Sir: Mr Donaldson's letter (3 January) sheds some light on
the mentality of ex-colonial officers of his type who have been largely re- sponsible for the Government's disastrous Biafra policy. One thing evident from the letter is that Mr Donaldson has an intense hatred for the Ibos, and this has warped his judgment of the whole crisis.
He believes that Biafra started-the war and not Nigeria, just because Lagos radio said so
on 6 July 1967. Nobody was at the battlefield with the soldiers when the war started, and so nobody can claim to be an eye-witness, but one point of fact is- that the war started on the day Nigeria told their foreign friends in Lagos that it would start. This coincidence requires some explanation.
According to Mr Donaldsorf, the Ibos have a 'built-in power-drive' with which they were
engaged in a determined' effort to dominate Nigeria. Surely, in such a case, it would be in the best interest of their victims if the Ibos were to be kicked out of Nigeria, and not otherwise. Perhaps Mr Donaldson is in sup- port of the present operation simply because it gives him immense satisfaction to see the objects of his hatred being decimated.
He thinks that some sort of reprisal was merited by the Ibos because he found them 'rude, overbearing and arrogant.' Granting, for the sake of argument, that all the Ibos are all these things, it would be interesting to know from Mr Donaldson what type of reprisal he would have decreed as Her Majesty's District Officer in Nigeria. Countries all over the world abound with rude, overbearing and arrogant people leading their lives, among their country- men, in safety and enjoying state protection. Only hatred could have made it seem right to Mr Donaldson that the massacre of 30,000 Ibos in gruesome circumstances, and the mount- ing death toll in Biafra is adequately explained away as a reprisal for arrogance.
Biafra is the home of both the Ibos and non-Ibos. Does Mr Donaldson think, too, that the non-Ibos merit reprisal? They have prob- ably suffered more than the Ibos in the present crisis. It is impossible for Mr Donaldson and his type to be so bitter, and still be logical, over an issue involving the object of their bitterness. Constructive thinking is made of saner stuff. B. Ngwuocha London SW II
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