Barrel of a Gun

by Al Venter

  The officer looked me over carefully once more, obviously undecided. He then peered in through the rear window and with his free hand, turned over the pile of papers. What he saw seemed to placate him, but that didn’t prevent his going through the rigmarole again.

  It took at least 15 more minutes of talk and banter to finally get the lieutenant commander to accept my story, if not for its veracity, then for the sake of saving face. Even then he did so grudgingly. I knew that my smile and nonchalance helped and that I needed to convince him that I really was not a threat to the security of the nation. Ultimately I succeeded. But just!

  Finally, he allowed me to turn my car around. I did so, very slowly and deliberately, all the while in the shadow of the turrets above. Meanwhile, his men kept their rifles pointed in my direction, as I could see through my rear-view mirror until I had turned the corner at the far end of the driveway. God, was I glad to get away!

  When I told them what had happened at the club, some of the more experienced old Coasters agreed that I had been lucky, extraordinarily so, said one of them. Several Apapa residents had been threatened by troops in the dock area earlier that day, he revealed. One was wounded by rifle fire, for no other reason, apparently, than because he was there.

  ‘The same old story’, said some of them: ‘wrong place at the wrong time.’

  Domestic scene at Ikeja Airport after the coup d’état. British-built Ferret armoured cars of the Nigerian Army patrolled the area and would not hesitate to shoot at anything considered suspicious. I managed to quickly slot into the routine by not asking too many questions. Consequently, I was rarely hassled by the troops manning airport strongpoints. (Author’s collection)

  In retrospect, I simply had to accept that things like that happened from time to time in Nigeria. Judging by what is going on in the oil-rich Niger Delta today, not a lot has changed in the Armpit of Africa and it has been going on for almost half a century.

  All of us were a lot more cautious afterwards. My steward David kept me informed of what was happening. He had his own grapevine and some of the details that emerged were spot-on, down to where the next anti-Eastern attacks would take place and yesterday’s casualty figures. Young Ibo males, he told me, were being pressured to return home. The idea was for them to undergo military training, even though the Biafran War would still be a year in coming.

  With the assassination of General Ironsi in the July coup, his place as national leader was taken by a 30-year-old Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant Colonel (later General) Yakubu Gowon, possibly one of the most amiable of all Nigeria’s post-independence leaders. ‘Jack’ – as we got to know him – Gowon was the original ‘Mister Nice Guy’. Uncharacteristically (for a Nigerian) he was short on either pretension or pomp and believed implicitly in the direct approach. His only flaw – if it was one – was that he was a Christian in a Nigeria dominated by an Islamic North.

  Gowon was the son of an evangelist from the Plateau area of the Middle Belt. He was overthrown five years after the end of the so-called War of National Unity (as the Biafran War was euphemistically phrased by Nigeria’s military leaders) and went back to university in Britain.

  I continued to travel throughout the country during the course of my last months in Apapa and a good deal of my time was spent in the East with my John Holt assistant, Silas Anusiem, another Ibo.

  A quiet, reflective individual who viewed developments with alarm, Silas nurtured some excellent connections within the government in Lagos.1 His leaks were always accurate and I invariably appeared to be ahead of the pack when it came to the kind of projections I used in my articles about the future of the country. I was grateful for his help.

  Then came an incident that might have had severe repercussions had things gone awry. I was asked by friends in South Africa to help them ‘secure a contract’. Someone was tendering for a construction deal in Lagos harbour; a multi-million dollar project, I was told. Because South Africans were banned from any commercial contact with just about all of Black Africa, the scheme would have a British identity and be handled offshore from an office in the Bahamas. To do so, they said, they would require a set of naval charts of Lagos harbour. That included the entire port area, as well as Apapa.

  I wasn’t to know it yet, but should this request have been intercepted by Nigerian intelligence, my actions would almost certainly have been construed as hostile. Why else would anybody need detailed drawings of Nigeria’s biggest maritime facility? Overnight I’d become a spy, though I was never paid a penny.

  It was an odd request that had come through the post. I was to send the charts to the Naval Attaché, Commander (later Rear-Admiral) ‘Solly’ Kramer, at the South African Embassy in London. I had served briefly under Kramer in Simonstown while he’d been skipper of one of South Africa’s former Royal Navy frigates, the SAS Good Hope.

  In Cape Town, after I’d left the navy, I’d met Kramer socially through an old friend of the family, Commander Joe Gower, a former Royal Navy submariner and at that stage head of Naval Intelligence. Joe and his wife Elizabeth – they had a beautiful home in Constantia – were good friends.

  Of course, I should have put together all the pieces, but I didn’t. It was years before I was to discover that the charts were intended to be used in an attack on Soviet and East European ships in Lagos harbour during the Biafran War, which was then slowly gathering its own momentum. Most Soviet ships entering Nigerian waters over the next few years were loaded with weapons for the Nigerian war effort against Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu’s breakaway state.

  Apparently, the South Africans had plans to use limpet mines against these vessels as they lay alongside the quays in the port and the charts I acquired were a vital part of their planning. Also involved were two other good friends of mine, Colonel Jan Breytenbach, one of the founders of South Africa’s crack Reconnaissance Commando, and an old diving buddy ‘Woody’ Woodburn. Admiral Woodburn was later to become head of the South African Navy.

  The original idea had been to take a demolition team close to the Nigerian coast in one of South Africa’s small French-built Daphne-class submarines. At the last moment, Woody told me years later, the attack was called off.

  That was why, in all innocence, I’d asked Silas Anusiem to buy the charts from the government office responsible for such things in Lagos. As a consequence, I’m aware now that had things gone wrong, we might both have been arrested on espionage charges, something that would have proved difficult to counter when there was a revolution brewing. In the heady political climate that preceded the war, we might even have been executed for treason. There was reason enough; the charts were invaluable. Others were shot for much less once hostilities started.

  But Silas – with his remarkable network of contacts – was forewarned. Halfway though one of our trips to Onitsha, the biggest city in Nigeria’s East, he turned to me in the car:

  ‘Those charts, Al. Where are they now?’ I sensed there was more to come.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, no longer above suspicion.

  ‘Because questions have been asked.’ My Ibo associate was well aware of my South African connections. He’d been grilled by the Nigerian Special Branch. I knew too that my Apapa apartment had been searched once or twice while I was away on trips. David had told me.

  I explained to Silas exactly what I had done and also the reason why. Silas paled perceptibly. Give him his dues, he never said a word. Nor did he ever raise the issue again.

  Silas Anusiem had told me once before that he had a brother in the higher echelons of the Nigerian Navy who served at Naval Headquarters in Lagos. I have no doubt that it was left to him to sort matters out.

  It would seem that once again, the lady smiled.

  It was with Silas Anusiem that I had my last adventure of any consequence in Nigeria, at least before I returned to cover the Biafran War on the ‘other’ side. It was during a long road journey through the Eastern Region, which was always a very different experience from the rest of the
country.

  I’d always enjoyed covering the East before the war. The people there were friendly and certainly much chirpier than the rest. There was always something going on, a High Life session or a feast with palm wine by the calabash-full. Also, you got things done among the Ibos: they were always willing to help and though it cost some, you didn’t mind sticking your hand in your pocket for good work done.

  In Lagos, in contrast, the lifestyle was a perpetual round of haggling, delays, cancelled appointments and very little achieved without ‘dash’, the universal system of crossing palms with silver, or – increasingly – with large denomination Naira banknotes.

  Our route this time took us across the Niger River at Onitsha and then on towards Owerri and Port Harcourt, both critical points in the war to come. We were on the second day out and so far it had been an uneventful journey. Then we reached the small town of Nsokpo about a dozen miles or so from Port Harcourt. Quite unexpectedly we came upon a crowd, several thousand strong. This mob had totally blocked the road ahead and what appeared to be an angry, ugly melee had developed.

  Silas suggested I park next to the road and wait for him; he’d go and see what was happening.

  Shortly after I’d pulled up, I spotted several youngsters throwing stones at cars that arrived along the same road that we’d just used. Being white, they ignored me: it was the Nigerian fat cats they were after. Most of these people turned around and roared off. Then an army truck with about a dozen soldiers on board came hurtling down the same road towards us at speed. The mob surged towards them in a fury of roars and obscenities and the driver made the mistake of stopping. This was clearly a very angry group of dissidents as they converged on the troops, a frightening, shrieking black mass. I thought I knew Africa, but I’d never seen anything like this. The corporal in charge put his truck into reverse and in double quick time pulled back a third of a mile or so before turning around and moving off.

  There was no question that the mood had become menacing, which was when I turned my car around and also moved back down the road a short distance. I was afraid that the situation would get worse.

  I waited half an hour; then an hour, but still no Silas. By now I was worried. Also, I was hungry. We’d been on the road for half the day and hadn’t stopped once.

  So why not take a photograph? I thought. There was obviously a reason for the troubles and who knows, there might be a story there somewhere. Certainly, Nussey would use it. So I pulled my camera out and, for good effect, climbed onto the roof of my car. I was just starting to focus when a couple of young men near to me noticed the camera.

  ‘No pitcha!’ they shouted, their arms raised high above their heads.

  More of the men around them heard their cries and turned towards me. Soon there were dozens of people screaming. Fists in the air, they bellowed: ‘No pitcha! You no takka pitcha!’ It was fundamental Pidgin English and the message was clear.

  I smiled, waved and went on with what I was doing. By now I was attracting an awful lot of attention. At that point there were two or three hundred people very vocally focused on what I was doing. Perhaps 30 seconds later it had become a thousand. Or it could have been five times that because I wasn’t counting. Except that there was an ocean of black faces in front of me and there wasn’t one among them who wasn’t incensed by the presence of this stupid foreigner taking pictures.

  Who was this white man who had so rudely intruded on the ground where some of their folk had been gunned down earlier in the day? That I’d wanted to take photos compounded the issue. For such is the volatility of Africa at a time of crisis.

  Just then this massive surge was heading straight at me. The cry ‘No pitcha’ had become a roar. Some of the youngsters alongside started to rock the car. Hell, this was serious!

  I’d already jumped to the ground, just before the first wave of protestors got to me. I tried to say something to those nearest me but was completely drowned out by their screams. It was useless: a lone voice against thousands. What had started as a few calls to desist, had become hysteria.

  I must have saved my life by jumping into the car at about the same time as those closest to me started to beat on my windscreen and roof with their fists. By now the mob was shouting at me in their own language and I understood none of it. If I didn’t get away, and fast, they’d haul me out, drag me away and who knows what would happen then? There was no way that I would be able to reason with this rabble.

  In a single, fluid motion that comes with practice, I started the engine and at the same moment, released my brakes. A split second before, I’d shifted the car into gear. It all happened in a blink and a screech of rubber. Some of the mob was ahead by now, but I went right through the crowd without touching any of them. That was the moment, I knew, that if I had to run over any of them to get clear, I would do so. I was 100 feet down the road before the first rock hit my back window, shattering it.

  It is notable that my car had been giving trouble on the trip up. Once or twice I’d had difficulty starting it, usually in the mornings when Silas had to push. Had I stalled then, I would most certainly have been killed. The mob was berserk, totally out of control.

  As it happened, the car took in a flash. I heard later that with me gone, they then turned on some more soldiers who had just arrived.

  Silas joined me later in Port Harcourt. We’d agreed that we would be staying at the Cedar Palace and that should we become separated, he’d find me there. He did so some time before midnight that evening.

  What had happened, he told me later, was that the army had apparently shot a group of striking students at Nsokpo earlier in the day. A riot had developed. More soldiers arrived and more people were killed.

  Wounded soldiers being carted off to hospital by an ‘ambulance’ in Eastern Nigeria. They were the lucky ones… (Author’s collection)

  Then the mob cornered some troops. Though the army held its own for a while, every one of them was overpowered, disarmed and killed. The slaughter developed into a ritual; limb by limb these poor souls were ripped apart and the corpses burnt. It didn’t help that most of the troops involved in this fracas were Northerners. By the time we’d arrived, the mob was already out of control.

  Certainly, said Silas later, if my car had stalled, I wouldn’t have survived. The mob was frenzied and conditions stayed that way until the first Nigerian Army armoured car arrived and more live ammunition was used, though details of that action were never made public.

  Nor was I able to discover how many people were killed that violent afternoon. It must have been a hefty tally because at that stage the Hausas were intent on making a dramatic example of Southerners who voiced dissent. People would be pulled off the roads by troops and simply disappear.

  None of it ever appeared in the Nigerian press.

  Many lives were lost in Nigeria in 1966 for no apparent reason and not all the victims were Ibo.

  There was never anyone who would or could do anything about it. We, the public, only heard rumours, which were often exaggerated. The reason was simple: the moment the military took power they occupied the editorial offices of all the country’s newspapers. They already controlled all the radio stations.

  Rumour then feasted on its own excesses and that didn’t help either.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Biafra: The Build-Up

  It’s a truism that for those in the West with expanding communications, the world has shrunk. For Africa, it has grown immeasurably…

  AS WITH IRAQ, ALMOST 40 years later, oil in the mid 1960s lay at the core of Nigeria’s problems. Huge deposits of fossil fuels had been discovered along the coast of the Eastern Region, or Biafra, as it was known for the short time that it existed.

  Even today there is much squabbling about exactly who owns what. At one stage in the early 2000s, Nigeria and the Cameroon Republic almost went to war over the disputed Bakassi Peninsula: nobody even knew it existed until oil was discovered there. Until then, Bakassi might have been a ne
w brand of toothpaste.

  There was more sabre-rattling over what constituted the offshore rights of Equatorial Guinea – formerly Spanish Guinea – and, more recently, a botched South African mercenary attempt to oust the President of that island government, one of the most brutal and corrupt countries on the globe. Oil motivated that lunacy as well…

  Four decades earlier, it was oil that made the Ibos greedy because they wanted all the black stuff for themselves. Certainly, they didn’t need what they termed the ‘Backward North’ to enjoy any of it: all the oil under the ground was rightfully theirs was it not? Therefore, ran the argument, which was quite public, let’s keep it for ourselves. Goodbye Nigerian Federation!

  It was about then that quite a few developed nations – Britain, America and Russia in particular – began to look seriously at the military options involved. It seemed clear that Nigeria was heading for civil war. Nevertheless, it was a complicated issue. Internecine strife – as we have seen more recently in places such as Chechnya, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere – usually is.

  Meanwhile, I’d settled into my new job in Lagos and there had been some interesting developments following the army mutiny that had almost claimed my life. I stayed on at Ikeja during this period, running the military gauntlet each day until I was on first name terms with most of the senior Nigerian Army and Air Force officers there.

  From my office at the airport, despite being open to large numbers of commercial airlines, including the old Pan American Airways (the company ran a regular service between New York and Johannesburg), I could see that the government was starting an arms build-up of its own in anticipation of an Ibo secession. The first evidence of this was the arrival, in full Nigerian Air Force livery, of a squadron of Czechoslovakian Delphin trainer/fighter jets. Some of these trim little aircraft were parked outside my office.