When is a nation not a nation ?
Sir: If Mr Horton (Letters, 11 April) is going to continue to spread allegations, without evi- dence, about the criminal nature of Biafran actions and intentions, singling out the lbos and Ibo leaders in particular with his generous slander, he should be sharply reminded of the conduct of Nigerian Federal troops on 29 July 1966, late September 1966, and indeed at the out- set of this war in the Mid-West, where, accord- ing to Monsignor Georges Rochecau, in the area around Benin and Asaba, 'only widows and orphans remain, Federal troops having for some unaccountable reasons killed all the men.' All these atrocities have been documented by British Journalists.
Perhaps Sir Denis Brogan's erudite response, non tali auxilio,' might be supplemented by the more familiar parable of the mote and the beam. One appreciates the difficulty of both sides in coping -with atrocities of this nature: it was, however, the inability of the Federal govern- ment to cope with the outbreak of racial violence in Northern Nigeria in September 1966, which as much as anything has led to the present con- flict: that, and their involvement with, or con- doning of the army mutiny of July last year, which would appear to have been of the nature of a pogrom against servicemen of eastern origin.
Even if one does not consider that those events effectively removed any basis for unity, on the more narrowly legalistic side it is argu- able that the Federal government further under- mined the Nigerian constitution by its failure to implement in good faith the agreements of the body it accepted as the 'supreme legislative and executive authority' (to quote from the Federal government decree no. 8 of March 1967), the Nigerian Supreme Military Coun- cil, after the meeting of that body in Aburi, Ghana, January 1967.
Surely these atrocities should inspire simply revulsion and grief : failures to check them, or to prosecute their perpetrators, there have been. Mr Horton's inflammatory language can only add fuel to the fire. There is in this country a law against statements of this nature, and had such a law been operative in Nigeria prior to the war, perhaps this tragedy would never have occurred.
Previous page
