Hail Biafra

AFRICAN COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH

Of the many journalists who have visited Biafra and attempted to give some picture of what British foreign policy is achieving there, I think I was the first political correspondent. When our party landed at the airstrip in one of Mr Hank Wharton's Constellations—our plane brought in seven tons of ammunition and we had taken it in turns to sleep on a mattress thrown over the ammunition boxes- I was straight from the Government's moral crusade in Westminster. I had heard Mr Michael Stewart assure the House pf Commons that if he could be persuaded that it was the Lagos government's intention to commit genocide against the lbos. then he would 'more than reconsider' his decision to provide arms for the purpose. Both Mr George Thomson and Mr Wilson had expressed a willingness to fatten the Biafrans up before allowing them to be killed by the weapons they supplied to the other side, and seemed upset when Colonel Ojukwu refused to let them demonstrate their compassion in this way.

Our plane was met at the airstrip by a party of missionaries who were hoping for food and medical supplies. Unfortunately. on this occasion, we had brought them only the Catholic Bishop of Port Harcourt, a most amiable man who created a scene in the dining room at Sao Tome Airport when they tried to give him coca-cola instead of beer. There was also another African priest and Father Butler, an Irish missionary working for Caritas who had come over from Sao Tome just for the ride. His sang-froid rather annoyed. one journalist who swore that we were being shot at every time the plane shuddered.

The pilot was a highly capable American mercenary called Robbie who, like all Mr Wharton's pilots, had a huge cigar permanently stuck between his teeth. Goodness knows why he chose this method of earning his living. but I would like to take this opportunity of putting a little free advertisement for Mr Wharton's Air Biafra. If my dispatch from Lisbon last week seemed a little curmudgeonly in this respect. it may have been coloured by the fact that we had failed to get a plane three nights running—on the last occasion Mr Wharton ex- plained with commendable frankness that his navigator was drunk. But once aboard, the cheerfulness and competence of Air Biafra's pilots make it an unbeatable advertisement for the American merchant adventuring spirit.

The first sight which meets the eye at Umuahia airstrip is a formidable anti-aircraft gun flanked by two Biafran soldiers standing to attention. This covers the runway's direct approach. and as Nigeria's Egyptian mic pilots do not like being shot at, they have always tried to hit it from a diagonal approach. with no success. With extraordinary speed, working under the arc lights in the muggy haze at two o'clock in the morning, men unload the ammu- nition boxes into army lorries, the plane is turned around and passengers are shepherded inside for the return trip. We arc taken to a concrete shed about half a mile away for the mild farce of passport and immigration control. Our luggage is searched, passports stamped and an anxious health official asks for certificates of inoculation against smallpox and yellow fever. On being told that we have none, and that we should consider it indelicate to show him them in any case, he goes away looking misunderstood.

Much of Biafran officialdom's time is spent making lists, and we had all been listed about half a dozen times when we set oft. in a convoy of four cars, on the sixty-mile journey to Aba. The roads in Biafra are estreinely good, and one only had time between roadblocks to re- ceive a fleeting impression of coconut palms rising above the dripping vegetation. These roadblocks are a major feature of travel in Biafra. They arc approached by nine inch earth works across the road, over which one has to. drive very slowly or break an axle, although, of course, they would not make the slightest difference to a Saladin, or even a Ferret. They have been manned day and night for fourteen months. and one is never quite sure of one's reception. Sometimes a terrifying figure in camouflaged denim uniform would thrust a submachine gun through the window cocking it as he does so, and demand to see my papers. At others I was waved on by a sleepy figure, bare to the waist in the pouring rain, or dressed in an ankle-length raincoat and floppy hat, leaning on an upside-down Lec Enfield from the First World War. The words 'world press' are usually greeted with great grins of welcome, patriotic salutes and, occasionally, little dances to the refrain of 'Hail Biafra.'

All the government rest houses have been re-named Progress Hotels, which seems as good a name as any. The Progress Hotel at Aba- since the fall of Enugu. Aba has become the administrative capital of Biafra, although every- thing has been decentralised as much as possible -• possessed neither electric light nor water when we arrived, although water started flow- ing at about six in the morning. Everybody unpacked by candlelight : torches, pills to make poisonous water drinkable, mosquito repellent, things to remove stones from a horse's foot. The Germans brought knives to carry in their boots and electrical gadgets for every occasion. They had an insolent way of shaving them- selves with battery-powered machines during any lull in the conversation. At any other lull, an incredibly boring young Swede would ex- plain the Swedish way to health and happiness. He said he spoke in an American accent be- cause he found it easier. He was far too intel- ligent to be taken in by Biafran propaganda. We all resolved to poison him as soon as the first Red Cross supplies came through.

We were called at seven o'clock for break- fast—fried plantains and mushrooms —by a servant called Michael who called one 'master.' At the home of Mr Oti, the local representative of the Ministry of Information, we were told that as the Biafran pound had not 'devalued last November, we should receive only I6s 8d in Biafran money for our English pounds, and American journalists would have to pay $2.80 for a Biafran pound. Also. we were to be charged about £12 a day for board, lodging and share of a car. We were asked what in

particular we wanted to see. Everybody said they wanted to have a personal interview with Colonel Ojukwu and see at least one of the fronts. To see the Colonel, it is necessary to fill in a long form listing one's educational qualifications, the readership of one's news- paper, other countries visited, religion and number of children in one's family. Perhaps my family did not come up to scratch, because I never heard any more about it—nor indeed did any of the other journalists. In any case, the Colonel was away when we arrived, at the abortive talks in Niamey, and just conceivably the fellow was rather busy on his return. Only the Swede seemed to mind, claiming that he represented the second most important news- paper in the South of Sweden.

The Eastern Nigerians—largely through their own carelessness in the matter—have always chosen to live on the borderline of protein sufficiency. Their normal food, of cassavas and yams flavoured with various highly peppered gravies, has very little protein content indeed, but it has always been supplemented by some 3,000 tons of stock fish (dried cod) imported from the West every month, and some 2,000 head of cattle imported from the North. In 1965 the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Umuahia, treated 100 patients suffering from malnutrition throughout the whole year. In 1967 the figure was 800 patients. Last week, on a bad day, the staff treated 1,700 patients, nearly all suffering from oedema, or swollen feet, a characteristic of the last stages of protein deficiency. While everybody—or nearly everybody—is now living on a virtually protein-less diet, it is inevitably the children who are struck down first. The outpatient department was jammed solid with mothers nursing their babies—not skeleton-thin, with stick-like legs and distended stomachs, as in Oxfam advertisements, but curiously puffy, with a reddening of the skin, a paling and straightening of the hair and a total listlessness. 'I should say it's most dubious whether this one's going to live,' said Dr Shepherd, a quiet- spoken Scottish Presbyterian in charge of the department. 'If I had to choose, I'd feed up this one.' Of course, he has no choice. Only the extreme cases can be treated at all, and they are rationed to one scoopful of powdered milk per fortnight. The most impressive thing about it was the way in which mothers accepted that this was just, that no more could be done. It was only when one saw the pain and hopeless- ness in the mothers' eyes that one began to understand what every unit in the casualty

figures represented in terms of personal agony.

I also visited the casualty wards, which had received some forty patients from the Degema- Igrite—Port Harcourt front on the day before (thereby giving the lie to Lagos claims both that there was a lull in the fighting and that all resistance in these areas had been crushed). As the hospital specialised in thoracic surgery, most of the cases involved bullet wounds in the chest—occasionally sniper fire, but mostly from the machine guns of the Saladin, Saracen and Ferret armoured cars supplied by the British government. Without these armoured cars, the Nigerians would have very little chance of pushing through to Umuahia. The Biafrans have no defence against them, except land mines and the more desperate method of climb- ing under them with napalm grenades to put on the outside of their petrol tanks. One did not feel particularly proud of being English on this occasion.

While there is a certain amount of anger against England among the Biafrans, there is far more incomprehension. They keep returning to the fact that England is a Christian country, that they learned their Christianity from England (and Ireland) as well as their cricket and also, perhaps, their sense of fair play. It is this sense of fair play, as well as Christian fatalism, which is the strongest impression one receives in Biafra. How is it possible, they ask, that Mr Wilson does not understand what will happen to Biafrans in the event of a Nigerian victory? I reply that he believes that nothing will happen to the Biafrans, he thinks that talk of genocide is so much false propaganda put about by Colonel Ojukwu and those who covet Port Harcourt's oil in order to stiffen Biafran resistance. But the roads are jammed with non-Ibo refugees fleeing from the Federal Nigerians. These minority tribes, accepting the

Lagos thesis that the war was to prevent Ibo domination, initially joined the Nigerian forces, However, the Hausas from the North do not distinguish between Ibo and non-Ibo Easterners, with the result that, when large numbers of them had been murdered and others rounded up into concentration camps, those remaining started the long trek into what remains of Biafra where they now add to the appalling refugee problems.

Mr Wilson's thesis that we are all the victims of skilful propaganda could not survive a visit of even half an hour to Biafra. In the course of my travels I must have talked to about fifty people directly concerned with ministering to the hungry and the dying. They were mis- sionaries, doctors, camp organisers and local Red Cross workers. I asked all of them, first, whether they did not think the risks of a sur- render would be preferable to the certainty of starvation, and, secondly, whether they did not think that too much priority was given to arms in the aeroplane flights, and not enough to food and medical supplies. Without a single exception—and my informants included paci- fists and humanists, as well as Catholic and Anglican missionaries, nurses and school. teachers—they all said that the probability of a massacre was too great to make surrender thinkable.

More surprising still, there was no suggestion among the army officers that greater priority should be given to arms and less to powdered milk. They, too, have seen whole companies cut down by Nigerian artillery and machine gun fire without being able to return a single shot. They have no choice but to fight, and everything which can be done is being done. Even the journalists—and British journalists at that—who were eating valuable meat and burn- ing valuable petrol, were welcomed wherever they went. So great is the Biafrans' faith in the justice of their cause, and so great their faith in the basic fairmindedness of human nature, that they welcome journalists as saviours. This is not only among government officials, army officers or white welfare workers, but in every single Biafran home. One may doubt whether many English homes would show such sophis- tication in similar circumstances.

Any Commonwealth Office official who is prepared to spend half an hour talking to Biafrans will learn that, after what has hap- pened, there is not the slightest chance of Biafra voluntarily rejoining any except the very loosest Nigerian federation. The only prospect in sight, if Britain continues to pursue its lone policy of one Nigeria—shared somewhat half- heartedly by America, whose assistant-secretary of State for African Affairs, Joseph Palmer, made his name as ambassador to Lagos with hi, glowing reports of Nigerian stability, unity and permanence—is that the war will drag on indefinitely from the bush.

This is because misery is only one aspect of the Biafran scene. In a sense. and despite the :,i)palling numbers involved, one has to hunt out---:n the hospitals, camps and villages— know that it is there. Although protein ,.H.:iency is the major problem, there is a lain amount of starvation. too. We are all with this, of course, from Oxfam

ads ertisernents. What is more disconcerting is to see these same Oxfam advertisements walk- ing around, laughing to show their great white teeth, waving to one as one walks past and calling 'Hail Biafra.' They are dying, and the numbers are growing, but there is an almost unbelievable enthusiasm among them for the war. I stopped at a village market on the way to Owerri, and asked a boy of about twelve whether he thought Biafra was going to win the war. Like most Biafrans. he was educated and highly articulate, with a cheerful manner and quiet, thoughtful approach to the problem. 1 think we are bound to win it in the end,' he said, `although it may take a long time, and I am afraid that many of the people will be like stock fish.'

So far as one can judge, there is no sacrifice which the Biafran people are not prepared to make. One half of this is explained by fear for the consequences of failure and the other half is attributable quite simply to pride in Biafran nationalism. It is this extraordinary joy in their nationhood which is the most obvious pheno- menon among Biafrans. The misery, as I have said, is there, but it needs hunting out. The pride and joy strike you from the start.

After the visit to the Queen Elizabeth

Hospital at Umuahia, four of us were taken to a refugee camp. Of the 550 people in the Orei- Amaenyi camp, 136 were non-lbos from the Udi area. Thirteen children were orphans from the fighting there. It was only one of forty-two camps round Aba. Its warden, Mr Nwaubani, used to work in Lagos on the railways before the first anti-lbo pogrom in 1966. He became separated from his wife and family in Ibadan, and hopes they are still alive, but has no means of knowing. He said that children in the camps were much better off than refugee children in the villages. He received food from the Biafran

government. now that supplies from the Red Cross and World Council of Churches had ended; the refugees, who spend their time making baskets in the main classroom of the school which the camp occupies, did not seem too unhappy. but twenty-eight of them had died since January: also, eight babies had been born there. One, who had been born a week before, was being nursed by her brother. a boy of about three. who already had the patchy discoloured skin which one had grown to recognise as an advanced case of malnutrition. Mr Nwaubani hurried us past the couple, look- ing distressed. An old man approached us and said that he had a complaint to make: sonic of the younger inmates made too much noise at night and prevented him from getting a proper sleep. The younger people laughed. Strangely enough, his was the only angry face I saw during my stay in Biafra.

The Progress Hotel at Umuahia was decorated with posters saying: WATCH OUT ! ! ! FOR PEOPLE WHO SPEND MONEY THE WAY THEY SHOULD NOT All over Biafra there are posters exhorting people to greater feats of bravery and instruct- ing them on what action to take in the event of air raids. They are scarcely necessary. More civilians than soldiers are killed by the peculiar Federal Nigerian method of fighting, which is to pound an area with artillery, then occupy it with British armoured cars spraying machine gun bullets ahead before the infantry arrive.

My guide very much wanted to take me to the bomb sites of Umuahia and rather reluc- tantly I agreed. Like the great British public, I felt that I could only take so much Biafran propaganda in a single day: all belligerents invariably claim that the other side had bombed

hospitals, schools and churches. and I was quite prepared to believe that the Egyptian pilots had made a mistake. The Federal Nigerian case is that the Biafrans are using school buildings as barracks. and this is cer- tainls true of some of the Luger hoarding schools -there is no other accommodation. But ss as not quite prepared for the e■idence of my eyes in what remained of St Stephen's Church of England Mission school at Cmuahia.

According to Air Peter Okpara. a Red Cross official. who witnessed the attack, some Russian MR Jets first tried to hit the school which was unintelligently flying a Red Cross flag at the time with rockets. These missed, and one

could see the line of small craters across the

school playing fields which continued into a line of devastated houses. Next. according to Mr Okpara, the jets turned round and machine- gunned the children. as they ran out of the school, killing thirty of them. If he was lying, I can only say that I saw the bullet marks all over the school building, including a few in the classroom, where letters and pictures for a writing lesson were still chalked on the black- board. In Aba, too. I saw where the biggest Anglican Church. St Michael's, had been bombed and strafed --unmistakably as the main target. since only about half a dozen of the houses around it had been touched. Goodness knows why these Egyptian pilots should feel so strongly about the Church of England, but it is curious that they had not made the slightest effort to identify or attack the numerous military and administrative targets about ten miles away.

On our return to the Progress Hotel at Aba, we learned that the Germans had done rather better. "'they had filmed the actual deaths of two children from starvation in hospital, and also found a refugee camp where they were cooking rats: 'Ho, ho, Fonily enoll, it voss not a bad smell.' Next day, there were six vultures on the roof of the cookhouse. which everybody felt to be symbolic of something or other.

It was not until we visited the Biafran School of Infantry that I began to realise the full extent of this small country's military effort. Its Commandant, Colonel Okeicheku Ochei, had been to Mons, but the whole place re- minded one more of the Guards' Depot at Caterham in its unregenerate days. Those who

have not attended any such institution will probably not understand how curiously moving it was to hear the familiar British drill orders— 'Open order, march,' General salute, present arms'—bellowed across the playground of a former Catholic public school near Owerri, and obeyed by squads of half-naked Biafran war- riors many of whom will be killed within a fortnight. They have an intensive course there to produce a Biafran army officer from a Biafran civilian in six weeks, but it is the enthusiasm of the cadets—none is under twenty-five—which takes the breath away.

At the same time as one squad was drilling, another was dismantling and assembling a 106 mm American recoilless anti-tank weapon (goodness knows why—this was the only one in the army, and it had no ammunition), another was running over the obstacle course, another two squads were practising bayonet drill on each other (`In, out, forward'), another was boxing (`this way we weed out the cowards,' said Colonel Ochei with a cruel chuckle), another was engaged in mortar drill and an- other three squads were marching round and round the football field in slow time to the strain of a brass band, singing their heads off : 'Give me oil in my lamp, keep it burning; Keep it burning till the break of day.'

Other songs were more topical, sung in Ibo. Apparently each new intake makes up its own songs. One, in quick time and extraordinarily melodious, was translated for me thus: 'I went to war with my brother, but my brother Ifeajuna was bribed. Biafrans never be deceived again. We must fight the Hausas who do not believe in God. Please give us enough intel- ligence to defeat the unbelieving Hausas.'

This academy is situated about fifteen miles from the enemy lines. On its establishment is an embarrassingly sane professor who makes electrical systems for rocket launchers and `secret weapons.' One of his secret weapons looked like a large, overturned milk churn with large handles. He said it was a projectile. When I said that it looked rather hard to project, everyone present collapsed in the high girlish laughter which is one of the most amiable characteristics of these warriors. 'It is very easy to project,' said Colonel Ochei mysteriously.

Another good joke here is that at any moment the officer or instructor in charge of a squad is liable to pull out his pistol and stand shoot- ing it off. This is supposed to teach the cadets not to panic under gunfire, but one could not escape the conclusion that it was just as useful in boosting the morale of the instructors, many of whom, like Colonel Ochei, were on leave from a long spell at the front.

The Colonel entertained us to lunch in the officers' mess. As a treat, a bottle was produced of something which they humorously described as Biafra gin. Between giggles his second-in- command (a Yoruba, as it happened) explained that before the war one could be sentenced to seven years in jail for making it. After a few sips, I began to yearn for the good old days before the war. But the regimental dish, of goat's head stewed in a peppery sauce with fried plantains, was delicious. It was hard to believe, as one sat giggling between exaggerated expressions of friendship and esteem, that these men were fighting for their survival, and that in a matter of weeks, in all probability, they would be taking to the bush, to continue the war with captured weapons. As Colonel Ochei said, staring at the fine Palladian front of the school which was now his headquarters: 'The trouble with Biafrans is that we have always set far too much store by education. I spend half my salary on educating my relations. That is why they will destroy us.'

On the return journey, past fields bristling with thousands and thousands of wooden spikes as a sensible precaution against para- chutists, a danger of which the Biafrans are very much aware (as is shown in their illustrated propaganda sheet, reproduced on pp. 152-3). One realised that support for the Biafrans was more than a matter of opinion or of intellectual choice, to be discussed in a civilised manner with proper respect for the opinions of those who take a contrary view. The only solace which the Biafrans now have—and one may doubt whether such a pious, Christian race will find much consolation there—is that those who do take the contrary view (Sir David Hunt, Lord Shepherd, Mr Wilson, Mr John Cordle, MP, the Editor of the Daily Telegraph, General Gowon and the whole, accursed, Bac news service)— will very probably rot in hell.

Next day I went to see the chief of staff, Major-General Effiong, another member of a minority tribe—the Annang. A quiet, learned man of exquisite politeness, he spoke sadly of his old friend Jack Gowon, with whom he had served at Kaduna and in Lagos.

`No, I'm not Sandhurst-trained, unfor- tunately, although I'm a Christian'—he went to Eaton Hall—`but Jack and I used to be very intimate. One day we were driving from London to Camberley—it was about the time of inde- pendence, in 1961/2—and I said to him: "Jack, you know it is chaps like you and I who will lead the army." He said: "Yes, I shudder to think about it, it will be a terrible respon- sibility." He always had difficulty making decisions, but nowadays, I can't believe he is the same person—whether he has any honesty left in him.' About Brigadier Adekunle, the maverick Nigerian commander of the Port Harcourt district who has said that he would never allow a mercy corridor through his ter- ritory, whatever Lagos may decide, General Effiong is more scathing. Until the British regulations came into force, under which, on independence, army ranks had to be shared out on a regional and tribal basis instead of accord- ing to merit, Adekunle was unable even to pass his preliminary qualifying exams.

From a man who was simultaneously in command of five fronts in action General Effiones politeness and charm became almost an embarrassment; but he had reached a philosophical position about the war. At the battle of Udi, the Nigerians dropped 6,000 shells continuously for seventy-two hours; the Biafrans were able to reply with about fifty. If Britain stopped shipment of armoured cars, the Federal troops would scarcely be able to move; but Britain will not stop shipment. The hope was that the Nigerians would advance too fast and find themselves cut off from behind.

`Gowon will probably succeed in taking Aba, Umuahia and Owerri, he will overrun Biafra, and he will succeed in perpetrating the worst carnage in African history. But, whatever the leaders may agree to do, he will never succeed in winning the ordinary Biafrans in the villages —not even the schoolchildren—back to the idea of one Nigeria.'