plateau region and was a Christian rather than a Muslim. For the second time that year the country faced the question: what would happen next? Was the Federation to continue and who would lead it? The two obvious contenders for the leadership at this point were the cautious Gowon and the hot-headed Murtala Muhammed who at that stage was demanding secession for the North although opposition to the idea was crystallizing, especially among civil servants, lawyers and the police. Northern families then in the south were flown back home and civil servants were told to prepare to do so. A confrontation between Gowon and Muhammed led the majority of senior officers to choose the former as Supreme Commander; they did not want to break up the Federation; rather, it should continue under its existing form with a Northerner as head of state. This ‘consensus’ was arrived at over three days when Nigeria had no head of state. The Northern troops acted as arbiters of the country’s fate. Gowon, who was to lead Nigeria for nine years, was an interesting choice. A Northerner from a minority tribe, he was a Christian, non-smoking, non-drinking soldier who had been educated at Zaria in the North and in Ghana and Sandhurst. He had served in the Congo and then attended a course at Camberley Staff College. He was very much a ‘one Nigeria’ man who loved the army and knew how it worked. He also knew how to take advice and reach a consensus. He won the backing of those who saw the dissolution of the Federation as a disaster, especially the civil service, and he and his supporters soon became known as ‘New Nigerians’. Subsequent controversy about the legitimacy of Gowon’s elevation obscured the crucial fact that at the time what was needed was to stop the bloodshed, get the soldiers back to barracks and prevent the country disintegrating. This Gowon achieved.19
Gowon’s first recommendation of 13 August was to order all troops from Eastern Nigeria to be released and posted to Enugu in the Eastern Region and troops of non-Eastern origin in Enugu to be reposted to Kaduna and later to Lagos to form the 6th Battalion of the Nigerian Army. That action ‘broke the last thread and split the last institution symbolizing Nigeria’s nationhood and national cohesion, which had been regularly tampered with by the politicians since 1962’.20 Gowon and Muhammed were to clash about the coming war with the Eastern Region, even before the formal proclamation of Biafra. As early as April 1967 Muhammed was convinced that civil war was inevitable and that any delay was simply to put off the evil day but Gowon was more cautious. However, between July 1966 and May 1967 Ojukwu had built up the East’s forces and boasted: ‘We possess the biggest army in Africa.’ During this period he had secured arms and ammunition from French, Spanish and Portuguese sources while he had also obtained assurances of mercenary support from France and South Africa.
A second series of massacres of Ibos in the North took place over the end of September into October when between 10,000 and possibly 30,000 were killed. At the time there were about one million Ibos still in the North. A huge movement of population now took place as more than a million Ibos poured into the Eastern Region. There, for their own safety, Col. Ojukwu ordered all non-Easterners to leave the Region. Ibo refugees now came from the West, the Mid-West and Lagos as well as from the North. As the crisis worsened ‘and the possibility of a complete breakdown became imminent, the refugees from Lagos came to include senior civil servants of the Federal Government. These were to constitute a powerful pressure group behind Ojukwu, urging him to secede from the Federation’.21 By late November 1966 Gowon was facing the possibility of war with the East: ‘If circumstances compel me to preserve the integrity of Nigeria by force, I will do my duty,’ he said.
In January 1967 the military leaders met at Aburi in Ghana under the chairmanship of Ghana’s General Ankrah. Gowon wanted to maintain a single Nigeria, Ojukwu argued for separation. The meetings were taped at Ankrah’s suggestion to ‘avoid’ argument later. At Aburi Gowon made some concessions towards confederalism but no solution was reached and he then spent the next six months trying to persuade Ojukwu to turn away from secession, but without success. Following the Aburi conference, in a bid to keep Nigeria whole, the North agreed to the creation of more states, something Ojukwu had argued for and the North, to that point, had opposed. When Biafra seceded at the end of May 1967 Gowon declared an emergency and then divided Nigeria into 12 states, abolishing the old regions, a move that won wide support and removed the fear of domination by the North. War was then inevitable although a final peace bid was led by the Federal Chief Justice Sir Adetokumboh Ademola who flew to Enugu though the possibility of a last-minute reconciliation was an illusion. At 2 a.m. on 30 May Col. Ojukwu made an announcement at State House Enugu: ‘…do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as Eastern Nigeria, together with her continental shelves and territorial waters, shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title The Republic of Biafra’.
THE CIVIL WAR
Once war had become inevitable the attitudes of the major external powers became a matter of great importance to both sides. A united Nigeria had great economic potential, as a market with its population of more than 56 million people, as a rapidly developing source of oil as well as natural gas in an oil-hungry world, and as a substantial producer of coal, iron ore, cotton and rubber. These resources, as well as significant hydro-electric power potential, gave it a base for industrialization. It was then the world’s largest producer of groundnuts and the second-largest producer of cocoa (after Ghana). Britain found itself in a dilemma: most of its business was centred upon Federal Nigeria but not the oil, and Ojukwu at once insisted that oil royalties should be paid over to Biafra by Shell-
BP The British Government told the oil companies to make a token payment but the Federal Government proceeded to blockade the oil shipments. Britain was then the principal source of small arms for the Federal Government and while continuing to supply these refused to supply more substantial armaments, most notably aircraft, with the result that Nigeria turned to the Soviet Union. On 6 July 1967 Federal troops advanced into Biafra, and Nigeria was at war with itself.
When asked at the outbreak of hostilities what US policy towards Nigeria would be, Secretary of State Dean Rusk told a press conference, ‘We regard Nigeria as part of Britain’s sphere of influence.’ It was a monumental gaffe, reminiscent of nineteenth-century big power attitudes towards the lesser countries of the world, and understandably infuriated the Nigerians. Even so, the big powers saw Nigeria as a ‘prize’ and determined to remain involved, with Britain, France, West Germany and the USSR in particular taking sides in pursuit of their interests. At the beginning of the war, when the British refused to do so, the Russians sold the Federal Government small, obsolescent aircraft; later, they supplied MiG 17s, Ilyushin bombers, heavy artillery, vehicles and small arms. The Soviet presence in Nigeria grew in other ways as well and in November 1968 it agreed to construct Nigeria’s first steel mill and provided a loan of £60 million for the purpose. The Soviet Embassy doubled in size and there was a growth of Nigeria–Russia friendship societies.
Biafra benefited from the image, which it carefully cultivated, of a small, embattled country being bullied by a large one. An abundance of relief supplies was available – the problem was one of delivery. International assistance for Biafra came from a number of sources and for a variety of reasons. Its supporters included humanitarian agencies, four black African states which recognized it, Rhodesia (then embarked upon UDI), South Africa and Portugal because it was in the interests of the white regimes in Southern Africa to prolong the war in Nigeria since chaos and breakdown in Africa’s largest, most promising black state boosted their claims to maintain white minority control. There was considerable international sympathy for Biafra as a ‘small loser’ and the Federal Government was criticized for not having made greater efforts to find a peaceful solution. Tanzania recognized Biafra on 13 April 1968, Gabon on 5 May, Côte d’Ivoire on 14 May and Zambia on 20 May. In the case of Tanzania President Nyerere defended his decision to do so with his usual intellectual skill on the grounds that the Ibos had been artificially included in Nigeria by the British for imperial reasons and had the right to secede if that was the wish of their people. Zambia’s President Kaunda followed the Nyerere line. Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon were generally seen as acting on behalf of French interests. Haiti, for reasons that remained obscure, recognized Biafra on 23 March 1969. France supplied weapons for Biafra through its surrogates, Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon; Portugal did so through Portuguese Guinea. The principal sources of humanitarian aid, though there were others, were the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Church Aid and Caritas. Biafra obtained a number of old DC-class aircraft from Rhodesia. Both Portugal and Spain supported Biafra to stifle aspirations for independence in their own African territories while a motley range of gun-runners and other dubious arms dealers became overnight friends of Biafra. As Gen. Obasanjo was to say in his account of the war, ‘The main paradox of the Nigerian civil war was that Tanzania, Zambia, Rhodesia, South Africa, Portugal and Spain all found themselves in the same camp supporting secession in Nigeria.’22 President Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire, who had a pathological fear of Nigeria, assisted Biafra with financial support and persuaded de Gaulle to be more open in his support for it. De Gaulle, in any case, had not forgiven Nigeria for breaking diplomatic relations over the French nuclear tests in the Sahara at the beginning of the decade. In a realistic assessment of external support for Biafra, Obasanjo wrote: ‘The effective rebel propaganda and phoney battle victories on Radio “Biafra” coupled with open diplomatic recognition and other support by four African countries, Tanzania, Zambia, Gabon and Ivory Coast, one West Indian country, Haiti, and covert support by one of the major world powers, France, and the double-dealing by some countries in Africa and Europe, Republic of Dahomey, Sierra Leone, West Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden, had strengthened the rebellion almost to the point of permanently sustaining it. Cynics all over the world had started to deride the Nigerian Army and saw no hope of Nigeria becoming a united country again.’23 Mobutu, on the other hand, gave open support to the Federal Government as did Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and Congo (Brazzaville).
Ojukwu’s decision to invade the Mid-West Region in August 1967 changed the course of the war. Had he played a wholly defensive role, defending Biafra against Nigerian attack, he might have lasted longer and gained more sympathy within Nigeria itself, but by attacking the neighbouring region he showed his readiness to threaten non-Ibo Nigerians and, as a result, he lost overnight the support and sympathy he might otherwise have had from many of the Yoruba. Instead he could now be branded as arrogant, power-hungry and over-ambitious and the slogan ‘one Nigeria’ in opposition to the threat he posed became highly popular.
The fall of Enugu to Federal troops on 5 October 1967 raised the hope that the war would soon be over but this was not to be. A description of Enugu after its capture suggested that Ibos, fearful of what might follow the fall of their city, had simply fled. And that being the case, the war was likely to continue for some considerable time. ‘It is not so much the war damage; in fact, compared to Asaba the destruction has been comparatively mild. It is rather the complete absence of people that unnerves. There are Federal troops by the score, guarding key positions, but of civilians there are no sign. The limited nature of the damage makes it, if anything, more uncanny. With so many houses so recognizably recently lived in, you almost expect the bad dream to end and all the people suddenly to return. It is rather like one of those mystery stories about abandoned ships, like the Marie Celeste, found with signs of evident recent habitation, only with nobody on board.’24 On 20 October Federal troops took the port of Calabar and the government in Lagos announced plans for post-war reconstruction. An OAU mediation mission arrived in Lagos to be told by Gowon: ‘The most valuable contribution the mission can make in the present circumstances is to call on the rebel leaders to abandon secession. Your mission here is not to mediate.’ More to the point for the Federal Government, Emperor Haile Selassie said that the mission’s cardinal objective was to discuss ways and means, ‘with the help of the Federal Government, whereby Nigerian national integrity is to be preserved and innocent Nigerian blood saved from flowing needlessly… We believe a solution needs to be urgently sought to accommodate the varying interests in Nigeria, but it must be specific enough to ensure the steady development of the Nigerian state’.25
By the beginning of 1968 the dense Ibo population had become concentrated in the eastern heartland round Aba and Umuahia and the Ibos, with nowhere to run, were fighting for survival. It seemed that a second, more desperate and bloody phase of the war was about to begin. As West Africa was to editorialize at the end of the year:
The grim fact… remains. This is a civil war in which international appeals sound like international interference and in which the Federal Government is no more ready than any other sovereign government to accept instructions from outside. The Federal Government, in fact, has gone further in its response to international opinion than some of its supporters like. Wisely it has extended the stay of the international observers, whose reports refute the accusation that the Federal Forces are bent on ‘genocide’ (which would, if true, leave the Biafrans no alternative but a fight to the death)…26
The Federal side had its own problems, not least among some of its military commanders. After capturing Onitsha early in 1968, Murtala Muhammed, who was a difficult, power-hungry man, walked away from his Division, accusing the Commander-in-Chief (Gowon) in particular and Army Headquarters in general of deliberately starving his division of arms, ammunition and necessary
equipment to prosecute the war effectively. He refused to return and expressed his lack of confidence in Gowon. On 19 May 1968 troops of the Federal 3 Marine Commando Division entered Port Harcourt where they witnessed a disorderly and dispirited Biafran exodus under way. After this defeat a flurry of diplomatic activity by friends of Biafra followed to keep the increasingly beleaguered ‘state’ in being.
As in the Congo (K) a few years earlier, Nigeria had to deal with the mercenary factor. The civil war was the first since the Carlist wars in Spain during the nineteenth century in which mercenaries fought one another from opposite sides; or rather, they did not fight one another which was part of the problem.
Mercenaries had earned such a bad name for themselves in the Congo that it was a political risk to use them at all. The Federal Military Government in Lagos, in any case, wanted to demonstrate its ability to deal with Biafran secession on its own. Biafra, however, was promoting the image of an embattled underdog fighting for its existence and so could legitimately seek outside help including that of mercenaries. In the end both sides used mercenaries but were able to exert far greater control over them than had been the case in the Congo. In July 1967 the Federal Government hired British, Rhodesian and South African pilots at a reported fee of US$2,800 a month tax free to be paid into numbered Swiss bank accounts. However, since Britain refused to supply warplanes, Soviet and Czech planes were purchased and flown by mercenary pilots from Czechoslovakia and Egypt as well as pilots from Britain. The Federal Military Government employed between 12 and 20 such pilots throughout the war – there was a rapid turnover – and employed them to fly Russian MiG17s since the Egyptian pilots proved inadequate. In November 1967 Biafra hired 83 French mercenaries under Col. Roger Faulques. Their task was to train Biafran troops. Faulques was soon joined in Biafra by the already legendary Bob Denard, who came fresh from his activities in Angola and Katanga, with another 200 mercenaries. Then a third group of French mercenaries arrived under Michel Declary. The Biafran decision to recruit French mercenaries followed the refusal of the British mercenary Mike Hoare to accept the Biafran offer for he wanted more money than Biafra was prepared to pay. Many of the French mercenaries quit when they discovered that the equipment needed for training the Biafrans was not forthcoming. By the summer of 1968 the French contingent had dwindled to five and by then it was apparent to the mercenaries that Biafran secession was doomed. In any case it was by then apparent that Biafra’s compelling need was for pilots to ferry supplies to its only remaining airstrip at Ulli. Some of these supplies were in the form of humanitarian aid provided by such non-government organizations as Caritas, the World Council of Churches or the ICRC.