Friday, June 9, 2017

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Surrender message of Biafra warlords

Sir Abolaji Adekeye,

4U2 laf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIVxPRqgtD4

At the Battle of Vienna - it was all praise to the Almighty : Venimus, Vidimus, Deus vicit !

What do you think is the difference between Obi what's-his-name and Comical Ali?

The difference is that I believed Comical Ali when he was there giving his live TV interviews about what Saddam was going to do to the invading forces, that they would " swim in their own blood" even as one after the other we could see the US 's military convoys rolling into Baghdad , unimpeded, and so I feared that the worst was yet to happen, that Saddam really had his weapons of mass destruction on the ready and he he was just waiting for all of them to arrive Baghdad central , to begin the begin. Swim in their own blood indeed. Instead of which Saddam went into hiding , whereas in the annals of Naija history according to Obi what's-his-name the unvanquished Oju ran all the way to Abidjan.

This is the worst that I have ever seen: The assassination of Ayatollah al-Sadr by Saddam

Poetry?

Sometimes it's like writing love letters in the sand





On Friday, 9 June 2017 20:55:39 UTC+2, Abolaji Adekeye wrote:
You sir make me laugh. The voice of the routed. I laugh still. 

On Jun 8, 2017 4:58 PM, "Rex Marinus" <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:


"I understand too the need for propaganda, grandstanding and bravado from conquered people. "
-Abolaji Adekeye

Abolaji, even you too want to be counted among the conquerors? Don't make me laugh, as Ezeulu would say. You can't even walk straight yet not to talk about conquering people. Although you're part of an alliance that fought the Biafrans, your condition in Nigeria is not, in spite of it all, any better or worse or of historical consequence. All you have done is make a mess of Nigeria. The ex-Biafrans control 74% of taxable business in Lagos, and you talk of conquest? Do you understand the meaning of that word? The Igbo left Nigeria spiritually, and when they left, Nigeria went to the dogs. It could not run its National Rail infrastructure. It could not manage and develop its own power and energy systems. It has never been able to produce its own war materiel. Its national postal system collapsed. Its national shipping lines collapsed. Its strategic industries collapsed. Its national civil bureaucratic institution collapsed. Its national educational infrastructure collapsed, and the system of ideas that creates great nations disappeared with Igbo psychic absence from the nation you claim to have won. Do you understand the meaning of conquest? Nigeria returned to the dark ages when the light left. That is the Igbo challenge. In channeling their energy towards the creation of private capital, rather than nation-building, the Igbo left Nigeria to you, faux-conquerors to manage, and see what you have made of it. Conquerors. Of course, you will say, but Alex Ekwueme was Vice-President. And that was the last time Nigeria saw a little semblance of light - just nine years after the end of Biafra. But since then? Nigeria in your conquering hands has turned to dust. So, go figure, conqueror. Don't make me laugh.
Obi Nwakanma




From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Abolaji Adekeye <blargeo...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 8, 2017 12:28 PM
To: Cornelius Hamelberg

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Surrender message of Biafra warlords
 
I understand why the Biafra history has transmuted in the laboratory of poets turned alchemists. I understand too the need for propaganda, grandstanding and bravado from conquered people. 

If the grass cutters are allowed to write the history of the hunt which took their forebears, they are likely to blame the traps for their humiliation and not the man who made and set the traps. They may even disingenuously suggest that they came to an amicable resolution, after negotiating from a position of strength, to provide the hunters with meats to save the said hunters from starvation. 

Arch revisionists and uber reactionaries would have us believe Biafra was on the cusp of victory and yet in another breath would claim genocide against the federal government. 

Millions of starved and kwashiokored Biafran kids defeats this skewed narrative. What does it matter if days after I slapped your father you ask me to show you the imprint of my palm on his cheek. 

Many are bold
Few are brazen
Ancient Mariner
Thou art the most. 

On Jun 8, 2017 9:15 AM, "Ibukunolu A Babajide" <ibk...@gmail.com> wrote:
Obi,

This Achuzia that you gushingly eulogise was a psychopathic soldier who killed so many fellow Biafran soldiers on the mere pretext that they were cowards or saboteurs.  He blew the Niger bridge and killed so many and was also lucky with the Abagana fuel tanker explosion when he sabotaged the supply lines of federal troops.

The fact that he was not tried and sentenced to summary execution after the war speaks to the magnanimity and open mindedness of Gowon and many gallant federal soldiers.  With your revisionism, you are justifying the position of those who predicted that in future these kind of lies will return.  Those who resisted the final solution and ensured that the Igbo are not annihilated are now the fools because ignorant or bloody minded revisionists like you are changing the truth and spewing lies.  This is the reason the Nnamdi Kanu's of the world are emboldened.

That is why the Arewa youths want to send all Igbo away from the North.  That is why the peace built for over 50 years is being torn apart because of the Hitleric revisionism and Goerring-type crass propaganda.

Keep at it but remember that he who sows the wind, reaps the whirlwind.

Cheers.

IBK



_________________________
Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)
(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

On 8 June 2017 at 04:15, Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Achuzia is not a "self-acclaimed Biafra War-lord." He was indeed a "War-lord" in Biafra. The word, "Di-Ogu" (War Lord) suits him perfectly, and he earned it, not by self-acclaim, but by field experience. You think the term "war-lord" is a pejorative? It is not. Every General is a war-lord. And yes, two interviews by a direct participant in an event, published in a credible, publicly circulated newspaper, in academic circles is accepted as a credible source of research. I guess you do not know that. Achuzia as the primary source of that story did challenge the mythologists of the war, but has not been challenged or contradicted. That's a great empirical source. I guess you do not know that. So, what else have you got?

Obi Nwakanma





From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 7, 2017 11:12 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Surrender message of Biafra warlords
 

Obi Nwakanma may be an expert of acrobatic Antilogwu dance but he should not dance acrobatically with  the history of the Nigerian civil war. Self-esteem ought to have  restrained Obi Nwakanma from referring his readers to newspaper's interviews conducted with a self-acclaimed Biafra war-lord, Colonel Joe Achuzia, who claimed to have ended the Nigerian civil war single-handed. This is more so, since he has accused me falsely of reproducing newspapers' reports as history. The best evidence Obi Nwakanma could produce to substantiate his myth that Biafra was neither defeated nor surrendered in 1970 were two newspapers' interviews with Biafra's Joe Achuzia as contained in THE SUN of May 12, 2016, and The NIGERIAN COMPASS of 7 March 2010. Achuzia mentioned names in his interviews and Obi Nwakanma assumed that those whose names were mentioned ought to have read the interviews and lack of any response from them meant Achuzia was telling the truth. THE SUN and the Nigerian Compass are provincial newspapers in Nigeria and, even if by accident, the people mentioned by Achuzia in the interviews read the interviews, there is nothing compelling them to dance to the drum of a lunatic. A dog claiming to have thumbed the nose of a lion must be deceiving self. Are you saying that Biafra was not defeated by Nigeria? Achuzia replied, Yes. What explanation do you offer for this? Achuzia came with a long incoherent and contradictory reply that he who is not a Doctor of history would have dismissed him as a 419 bluffer. He said among other things, "Those civilians were the ones who, when Odumegwu-Ojukwu left to attend the crucial meeting in Liberia, came to me and requested that I should stop the war." He said further that Justice P.K. Nwokedi and Justice Mbanefo approached him to stop the war. He objected to their request initially, but when he was reminded that it was not his personal war, as a soldier, he had to obey the orders and demands of the Biafran Executive Council to stop the war. Ojukwu did not and never left for any crucial meeting in Liberia as his aircraft landed in Abidjan on Sunday, 11 January 1970, where he got asylum. Achuzia must have smoked a lot of opium of wishful thinking.


Obi Nwakanma portrayed his hero, Joe Achuzia thus, "It was he who brought Akinrinade to Effiong. It was he who stepped down the phase of the war, the guerilla phase...." How Akinrinade and Obasanjo met Effiong have been narrated by Obasanjo in his Book, My Command, published in 1980, and by Effiong in Nigeria & Biafra : My Story published in 2007. About Biafra that was not defeated in War, Ojukwu stated in a broadcast on French Radio, 14 January 1970, "..... By the end of November (1969), the Biafran armed forces were no longer able to feed themselves; our civil populace were neither able to feed themselves nor the army. Yet for over 30 grim days our gallant and heroic forces maintained their positions in the sheer hope of a miraculous respite.

In the first week of January, the Nigerian forces, by a fast military move, took control of the last areas from where we had any possibility of obtaining food. In quick succession demoralization set in, threatening national disintegration and bringing in its wake confusion and mass exodus.

I gathered together at Owerri during the night of January 8, 1970, those members of my cabinet who could be contacted to review the situation. At that meeting, I presented in firm and clear terms the grim hopelessness of continued formal military resistance." Achuzia did not stop any war and Ojukwu was honest to admit defeat because a starving soldier cannot carry gun much less shooting. Ojukwu's friend wrote about the end of the war thus, "Then in the second week of January 1970, Biafra collapsed. It came quite suddenly. A unit on the southern front, exhausted beyond caring and out of ammunition, quietly stripped off its uniforms and faded into the bush. ..... Units on either side of the missing men took fright and followed suit. Soon a gaping hole ran along the entire defence line from Aba city to Okpula Bridge. A Nigerian armoured-car patrol, probing north, met no opposition and rolled forward. Within a day the front was breached. The remainder of the Twelfth Division ran off into the bush. Between Okpulala Bridge and the River Niger to the West the Fourteenth Division was outflanked. Here too, exhausted troops faded into the bush. Colonel Obasanjo's Third Nigerian Division rolled forward into the heart of the Biafran enclave, heading for the airstrip of Uli. There was no opposition; men who had not eaten for weeks had no strength left to go on fighting (p. 286-287,The Biafra Story By Frederick Forsyth)."


Those denying that Biafra was not defeated and did not surrender are doing the same thing Adolf Hitler did with the First World War which result, he set out to revise by initiating the Second World War. The rest is history. Those that will not learn from the past will allow the past to cripple them.

S. Kadiri  
 




Från: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> för Rex Marinus <rexma...@hotmail.com>
Skickat: den 6 juni 2017 23:59
Till: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Surrender message of Biafra warlords
 


Again, I bring a different interview, earlier in March 2010, which reiterates Joe Achuzia's position. Neither Obasanjo, nor Akirinnade, nor the honorable P.K. Nwokedi, former Judge of the Supreme Court has publicly contradicted Achuzia. He names names, gives details, and asserts the verities of his direct involvement and role, as mandated by the Biafran Executive Council. It was he who brought Akirinnade to Effiong. It was he who stepped down the second phase of the war, the guerrilla phase, as mandated by the Biafra exco, after their contacts with Zik through Mbanefo and the Quakers. The fact, still unaccounted yet by history is that Nnamdi Azikiwe put into complete motion the process that resulted in that compromise that ended the war from his activities beginning in August 1968 to late in 1969, when he got his men in Biafra to activate the implementations of his own agreements, the results of those diplomatic outreaches made from London and Paris. That's a different story. But so, as far as historical accounts go, Achuzia as a participant is a far more credible subject than John de St. Jorre. Achuzia's background as ex-Kings College, Engineer, and soldier, and of course those who were in Biafra and knew exactly his role in Biafra's war strategy, would agree that nothing Achuzia says about Biafra and its conclusions can be dismissed or taken as cavalierly as Salimonu Kadiri and his cohort of denialists would take it. He names the place, names the occasion, names the people, and names the conditions. As he completes his memoir, other facts will come to fore, and they most certainly would be superior to any account given by Mr. St. Jorre, or in Salimonu Kadiri's selective cut-and-paste. That is the litmus for historical verity, because Achuzia would be writing from the force of both introspection, clarity, and direct, first-hand experience. Meanwhile, Salimonu Kadiri's "rank-conscious" claims that Achuzia was a Colonel in the Biafra Army is quite true, and it was deliberate. It was a policy in Biafra that ranks were not what counted. Ojukwu for a long period insisted on remaining "Colonel Ojukwu" until he was pressured by his War Council to adorn the rank of General. But I refer to Achhuzia as a General in the typical way the Igbo recognize his title as "Ochiagha" - meaning General. And Achuzia is "Ochiagha" - those who want to choke on that can go ahead. Meanwhile, a one-year old Biafran child, who felt the pangs of hunger and instability, is by all indices more experienced in war than a senile, file-pushing  draft-dodger, just saying. Children too remember.

Obi Nwakanma



____________________

Many people have blamed Odumegwu-Ojukwu for the way Biafra was defeated. Secretary General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ralph Uweche, recently said that Odumegwu-Ojukwu's way of leadership was responsible for the collapse of Biafra. Do you agree with this?


Biafra was never defeated nor collapsed. It is not true that Biafra was defeated. That is what many do not know.


Are you saying that Biafra was not defeated by Nigeria?
Yes.

What explanation do you offer for this?
Yes, I will do. Let me tell you the truth. You journalists must always do your research properly to educate the public. You should also look into the choice of words. You see, I repeat it again: Biafra was not defeated. It was not the Biafran Army that was responsible for the war efforts during the conflict. The efforts were handled by civilian populace. The soldiers were recruited to defend the civilians. The arms were provided by the civilians. In the executive council of Biafra, there were only two military personnel: Odumegwu-Ojukwu as the Head of State and Effiong as the Officer-in-Charge of Defence. The rest were all civilians. Those civilians were the ones who, when Odumegwu-Ojukwu left to attend the crucial meeting in Liberia, came to me and requested that I should stop the war. Today, there are living witnesses to what I am telling you. These include former Enugu State Chief Judge, Justice P.K. Nwokedi. He was one of those who came with Sir Louis Mbanefo and others to request that I take steps to stop the fighting. Initially, I was against it. But then I was reminded and made to understand that it is not my personal war. So, as a soldier, I have to obey the orders and demands of the Biafran Executive Council to stop the war. Another living witness is Obasanjo. He is still alive. When I sent for him from Owerri, it was to my house he arrived. General Alani Akinrinade was the one I signalled to tell Obasanjo to come to Uga in Orlu Division. He and then Lt. Col. Sam Tumoye were at our headquarters when we discussed how to bring the war to an end. It was from my house that I took Obasanjo to meet Effiong at Igboukwu, which used to be the headquarters of the Biafran Directorate of Military intelligence. General Akinrinade is still alive and can testify to what I am saying. Nobody defeated Biafra. Commonsense will have tell you the truth. If they defeated Biafra, the federal side would have demanded our weapons. In my own case, I asked all my soldiers to go home with their weapons. Those that don't want it should dump them by the roadside. Some handed them over to us. The truth is this. For a long time because of the laws in the archives of the military, what I am telling you today was kept under cover and secret. The essence is to give Nigeria a chance to formulate a new society where all can live in peace. But unfortunately, what I see now is that the issues that led to that armed struggle is yet to be addressed. And instead of addressing this issue so that Nigeria can have a good future, our leaders are still pursuing selfish interest. It is such that even in their presence, the Niger Delta struggle is rising every day.

- General Joe Achuzia, Biafra War Commander, interview in the Nigerian Compass, March 7, 2010. Full interview below.

_________________________________




From: usaafricadialo
Danjuma instigated the killing of Ironsi, Fajuyi –Joe Achuzia
Sunday, 07 March 2010 00:00 Nigerian Compass
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Beyond being one of the major actors in the Nigerian Civil War, Colonel Joe Achuzia (rtd.) is a very popular figure. In this revealing interview with EMMANUEL AGOZINO, Achuzia, popularly known as the Biafran Hannibal, talks about some of the other actors in the Civil War, including Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu; former President Nnamdi Azikiwe; former military Head of State, General Aguiyi Ironsi; and former Minister of Defence, General Theophilus Danjuma. Excerpts:
____________________
You were said to be a man that fought the civil war without rules. While some see that as barbaric others take to you be a hero. Who is Colonel Joe Achuzia?
Well, I don't know about being great. All I know is that in history, every society passes through one phase or the other. It is only those phases that leave indelible marks on society that make for remembrance. And within the issues of remembrance, people now realise the activities that led to it. As part of these activities, certain persons are usually identified with that cause. It is in the process of this identification that certain names takes prominence, not because they are the best, but because within their activities, they left mark as a signpost for the remembrance of the activities that took place at that time. Fortunately, I seem to be identified in one of these activities. Anybody familiar with Nigeria's history from independence will easily identify the landmarks, the memorable incidents that stand out in the history of this country. One of those is the three and half years civil war out of which at the end of it, names were bandied about and mine is one of those names. But luckily, I am still alive not only to help correct all the misinterpretation that some people assigned to me, but also let today's generation know the roles that I played and also refute any false information. For me, these were the things that singled me out. But otherwise, there is nothing that I did. Regarding the allegations that I fought the civil war without rules, others have done even worse.

What will you say about the recent statement credited to General T.Y. Danjuma that late General Aguiyi Ironsi, who was killed as a military Head of State, was a useless man. What is your reaction?
You see, when I read Danjuma's statement, I felt very sad about it. First, go and do your research and you will realise that what I am going to tell you is the truth. In the 2 Division, [b]it was this Danjuma, then a Captain in the then Nigeria Army, who was responsible for organising the security of General Ironsi. It was his job. So, if Danjuma turns today and tells the world  that he did not know about how Ironsi and Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi were killed in Ibadan, it will be a very big lie. If you want me to put it straight, it was because of the opposition of the unitary system declared by Ironsi that Danjuma organised his elimination along with Colonel Fajuyi in Ibadan. So, Danjuma cannot in all honesty deny that he was not the chief instigator of the killing. [/b]We were all living witness. I was in Lagos when the incident happened. So, I am not telling you a myth or what I did not know. It is this same group who killed Ironsi and Fajuyi in Ibadan that up till today are benefiting from the unitary system that Ironsi set up. Can you imagine. It is out of this same cabal too that the so-called Kaduna Mafia sprang up. I am not saying that it is all Northerners that wanted the total elimination of the Igbo during civil war period. But when we talk in terms of what Danjuma did, I know what I am saying. That is his character. It was just the way he killed Ironsi and Fajuyi that he betrayed the late General I.D. Bisala. He denied Bisala when Bisala needed him the most during the coup that killed  Genral Murtala Mohammed. If he is a soldier, he should have stood his ground as the GOC of the 3 Division. But instead, he did not. Let me say that when we talk in terms of military courage and bravery, rank does not bestow courage on people. I  like Danjuma. But he cannot deny the fact that he was the chief instigator of the murder of Ironsi and Fajuyi. History will continue to hold him responsible for that. When the war ended, he was the go between me and Bisala, especially in Enugu, when I was handing over Biafra to the federal side.

Are you saying you were the one that handed over Biafra to the federal side?

Yes.
But many believe that General Philip Effiong handed over Biafra to General Olusegun Obasanjo. Is that not correct?
No, it is a mistake that many people are not aware of up till today. I was the one who handed over Biafra to Obasanjo and Bisala. Effiong's  role was going to Lagos to meet General Yakubu Gowon with some of our Biafran officers. And also reading the script which I prepared. I planned it that they should start from 9a.m. announcing that we had sent emissaries to the war fronts to meet Nigerian commanders so that everybody should lay down their weapons. That speech that we prepared was given to Effiong to read because if I should do that, the Nigerian side  will misinterpret it that possibly there was a coup in Biafra. So, to avoid that misinterpretation, we had to ask Effiong to read it. Because when Odumegwu-Ojukwu was leaving, he specifically told Effiong to represent him, while my job was to take care of the Army. I was the person in charge of the Biafran Armed Forces. So, I was  the one that actually handed over Biafra and not Effiong. Again, when the war ended, I was very visible. For instance, all the documents that Danjuma said that Gowon requested that I should sign, I signed them all. These included when Danjuma said that Gown asked that I should prepare a document of what I would like to do.[/b] I did all that and part of that document was what later led to the establishment of PRODA in Enugu. I also reported at the Board of Inquiry headed by the then General Adeyinka Adebayo. There I was told that one of the reasons why I was being detained was for the  protection of my life. But I asked them, 'Protection against who?' Well, they said that so many people were against me, especially the way I ended the war. So, for tempers to cool, according to them, I was kept in detention for seven years. But for me, I have always said that I don't have any regrets over the war. Beside, I owe it as a moral duty to those whom I led through the war, especially with their situation today. They have not been compensated.

That is why we have today the Civil War Veteran, East West Command Association. The purpose is to look after the welfare of those comrades who survived the civil war. But as I am talking to you, up till today, none of them is less than 56 years and nothing has been done to help them. We are taking steps to bring their problem to the attention of the present government. I have written to President Umaru Yar'Adua. I have also written to the Ministry of Defence and to the President of the Senate, David Mark, that on the basis of "no winner no vanquished," Nigeria owes it a duty to rehabilitate those veterans across the country as done in other parts of the world. The situation can be dangerous in the future if the government continues to exhibit lack of concern. Many people today may not know that those militants in the Niger Delta are all children of the war veterans. The members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) are children of the veterans. We don't want a divided Nigeria again. We as veterans of the war gave a lot for the Nigeria  we have today. All we are asking is that the government should look into the welfare of these veterans. If you look at the present military command in the country, none of them saw the civil war. War is not good. And that is why we have been calling on the government to also take a census of the war veterans on both sides of the war and create a programme in the interest of reconciliation as the Army that fought the war is the Nigerian Army divided against itself based on the side one was standing at the time of the political logjam.

Now, 43 years after, do you think that the issues that caused that war have been resolved?

You see, it sounds naive when one talks about solving the issues that led to that war. There were multitudes of problems and issues that led to the civil war. While some are of the view that the January 1966 coup, led by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna and the others, were the issues that led to the war. others tell you that the way Ironsi handled the issue of the coup by declaring a unitary system as opposed to the federating system in existence then led to the war. There are others who hold that it is the unbridled and the so-called ambition of appointing military administrators to take the place of political leaders. Also, there are those who say that the mismanagement by Gowon after the second coup, which brought Gowon into power  and led to the balkanization of Nigeria from the regional arrangement into states, caused the war. But whatever the cause, the war has been fought. To me, the greatest problem was the balkanization of Nigeria by Gowon without thinking of the future consequences. He did that to weaken the Igbo. But it turned out to be the root of whatever crisis that Nigeria is facing till today. By trying to take the so-called minorities away from the Igbo, when they  claimed that the Igbo were dominating, he  eventually opened their eyes like Oliver Twist. Whoever gave Gowon that advice gave him a wrong one because from then on the spiral effect brought Nigeria to the 36 states which we now have. The cumulation of all these, I will say, are parts and parcel of what in retrospect led to the  civil war. If Gowon did not create the 12 states, I do not think that the Eastern Region would have declared secession because there is nothing like dialogue. And that was exactly what happened. Gowon should have continuously kept seeking for dailogue.

But instead, he was advised to settle the situation the way he did by balkanizing the country. And once you do that, the people's temper will rise. So, today, Nigeria cannot be at peace because the issues that led to the civil war have not been addressed. What do we have? We say we are practicing democracy, but here in Nigeria today what we have is a democracy of the cabals. It is these few cabals that are ruling the country. They have been doing so since the end of the war. And until the country wakes up to say enough is enough, the situation will continue. Hence, corruption will abound. It is only under the system of cabal leadership that certain people are favoured. And these few who are favoured will continue supporting the existence of the cabal government at the expense of the majority. If you look very well, you will see that many people do not understand what Wole Soyinka is trying to do. Knowing the deception that we call Nigerian democracy today, Soyinka has been doing his best trying to tell Nigerians that they should not allow themselves to be cowed into slavery. Because he is not a back seat General. That is why he comes to the front to tell Nigerians to say no to bad leadership that is going on in this country since after independence. For about two months now, all of us are seeing that what is happening with the leadership of this country.

There has been this controversy over the role Nzeogwu played during the first coup. While Odumegwu-Ojukwu keeps saying that it was Ifeajuna that was the leader of the coup, others say it was Nzeogwu. As one who saw it all, who actually was the leader of that coup?

You see, Nigerians have a way of mismanaging information. One person alone does not carry out a coup in the Army. A coup is a concerted arrangement by a few persons of like minds and ready to participate in overthrowing a system. So, the coup of January 1966 was carried out by a group of Army Majors. You cannot put it on one person. Otherwise, you are simply giving a dog a bad name to hang it. To say Nzeogwu, it means Nzeogwu and his group. Ifeajuna and his group. To be honest to your question, Ifeajuna and Nzeogwu were actually together in the plan and execution of the coup. Consequently, if the coup had succeeded, Nzeogwu or Ifeajuna could not have led the country or even [b]Victor Banjo who was a part of that group. [/b]So, all that is important is that the coup took place and that these names were the leaders of the coup.  Any other person from the side that didn't  participate at that crucial time is not a part of the coup. Any other information is an after thought. Unfortunately, those that led the 1966 coup and participated, you only have the junior ones left. They were not the primary leaders. As a result, I would advice that the January event should be consigned to its proper place and perspective, that this an aberration that took place at a point in time in Nigerian history. It is not a situation to continue apportioning blames or encomium.

What do you mean by consigning it to its proper place?


I say this because as long as we continue to apportion blame or look at it as an Igbo coup, we will not come out of the morass of the problem posed by the coup. You know that after the coup, it had a wide ripple effect. Because the North felt that it was an Igbo affair and consequently in their usual characteristics way, they descended on the Igbo without first trying to find out exactly what happened. They reacted as a mob without thinking. That mob action  has since then placed Nigeria in jeopardy. The result was finally a coup in which Danjuma and Gowon emerged. Gowon then became the Head of State. But the funny thing about it was that they did not carry out the coup for enhancing the interest of Nigeria. They did it on the basis that they wanted to secede from Nigeria. Hence the word Araba (Let's divide). It was very clear that even Gowon in his first speech he delivered made it clear that there was no basis for unity. But unfortunately, he took the advice of the  civil service dominated then by the Southerners to advice him that it is not in the interest of the North to pull out of the federation. It was this same people that advised Gowon that the best way to bring the Eastern Region to its knee was to balkanise it. But before he did that, information was also leaking to the Eastern Region Government. And the reaction of the East was no, we are one. If you say you do not want us, we will go on our own by any name. If you look at the situation critically, you will see that the Eastern Region was pushed out. They were being pushed out for purposes of total elimination. That was the beginning of the genocide. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been the need to cut them off from the sea, air and land or get them landlocked. It was for this purpose that Bakasi was given out to Cameroun so that they will not give space for Biafra to retreat into Cameroun.

You mentioned Banjo. Where do you stand on the trial and execution of Banjo and his group during the war?

Banjo and his group  were tried under military procedure in line with the Biafran laws. I don't think that it should be a thing for apportioning blames to anybody. They violated the war rules and laws at that time. And they were tried accordingly. Anybody could have fallen into that line. So, it was the laws at that time. And it was approved based on the orders of a military tribunal. So it is not a thing to blame anybody. 

Many people have blamed Odumegwu-Ojukwu for the way Biafra was defeated. Secretary General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Ralph Uweche, recently said that Odumegwu-Ojukwu's way of leadership was responsible for the collapse of Biafra. Do you agree with this?

Biafra was never defeated nor collapsed. It is not true that Biafra was defeated. That is what many do not know.

Are you saying that Biafra was not defeated by Nigeria?
Yes.

What explanation do you offer for this?
Yes, I will do. Let me tell you the truth. You journalists must always do your research properly to educate the public. You should also look into the choice of words. You see, I repeat it again: Biafra was not defeated. It was not the Biafran Army that was responsible for the war efforts during the conflict. The efforts were handled by civilian populace. The soldiers were recruited to defend the civilians. The arms were provided by the civilians. In the executi

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