Sir: It was distressing to me to read your ill-
informed comment 'Murder by proxy' (14 June). Thank goodness Robert Horton (Letters, 21 June) put on record what we who have lived in Nigeria for years know to be the true position.
Your editorial helps to foster the illusion that the civil war was started by the Federal govern- ment. It was not. It was started by the rebel lbos who marched into parts of the then northern region of the country and, soon afterwards, dropped bombs on Kano, Kaduna, Lagos and Lokoja. And this at a time when the Federal government had no fighter or bomber planes and no defences against air attack. Further, the troubles. in Nigeria were sparked off by the :Ibos who murdered the Prime Minister (a great man), two regional premiers (but not the Ibo premier) and knocked off nearly all the senior ion-Ibo army officers. (My next-door neigh- bour was murdered, ,brutally, in front of his family by Ibo mutineers.)
It was the Ibos who distorted the agreements reached at Aburi in 1967 and wrecked the re- :cent peace conference .at Kampala. The Ibos now want a cease-fire.. immediate lifting of the blockade and a return to prewar lines! This before a conference can start!
The truculence and intransigence of the lbos is well known and is equalled only by their arrogance and their weakness to 'overplay their :hand.' It now seems the Ibo leaders have an unstoppable tiger by the tail.
. You.draw a distasteful comparison between the Federal government and the Nazis. A more apposite comparison would be between Hitler and Ojukwo; the Ibo people, like the Germans, have now become the victims of their own flam- boyant and lying propaganda.
And, please, no genocide. 1 was recently in Lagos where thousands of Ibos live and work quite peaceably. Not all want secession.
In any case, the concept of Biafra on seces- • sion no longer exists. Several millions of non- Ibo tribes in Eastern Nigeria (Ibibios, • Efiks, ljaws, etc) are now running their own affairs, and I feel quite certain they will never wish to return to. the former position where they lived an 'almost serf-like existence under Ibo domina- tion.
Angus Buchanan Newton Village, Millerhill, Dalkeith
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