By Steve Uzoechi
When I heard Cubana Chief Priest talking about Ndigbo being defeated in war, a common narrative among this generation; then my mind raced back to an interview I conducted with Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu of blessed memory in September 2020, during his 78th birthday.
He told me a story of the war most people didn't know.
Iwuanyanwu fought in the war, Cubana Chief Priest didn't. I will drop an extract of that interview below, so you can make of it what you will:
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RIGHTING THE CIVIL WAR NARRATIVE
IWUANYANWU: I have said this before and I am repeating it. I am still alive. I commanded the last battle for the defense of Uli airport, so anything I talk about, concerning the end of the war, is more of an eye-witness account. I am telling young Nigerians particularly, young Igbo people who continue to read all these books citing the ‘fall of Biafra’, ‘the defeat of Biafra’, ‘the surrender of Biafra’, those are not true.
Strictly for the purposes of history, those narratives are not true. the truth about it, is that Nigeria was better equipped than Biafra, Nigeria had upper hand but Biafra was resilient. We fought like people who had no other choice. The way we perceived the war was such that we were rejected, we did not feel safe in Nigeria anymore. Our people were slaughtered and massacred for a cause they know nothing about. They said Igbo people caused the coup, of course that was also a lie, we did not cause the coup. Thousands of Igbo people were killed for no reason. So we did not have any choice, we resolved it was better to die fighting in defense of our people. That’s why we, the young men of those days joined the army and took up arms. We already made up our mind to pay the supreme price in defense of our fatherland, so in spite of our shortcomings and inadequacies, we were a fearless and resilient army of passionate young men who were willing to die for their homeland.
So like I said, the end of the civil war was negotiated and I say this because I was on ground. Just like the Boko Haram insurgency, if anybody thinks they can defeat Boko Haram by just force of arm, and without negotiation, they may just be wasting their time. They should engage them and find a middle ground.
If not for the negotiation, Biafra war could have continued for 10, 12 or even 15 years because it is not that easy to utterly defeat somebody in his own ground without a long-drawn hostilities. If you come to one place, he will go to another place, and guerrilla warfare was an option. Our own generation of young people at the time, were so determined and there was no way we would have surrendered at the time. We couldn’t have surrendered.
Some people we must actually give credit for the end of the war are Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, General Yakubu Gowon and then President William Tubman of Liberia.
What happened was that Azikiwe was able to get Tubman to broker peace. The truth remains that Azikiwe loved Nigeria. He never believed in anything else outside one Nigeria. He believed he had spent a greater part of his life fighting the cause of Nigeria, so he was not happy about the war. He knew we were being unjustly treated and he knew we were not safe. Though he supported our cause but he did not believe that war was the only path to amicable resolution. He left the country and that was because if they had seen him, he would also have been killed.
Azikiwe now organized a meeting with Tubman and Gowon. And that meeting was held at Ikeja airport because Azikiwe refused to go to Dodan Barracks which was the seat of power at that time. For people who do not know, Gowon is a great leader. Nigerians must respect Gowon for making peace possible. Consider how the war against Boko Haram has become protracted and has lasted more than a decade, but Gowon was instrumental to making peace possible in just three years of the civil war. If anybody is taking for granted the role of Gowon, Azikiwe and Tubman in bringing the war to an end, then I will have you know that if not for their involvement, that war would have lasted for more than 15 years.
The type of people we had in Biafra were not people who could have surrendered like that.
I will also like to add that when the negotiation came to our attention, we the younger officers held a meeting, we didn’t want to surrender, we wanted to go on but it was General Effiong that saved the situation. He told us that it was not defeat, that it is a negotiated ending for the war. So it is not a question of history recording it that our generation were defeated while fighting for survival. If someone defeats you while fighting for survival, tomorrow he can fight you again to annihilate you and we didn’t want to accept such a situation. So we want our young people to know that we their parents fought well, willingly placing our lives on the line and we were not defeated.
It was Effiong that first told us that there will be no victor, no vanquished. And he assured us that it was going to be put in the news and in fact young men of those generation would remember that before Seven O’ Clock news every day, it was announced, ‘No Victor, No Vanquished’.
Again, he told us that nobody will be tried for the war including General Emeka Ojukwu himself. This followed our pointed question to him: “Will Ojukwu be tried?”. This was because Ojukwu was a leader we all respected. It’s important to note that Ojukwu did not have a Biafran secession plan ab-initio, he believed in Nigeria. But it was the Nigerian government that forced him into the Biafra struggle, in defense of his people who were being slaughtered across the country.
Infact, Ojukwu helped to neutralize the Chukwuma Nzeogwu coup alongside Aguiyi Ironsi who led the army at the time. But Nigerians plotted and killed Ironsi. So we didn’t feel any safe at all.
So General Effiong assured us that General Ojukwu will not be tried and that also went for other soldiers and officers, unless there was any other criminal offence.
Effiong also told us that the Nigerian government was going to rehabilitate all of us, will reconstruct our region due to the damages done by the war and that government was going to initiate policy for reconciliation. Rehabilitate us, reconstruct the region and reconcile Nigerians – that was the 3Rs of the post-war era.
He also told us that all the civil servants, policemen and soldiers will go back to their jobs and start where they were.
When we agreed, we were asked to report to where we know now as Alvan Ikoku College of Education. Some people who died were those who were trying to escape. For all of us who went to Alvan Ikoku College Of Education, all we did were profiling and documentation. Olusegun Obasanjo was then the Commander of the 3rd Marine Commando, they were the people who moved into Owerri. They reassured us that we are all brothers and we embraced ourselves. After the documentation, all of us left.
So there was no defeat, there was no surrender. It was a negotiated settlement to have one Nigeria. And after that, if you noticed, Igbos spread all over Nigeria again and there was no problem anywhere.
I must state here that Igbo are very happy with the way the northerners treated them after the war. In the north, most of the properties Igbos left behind were all preserved for them, many northerners collected rents for Igbo properties and handed it back to them after the war. It is good for our children to know all these. The Emir of Kano was particularly a great friend of the Igbos, a good man. He protected the Igbos and preserved their interests. Many Igbos lived within his emirate. The properties of the Igbos were largely protected in the North, it was only in the East here, where we are fighting ourselves that Igbos had issues with their properties. But it did not take a long time before it was resolved.
I am saying this again; we were not defeated. Yes, Nigeria had upper hand but we were resolute, we manufactured our equipment and military hardware. This is same reason I am suggesting that we negotiate with Boko Haram and settle the matter. The war is causing this country a lot of lives and money. We have gone on recession before, we may go on recession again. Can you imagine the amount of money spent on prosecuting this war?
I’m getting old now, so I do not want our children tomorrow to say we were defeated. I am one of the people privy to all the meetings held. The end of the war was negotiated by both sides in the war.
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