You Must Set Forth at Dawn

by Wole Soyinka

  It was while I was waiting for my transfer to a hotel that Christopher Okigbo drove in, kitted for war—in casual civilian clothing, but complete with rifle and ammunition belt. He screeched to a halt in front of the station. He was coming from the front, the excitation of battle still fresh in his eyes. For one brief, nostalgic moment, I believe I envied this friend and colleague who would rather be a poet but had thrown himself fully into a self-defining cause. But he was alone, not within a column of the writers and artists brigade of our student dreams, heading south to demolish the apartheid kingdom. Was there really much difference? How is one craving for liberation to be faulted but not the other?

  Christopher had come for promised reinforcements, of both men and weapons. The police commissioner let him into the office, having first made me hide behind the door. When the door was shut and I stood revealed, Christopher let out a screech that brought everyone out of their offices. He broke into a mad jig in front of the astonished officers and wanted to drag me off to wherever. Finally, he had to content himself with accepting that the head of his new state exercised priority over my presence in Biafra. We promised to meet later in the evening, when I would have fulfilled my immediate mission. I watched him load some guns and ammunition into his car, waved to him as he drove off in a small cloud of dust. That was the last time I would see my excitable friend and poet Christopher Okigbo alive. He perished on the Okigwi front, we later learned, with that chant from the Spanish Civil War issuing from his throat: “¡No pasarán!”26 One person, at least, had given his life to the dreams of youth, but how sad that it should have been on a fratricidal field.

  THE HOTEL PRESIDENTIAL, where I was lodged as a guest of the government, said it all. Sanctions and a blockade to enforce them had taken their toll, and this once-splendid lodging with a commanding view of the city had nothing left that was remotely presidential—except perhaps the size of its rats! Since I was the sole occupant of that vast, derelict space, perhaps they looked to me for company and even sustenance. They accompanied me everywhere—from the dining room to my bedroom suite, with its discolored ceiling—and formed guards of honor along the corridors of moldy carpets and peeling paint. If I sought a pessimistic portent for the future of Biafra, the Presidential offered itself most assertively. I tried my best to dismiss this pessimistic image, however, eyeballing the rats while I awaited my summons to the leader of the secessionist state.

  We met the following morning in an ornate office, a kind of converted hall, its spaciousness a marked contrast to the cluttered office of his predecessor in office, Dr. Michael Okpara, who had shielded me in that city after the radio holdup. The irony was striking: on that visit, I had discussed the logistics of popular insurrection with the civil leader; now I was cast in the role of a mediator between professionals at war making, a role to which I felt distinctly ill fitted. Preaching pacifism, even of a limited, tactical kind, in the midst of evident wrongs has always struck me as a task specially designed to separate saints from mere mortals, and I have never succeeded in finding my proper size in haloes. It became possible to actually exercise conviction in the mission only when I reminded myself that I had really come to call for restraint, even temporary, while accompanying moves were made to reassure the Biafrans of the recognition of their just cause.

  Meeting Ojukwu face-to-face, I tried unsuccessfully to remind myself that I was now facing His Excellency Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, head of an independent state, not the young “Emeka” whom I had known in Yaba, Lagos, in the early fifties. Then I had been laying siege to the heart of the younger sister of his own object of attention, envying the jazzy sports car that brought him to his trysts while I pedaled to battle on my bicycle. He was heavily bearded and already balding from the forehead, self-conscious of his new status to the point of unintended self-parody, especially when taken with his exaggerated upper-class British accent, but his delight at my visit was genuine enough.

  I outlined my mission: I was there to persuade him to call a halt to the firing from his side while one more effort was made to resolve the conflict between the federal government and his now-seceded state. The sticky point, however, was that this would require placing a hold on the secession.

  Ojukwu reiterated his charges against the federal side and painted for me the mood of his people: it was the people themselves, not he, who had pressed for secession. No one, he insisted, could have withstood the tide of that resentful outpouring. It was a plausible case, but one that I found difficult to swallow entire. Ojukwu himself had played a role in manipulating emotions.

  I joined in his midmorning snack, watched him daintily pick akara27 balls from a silver salver served by a waiter in immaculate white uniform complete with white gloves. It all seemed rather incongruous, impossible not to feel that one was watching an act. The exchange was anything but staged, however; we were, after all, engaged in an exchange of life and death—not merely of human beings but of his dream of Biafra.

  He would not commit himself. Instead, he insisted that I speak first to a few civilian leaders, some of whom I did meet later on. In turn, I requested to speak with Major Wole Ademoyega, an officer from the West who had been imprisoned for his role in the January 15 coup and transferred to Enugu prisons. That transfer had saved his life. When the countercoup had taken place in July that year, the plotters had invaded prisons under federal control, abducted the officers, and subjected them to cruel forms of death. Ademoyega, however, lived to write of his role in the January 15 coup in Why We Struck.

  MOST FATEFUL OF ALL my meetings in the seceded enclave was that with Victor Banjo, a Yoruba officer. Following some convoluted chain of incidents, Victor Banjo had been accused of menacing the former head of state, General Aguiyi-Ironsi—and had ended up in Enugu prisons. After the declaration of Biafran independence, he was released by Ojukwu, as were other Yoruba officers and soldiers from the Western Region, some of whom had certainly been involved in the original January 1966 coup.

  Loose-limbed and slightly bandy-legged, Victor Banjo reminded me very strongly of a browsing igala, that rangy, powerful deer, when it is totally unconscious of any intruder. He exuded a quiet, commanding presence, as one who would be at ease in any environment, looking as if he were in studious contemplation of a world devoid of strife. A total contrast to Ojukwu, his bearing still struck me as a contradiction to the frenzy of war, as if the outer reality had nothing to do with him personally. Yet the war map on the wall, the guns, even the Spartan nature of his office and the stiff, attentive poise of his batman told a different story. I noticed the lenses of his glasses at once—very thick— and from the way his eyes appeared to adjust to distance, I guessed that he was shortsighted. Impeccably groomed even in his khaki uniform, this stranger soon revealed himself as an idealist whose politics were quite close to ours in the Third Force. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he was subjecting me to some deep scrutiny—or perhaps that was simply the effect of his thick lenses—then abruptly appeared to have made up his mind.

  A stream of indignation followed as he castigated the failure of Western leaders to condemn the massacres of the Igbo and ridiculed the visits of traditional rulers who had come to the East to commiserate with widows and orphans—too little, too late, and short on sincerity, was his verdict. For the leader of the Biafran secession, he had even harsher words. If Odumegwu Ojukwu had displayed true leadership, the secession, he insisted, would never have taken place.

  Then, again abruptly, he shrugged it all off, dismissed the past with a wave of his hand. He had relieved himself of a long-pent-up resentment, and now he had no further use for it. A slim, light-complexioned, quite good-looking man in uniform joined us and was introduced as Phillip Alale. He was a complete contrast, restless and excitable. Alale spoke agitatedly and volubly of the lack of ideological grounding in the conflict, slashing the air right and left as he outlined the cleansing that was needed for the diseased polity called Nigeria. For him also, Ojukwu was not the answer to
the threat of Northern domination in Nigerian politics. What was desperately needed was a third force, though he did not actually use the expression; still, his prescription was for a new entrant that would neutralize the two combatants. It was Phillip Alale, however, who was fated to be neutralized at the firing stake in Biafra, convicted of treason against Ojukwu’s government, together with Victor Banjo and two others.

  Banjo let him run on for some time, then interrupted with a gesture that was nearly imperceptible—he appeared to be used to commanding effortlessly and economically, like one who needed to conserve his energy. My appearance in Enugu, he pronounced, could not have been more fortuitous. The face of the war was about to change, dramatically, and I was the only one who could transmit certain crucial messages to the other side, that is, to the leaders of the West, both military and civilian, but especially to a certain Lieutenant Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo. It was there, right in Victor Banjo’s command room, that I heard that name for the first time and was informed that Obasanjo had only recently been appointed commanding officer in charge of the Western Area Command, with his headquarters in Ibadan. Obasanjo had once served in a subordinate capacity to him. His response to the message I would take, Banjo stressed, would be crucial to the changes that were being contemplated on the Biafran side.

  I BECAME A MARKED man on account of my visit to Biafra. Delivering the messages that I brought back with me, however, turned me once again into a wanted man, but this time that designation had turned sinister and all the more deadly for being unannounced.

  On the third night after my departure from Enugu, Victor Banjo broke the federal stranglehold on Biafra and led the breakout military unit that had been in secret training. The obstacles that blocked both the Biafran and Midwest ends of the Asaba bridge were flung aside, and Banjo’s army crossed the bridge in a rapid move and took over the Midwest state on the other side of the Niger River. It could be rightly considered a politically fatal move for the Biafrans, even militarily self-defeating—unless of course such a move was proceeding strictly according to plan, which was to plunge straight through to Lagos in an all-night advance and swarm over the seat of government without a loss of momentum. That invading force did not, and the result was that the rebel forces were soon spread too thin to be effective. The move also played straight into the hands of the federal government both militarily and politically. What had formerly been a limited war, in which one of the states still retained sufficient autonomy to insist on its neutrality—“No shooting on Midwest soil,” declared the governor, David Ejoor—that war now expanded to involve the entire nation. It changed the terms of conflict, enabling the federal government to mobilize the nation against the allegedly expansionist agenda of the Biafrans. It altered the scale and tempo of the war from a desultory “police action” to one of “total war,” leaving no room for further neutrality.

  If I had earlier had any hesitation about delivering the messages from the architect and leader of that Midwest incursion, they vanished completely and even took on an urgency once Victor Banjo’s troops made their move, although not fully according to script. The crux of his message was this: Let them understand in the West that I am leading not a Biafran army but an army of liberation, made up not only of Biafrans but of other ethnic groups. Make the governor of the West and other Western leaders understand this. Urge them not to be taken in by any propaganda by the federal government about a Biafran plan to subjugate the rest of the nation, especially the West.

  Moving as rapidly as I dared, since it was clear that I had come under heavy surveillance, I carried out my mission to the civilian leaders, with one exception: Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Even before I left Enugu, I refused to accede to Banjo’s insistence that I speak to “Awo.” After my meeting with that politician, I simply felt, intuitively, that the approaching conflict was not one in which he should be involved.

  A Moment of Truth —and the Lies of History

  WAS LEFT ONLY ONE INDIVIDUAL ON VICTOR BANJO’S CALL LIST, THE MOST critical: Olusegun Obasanjo, Officer Commanding, Western Zone. It was the moment of truth, the hardest, most risk-laden decision of all. Obasanjo’s junior officers, with whom I had maintained steady contact since my return, warned me to beware. In the same breath, they clearly wished—well—maybe if . . . I weighed the risks. They were difficult days for objective, rational choices. While I hesitated, Victor Banjo broke through to the Midwest, but now he paused to secure the Midwest militarily and politically, making inflammatory broadcasts. The West became confused and awaited direction from its leaders. I chose.

  I called Obasanjo over a secret telephone in his bedroom, of whose existence he had not known. In his memoirs,28 Obasanjo tells the story of how he had to search for the source of the mysterious ringing that he eventually traced to a wardrobe in his bedroom, one of the few details in that narrative that can stand the test of veracity in the midst of so many half-truths, outright lies, and coy adumbrations. A few more calls and we agreed to meet “unaccompanied and unarmed”—another truthful detail from his memoirs—at a petrol station on the road between the noncommercial Jericho and Mokola sections of Ibadan. Now I had truly burned my bridges, I told myself. There was no turning back.

  Even before the fateful meeting, Femi’s brother, Brigadier “Bolus,” had cautioned Femi about his association with me. I still recall the exact words that Femi said his brother had used: “So’ra l’odo e o, enu nfe si la’ra. Mi o tii mo kini n’lon gan, sugbon, so’ra l’odo e”—“Watch yourself with him, tongues are fanning the wind in his direction. I don’t know exactly what is going on, but watch yourself.” His brother was right. What he did not know was how far committed Femi was—not to the Biafran side as such but to the liberation of the Western Region from the domination of the North.

  With the incursion of Victor Banjo’s troops into the Midwest, all subterfuge, all fence-sitting, came to an end, affecting soldiers and civilian leaders alike. Obafemi Awolowo surrendered his bargaining powers. The Midwest, formerly a part of the West, a self-declared neutral until now, had been invaded and occupied. That region now threw its weight formally behind the federal government, where Awolowo was now minister of finance under Gowon, and it put an end to all his options. Nnamdi Azikiwe, “Zik of Africa,” an Igbo and former president of the Nigerian Federation, had already taken his place on the side of his fellow Biafrans. Not that he’d had much choice. At the time of the January 1966 coup, which had been led by a preponderance of Igbo officers, Azikiwe had been on a seemingly endless “health cruise” in the Caribbean, and news of the coup had caught him, incongruously, on the isle of Haiti, then groaning under the misrule of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. The timing of the cruise had been too pat, and the Northern proponents of the countercoup that brought Yakubu Gowon to power in July did not believe for one moment that Azikiwe had not been taken into confidence over a coup that oversaw the decimation of Northern leadership. Azikiwe wisely kept beyond reach of the new regime, becoming a roving ambassador for the breakaway region, a powerful voice internationally in the Biafran cause.

  Azikiwe’s counterweight on the Nigerian side was Anthony Enahoro. Tony Enahoro was a most effective minister in Yakubu Gowon’s government. Indeed, his advocacy contributed much to the international acceptance of the federal cause. Enahoro exuded an easy charm and was gifted with intelligent eloquence, a persuasive Edo nobility in the midst of so many fakes. He was one of the early youthful nationalists, a political model from our school days. Enahoro had learned at the feet of Azikiwe, who would, however, denounce him during that anticolonial struggle as an intemperate agitator when the younger man stood trial for sedition against the colonial government. Enahoro never forgave Azikiwe for that act of repudiation and later switched his allegiance to Obafemi Awolowo and his party, the Action Group, joining his leader in prison as one of the casualties of the treasonable felony trials. He was among those who were freed by Yakubu Gowon in the shrewd political move to gain support among Southerners in the conflict with the br
eakaway Biafrans. Enahoro was a die-hard federalist—at least then. Together with Obafemi Awolowo, he outweighed the influence of Nnamdi Azikiwe in mobilizing international support.

  In his position as commissioner for information, Tony Enahoro was the government spokesman who would read to the international press, after my arrest and detention, an infamous confessional statement that had me admitting that I had been negotiating the purchase of warplanes for Biafra! It was, of course, intended to silence any further hue and cry over my continuing detention without trial. I found it rather ironic—and a little depressing at the time, I must confess—that the “fugitive offender,” not many months out of jail, would be the one to read such a damnable fabrication and wave the “confessional statement” in the face of the international press. Perhaps the most easily disproved of the charges—next to the ridiculous claim that I was purchasing arms, including planes for Biafra—was my alleged admission that I had held a meeting in Benin with Victor Banjo, the leader of the invasion, on the very night when his troops had taken over the Midwest state. A few weeks after Tony Enahoro’s press conference, an indignant Femi Johnson encountered the commissioner on the Ibadan golf course and refused to let that chance meeting go to waste.