From the disasters of the previous autumn Emeka had become aware that the war had inevitably become one of attrition. He at last knew he could make no further breakouts, in the manner of the Mid-West thrust, and he intended to ensure the Nigerian Army made no such sweeping surges through the heart of Biafra. So militarily he counted on a stubborn, yard-by-yard defence. Failing the emergence of a new and powerful ally of himself, he knew he had no other realistic option but to try to persuade the Nigerian regime that the tenacity of the Biafran resistance and the duration of the unresolved war could only hurt both sides so badly that in all their interests the

X

issue should be settled by a negotiated peace.

Unfortunately, during all three peace conferences the Gowon regime’s position never in fact varied from its ori^al single demand: unconditional surrender or nothing. In this attitude Gowon had the unreserved support of London.

The first set of talks took place on 2 May 1968 at Marlborough House, London, and was really to dedde on the venue and the agenda for the real peace conference. The Biafrans refused to accept London and the Nigerians refused Dakar. Out of a list of seventeen Commonwealth capitals, they finally agreed on Kampala and here the conference opened on 23 May.

It was a farce. Four days earlier, the first Nigerian units had entered Port Harcourt and once again the view in Lagos and London was that the war was all over bar the shouting. After several days of extraordinary delays by Chief Anthony Enahoro on behalf of Lagos, he finally entered a twelve-point document discussing in detail the surrender of Biafra, disarming of her forces, dismemberment of her territory, its administration by Lagos and the fate of the Biafran leadership.

Sir Louis Mbanefo for Biafra pointed out that according to the agreement on agenda made at Marlborough House, they were actually in Kampala to discuss a ceasefire, the first item on the agreed agenda, and a possible political solution after that. But by this time, the details of the Nigerian capture of Port Harcourt had come through. Lagos and London were quite convinced the war was over, so there was in effect nothing else to discuss. On that note the conference ended.

The next move cfime from the OAU. Emperor Haile Selassie had for months headed a six-man conciliation committee on Nigeria, and after the failure of the British-organised Kampala talks he contacted the other five heads of state on his committee — those of Liberia, Zaire, Cameroon, Ghana and Niger — and they agreed to convene a conference in Niger’s capital Niamey.

l'

I The meeting opened on 15 July and Gowon attended the foUowing day. After explaining his position, he flew I home confident there would be no trouble from the committee to his policies. Unfortunately for him, the commit-I tee decided it might bother to hear the other side of the f picture and issued an invitation to Emeka to come and explain the Biafran viewpoint. The bulk of the discussions ^ were taken up with the question of a corridor to bring I emergency food into the Biafran enclave for the starving children and to the dismay of the Lagos delegation left behind, the sfac-nation committee accepted Emeka’s proposal for a neutral waterlane up the Niger River from the delta to Oguta as being the one means that could help the children but bring no military advantage to either side. On instructions from Lagos the Nigerian delegation promptly vetoed the idea and produced the regime’s view on hungry children: ‘Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war,’ and we have every intention of using it.’

Nevertheless, an agenda was agreed for a full-scale peace conference to be held in Haile Selassie’s capital, Addis Ababa, and it opened on 29 July. Gowon was going to attend until he learned Emeka would be there, at which he promptly cancelled. At the first meeting, Enahoro sought to have the press banned, but this was refused by the Emperor. So he made a twelve minute opening speech

and sat down. Emeka rose and in an address of seventy minutes described in detail the history of Biafra, what had happened to her peoples through history, the persecutions of 1966 and her treatment at the hands of Yakubu Gowon.

It is extremely unusual for diplomatic and political gatherings to give a standing ovation to any speaker; usually this is the practise of audiences. But the whole OAU, the attendant diplomats from half the world, and the hardbitten press correspondents rose for the ovation that followed the speech. Only Enahoro remained seated, though invisible amid the clamour. In seventy minutes Biafra had ceased to be an obscure enclave of Nigeria, her people just a collection of minor ethnic groups. It had become a world issue, and its leader a world figure. This was translated into press terms twenty-four days later when Emeka was on the front cover of Time magazine, which annoyed Gowon more than anything else in the war.

But the press went away and the conference bogged down again. Nigeria stuck to her demand: unconditional surrender or nothing. The food relief channel up the Niger was refused once and for all. The conference ended and the delegations were home. No more were ever held; they would have served no purpose. But Emeka had made his point; if he and his people should die, at least the whole world would know who they were, and of their passing. A searchlight of global publicity now switched on to this war, to illuminate its most obscure secrets.

If there was any government less pleased than Gowon’s by this unwanted attention, it was in Lx>ndon. From the outset of the dispute, even before secession, Mr Harold Wilson’s government had taken an increasingly weird at-

titude that stiU puzzles observers to this day.

When hostilities began the Commonwealth Office announced, as did Ministers advised by the office, that l^ritain deeply regretted the turn of events but intended to remmn neutral, diplomatically and militarily.

Within a few weeks this was proved to be a lie; weapons were being shipped out under cover of darkness, from secret loading bays, between London and Lagos. The excuse was then given that these were tail-end orders that legally had to be completed. Then this was shown to be a lie. The next excuse was that Wilson was only shipping defensive weapons, nothing else. Then press investigators showed this was another lie.

Ah, said the London government, well, you see, certain private arms dealers are allowed to fulfil orders, but the government itself is not shipping any offensive weapons. When tens of thousands of 105mm Howitzer shells were sent out, it was indicated that such shells were not made privately in Britain; they come only from Government factories. The official version changed again. London was indeed shipping weapons, but only fifteen per cent of Gowon’s imports. When this was disproved and the figure shown to be close to eighty per cent, the excuse given was that if Britain did not do it, someone else would.

A peer in the House of Lords suggested this was an excuse a drug-pusher could use, while another asked how London could pretend to support peace conferences aimed at halting the war while fuelling it at the same time. The new reason then became because Russia would get involved if London halted the supply. The sceptre of a complete Russian takeover of Nigeria was waved about.

V

Those who knew Nigeria realised this was about as likely as the moon being really a big ball of garri. Hnally a British Minister admitted London was not neutral and never had been from the start. After that, the London government simply got angry with anyone who questioned what they were up to.

It soon became plain that the Wilson government was one himdred per cent behind Gowon; military, political, diplomatic, moral, advisory, technical and publicity aid was being poured upon him at every level.

In Enugu Emeka was perfectly well aware of this. It surprised observers that throughout the war, isolated inside Biafra as he was, he remained remarkably well informed about ^at was going on in Lagos and London. Even the top secret Scott Report about the Nigerian Army was on his desk in Biafra a fortnight before a leak in London gave Lagos an idea of what was in it.

‘It’s not about the issues between Nigeria and Biafra,’ he said once during the war. ‘They (in London) know the background as well as anyone. It’s about Gowon. He’s their man. They have to back him, right or wrong, win or lose.’

And the year of 1968 saw the emergence of a fresh scourge to flay the Biafran people. By the summer of that year the blockade of protein foods had produced its first intended outcome. CWldren were beginning to die in ever increasing numbers from the dreaded kwashiorkor. It is a medical fact, known in Lagos and London, that to remain healthy an adult needs one gram of pure protein per day. But a child, with its growing bones and organs, needs five grams. A child being about a quarter the weight of an

adult, that means that pound for pound a child is twenty times more dependent on protein. Cut off the protein supply, and the children suffer first. This is what happened. Eastern Nigeria had always had enough yams, garri and fruit. But for protein — in the form of meat, fish, eggs, milk — it was heavily dependent on imports. Gowon’s blockade, which even preceded secession, had cut off those imports.

Together with press reports of the peace conferences, the first pictures of the starving children came out of Biafra and broke upon the external world in the summer of 1968, also converting this (up till then) obscure struggle into a worldwide issue.

Emeka from the outset adopted a single policy on this issue and stuck to it. It was to place no faith whatsoever in the statements of concern from Lagos and London (he had heard the regime’s comments at Niamey and knew London supported everything Lagos said) but to do all he could to incite the world relief agencies to come, see for themselves, and try to help. To this end he offered them his unstinted co-operation in their efforts.

By the end of 1968 three major agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Catholic Caritas, and the world’s Protestant churches united under the umbrella of Joint Church Aid, had mounted huge efforts to bring powdered milk and protein concentrates to the children of the enclave. Over a million of those children died, as aid came too late or in too small quantities; but at least emother who would have died lived on. Hopefully those children are today growing up in a new and quite different, a more just and more peaceful Nigeria, and

under a more fair and more enlightened government than their dead brothers and sisters ever knew.

Chapter fourteen

In military terms the year of 1969 opened for Biafira as bleakly as had 1968. Aba had fallen, Owerri was gone, attacks were being mounted on Umuahia. Before the end of the year Umuahia would go, but Owerri would be recaptured. It was a year mainly of stalemate, ^th only small territorial gains by the Nigerian army compared with the previous year.

Yet it was a year dominated by three themes, none of them military. It opened with a question being asked in Lagos, London, just about every other capital and in every newspaper office. How much longer can these Biafrans go on? How much more can they take of suffering and deprivation? How many more attacks can they hold off? How much more stubborness and courage can they draw upon?

The answer to all these was at that time, January 1969, unknown. It was to turn out to be: for another full year. But how? They had already taken more beatings than any African expert could recall in the history of the continent.

The answer to the ‘how* lay partly in their leader and

V

partly in the relationship he had with his own people. It was because the struggle and the cause was participatory and not coercive. The imposition of army jackboots on the necks of the people would never have brought them to the end of 1967, let alone 1968. A total popular collapse would have overtaken them months earlier.

This participation was further expanded in January, 1%9 when Emeka instituted a series of‘open parliaments’ in which people from all walks of life including the army, and from every level, from humble and obscure to educated and notable, gathered at his house weekly to discuss events. One of the most frequently raised questions was: what are we actually Hghting fori (They knew what they were fighting against, of course.) Ideas flowed and were exchanged.

The essence of these ideas and discussions found its synthesis in a speech made by Emeka at the small village of Ahiara on 31 May 1969, the second anniversary of secession. The Ahiara Declaration, as it came to be called, sought to describe a new kind of society on the face of Africa, dealing with relationship between the governors and the governed, between citizen and citizen, administrator and soldier, trader and professor. It became not only the political and moral philosophy of Biafra, but subsequently had been borrowed, used and quoted by many others, far outside the shrunken borders of Biafra in the midsummer of 1969, including successive Nigerian governments.

The speech evoked again the solidarity, understanding and trust born so long before in the heart of a young ADO at Udi for the broad masses of his own people; qualities

which, being as fully reciprocated by the people towards him, baffled and bewildered that layer of officers, academics, civil servants and ‘been-to’ pseudo-intellectuals who sought to stand between them.

The abiding irony that became plain in 1969 was that the months and years of suffering, far from driving the people from him, actually hardened the sentiments and the relationship. The phenomenon utterly defeated the comprehension of the Nigerians and British at that time. In their understanding, based on contempt for the toiling masses, the continuing blood-stained resistance of the Biafran people was simply not possible without a magic formula.

In an attempt to fathom the secret of this ‘magic formula’ Lagos and London fostered stories that Biafra was in receipt of great quantities of French support (there wasn’t any), of continuing shipments of arms from South Africa (not true either) or from shady international financiers (even one financier would have been a help!)

This mutual feeling between Emeka and his people not only survived another misery-filled year of resistance, it has survived the twelve years of Emeka’s exile. It was, and is, in fact the only ‘secret weapon’ he ever had. But it is a strong one, and unique in Africa.

The second theme of 1969 was the growing amount of publicity Biafra received, something that had started in 1968 and continued increasingly. Emeka had decided early on that what had happened to his people stemmed from a policy conceived in closed rooms. He determined that the antidote was to open the doors and windows, to let the world see what was really going on. That meant

V

publicity, and though personally rather reserved he approached the creation of a huge publicity campaign with his usual skill.

Before Biafra was crushed that global publicity campaign had driven Lagos and London to frenzies of rage, frustration and bewilderment. He succeeded in a manner beyond anyone’s expectations. With no communications apart from a single faltering telex link to Sao Tome and Lisbon, he ran rings round Anthony Enahoro with his telephone, telex, radio, television and daily airline links to Europe and America. Even in exile he had been approached by other African heads of state seeking to know his secret formula, a great joke to him because, in fact, there was no formula.

It is true that during the war he engaged the services of a public relations agency in Europe, and spend money that might otherwise have been used to buy arms. But he estimated the publicity was in itself a weapon and overwhelmingly a means of securing relief aid for his children. His enemies pointed to the agency and screamed ‘That’s how he’s doing it.’

But it wasn’t at all. The agency was creative only inasmuch as it put out official bulletins for Biafra and arranged the visits of pressmen with speed and efficiency. For the rest, the agency was distributive; he needed a European contact point because he had no communications. The real publicity campaign was born inside his own head.

After listening to advice he came to three decisions. 1. Publicity does not come from simply issuing a stream of propaganda bulletins. Those are only for internal con-

sumption. 2. Publicity depends on the World Press; newspapers, magazines, radio and television. And these are served by their ovwi reporters and correspondents. 3. Then give these ladies and gentlemen what they want. What do they want? Answer: to see for themselves. So ‘If they want to see it, let them see it.’

It was a policy that left his civil servants horrified. In Lagos the press was regarded as thoroughly untrustworthy and to be kept from wandering about as much as possible. Theyoi/g/it to accept the Information Ministry’s hand-outs as the gospel truth and ask no further. Emeka did the opposite; apart from secret military and economic installations, he let them wander where they wished, talking to other ex-pats, priests, relief workers, the six mercenaries (who departed at the end of 1968) and even his few detainees.

He received foreign correspondents endlessly, not just in stiff and formal press conferences, but privately over a can of beer. He let them go to the front and risk getting their heads shot off if they wanted to; he let them walk through the feeding centres and refugee camps, taking their pictures and recording their images.

He also managed to receive an endless stream of non-journalistic visitors, MPs, jurists, academics, church-men, senators and special emissaries from a dozen countries, allowing them also to see whatever they wished. Occasionally, this led to a hostile report or magazine article, but the overwhelming majority were helpful and the quantities were enormous. And that was the so-called magic formula. In a continent where most regimes seek to ‘control’ the foreign press and only arouse the

V

correspondents’ hostility, Emeka gave them his trust and by and large they gave him theirs. i

All this publicity inevitably highlighted the third theme of 1969, the continuing crisis of the starving and dying children as the food-blockade policy tightened its grip. As the nightmare of this sea of gaunt infantile faces, a memory that still haunts Emeka today, grew darker and ' bleaker, he asked the Consultative Assembly and the Consultative Committee of Chiefs and Elders several times if they should not surrender. The answer was consistently; fight on.

The food relief programme grew and grew, despite all f the obstacles. Then in the middle of 1969 a fresh consignment of MIG fighters arrived on the Nigerian side, flown now not by Egyptians like the MIG 15s, but by East Germans. Interestingly, their first target was not a Biafran frontline position, a main bridge, a trunk road or even Emeka’s State House itself, it was the food-relief airbridge set up by the Red Cross, Caritas and Joint Church Aid.

On 2 June Capt. Policy of Australia was landing at Uli airstrip for the Joint Church Aid with a cargo of milk powder when his cargo plane was riddled from end to end by two MIG 17s, flying fast and in close formation in total darkness. On 5 June the American Captain Brown, flying out of Fernando Po with another cargo of milk, for the Red Cross, was intercepted and shot down in flames by another MIG 17. His DC-6 plane was covered all over with large red crosses on white circles. He and his crew died in the marshes around Opobo. It became ever harder not to wonder why, if Gowon was not using the hunger of

the children as a weapon, it was the Red Cross planes that were designated target number one for his modern MIGs.

The misery of the children and the aged continued until the end of the war despite the efforts of hundreds of relief workers and millions of donors of money across the world, and for the world it is the face of a hungry child that remains the abiding image.

The end came finally in December 1%9/January 1970. Both sides knew the British government had indicated that the following spring, if the war was not over, it would have to reconsider its policies. In June 1970, Harold Wilson wanted to go to the British people in a general election. Through the autumn of 1969 massive quantities of new arms poured into Gowon’s hands, and in December the last ‘final assault’ began. By Christmas it had made no penetrations anywhere, and a lull developed as both sides rested, panting and tired, for the New Year. On 9 January there was an emergency Biafran Cabinet meeting at Owerri, now recaptured by the Biafrans. It was agreed that Emeka should fly to Abidjan to see the Ivorien President and through him possibly even the French President to seek one last time their intervention towards a negotiated end to the fighting and the suffering. It was his first journey out of Biafra since mid-1968 and was to be his last.

Whatever the chances of a negotiated peace might have been, events overtook him. The Ivorien President was not in Abidjan; he was away. Back in Biafra, troops along the southern front outside Aba, hearing their leader had travelled, lost heart and drifted away into the bush. Twenty-four hours after that, on 12 January, the acting Head of

N

State Maj-Gen. Philip Effiong, yielding to mounting pressure, not from the people but from the Officer Corps, sued for peace.

Emeka learned the news in Abidjan. For him the long struggle was over; the even longer exile had begun.

' Chapter fifteen

Emeka arrived before dawn of 11 January, 1970 in Abidjan, the capital of the Cote d’Ivoire to begin a long and ip lonely exile. A small group accompanied him; his family 1! had been sent ahead.

The man who offered him sanctuary in his hour of desolation was the Ivorien president, Felix Houphouet-[ i Boigny, one of those who had chosen to recognise Biafra as a state during the war. He was widely criticised for his act then, and for his acceptance in safety of the controver-. sial refugee. But at least he had the courage of his convic-|: tions and the steadfastness to stand by the man he had

befriended. Many others would prove much less steadfast.

Within days of the arrival, the president thought it I* would be better if Emeka and his family moved out of the capital to a more secluded spot. A bungalow was proposed close to the Ivorien summer palace at Yamous-I soukro, far up-country and Emeka accepted. There, in a ' modest one-storey house, in a walled compound, across the road from the pool where dwelt the sacred crocodiles, I he began his new life in a spirit of deep sadness and dejection. As ever his thoughts and his grief were little for

111

himself, much for his people far away in the east across the Niger.

If he wept, it was never by day where others could see, but in the dark of night; and not for himself in his ruin but for those thousands of young men and women who had died fighting for what they believed in, for those hundreds of thousands of small children stunted and killed by deprivation of food before they had a chance to live. Those early months were a time of deep dejection as he looked back at the road he and his people had marched.

As the first months moved towards a year those close to him became aware of something they had not truly believed however many times they were told. He had no money to support them in the lifestyle they felt they should expect. Like others, including the ever-present French, they assumed there was a large fortune salted away in European banks. After all, even though his late father’s fortune was trapped in Lagos under Yakubu Gowon, he had handled millions and millions on behalf of Biafra. Surely he had put aside a comfortable fortune for himself.

It took nearly a year before his host and dependents finally realised that he had not. He was penniless. He was also the subject of a gigantic campaign out of Lagos to discredit him. There was hardly a publication out of Lagos or London that did not pour down a campaign of rage and false accusations on him. It was about this time, in the second year of exile, that an observer could have noted the start of a steady stream of self-serving statements and publications coming from many of those who had been among the highest-placed in Biafra and who had not suffered poverty or hunger personally.

These gentlemen seemed hell-bent to repudiate Biafra and their part in its creation and government, apparently in order to ingratiate themselves with the Gowon government. Articles and ‘memoirs’ appeared in a stream, each claiming its author had throughout the whole experience been a solid One-Nigeria man, forced at gunpoint to serve Biafra. Men who had spent the war riding the few Mercedes cars while others limped through the dust now painted themselves as victims, forced to adopt high ofHce by threats and coercion.

Others who, during the war, had had the guardianship of foreign money, collected and donated to buy food for starving Biafran children, now appeared again, translate^ from salaried officials to wealthy men drifting through the streets of Lagos in their chauffeur-driven limousines. Others left for London, to purchase large apartments and coimtry houses. Of the donated money there was never any sign again.

As the Nigerian and British press sought to elevate Yakubu Gowon to the status almost of sainthood, certainly that of a statesman of worldwide stature, the same scrib-blers poured their venom on the silent exile in Yamoussoukro. ‘All Ojukwu’s fault’ was the cry, an allpurpose excuse that sought to make one man the universal scapegoat for the Nigerian nation, its mistakes, its errors, its failure and its excesses. Throughout the whole campaign, besieged by reporters for an interview to answer the charges, Emeka maintained a complete silence.

He was once asked, in those early years, why he did not contest at least the most obvious lies.

‘A he,’ he said ‘is not challenged by a counter-claim. It

is only highlighted. I will not give dignity to a lie by a reply.’

The principal accusation, vigorously promoted and argued from sources inside the British Foreign Office and High Commission, before and since the war, was that Emeka had been from the outset bent on the pursuit of political power and of self-advancement. This is probably the accusation that has most firmly stuck, and he has never bothered to reply. It is however a charge that simply does not make sense if one looks at the man and the history of what happened.

The fact is, a highly intelligent man — and his worst enemies have never seriously called Emeka a stupid man — determined on his own personal advancement, would from July 1966, onwards have pursued just about any course of action except the one he actually followed.

If he had simply wanted money, he could have quit the army and resigned the governorship of the East to take his father’s huge fortune and lived like a king for the rest of his life, in or outside Nigeria. If he had wanted power in Nigeria, why not quit the East, bow to Gowon and, as was in 1966 quite possible, take the number two slot within the federal military government? With his force of personality, most observers believed he could have become Gowon’s right-hand man, had he chosen to co-operate to the full.

If he had been determined on secession and the leadership of a smaller nation all by himself, why not secede in the immediate aftermath of those terrible massacres in the autumn of 1966? African and world opinion would probably have accepted this, with the memories so fresh. The Nigerian army then was utterly unprepared for a cam-

paign and the British government would have been much harder put to justify its later massive military and political help to Gowon.

It may be argued that the East was not ready in December 1966 either. But the fact is the gap of preparation actually widened in the next six months. Or again, if secession was the goal from 29 July 1966 onwards, why not begin then in secret the most intensive training and purchasing programme? Why not establish concrete defences on all the land approaches? Why allow the Northern garrison troops to depart with their valuable weaponry?

Why not delay secession until a far higher level of preparation had been achieved, pretending to ‘go along’ with Gowon until the preparation were fully complete and offering a much better chance of success? For the truth is, the East pulled out at the worst moment for the political ambitions of a self-seeking leader to have dictated.

No atteriipi has seriously been made to answer the questions, so let this small book attempt some answers now.

A highly intelligent, scheming, calculating man would have acted differently had his motives been for personal political advancement. Such a schemer would either have abandoned the Eastern people to their fate and changed sides or arranged as a dictator that the secession should take place at the optimum moment under the best possible circumstances.

The reality is, on the latter point, he did not govern the East or Biafra as a dictator. He was, through that spring of 1967, under increasing and intolerable pressure and

finally bowed to the clamour from the Codsultative Assembly and Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders, that is, to the representatives of the people. He personally would have chosen a different time and place. As to the first question, why not leave the whole E^em people in their mess and fully join the new Lagos regime, he answered it once in a single sentence:

‘You cannot, you simply cannot, abandon, betray or sell, a people who have put their trust in you, and remain an honourable man.’

That the trust was present no one seriously denies any more. There were too many witnesses. It is accepted, inevitably, that no African people, least of all the disputative Easterners, would have fou^t the way they did, suffered the way they did, and died the way they did, for a dictator who was fordng them. Sue times during that war, when the sufferings, seemed too much to bear, Emeka offered his resignation, the better to permit a surrender. Six times the Assembly and the Committee consulted their people and brought back the answer: no surrender, we arc prepared to go on.

Did the trust die with defeat? Shortly after the exile began, so began also the ^rivals of the first delegations. They came secretly, trekking through the national borders, presenting themselves by night: small groups, small men, of no account in the halls of the mighty. From the townships, the villages, the bush. Just to say: we have been, we have seen him, we have greeted him. It was enough. When it was safe, slogans began to appear on mammy-wagons in the East Central State, beneath the eyes of Gk)won’s puppet administrator there, Ukpabi Asika. The

painted words read: Agaracha (he who has travelled) Must Return. While the ‘been-tos’ were busy saving their skins, their careers and their fortunes, someone somewhere was trying to say something.

In the third year Emeka raised a small loan, put down the deposit on two trucks and began to work. Once again ; he wanted to be free of the generosity of another, his host; ' wanted to be his own man. The trucking enterprise prospered. By sheer hard work he began to build up a business to maintain himself, his family and his numerous dependants. Food had to be bought, education paid for.

I While he did so he watched with sadness the deteriora-f tion of Nigeria under Gowon. Despite the tremendous oil-revenue boom of late 1973 and onwards, he saw the growth of the institutionalised corruption of public life, I the stupendous mismanagement and the astronomical waste. Not millions but billions were frittered away on crazy schemes like the Cement Scandal, or siphoned into private fortunes. Enough wealth and resources in those five and half locust years to July 1975 were wasted to have made Nigeria the most prosperous, the most powerful and the most influential nation in Africa, with a permanent seat as of right in the councils of the world.

From afar he watched Yakubu Gowon, prancing upon the world stage, flattered and honoured by the same governments and business enterprises who were happy to pluck the Nigerian economy as a poulterer plucks a plump goose.

He saw it and noted it all, not with joy or jubilation, but with a deepening sadness for all that might have been, for all that Nigeria might have become.

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The strain of exile told in other ways. In 1973, his marriage ended, a state of affairs brought about first by the frequent and extended separations occasioned by the War and later by the existence in exile. By then there were three children: a daughter Mmegha had been born in July 1967, the first month of the war, emd there was a new baby born in Cote d’Ivoire, a boy Okigbo.

First he was allowed to travel from Yamoussoukro to Abidjan to supervise his business there, and after that he moved to the capital permanently. His business began to flourish at last, and expanded into supply of sand and gravel for the construction industry, dredging and housebuilding. With a bank loan he bought out a departing Frenchman and took over a running company in the same line of enterprise, into which his own firms were soon amalgamated.

On 29 July 1975, he heard the news that Gowon had fallen and that General Mohjimmed was behind the coup, the only man ever to have led two coups in Africa. He smiled at the news.

‘I wondered when Murtala would finally have had enough’ he said. When asked where he thought Gowon would go from Kampala, he shrugged and said ‘Britain of course.’

Twenty-four hours later Yakubu Gowon landed to a secure asylum in Britain. The nine-year rule was over at last.

‘It is just,’ Emeka commented, ‘now he has gone home to his masters.’

He was then asked if he thought that under the new

regime he might be allowed to return to Nigeria. He smiled and shook his head.

‘If I could talk to Murtala personally, then maybe,’ he said, ‘but it will not be allowed. I do not think I shall return until a civilian rule has been restored to Nigeria. The military rule must end, and as soon as possible. The military have brought us all too much damage.’

It was prophetic. There were still more years of military rule in Lagos and exile in Abidjan to run.

V

Chapter sixteen

Although the fall of Gowon brought no mention of a possible return by Emeka to Nigeria, in other areas it had an effect.

Those who made the enquiries in London were surprised by his supposed reason. Britain has a long tradition of permitting exiles who have offended foreign governments to enter Britain and had always stoutly defended that tradition as a good and honourable one, which it is. Exiles from military regimes from Chile to China, from Arabia to Burma, have been allowed in, at

For the first time in years he was able to travel, and his first trip abroad was in January 1976, from Abidjan to Rome, then to Brussels and then to Ireland. Enquiries were made to see if the British government would permit him to land in Britain, where he wished to enter his Hrst-born son, Chukwuemeka, at a boarding school. The British embassy in Abidjan was quick to reply that the answer was No. Enquiries in London revealed he had been put on the ‘stop list’ which is to say, forbidden entry. The reason given, although only privately, was that the British did not wish to offend the government of Lagos.

least on harmless visits. No concern has ever existed to I avoid offending the most powerful governments in the I world such as Moscow when permitting entry to Soviet I dissidents and the most outspoken critics of the Russian regime. As for volume of trade, which might be endangered (or so ran the argument), Britain has an equally f | large trade relation and investment interest with South I Africa, yet scores of opponents of Pretoria are happily ; welcomed to Britain.

• Moreover, quiet enquiries in Lagos revealed that General Murtala Mohammed had not even been asked if he objected to a small boy going to preparatory school in Britain and being visited by his father. He knew nothing of the ban at all. From all of which Emeka’s British friends could conclude but one thing: the ban was personal and I deliberate. It had nothing to do with any supposed hazard to British citizens in Nigeria or damage to trade relations.

In any case, an event was soon to occur which would j show how far London was prepared to go in risking the i anger of Lagos. On 13 February 1976 Murtala ). Mohammed was gunned to death in his car on a Lagos j street, victim of a conspiracy and an attempted coup d’etat I that beyond any reasonable doubt had as its aim the restoration of Yakubu Gowon to power. To what level, if at all, the student at Warwick University was implicated or aware will probably never be known, but suspicions in Lagos were considerable.

In the wake of the failure of the coup attempt. General Olusegun Obasanjo, the number two, became the Head of State and the Lagos government required the return of Yakubu Gowon from Britain to answer a few questions.

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On that issue the British government made plain it was prepared to tolerate a break in diplomatic relations and enormous damage to the lucrative trade relationship with Nigeria rather than ask its protege even to leave the country for a third destination. But the myth persisted for another five years that Emeka visiting his son at school would cause the sky to fall in!

Other countries made no such foolish suggestions. Within two years after that first trip outside Cote d’Ivoire Emeka had visited France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Ireland and America. In most places he was spotted by other Nigerians, warmly greeted, and news of his presence went straight back to Lagos. No citizen of any of these countries was lynched on the streets of Lagos, no trade contract cancelled. In several countries in Europe and America, Emeka was greeted by officials of the Nigerian government (who obviously reported back) and before long was asked to become a Visiting Lecturer at a large and famous American university. His lectures were strongly in favour of reconciliation inside Nigeria, were packed with Nigerian students of all ethnic groups, and also attended by diplomats from the Washington embassy.

In New York, he had the warmest greeting from the sister of Abdul Atta, the same from Mrs Leslie Harriman and a long friendly talk by phone with Mr Harriman, then Nigerian Ambassador at the United Nations. Of course, all this went back to Lagos, but no one made the slightest objection. There was indeed nothing to which objection could be made. In Abidjan Emeka one day visited in his hotel suite General Theo Danjuma and they spent several hours talking in the friendliest manner. The Nigerian general, still then in the Army, expressed complete

surprise and mystification that Emeka was banned from London for fear of offending Lagos.

The upshot was that his son went to Ireland to school, and a year later the daughter Mmegha followed him there.

Back in Abidjan, in the years 1977 to 1980, Emeka became an extremely well-known figure, a close friend of his host the President, and a sought-after consultant on a host of issues. Africans and non-Africans visiting Cote d’Ivoire came to value his shrewd counsel on business, finance, banking, investment and politics. At least, seven African and non-African governments thought enough of his views to ask for them, usually on the affairs of Africa.

The visitors from inside Nigeria itself became a continuing stream, and by no means all from the Igbo people. Representatives of all the main ethnic groups, most of the professional and merchant classes and several members of the armed forces came to visit him and discuss the affairs of the day.

His businesses, under shrewd management, expanded and prospered, earning, if not a great fortune, enough to sustain his dependants, educate his children and keep himself. In 1976, he contracted a second marriage to Miss Stella Onyeador from Arochukwu. As his children reached the age of thirteen one after the other transferred from their schools in Ireland to boarding schools in England, even though the father could not visit them there.

During the last few years of the decade he was sought after more and more by the Press for interviews. In fact, he gave only three; one to the American paper Herald-

V

Tribune, one to BBC television and one to the Nigerian magazine Newbreed. In each he was highly conciliatory, refusing to be drawn into criticisms of Nigeria or its government, confining himself to further appeals for reconciliation, a final binding-up of the wounds still left by the war, and expressing the hope for a speedy return to civilian rule. (Most Nigerian news organs by this time were saying the same thing).

When asked privately whether the question of any further secession should rise again in Nigeria, he was more forthcoming.

‘What happened in May 1967 should always be seen in its context,’ he replied ‘We did what we did then in response to a whole series of terrible experiences and in opposition to a specific regime which had either helped those terrible experiences come about, or condoned them afterwards. Since then my people in the East have not been subjected to further massacres, or destruction of their property, so the question of a reaction like that of 1967 does not arise. One should not forget that the war of 1%7-1970 taught everyone even the victors, a lesson, which is, that you cannot treat a people, even an ethnic minority, that way. If you do, they will fight, because they have no choice but to fight. I believe that if we on the Biafran side learned things to our cost in that war, so did all Nigerians. Chief among these, I believe, is that we earned the respect even of those who fought us. That is important in this world, but most of all in Africa, to have respect and self-respect. We fought for it; in our people’s suffering we earned it. That’s why I do not think we shall be subjected to those things ever again.’

He learned of the definite return to civilian rule, scheduled for September, 1979, with undisguised pleasure. He had wished to see it for years.

As preparations for the political campaign of 1979 began he was approached by the GNPP and asked if he would stand as their candidate for the constituency of Nnewi. After considerable thought and reflection, he decided to accept. Privately, he thought Alhaji Shehu Shagari would win the presidency anyway, but agreed to stand for Nnewi after being visited by a strong delegation from that town, who pleaded with him to stand for them, even under any party banner.

In fact, it was the shortest campaign in the election. The moment the candidate was announced the military government jumped several feet in the air with shock. The skies over Nnewi began to rain security officials, and the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO) immediately quashed the candidature as null and void. And that, apart from a forlorn and futile court appeal, was that.

‘I’m not terribly surprised,’ Emeka said later, when it was suggested that the FEDECO decision and the court ruling might have been less than impartial, ‘one cannot expect too much. In any case, it gave Obasanjo a nasty fright, which cannot be a bad thing.’

He saw his forecast of a presidential win by Shehu Shagari come true, but by a tiny majority.

‘For the sake of stability, it should have been a clear victory,’ Emeka remarked. ‘Actually with rather better tactics it could have been.’

For the next twenty months he watched the slow break-

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up of the post-election party alliances with despair. The old story, he told a friend. Everyone jockeying for personal position; few prepared to serve the nation as a goal in itself.

But with the muzzle finally taken off by the return of civilian rule, long-suppressed freedom of expression of the Nigerian people once again came into its own. Increasingly, politicians, journalists and opinion-formers began to say what many had thought for years; that the true binding-up of the old injuries could not go forward until the last trace of the 1967-1970 war had been dealt with. The exiled Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, said an increasing number of voices, should be allowed to return home.

In January, 1981, the first tentative contact between the Nigerian presidency and Emeka was made. He was asked for his views. He gave them. They were brought back to Lagos. A second meeting followed, then several more. In the summer of the year the British Foreign Office, made aware of these continuing contacts, finally allowed Emeka to visit London. In a hotel room there he was told President Shagari intended to make two successive broadcasts to the Nigerian nation. One would mention Yakubu Gowon, the other Emeka.

Tt will be Gowon first, myself second,’ Emeka said without hesitation some hours later.

He was right as usual. On 1 October 1981, having delayed his departure for the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in Melbourne, President Shagari spoke to the nation and announced that Yakubu Gowon could return home in safety from all molestation.

Nigerians will know there was deep disappointment in Eastern areas that the same speech did not include any mention of Emeka. Shortly afterwards a public opinion poll in the East revealed that the exiled man would be the first choice of the Igbo people by a substantial margin over any other Igbo notable, a quite extraordinary tribute to a man who had not even been present in the country for twelve whole years.

From London, the day after the announcement, Yakubu Gowon issued a statement of almost unbelievable gracelessness. Not a word of appreciation to President Shagari; not a word of thanks to those who had supported the small campaign inside Nigeria for his return; not even an acknowledgement to the British government who had helped and protected him for six years. Just a rather rude statement that he might consider returning in a year or so when he had finished his studies. Not surprisingly, his supporters in Nigeria transferred their attentions to the liberated persons who had been in prison since the murder of Mohammed six years earlier.

‘That man Gowon is extraordinary,’ said Emeka when he read the Gowon statement. ‘He can make a complete mess of eating a boiled egg.’

Meanwhile, towards the last days of the year, hopes began to be pinned on the date of 1 January 1982, the second date on which Nigerian leaders traditionally make important statements. Would the first day of the New Year be the day? Would Emeka go back to Nigeria in the spring, he was asked by a friend. Would the twelve years of exile finally end?

‘We have a saying in Igboland,’ he replied. ‘Nothing in

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this world is permanent. So, if it is the will of God, yes. We shall see, we shall see.’

Chapter seventeen

In moving towards the end of this short biography it seemed reasonable to give the subject an opportunity to express his own philosophy of life. This chapter therefore is in the form of an interview, with the briefest of questions on five topics, and the bulk of the text out of the mouth of Emeka himself.

Q. How do you view the fact of being a black man in today’s world?

A. For me, black means in a word ‘disadvantaged.’ The moral and emotional fabric of western civilisation is based on the concept that black and inferior are synonymous. There are many reasons for this, but the important thing is not what the white thinks of the black, but what the black man thinks of himself in the face of this reality.

Confronting this reality, my blackness becomes a reaction. I am black because the other man says I am black. So be it. I then have to establish a catalogue of those qualities that have been denied to my race and proceed by my conduct to refute the other man’s prejudices about me and my people.

From this I observe that as a black one has this ad-

vantage; that at least I can look at western civilisation with objectivity if I choose. One can assess, judge; one has choice; to copy, to reject or to modify. Being black means having a certain concept of life, of which a major strain is of being close to Nature. But this also has a concomitant weakness in lack of technology and fear of the supernatural. These limitations — and in the modern world they are limitations — are not naturally insuperable, but understanding them is vital for the necessary conquest of them.

Over the yer^s I have tried to find at what point the road of evolution of the black man moved away from that taken by the white man. Increasingly, I believe the point of diversion can be found in Man’s relation to God. The fact is, the blacl? man’s God is a God of retribution; awesome, unapproachable and merciless. The white man’s God is god of love, mercy and forgiveness. From there it is not hard to see how the black became inhibited in his confrontation with natural phenomena, while the white felt encouraged to explore and conquer the natural phenomena that surrounded him.

Let me give an example. The black man, faced with a strange mountain, quickly turns his back on this terrifying monster, seeks out a calf from his miserable herd and begins the regular sacrifice to the god of the mountain. Very soon the mountain has become sacred and therefore impenetrable. His white counterpart would be fascinated by the spectacle of the mountain, but his reaction would be to climb it, on its summit to dominate the landscape, on its flanks to sow his crops and in its entrails to mine for minerals. The black man in history, considering himself unworthy of God, has tended to leave Creation as it stood, easily satisfied; the white man, considering himself

favourite of God, has, through the ages continually questioned Creation, and never hesitated to bend it to his will and his advantage.

Where each of these divergent attitudes have led is now very clear: the technological gap, the domination of the world by the white, and the moral enslavement of the black man’s mind. Today I think we have come to realise that this bar to our development can and must be overcome. But to overcome it we must, as a race, make fundamental changes in our attitudes, realising that the greater enemy is within ourselves, and that plots and conspiracies against us, if they exist, are but secondary obstacles.

Q. How do you view Africa today?

A. It can be safely said that in this year 1982 Africa, despite certain setbacks and their consequences, has been independent for twenty-one years. That is to say, she has become an adult. This being so, it seems to me we should, in Africa, put aside childish things — look at the world as it really is and take our destiny as Africans into our own hands.

For twenty-one years we have tended to be content only to demonstrate our independence, a natural phenomenon in a people so long subjected. Now I believe the time has come to abandon all these posturings, which have become standard practice in African leadership. We are free, everyone knows we are free; we have no further need to keep shouting it from the rooftops. The question is no longer whether we are free, but what do we make of our freedom ? This is what determines our relative place in the world order of things.

By freedom, I mean the freedom to design and fashion our own destiny. But that also includes the freedom to make mistakes. What we now have to learn more than anything is to accept and face the consequences of whatever choice of action we elect to take.

The natural enemies of Africa today remain the primordial enemies of all mankind: poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance. Without first the conquest of these, how can we hope to demand and expect the luxury of an industrially and technologically advanced society? Some may say that certain developed nations have not completely conquered these scourges; but, at least, they have all reduced them to manageable proportions. We have not.

So I believe it is the duty of African leadership to seek ways and means of protecting our own people from these scourges first. I do not see how slogans on rostra, either at the United Nations or the OAU, solve this. Nor do I see how the crazed importation into our continent of the further scourge of great quantities of weapons of mass destruction can help us, unless it is the intent to abolish hunger in the people by abolishing the people.

Q. How do you view Nigeria?

A. Nigeria is without exaggeration the one true giant of Africa. Her peoples constitute nearly one half of the black people of the continent and two in five of all black people in the world. The resources concentrated within her borders would be the envy of most countries in Europe and the Americas. Her landmass is huge, her climate largely benign. All this should have made her not only the most powerful country in the Black world, but among the dozen most powerful nations on the globe.

!

Alas, it has not. Why?

Before a nation can become influential or powerful in the councils of others, she must first become mistress of her own destiny. To do this, Nigeria must do three things.

1. Achieve peace within her own borders, and this can only come from the kind of true unity that is observed in a good marriage: two separate people living and working together. It cannot come from the unity that is observed when an animal consumes its prey. From the first union comes production, from the second only waste.

2. Evolve a leadership which is itself truly free and ii enlightened. Free from the fetters of recent history, enlightened by a keen perception of the true aspirations of all her people. Only a leadership thus free can ever lead a free people.

3. Organise, really organise, her own society. Without such organisation a society is destined to seize up, choke

t| and eventually die. A state where the services do not ' function, where the citizenry is not disciplined, where ' crime at every level runs unchecked, where leaders are not accountable to the led, and where justice is available to il the highest bidder — such a state cannot inspire in 'I others outside that confidence needed for leadership abroad.

Q. How do you see the relationship between the governors and the governed?

A. I think I can do little better than refer to the Ahiara Declaration of May 1%9, with only a minimum of paraphrasing.

‘In the new social order sovereignty and power belong to the people. Those who exercise power do so on behalf of the people. Those who govern must not tyrannise over the people. They carry a sacred trust of the people and must use their authority strictly in accordance with the will of the people. The true test of success in public life is that the people, who are the real masters, are contented and happy...

‘Arising out of our belief that power belongs to the people is the principle of public accountability. Those who exercise power are accountable to the people for the way they use that power. The people retain the right to renew or terminate that mandate. Every individual servant of the people whether in the legislature, the civil service, the judiciary, the police, the armed forces, in business or in any other walk of life, is accountable at all times for his work or of those under his charge ... and where he is proved to have misused his position or trust to enrich himself, the principle of public accountability requires that he be punished severely and his ill-gotten gains taken from him.

‘Those who aspire to lead must bear in mind the fact that they are servants and as such cannot ever be greater than the people, their masters ... The leader must not only say but always demonstrate that the power he exercises derives from the people. Therefore ... he is accountable to the people for the use he makes of their mandate. He must get out when the people tell him to get out. The more power the leader is given by the people, the less is his personal freedom and the greater his responsibility for the good of the people. He should never allow his high office to separate him from the people. He must be fanatical for

their welfare.

‘A leader must, at all times, stand for justice in dealing with the people. He should be the symbol of justice which is the supreme guarantee of good government. He should be ready if need be to lay down his life in pursuit of this ideal. He must have physical and moral courage and must be able to inspire the people out of despondency.

‘He should never strive towards the perpetuation of his office or device means to cling to office beyond the clear mandate of the people. He should resist the temptation to erect memorials to himself in his life-time, to have his head embossed on the coin,’name streets and institutions after himself, or convert government into a family business. A leader who serves his people well will be enshrined in their hearts and minds. This is all the reward he can expect in his life-time.’

That was what 1 said thirteen years ago. You know, it really hasn’t changed.

Q. What are the personal moral virtues to which you think a man should aspire?

A. I have always believed that of all the qualities available to a man the most important is integrity. This to me is the beginning of all wisdom; to be true to oneself, to set one’s own standard, to rely on one’s own conscience. In relation to others that means, of course, not to betray trust.

Next to this, and going hand in hand, I would place the quality of humility because, bearing in mind what I have said above, a man without humility to moderate his self-reliance must be prone to excesses: to bigotry, fanaticism

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or ruthlessness.

And to support these two one must have courage, for ^thout courage all else can come to nought. To have standard and not the courage to uphold them is tantamount to having no standards at all. To have humility but no courage \vdll bring a man into a state of mere passmty. But a man aspiring to integrity, humility and courage will surely not lack a fair sense of justice, loyalty, honour, generosity and compassion.

And finally indispensable to all else in a man is his abiding love of God.

Chapter eighteen

In conclusion, a word from the author personally, hence this brief chapter being written in the first person. I have written about Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu; what happened to him, what he saw, what he did, what he said and what he thought. But I have not written of Emeka.

I have known him for fourteen years since, as a foreign correspondent on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa I attended a briefing at State House in the first week of the Nigeria-Biafra war. Since then I have come to know him much better, perhaps as well as any man, surely as well as any white man.

I have seen him in many moods and situations. In the war, downcast and close to despair as the bad news rolled in; near to tears on learning of the death in combat of a dear friend; in black rage, dominating a crowd of rebellious mercenaries and reducing them all to submission and mumbled apologies; losing patience with his own Biafrans outside Oguta, taking a machine- gun and charging the Nigerian positions personally, putting two companies of Federal infantry to flight; in the dark hours before dawn, drugged by exhaustion, wondering how much longer he

could go on; and sitting in palaver with poor village elders, discussing with infinite patience their problems while diplomats from Europe waited outside.

I have watched him walking by the crocodile pool in exile, abandoned and alone on learning that yet another Biafran he trusted had betrayed him for money; smiling with pride when his son did well at school; in pains as his first marriage broke up; exchanging jokes in an exclusive London club with British Admirals and Generals; telling an American racist Financier who offered him a bribe to take his money back because ‘this time you’ve got the wrong Nigger.’ (The American nearly died of shock).

When you see a man in all these moods and situations over all these years, you get to know him. Someone once said that if in this life you come across a man in whose hands you can trust your life, your wife and your fortune, and be certain beyond doubt they will all be safe, do not lose sight of him, for there are not many such men. Emeka is one such man.

If he were just a good and loyal friend, he would be valuable but unremarkable. Emeka goes much further than that. He has qualities that set him aside, not simply within a personal relationship, but among other men, and most of all among other Africans. He possesses a quality that many have sought and few achieved; it is called the capacity for leadership.

There are many, and I have met a few, who could administer, govern, even rule. But to lead, really to lead a whole people, takes something more; and it is not learned in schools or from books. It is not to be judged by fine clothes, big cars, money in the bank or the shouting of

slogans. It is not just the capacity to start a crowd cheering; a demagogue on a street corner am do that. Leadership takes more. It involves the possession of a series of qualities that are possessed and seen to be possessed, and which make others prepared to follow the one who owns them.

Some years ago, I addressed my thoughts to what these qualities should be and came up with the following. Strength without brutality, courage without recklessness, honesty without priggishness, intelligence without pedantry, humour without frivolity and compassion without sentimentality. Then 1 looked at the list and realised there was something more, something missing. Call it the X factor. It may be presence, or charisma, the ability to dominate other men by sheer personality, or the capacity simply to inspire. Winston Churchill had it, Charles de Gaulle had it, John Kennedy had it and David Ben Gurion, the Father of Israel, had it. But I never knew an African who had it. Till Emeka.

Inside Nigeria his enemies do not simply hate him; they fear hint, even though he has uttered no threat against them. They fear his honesty against their own greed and corruption; they fear his courage against their own cowardice; they fear his intelligence against their own foolishness. But these are not the real reasons. The true reasons concern respect. They fear the respect that is still-born towards him despite an absence that would have destroyed a lesser man. In a Nigeria where for years the people have despaired of finding a man they could respect, despite vigorous censorship imposed by the Generals the name of Emcka.ran like a rumbling current beneath their feet. The fact that millions might recognise

in Emeka a man who respected them as people and whom they could respect in return frightens that handful of men who know they could never have the people’s respect, because of what they have done.

The breadth of Emeka’s talent leaves these poor creatures in the shadows, and they know it. For one thing he speaks fluently the three main languages of Nigeria — Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa. It is not just that he speaks them; he took the trouble to learn them all. Who else did that? He is also bi-lingual in the two common languages of the African continent, English and French. But he not only speaks, understands and writes French, he understands the French psychology, the different ways in which the French and French-educated Africans approach things. As Africa moves towards greater unity, and move she must, who else can bestride this great gulf between the two colonial empires and the heritage they left behind them?

On matters internal to Nigeria Emeka possesses an understanding and a grasp that no other Nigerian can match. The reason for this is not far to seek.

In all developing countries, and Nigeria is no exception, there are five ‘communities’ in whose collective hands the development and destiny of the nation rests. These are not ethnic communities; they are professional. There is the political/diplomatic community, the business/investment/ banking community, the academic/professional community of lawyers, doctors, professors etc., the civil service/public administration community and of course, the military.

One of the abiding problems for all Africa, and especially Nigeria, these past twenty years has been that these

five communities have had great difficulty understanding each other and each other’s problems. The military have always had the power to take over, but not the experience to understand diplomacy, the economy or the particular problems of the civil servants. The businessmen are often at loggerheads with the public servants, who feel they are not understood by the politicians. The academics talk a language the soldiers cannot understand, and the soldiers mistrust the politicians. In a truly developed nation these five groups work together, but to do this they must communicate with each other. Thus they exchange members; a man may in one lifetime be a soldier, a scholar and a diplomat. Another may be a civil servant with a deep understanding of business and industry.

Emeka is the only Nigerian today with a deep understanding, based on personal experience, of each of the five careers. He has been a scholar at Oxford, and is completely at home among professors and lawyers. He has been a civil servant and understands the way the civil service has to work, its value to the community and the problems of public administration. He has been a politician and diplomat, communicating both with the people of the internal constituency and with the foreign governments.

He has been a businessman in Cote d’Ivoire, and is the son of a businessman, being able to negotiate a contract and comprehending how business and industry increase the wealth and prosperity of the people if they are handled responsibly. And he has been a professional soldier. He is the only man who can talk to them all and be at his ease.

One last thing. It is sad but true, that there exists a huge

gulf between the African and the man from North-western Europe or North America. Some Africans have crossed this gulf, with a European education, a white man’s way of speaking and a white man’s way of thinking. But then they have not been able to cross back, to return spiritually and emotionally to Africa. They have become white men, but with black skins, half-accepted in the white man’s house, but cut off from their roots among their own people, whom they have ceased to understand.

Others have chosen to stay with traditional Africa, visiting the white man’s world only for brief trips or not at all. These can understand their own people, but are puzzled and bewildered by the white man’s world. Yet like it or not, the whites still dominate the areas of international politics, economics, investment finance, banking, science and technology; and Africa must share in these areas if she is to develop. Who can pass with ease between the two worlds, straddling the great gulf?

Emeka is the only man, I believe, who can sit in the boardroom of a great City of London bank, surrounded by men who control immense financial resources, understanding completely what they say and mean, feeling quite at home, securing the respect of these strange men for his thoughts and ideas; who can spend the evening with a group of Army Officers, shoes off, a crate of beer open, and talk easily of the old times, the latest postings, the ideal construction of an armoured division; and who can sit in the hot darkness of a bush compound, by the glow of paraffin lamps, sharing a gourd of palm wine with the village elders, and talk with knowledge of the problems of the day, the state of the crops, the need for more fresh water.

As Nigeria moves towards the middle years of the ninth decade of our century her problems are great. She cannot easily discard any longer the talents of this, one of her brightest sons. It would be too great a waste, for her and for him. So, for Nigeria’s sake and indeed for Africa’s, this remarkable man should again take his place and devote his efforts t© those tasks all agree simply have to be done. It must be. If God wills it.

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Epilogue

The negotiations that led to the eventual return of Emeka to his homeland actually started in the early summer of 1981. Their initiator was Dr Chuba Okadigbo, personal political ad\dser to President Shehu Shagari, an Igbo and strong member of the ruling National Party of Nigeria.

The two men met several times that summer and in early September Emeka was asked to attend a secret meeting in the Berkeley Hotel in London. Here he met the Director of the National Security Organisation, Alhaji Shinkafi, a mere ‘official’ emissary of the Nigerian President.

It was made plain to Emeka that President Shagari had made a decision in principle to end the exile of Nigeria’s last two such men: General Yakubu Gowon and himself. But because there should be no linkage between the two announcements, they would be made separately.

Emeka had no doubts that the first to be amnestied would be Gowon, the lightweight of the two. And so it proved to be. On Independence Day, 1981, Nigeria duly announced an amnesty for Yakubu Gowon. If President

Shagari had entertained hopes of achieving a political advantage in the Middle Belt by this gesture^ it proved to be a miscalculation. Within days of 1 October the issue had passed into oblivion. That still left the much more controversial shadow of Emeka.

It was widely presumed — and this was shared by Emeka and his friends — that 1 January 1982 would be a suitable moment for an announcement concerning himself. New Year’s Day is, after all, associated with the idea of burying the past and making a new beginning. Indeed the view was widespread throughout Nigeria that 1 January would bring a statement. This view was strengthened by private remarks made between 1 October and mid-December by Vice-President Alex Ekwueme and others.

On 30 December, it is now known. President Shagari actually recorded a TV statement to the nation in which he announced the long-awaited amnesty. The same statement was recorded for radio and prepared for press release. On the morning of 31 December something strange occurred. Just before noon he ordered the recall of all statements, recordings and TV tapes. New ones were prepared that afternoon which had all reference to the amnesty cut out of them.

It remained unclear just what had caused this last-minute change of heart. It had been known for weeks that very senior elements in the Igbo-led minority NPP party had been quietly using every argument to oppose the return of Emeka, since his continued absence would enable these gentlemen to continue to claim the leadership of the Igbo people and carry on with their futile party

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games. It was known that some retired generals, having become quite exceptionally rich, would find the idea of the return somewhat embarrassing.

It has been suggested that just before the end of the year the Attorney General, the Hon. Akinjide, had informed the president that under the constitution he could not amnesty Emeka without the agreement of the Council of State. It is also known that on the morning of 31 December the first reports came in of the ongoing coup in Ghana mounted by Army units under Fit. Lt. JJ Rawlings and that this might have affected political thinking. Finally, there is evidence that just before mid-morning of 31 December, President Shagari received the British High Commissioner in private audience. (The British High Commission had long been a hotbed of anti-Ojukwu sentiment, as usual.)

Whatever the reason, the intended and prepared statement was cancelled. For those inside Nigeria advocating the return of Emeka, the process had to begin again. It was a tortuous and delicate process, often on the verge of frustration, but in early May 1982, President Shagari was convinced the time was ripe.

Once so convinced, he acted fast. Apparently believing that if invited to a Council of State meeting to vote on the Ojukwu amnesty issue, ex-President Nnamdi Azikiwe, leader of the NPP, would decline to attend, the astute Shehu Shagari acted obliquely. He announced the award to the NPP leader of a high order of state and invited him to come to his own investiture at State House, Lagos. The date: 18 may. The invitation was eagerly accepted in Onit-sha by Azikiwe. The only other living ex-Head of State in

the country, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was also invited and he agreed to come.

Immediately following the ceremony of pinning on the award, the president scheduled a meeting of the Economic Council, which happens to be the Council of State minus the two former Heads of State. Thus, all nineteen state governors and the others came along as well, apparently to attend the second meeting. Then Shehu Shagari sprang his surprise.

He duly awarded the high honour on Nnamdi Azikiwe with a speech praising the NPP leader to the heavens. Once this was done, he went on without a pause to point out that as the Economic Council was present, and the two former Heads of State, they might as well have a Council of State while they were all seated at the same table. Without a break, he announced his presidential wish to amnesty Emeka Ojukwu, and called for a vote. It was a triumph of the political art. One by one the state governors’ hands went up and finally NPP Governor of Anambra State James Nwobodo raised his own. Staring at the table. General Obasanjo raised his. With a last glance round at the forest of hands. Dr Azikiwe slowly raised his hand too. It was done and it was unanimous. The president smiled and summoned a secretary to whom he handed the decree.

The man left the council chamber and within minutes the decree was on the radio waves. It was just after noon. Not long after that, in the two Igbo states, people were dancing in the streets.

A very senior Nigerian delegation arrived in Abidjan two days later to discuss with Emeka the details of the

V

return home. Even in that short time, from popular and Press reaction, the NPN leadership was beginning to realise what an ace card they had dealt from the pack. With the details fully discussed and agreed, the question of a date came up. Emeka proposed 4 June.

Four days later he got a message back from Lagos. On the 4th, the president would be touring the Northern States; on the 11th, it would be the threshold of the NPN Party Conference. Would the 18th be all right? June 18 was agreed. Preparations were begun. They would turn out to be hardly adequate because few had yet begun to comprehend the tide of popularity Emeka still enjoyed in his homeland of Nigeria.

On the morning of 18 June, the process of going home began. Emeka and two friends left his house in Abidjan and drove to the airport. There a small group of local officials and chiefs of Cote d’lvoire-dwelling Nigerians awaited him . At nine a charter jet of Nigeria Airways, 2 illocated to the Ojukwu party by the Nigerian Presidency, arrived an hour late. From it descended a delegation of chiefs and notables, sent to bring him home. They were headed by Alhaji Galadima of Bornu and included a Yoruba and several Igbos. After a brief ceremony in the Abidjan airport VIP lounge while the aircraft was being prepared, Emeka thanked the delegates from Nigeria, thanked the President and people of the Cote d’Ivoire and bade farewell to the country that had sheltered him for twelve and a Jialf years.

The plane took off at 10.00 a.m., local time, and began the one-hour flight to Lagos. During the flight Emeka chatted with Alhaji Galadima, then passed down the plane

to thank those who had come for him, in a more personal manner; the Yoruba in Yoruba language, the Galadima in Hausa and the Igbos, of course in Igbo. This raised some eyebrows; people had forgotten he speaks all three languages.

The reception at Murtala Mohammed Airport was thunderous, exceeding by far what had been planned for. A crowd of four or five thousand, including just about the entire airport staff, surged through the building carrying Emeka shoulder-high and cheering until the place echoed. In a brief stopover in the VIP lounge, scores more pressed forwards to greet and shake hands.

Outside the building about 150,000 swirled around the area, swamping the roads, car parks and fields, defying the mounted police to chase them away swallowing Emeka’s car completely from sight at times. The official motorcade broke up in seconds, its various cars blocked by the crowd, forced to divert and reach the Ikoyi Hotel as best they could. The crowd had eyes and cheers for only one car, from whose sunroof Emeka stood and waved with both hands. An NPN official of the welcoming committee looked on with open mouth.

‘We thought he was popular,’ he said ‘but nothing like this. It’s unbelievable.’ It was a sentiment to be echoed from many quarters, government and opposition, over the next four days.

There was a similar 150,000 strung out all the way to Lagos and into central Ikoyi. After a brief rest in the Ikoyi Hotel where a series of suites had been put at the disposal of the returning party, Emeka went on alone to State House to meet the President. It was a strange but satisfac-

tory meeting.

For the first minute or so the two men just stared at each other, each seeming to be saying, ‘So this, at last, is the man...’ Then they began to talk, but in the most general terms, without mentioning specific issues, events or personalities, but understanding perfectly what the other meant. When the time ceune after twenty minutes for the meeting to end. President Shagari accompanied Emeka to the door. There he said simply,

‘I think we can understand each other.’

‘Mr President,’ said Emeka, ‘I am sure we shall.’

Back at Ikoyi, Emeka spent Friday afternoon and Saturday receiving the endless columns of Lagos-based notables who came to be greeted in his suite. That Friday evening he dined privately with Vice-President Alex Ek-wueme, his two wives. Dr Okadigbo and a personal friend. Emeka was as ever controlled. Dr Okadigbo quietly satisfied,' the vice-president slightly nervous.

On Sunday 20 June the same small party that had arrived from Abidjan drove back to the airport to fly in the same jet to Enugu. What had happened in Lagos was reduced to a pale shadow of what awaited in Anambra State. From the air the crowd at Enug" airport looked like a seething tide, a moving piece of cloth. There were about a quarter of a million who had turned up. They surrounded the plane in a great tide before it had even finished taxi-ing, frightening the pilot and crew. Police crowd control lasted about five seconds and was never restored.

It was twenty minutes before Emeka could even

emerge from the aircraft, so chocked was the passengerstairway to the ground. It was another fifteen minutes before he could get to his car, and another fifteen before the Mercedes, its sunroof open and Emeka standing exposed from the waist up to acknowledge the crowd, could nudge its way to the airport gates. More tens of thousands enveloped the car outside the gate, blocking off most of the official motorcade who never saw the convoy again that day.

Another 250,000 thronged the streets of Enugu city, led by an announcement from NPP Governor Nwobodo that Emeka would attend upon him at State House and then go on to a political rally at the Polo Field. This was quite wrong. On Thursday morning in Abidjan, Emeka had made perfectly plain to Governor Nwobodo’s personal emissary. Dr Obumselu that unfortunately he could not divert from the direct route between the airport and his home at Nnewi. For one thing there would be no time in the day to spend four to five hours inside Enugu; for another he wished to proceed straight to his home-town to greet his mother and pay respects at his father’s grave. He added however that he would be happy to devote a day to Enugu a little later, if so invited.

In an attempt to link his own political fortunes to the huge popularity of Emeka Ojukwu, Governor Nwobodo appeared to have ignored this information and announced to all that Emeka would be coming. So many turned up hoping for a glimpse. At the northern outskirts of Enugu the convoy swept to the right and down the road to Udi, Oji River, Awka, Nawfia Abagana, Onitsha and Nnewi.

It was an extraordinary drive. Something like a million

people lined that road. Many times the cars slowed as Emeka leaned down to shake hands, or simply to wave to the cheering crowd. On every car, wall, truck and tree the posters were up: Onyeije Nno — Welcome Home-comer. At every town, village and hamlet groups of red-bonnetted chiefs waited at the head of their clan or family and all were greeted. After several hours the cheering was like the refrain of the ocean in the ears of those in the cars.

At Onitsha the Owelle, NPP leader Nnamdi Azikiwe, who had pointedly refused to greet Emeka at the airport or Onitsha, sat in isolation in his shuttered compound as the streets around him, his own private vote-garden, erupted in swelling cheers for the younger man who once showed ‘his’ people the true meaning of leadership. The last stretch into Nnewi was the most poignant of all. Each hill and village was more and more familiar, each face better known, each greeting more familiar. But the crowds had no need of the mobile police with their whips and sticks. They were enormously affectionate and yet well-behaved. The bronze limousine glided slowly through the last miles, Emeka upright out of the roof, waving until his arms feJt like lead. When the motorcade finally nosed into the Ojukwu compound he had been standing and waving for seven hours.

Still, it was not over. His house was at once invaded and the process of receiving and greeting notables from all over Anambra and Imo States began again. It went on for two days. On Monday, the 21st, he was made a Chief of Nnewi (‘Ikemba Nnewi’) and then back to the house for more visitors. From forest and mountain, swamp and pas-tureland the chiefs came in for a greeting, a few moments of private conversation and a farewell. Along with

senators, assemblymen, leaders of thought and personal friends.

Two nights later, alone for a few precious minutes with a cold beer in his hand, he looked out at the compound and the trees beyond.

‘It’s good to be back,’ he said ‘Dear Lord, it’s good to be home.’

The following evening, in Dr Okadigbo’s house in Lagos, a senator of the NPP remarked; ‘There is only ever one leader of the Igbo people and we have just discovered beyond a shadow of doubt who it is. Now we can all sit down and re-draw the political map of Southern Nigeria.’

Emeka Ojukwu showed courage and fortitude in the year of 1966, demonstrated brilliant leadership and a selfless devotion to his people in the hard times to 1970, and bore the lonely and often impoverished years of exile with quiet dignity, refusing to respond to the many lies that were printed and broadcast about him. Perhaps those three days of June, 18 — 20 1982 were his reward.

But it would be hard not to imagine that there is more to come.

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