The Republic of Biafra: Once Upon A Time In Nigeria

The most serious aftermath of the marred and rigged Western Region's 1965 election was that it soon acted as a precursor to, and assumed the place of the last straw that broke the Carmel's back. Precipitated were earthquake-like events that provided the immediate reason for the Army to overthrow the government of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe on January 15, 1966. Barely three months after the rigged and contentious Western Region's October 10, 1965 election, the crisis and disturbances and the attendant mayhem in that Region (a microcosm of Nigeria,) soon found their way furiously like a whirl wind of nothing but anarchy and lawlessness into the center of the nation, Lagos and Northern Nigeria. From the localized events that took place in Western Region immediately after the election of 1965 that slowly but surely gravitated toward the center, Lagos, it would seem as if the more the people expressed their yearnings and aspirations for a more practicable unified, democratic and peaceable sovereign nation free from corruption, marred and rigged elections and other vices and crimes, the more the country devolved and degenerated into self-implosive and destructive states. Metaphorically, Yeats' poem stands to depict a Nigeria at the time where the young and brash breasted military personnel were fed up with the old and corrupt politicians and wanted to take charge of things by unleashing Armageddon - what venom they did on January 15, 1966 that ultimately led to the writing of My Story of the Biafra-Nigerian Civil War - A Struggle for Survival. As this turbulent whirl wind continued to blow treacherously on the Nigerian political landscape, the nation was no longer at ease. Things came tumbling down and started falling apart that the center, Lagos, as we knew it could no longer hold, letting the old politicians give way, and in giving way, only to mere anarchy on the Nigerian streets with innocent blood of the Igbos and Easterners being spilled on the Northern and Western streets. As would be expected, angry mobs who executed the most heinous crimes were obviously lacking in conviction and thus reacted to the developments with the worst passionate intensity devoid of any moral and intellectual rationale. This was Butler Yeats' imagery of the Second Coming revisited in Nigeria, when things fell apart and the center could no longer hold with nothing but mere anarchy unleashed upon the Biafran-Nigerian worlds as the innocent blood-dimmed tide of Biafrans was ruptured and let to run loose and gushing unceasingly on the streets and thoroughfares of Nigeria for 30 grueling, dark and deadly months! Historically, on January 15, 1966, young Army officers led by Major Patrick Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu in a military coup D'état, overthrew Nigeria's first democratic republic, citing a litany of anomalies and wrongdoings such as bribery and corruption, tribalism, and inefficiency among other ills, against the ruling political group. In that coup, Nigeria's Prime Minister, Tafam Balewa, some premiers and ministers and several top Army officers of both the northern and western descent, were murdered. Consequently, series of earth-shattering riots ensued in Northern Nigeria, reaching to frenzy height of callous and barbarous massacre of tens of thousands of easterners, mostly the Igbos in northern Nigeria by their Northern Nigeria host friends and neighbors. By July of the same year, the bloodiest counter coup on the face of Africa that took the Easterners by surprise was carried out by the Northerners in collaboration with Western Nigeria. During this coup, the Military Head of Nigeria, Major-General Ironsi, an Igbo man was assassinated in Ibadan along with his host, Lt. Col Adekunle Fajuyi, the Governor of the West. Thousands of Igbos - mostly top ranking military officers and civilians were killed in this coup. The killings and ethnic cleansing and pogroms of the Easterners, particularly the Igbos continued unchecked and uninterrupted in Northern Nigeria well into a year. With their lives, safety and overall security in jeopardy throughout Northern and Western Nigeria, and not being able to freely move in these regions as free citizens of Nigeria without being hacked to death, the easterners fled for their dear lives into the eastern region. The aftermath was massive refugees throughout Eastern Region.To protect their lives, properties and secure their continued freedom and ensure their security, the easterners seceded from the rest of Nigeria and on May 30th, 1967, formed an independent and sovereign nation of the Republic of Biafra. Once inside Igboland, now the Republic of Biafra, without further provocations, and bent on unifying Nigeria at all costs and by any means necessary, on July 6, 1967 (barely two months after the declaration of Biafra's independence) Nigeria invaded Biafra and from there, waged a gruesome, brutal, callous and barbaric thirty-month-civil war against Biafra. In the early outbreaks of the war, Nigeria imposed a policy of “starvation as an instrument of war” by blockading Biafra on land, sea and air with the intent of preventing food and military weapons from entering Biafra to force starvation and early surrender of Biafra. The blockade prevented food from coming into Biafra, thus leading to a massive malnutrition-oriented disease called Kwashiokor that led to the deaths of thousands of starving children, young and elderly Biafrans. Not content with the ravages of landlocked blockade on Biafra, Nigeria unleashed her fleet of war planes that harassed and carried out hundreds of air raids on both Biafran civilians and military locations. The air raids resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Biafrans - men, women, children and the elderly- none was spared! All said and done, on January 12, 1970 the war came to a screeching halt, having ended with more than three million people dead in a war that was totally avoidable! As a young boy of 10 years at the start of the fracas