A more murderous harvest
Sir: Mr Birch in his letter (28 June) is quite wrong to suggest that Mr Horton in his letter of 21 June confirms press-ganging of minorities into the Federal Nigerian army. Mr Birch is also grossly mistaken if he believes that such press-ganging does take. place. As Mr Horton pointed out, people from the Rivers have given up good jobs to volunteer for service in the Federal army-
. I have my own sad experience of this. George Amangala, a graduate teacher from Oloibiri in the Rivers, with whom I had been working on a. primary school history textbook for Eastern Nigeria, was so angered by the policies of the Biafran regime towards the Rivers people and by Biafra's invasion of the mid-west, that he joined the Federal army as a lieutenant. He was killed by the Biafrans while on patrol in the Bonny sector, fighting. for the creation of the Rivers State which he (and all the many other Rivers people I have talked to) so
desperately wanted. His death was not in vain, for the Rivers State, has, with the eviction of Biafran forces from all but one of its major towns, become a reality.
Michael Crowder Research Professor and Director, Institute of African Studies, University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria
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