Britain and Biafra
Sir: One is often surprised by the amount of havoc and injury small-minded and ignorant, prejudiced persons inflict on mankind. James Donaldson (Letters, 3 January) is an example of such irredeemably prejudiced ex-British colonial servants, who arrogate to themselves the omniscience of precisely telling the Ibos how to behave. By what scientific training does Mr Donaldson qualify and by what field-work among the over eight million Ibos has he estab- lished rudeness and `overbearing' arrogance among such eight million Ibos? But the irony of Mr Wilson's administration is that his Government's insistence on supplying arms to Lagos so as to exterminate the fourteen• million Biafrans, under the guise of 'keeping Nigeria one,' is almost entirely influenced by this blind prejudice against all Ibos. People like Angus Buchanan (Letters, 13 December), who speak about the 'treaiery' of the Ibos, or Sir David Hunt, the British High Commissioner in Lagos, who swears not to allow the Ibos to assert themselves, are very petty and unscientific. Such generalisations about a race of people can only give the impression of being the pro- duct of prejudice motivated by hatred. Why should civilised Britain allow such men to in- fluence its policy on the Biafran war?
The fact of the Biafra/Nigeria war as distinct from fancies peddled by Donaldson, Buchanan, Hunt and company are briefly these : 1. By killing over 30,000 former Eastern Nigerians in the atrocious massacres of 1966, Gowon had himself broken up the Federation of Nigeria. Blood cannot be so easily spilled without tragic consequences.
2. The emergence of Biafra is not a rebel- lion, but the inevitable result of the massacres sponsored by Gowon's regime in 1966.
3. African countries should encourage the existence of Biafra as a permanent pointer to all African rulers that the inevitable- conse- quence of wicked rule and the killing of any sections of the people out of hatred and prejudice is the breaking-up of such a nation. Edmund Ilogu 30 Collingham Gardens, London SW5
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