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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 3, 2022, 5:14:50 AM9/3/22
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I am tempted to believe that the way the Nigerian government is treating ASUU is the hand work of karma because of the way ASUU members treat students.

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)


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segun...@gmail.com

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Sep 3, 2022, 9:17:31 AM9/3/22
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Chidi, 
Please tell us how ASUU has treated students that has warranted your idea of Karma. 
Segun Ogungbemi 

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On Sep 3, 2022, at 4:14 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth

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Sep 3, 2022, 9:18:48 AM9/3/22
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Interesting  perspectivee.thats related to the subject of a Novel by Lola Akande titled "what it takes".its about university  teachers frustrating  their students.i have padded it above.  Interesting  . Views.some say what goes round comes round.
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 3, 2022, 9:18:55 AM9/3/22
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Really?

How representative of ASUU members generally is the negative behaviour of some ASUU members?

Without ASUU, what would have been the fate of govt  funding for university infrastructure, apart from academic staff welfare?

Thanks

Toyin

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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 3, 2022, 11:36:10 AM9/3/22
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Where would one start to narrate the ugly manner in which ASUU members and in fact all lecturers in both federal and state universities in Nigeria (Mal)treat students.

I have a daughter who attended the University of Port Harcourt.

There was a time I had to visit a lecturer at home to warn him that if my daughter who was doing very well in her grades up to her third year, fail any of his courses or any course taught by any of his friends, that I would make sure that there would be a public enquiry to be consisted of persons from outside the university. 

He had threatened my daughter that no matter what she wrote in the exams, that she would never pass any of his courses and that of his friends. 

Problem was that my daughter refused to be his lover as confirmed by other students who knew about the incident.

The above is just a tiny fraction of what really happens. Unfortunately, most of the students in Nigerian public universities do not have people to fight for them, most of those who have, would not report such incidents for fear of persecution by the concerned lecturers and their friends.

Thanks.

-CAO.

I know how many times I begged the girl not to drop out of school because of frustration prior to the warning.


On Saturday, September 3, 2022, <segun...@gmail.com> wrote:
Chidi, 
Please tell us how ASUU has treated students that has warranted your idea of Karma. 
Segun Ogungbemi 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 3, 2022, at 4:14 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:


I am tempted to believe that the way the Nigerian government is treating ASUU is the hand work of karma because of the way ASUU members treat students.

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)


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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 3, 2022, 12:04:34 PM9/3/22
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Oga Chidi,

"ALL LECTURERS in federal and state universities"!
 

Haba!

Na wa for you o.

Allow me to inform you,  sir, without denying wrong doing by some academics- I don't know the percentage- that without ASUU the public university system might cease to exist in any functional sense.

These are serious issues  to be handled with the critical attention and gravitas required.

It's not a time for uncritical emotion.

No offense meant.

Thanks

Toyin


On Sat, Sep 3, 2022, 16:36 Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Where would one start to narrate the ugly manner in which ASUU members and in fact all lecturers in both federal and state universities in Nigeria (Mal)treat students.

I have a daughter who attended the University of Port Harcourt.

There was a time I had to visit a lecturer at home to warn him that if my daughter who was doing very well in her grades up to her third year, fail any of his courses or any course taught by any of his friends, that I would make sure that there would be a public enquiry to be consisted of persons from outside the university. 

He had threatened my daughter that no matter what she wrote in the exams, that she would never pass any of his courses and that of his friends. 

Problem was that my daughter refused to be his lover as confirmed by other students who knew about the incident.

The above is just a tiny fraction of what really happens. Unfortunately, most of the students in Nigerian public universities do not have people to fight for them, most of those who have, would not report such incidents for fear of persecution by the concerned lecturers and their friends.

Thanks.

-CAO.

I know how many times I begged the girl not to drop out of school because of frustration prior to the warning.

On Saturday, September 3, 2022, <segun...@gmail.com> wrote:
Chidi, 
Please tell us how ASUU has treated students that has warranted your idea of Karma. 
Segun Ogungbemi 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 3, 2022, at 4:14 AM, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:


I am tempted to believe that the way the Nigerian government is treating ASUU is the hand work of karma because of the way ASUU members treat students.

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)


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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 3, 2022, 1:57:03 PM9/3/22
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Oluwatoyin,

It would definitely not be all lecturers but a greater percentage judging from the accounts of victims and witnesses.

"Uncritical emotion" you said? Well I am not going to engage you in any academic argument. 

If you had to beg your very academically brilliant daughter not to drop out of the university because of intimidation by a lecturer with the support of his colleagues because she refused to have amorous relationship with the lecturer in question, you would understand the issue at stake.

Thanks.

-CAO.
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Mr. E. B. Jaiyeoba

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Sep 3, 2022, 7:04:23 PM9/3/22
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Oga Chidi,

So sorry about your experience.

However, lecturers in Nigeria are being judged by the action of a few rotten eggs. Many of the critics border on sensationalism by the writers. Opponents of lecturers are good at releasing negative information when they want to sway public opinion against their foe. 

I know that it is difficult for the students to speak out when it happens but once they speak out there are a few lecturers dedicated to fighting such predators. 

In the social sciences, interpretation of statistics is too essential and generalisation from inadequate data is frowned upon. Many people are fond of this.

It is necessary to weigh the words to use when one is not very sure.


Thanks.



Babatunde 




















E. Babatunde JAIYEOBA PhD
Professor of Architecture
Department of Architecture
Faculty of Environmental Design and Management
Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria










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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 3, 2022, 7:04:23 PM9/3/22
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Oga Chidi,

I have studied in a Nigerian university as my family members also have.
 
I used to be a lecturer in a Nigerian university.

I am in touch with people who attended Nigerian universities across various decades and am in touch with people currently  in Nigerian universities.

I belong to my Dept Facebook group that contains old and current students.

I was the secretary for an initiative which spearheaded a quest for justice of victims of sexual harassment in my former Dept. 

But when someone claims that ALL lecturers in public universitities are predators, we have a problem of authentication. 

That kind of broadsweeping is not excusable. Using it as hyperbole if that's a person's aim, is unfair.

When you now modify that to claim that most, though not all lecturers in those universities are like that, I wonder if that is possible.

We thank God your daughter's case was handled. But is that and perhaps other anecdotal examples enough to make these generalizations you are making?

Thanks

Toyin


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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 4, 2022, 11:01:07 AM9/4/22
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Nobody loves for nothing, everyone loves because of and for something.

Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 4, 2022, 11:01:08 AM9/4/22
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Babatunde, Oluwatoyin,

I have no need to demonize Nigerian university teachers. I wish majority of them change from their unwholesome ways of treating students. I also wish that the system handles well the cases that would be reported so that when next they happen the victims would have the confidence to report.

The main issues here however are not even that these maltreatments happen, but that they happen at the scales they do and that majority of the victims do not have the confidence to report.

The weakness of the system(mostly run by lecturers) in handling this problem points to systemic corruption which gives impetus to these lecturers to maltreatment students in many ways at the scales they do.

My daughter graduated and now working as a Journalist because she has a father who can fight for her. Have we pondered about the many who do not have anyone to fight for them, who would have been graduates today and earning decent living but who dropped out, out of frustrations from these lecturers?

A system in which only those who have people to fight for them survive is a very bad system and needs to be reformed urgently.

Thanks.

-CAO.
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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I don't think Chidi is in a position to realistically argue that most lecturers in Nigerian universities, across North, South, are predators.

An argument based on conjecture.

He's arguing that the University system is so rigged that this predatory culture prevails.

No research. Stories he has heard.

What is the scope of the stories he has heard?

Who is in the best position to assess these issues?

Why is it that when these subject is discussed on this group, and such absolutisms are being thrown around, the representatives of those being so condemned maintain a careful silence.

Are there no lecturers in Nigerian universities on this group?

It is an act of heinous cowardice to be silent when the group you are a part of, the system through which you earn a living, is being so castigated.

You should have the self respect, the regard for your choice of profession, to take a stand and say "yes, we are really as we are being described" or to say "no, we are not as we are being described" or " these are my own observations about the situation".

There is no dignity in silence in such situations. 

My responses to such denigrations of Nigerian academia on this group will now consist of examining the psychology of a group of people who pretend not to see when they are being publicly demonized.

Yes,the Western universities are much more enabled but the beginning and the end of success, particularly in scholarship, is attitude. Vision.

What kind of vision may be possessed by a person who cannot find his voice when his contistuency is being painted as putrid?

Or are some people thinking that "let me stay quiet in my corner doing my own thing?"

The image of the collective shapes the individual.

Thanks

Toyin

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While I am sceptical about Chidi's methods of coming to his conclusion that most Nigerian lecturers are predators, I identify with his argument that in a system largely run by lecturers and in which the danger of mutual support in evil is real, failure to address these challenges leads to their proliferation.

His lucid description of such a situation emboldens me to urge the group of alumni of my former dept at the University of Benin to keep pressing for the University to transparently address the petition we sent to them some years ago on behalf of a group of female students alleging sexual harassment from male lecturers in the dept.

The University had  insisted that the students must travel to Benin for the hearing while we urged that such an arrangement was logistically unrealistic and fraught with security dangers and suggested remote interviews instead, but they did not budge.

Now that the lessons of Covid are ingrained, we can argue that no one can realistically argue against remote interviews, particularly since those former students making the allegations are either in different parts of the country or in various parts of the world.

We would also be able to make the kind of argument Chidi is making, referencing the fact that one of those accused in the allegations was later implicated in a particularly scandalous sexual harassment allegation in which the plloice had to be involved and the lecturer suspended.

If the earlier petition had been adequately addressed, would it not have decreased the likelihood of such a later occurrence?

I am also emboldened by Chidi's summation on the need for transparent addressing of the systemic implications of this subject beceause I had become a little sceptical of that effort I've been involved in on account of the time it's taking, particularly since I was accused by this same lecturer as being on a vendetta against the dept, having left there in frustration even as my former colleagues are now professors while I am nowhere to be found in academic distinction, as he put it,  and the story going the rounds of people from my village, which this same lecturer is from, that their only person in such a prime position in that dept is being undermined by me, the varied pressures people undergoe in seeking justice when circumstances are not oriented towards justice.

If one is pushing for the subject to be adequately addressed, the question could be asked, " what is your motivation?" "Why not let it lie?"

Chidi's sunmation on the systemic dangers of the stituation enlivens my own sensitivities.

I am very proud of the heroic efforts of most of my teachers in my BA at the dept of English and Literature, University of Benin, in the days of SAP and beyond, when academic salaries were little and books scarce.

In my journeys across the University of Kent, SOAS and UCL, those teachers I met there were not more intelligent or more consciencious than Ogo Ofuani, Odun Balogun, Chinyere Okafor, Opene, Victoria Ola, Onwuemene, Romanus Egudu, Okpure Obuke, Victor Longe, Rasheed Yesufu, Steve Ogude, Richard Masagbor, Titi Ufomata, those teachers who made my BA memorable.

I should be able to contribute to helping maintain positive values such people stood for.

Thanks

Toyin


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I am yet to see the relationship between the issues that ASUU is fighting for and the idea of Karma of Chidi? 
I have taught for many years in several public universities in Nigeria and l cannot make a general immoral allegations against all lecturers and professors in the system. There are some bad eggs in the university system in Nigeria but when they are caught and investigations against them are established, generally speaking, they never escaped justice. 
Segun Ogungbemi 

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 4, 2022, at 11:41 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Oluwatoyin, Segun,

Listening to stories of victims and eye witnesses is a form of research.

Clinging to the ALL line of argument when I have made it clear that it is MOST, is something I sincere don't understand.

While I have tried to provide the basis for my conclusion that most university teachers in Nigeria's public universities maltreat the students, both of you have argued that the ones who maltreat students are in the minority without presenting any basis whatsoever for your conclusion.

Finally, the relationship between what ASUU is fighting for and my position that karma may be propelling the government to also maltreat ASUU by denying the body and by extension its members of benefits and conducive work atmosphere already agreed upon is obvious to the discerning.

Thanks.

-CAO.
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Oga Chidi,

I did not particularly argue for or against ASUU and it's members.

I questioned the validity of your methodology.

True, listening to stories can be a form of research.

But in such research the investigator seeks a representative sample before making conjectures or drawing conclusions.

I would be most impressed if you have heard a representative sample of stories from the SW, Edo, Delta, SS, SE, Middle Belt, North East, North Central etc to reach your conclusion that most lecturers in Nigerian universities are predators.

I suspect a way out of such demands for authenticity of data is to make it clear that one might not have such a broad ranging sample of anecdotal information, but is drawing conclusions by extrapolating from ones quite limited data.

We could then discuss the data and the extrapolative method.

Another approach is to argue that given your conviction that adequate safeguards do not exist to prevent such predatory behavior, such behaviour is likely to be rampant in Nigerian universities.

But to argue as you seem to be doing, making sweeping and unqualified conclusions based on inadequate data, is disturbing and perhaps dangerous.

You then anchor your argument on a quasi-logical claim about karma, forgetting that you, ASUU and most Nigerians do not exist in the same social and economic universe as the people you are trying to credit with being instruments of karma against ASUU,people for whom it would be taboo to place their children in the same schools ASUU is fighting for, people for whom the life or death of those institutions is not likely to be seen by them as affecting them personally.

Your karma conjecture also is not sensitive to the history and dynamics of ASUU struggles, of the effect it has had on universities and perhaps even on the nation.

Thanks

Toyin


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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Oluwatoyin,

Empirical research "is also a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience"-Wikipedia

The stories I heard and have been hearing are representative enough to arrive at the conclusion I presented here.

I however do not think that I am supposed to come here with details of such direct and indirect observation or experience to convince you or anyone. I am not defending a thesis.

You either believe or disbelieve me, which is your right and which is alright by me.

Thanks.

-CAO.
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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How would you like it if you were sweepingly characterized negatively bcs of some bad things you have done?

A fair person would want to know the bases for such characterization.

On another note, where are the lecturers in Nigerian universities on this group?

Is it that they have little or no identification with their constituency?

One should at least be able to present a perspective when matters concerning one are being discussed.

If one can't do that, what's the value of all that education and pedagogical skill?

Is it not from the ranks of their students and colleagues that those Diaspora scholars who are vocal on these issues emerged?

Thanks

Toyin



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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 9, 2022, 9:08:00 AM9/9/22
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Nigeria is a very funny space. A ruling party(for 8 years) campaigning with "forget the past"! 

Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 9, 2022, 4:42:40 PM9/9/22
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Humans are equal, so all monarchies owe humanity apologies.

Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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The Professor wasn't talking about Colonialism. She was talking about the Biafra Genocide engineered by Her Majesty's government of Britain from 1967 to 1970 and executed by the Nigerian military government of Yakubu Gowon.

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 10, 2022, 6:34:56 AM9/10/22
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The description of the Nigerian Civil War as genocide against Biafra is problematic.

I wonder how the war was engineered by Britain.

Thanks

Toyin


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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 10, 2022, 5:27:06 PM9/10/22
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Oluwatoyin,

Truth is always problematic to those who don't want it said for whatever reasons.

The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege. 

That action of Gowon on the advice of Her Majesty's government led to the renewed offensive and the consequent genocide.

-CAO.

On Saturday, September 10, 2022, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
The description of the Nigerian Civil War as genocide against Biafra is problematic.

I wonder how the war was engineered by Britain.

Thanks

Toyin


On Sat, Sep 10, 2022, 11:00 Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
The Professor wasn't talking about Colonialism. She was talking about the Biafra Genocide engineered by Her Majesty's government of Britain from 1967 to 1970 and executed by the Nigerian military government of Yakubu Gowon.

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)


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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 11, 2022, 6:49:56 AM9/11/22
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Oga Chidi,

In conflict, the temptation exists to fix complex realities in terms of simplistic perspectives.

First of all, the claim that it was Britain that prevailed on Gowon to change his stance on the Aburi agreement is debatable. Another argument goes that he was persuaded by fellow Nigerians.

One of the problems of accountability in connection with that war is repeated refusal to accept responsibilities by some self chosen spokespeople of the Biafran side and their recurrent insistence on a self serving ideologicalization of that war.

You are referencing a pivotal moment that could not have led to war but chose to ignore others.

1. Did Ojukwu have to continue on his secession mission even though he was not satisfied with the powers the fed govt wanted to assume over the SE?

Was the war and its outcome not worse than the probable outcome of the fed govt initiatives before Ojukwu's  secession declaration?

Why did he insist on an action of that magnitude even though he was aware of the military and logistical inadequacies of his forces?

2. Why did Biafra invade the Midwest, brutalising, killing and raping people there, and possibly provoking the West into the war through their  plans for that region as they advanced towards Lagos, if his only goal was to protect his people on account of the largely anti-Igbo massacres in the North on account of which they had fled to the East?

If Biafran command  was of the view that the Midwest offensive and the push into the West  was vital in penetrating and dividing the federal side, should they not bear responsibility for the escalation of the war through the failure of that plan?

3. Even after the defeat of Biafran forces at Ore, putting paid to the Biafran advance in the West, leading to Banjo and the Biafran forces he led fleeing to the East, why did Ojukwu continue with the war since clearly the region he controlled was now reduced to a defensive position, which steadily shrank as federal forces crossed into his territory and the war began in earnest?

What was gained and what was lost by Biafran surrender in 1970 rather than at any other time in the war, particularly in its opening stages?

 Why did Ojukwu insist on continuing with the war even after Biafra had suffered terrible setbacks, such as the fall of Port Harcourt, blocking Biafran access to the sea,  and the civilians entered increasingly  desperate conditions?

I am not critiquing the manner in which Biafra conducted the war. I'm only arguing that its ahistorical to refuse to recognise Biafran responsibility for the war and project a gallant fight by Biafra as if they were simply victims.

Your approach suggests refusing to acknowledge that they fought a war in which they were also aggressors. 

The Genocide Question

Nigeria engaged in a high level of war crimes in that war, such as the bombing and execution of civilians. 

Biafra did something similar, but not in the same magnitude, such as the bombing of Lagos, the killing and raping of civilians in the Midwest and the brutalisation of minorities in what is now the SE and SS.  These people keep recalling those horrors but don't emphasise them. Those developments  are related to problematic relations between Igbos and other ethnicities at the present time in those regions.

The blocking of flow of food to the Biafran region, contributing to the high civilian death toll, is ethically problematic.

Its also true, however, that the Biafran elite cornered a significant  amount of the resources of the nation for themselves, reinforcing  Awolowo's claim that he advised that blockade because the food was being cornered by privileged people. Achebe depicts this heart-rending corruption in Biafra in Girls at War. Achebe was in the heart of Biafra and can't be described as a traitor to Biafra.

Why did Ojukwu use food relief transport in ferrying arms?

This narrative of genocide, of destruction in which the victim victimised no one and existed purely as the passive recipient of the inhumanity of others has no relationship to the reality of that war. The claim that the war was genocidal, conceived or executed to wipe out or generally decimate Igbo people is also not sustainable.

thanks

toyin





On Sat, 10 Sept 2022 at 22:27, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
Oluwatoyin,

Truth is always problematic to those who don't want it said for whatever reasons.

The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege. 

That action of Gowon on the advice of Her Majesty's government led to the renewed offensive and the consequent genocide.

-CAO.

On Saturday, September 10, 2022, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
The description of the Nigerian Civil War as genocide against Biafra is problematic.

I wonder how the war was engineered by Britain.

Thanks

Toyin


On Sat, Sep 10, 2022, 11:00 Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
The Professor wasn't talking about Colonialism. She was talking about the Biafra Genocide engineered by Her Majesty's government of Britain from 1967 to 1970 and executed by the Nigerian military government of Yakubu Gowon.

-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)


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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 11, 2022, 9:11:07 AM9/11/22
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"The claim that the war was genocidal, conceived or executed to wipe out or generally decimate Igbo people is also not sustainable"-Oluwatoyin Adepoju.

The civil war unfortunately became genocidal but was not conceived as such to decimate the Igbo and/or any of the people of the then Eastern Nigeria.

It was an attempt to sustain the new vision of  "one Nigeria" in which some would be first class and some would be second class citizens.

Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through Police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers.

The Igbos happened to be the majority and most active in that war and so, the most affected by the genocide.

-CAO.
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Dr. Oohay

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Sep 11, 2022, 9:55:58 AM9/11/22
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Except for children or those adults already physically or mentally handicapped, are there innocents in war?

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 11, 2022, 10:35:26 AM9/11/22
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According to Oluwatotin Vincent Adepoju, 

“This narrative of genocide, of destruction in which the victim victimised no one and existed purely as the passive recipient of the inhumanity of others has no relationship to the reality of that war”

 Since we are aware people and have been alerted  to “ the danger posed by a single story” by  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,  the author of “Half of a Yellow Sun”, let these links below serve as more than a mere footnote to the  “complex realities” that Oluwatoyin Vincent Afepoju is brave enough to allude to: 

“The people of Bakana, an Ijaw-speaking tribe of Rivers State, Nigeria, tell their story of forceful evacuation by Biafran Soldiers and eventual liberation by federal troops after 124 days in exile during the Nigerian Civil War" :

Bakana '68 Pt 1

Bakana '68 Pt 2

Bakana '68 Pt 3

Harrow, Kenneth

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Sep 11, 2022, 3:36:32 PM9/11/22
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further to cornelius's point: all you have to do is read ken saro-wiwa's Sojaboy to get the same message....
ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu


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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
 

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 11, 2022, 3:36:41 PM9/11/22
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Thanks Chidi.

Your structuring of the war makes me wonder.

"Police action" was the initial effort by fed govt to subdue the secession, a move that did not work.

From my admittedly imprecise memory of the course of the war, the next major initiative came from Biafra- the Midwest invasion and the effort to "liberate the West" as the ultimately unfortunate Banjo is referrenced as describing the Biafra plan, a plan foiled by the Battle of Ore.

So, the claim that genocide became the instrument of war of fed govt after the failure of the police action puzzles me, since I understand the major military initiative after the failure of the police action was carried out by Biafra.

Even after the fed troops took the war to the SE, at what stage did they begin to engage in war crimes, such as bombing civilian locations and the Asaba massacre?

Apologies to the dead and all victims of that war for this style of approaching the subject.

I'm wary of a flat description of that war as an anti-Igbo genocide even though the scale of Igbo civilian suffering and deaths was particularly horrible.

I see with you on the creation of a class system of a sort in the organization of Nigeria. 

Thanks

Toyin 

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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 11, 2022, 11:31:28 PM9/11/22
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Oluwatoyin,

Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas in Biafra by the then ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and the massacre of defenceless civilian populations by the then Nigerian blood thirsty military commanders like Murtala Mohammed and Benjamin Adekunle, alias scorpion, you and other Biafra Genocide denialists obviously do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra area by the Gowon administration with the support of Her Majesty's government, which resulted into diseases caused by malnutrition and lack of preventive medications and which resulted into the death of children and the elderly in great numbers in the Biafra area as genocide.

This is very surprising.

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 12, 2022, 6:02:19 AM9/12/22
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Thanks Chidi.

I would like to understand the situation better.

Thanks

Toyin


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segun...@gmail.com

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Sep 12, 2022, 9:47:42 PM9/12/22
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But Biafra soldiers did kill many innocent Nigerians as well. Whatever happened during the war must be blamed on Ojukwu and his Igbo groups that went to wage war against Nigeria, the most powerful country in West African region. 
Segun Ogungbemi. 

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 12, 2022, 11:06:14 PM9/12/22
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I thought Nigeria waged war on Biafra, with Biafra reacting to the aggression from Nigeria?

Did Biafra and it's military command consist only of Igbos, even though Igbos were in the majority?

Why did Ojukwu and the Biafran leadership not simply give up at various points of the struggle till 1970?

Were their goals self seeking, delusional, altruistic towards those they led or something of all these?

After Biafra, we have had MASSOB and now IPOB.

Is it possible that Biafra represents a vision that cannot be wiped out and must one day be given an opportunity to sink or swim rather than the standard approach of suppression?

Nigeria has a lot to learn from the Biafran vision.

IPOB may be seen as going further, in a tactical sense, than MASSOB.

What follows IPOB could be more mature.

I see the creative essence of the IPOB vision as the use of peaceful non-action as a means of compelling a referendum for secession in the SE, an approach piloted by the seat-at-home in honour of the Biafran dead.

If IPOB or a successor to IPOB is able to

1. Consolidate the peaceful resistance without employing compulsion

2. Avoid non-defensive violence

3. Make sure they don't try to impose the Biafra vision on anyone, either other Igbos or non-Igbos in the SE and SS

4. Act without the kind of visibility that exposes them to hostile forces, eg govt action against them

5. Avoid denigrating any ethnicity

6. Present the Biafra vision as a template for other ethnicities

Then the vision will achieve it's rightful place as a visionary political development which all Nigerians may draw from.

Thanks

Toyin


Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 13, 2022, 7:04:15 AM9/13/22
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Segun,

We are talking of Biafra Genocide as evidenced by Awolowo's "starvation is a legitimate instrument of war" and the various reports (from independent sources) of Biafran children suffering from kwashiorkor(including myself)as a result of the Starvation Policy of the Gowon administration(Awolowo's fascism actually), most of whom died as a result. We can debate the other aspects of the war but the focus of this discussion is on Biafra Genocide.

Is starvation of the civilian population in a war situation actually "a legitimate instrument of war"? Why are we not taking cognizance of that crime against humanity?

-CAO.

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Salimonu Kadiri

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Sep 13, 2022, 9:37:35 PM9/13/22
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​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote

Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 14, 2022, 9:20:55 AM9/14/22
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Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.


On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 14, 2022, 9:22:14 AM9/14/22
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Fine historical survey by Salimonu but veering to the extreme opposite of Chidi's narrative.

There is a need to be careful of the fact that some pro-Biafra perspectives can be very provocative in their determination  to focus on one sided, self justificatory  narratives.

Those negative orientations in terms of interpreting the Nigerian Civil War  should not blind one to the fact that the Nigerian side engaged in grave war crimes at a much higher level than the Biafran side, the guilt of which side should also not be forgotten.

How does one justify the Asaba massacre for example, described as the rounding up of males in Asaba by fed troops and shooting them?

How plausible would be the claims that most, if not all the civilian locations, such as markets,  bombed by Nigeria, were so bombed bcs they were used as field stations by Biafran troops?

My lecturer Romanus Egudu, if i recall correctly,  mentioned his experience behind Biafran lines that the fed air fighters would swoop in close to see if a standing figure was a tree or a human being, as the Biafrans had taken to imitating trees when caught outdoors by nigerian fighter planes.

My friend Chuks Obikwu described his own experience behind Biafran lines of  families camping in bushes only to later see the adjoining  bush gone, having been shelled by the fed troops and the people hiding there nowhere to be seen.

and more....
thanks
toyin a





Salimonu Kadiri

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Sep 14, 2022, 4:40:29 PM9/14/22
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​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 15, 2022, 8:08:57 AM9/15/22
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"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

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Salimonu Kadiri

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Sep 15, 2022, 4:20:20 PM9/15/22
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​If there had been war tribunal after the civil war, Ojukwu and others would have been convicted of war crimes for taking civilian hostages and refusing to accept relief supplies to non-combatants. In Nigeria where everything is up-side-down and people think with the heart and not the brain, the defeated in a war want to put the victor on trial for genocide because the defeated who took civilian hostages (both elderly women, men and children) that they could not feed by themselves but refused to accept food through supervised corridors, starved to death. While I have no reason to defend the Queen of UK, I am told that Queen Elisabeth II's government supported Gowon to commit genocide against the Igbo. What is the evidence for that?  Chidi somersaulted backwards referring to "photos from Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II's credible independent BBC of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkor Biafran children. Human head is not a hat shelf, it contains brain to think.
S. Kadiri  


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 16, 2022, 10:16:38 AM9/16/22
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it seems the biafran command's management of biafran civilians as well as their response to the issues around food relief need serious scrutiny.

there is a need for rounded narratives.

toyin

On Thu, 15 Sept 2022 at 21:20, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​If there had been war tribunal after the civil war, Ojukwu and others would have been convicted of war crimes for taking civilian hostages and refusing to accept relief supplies to non-combatants. In Nigeria where everything is up-side-down and people think with the heart and not the brain, the defeated in a war want to put the victor on trial for genocide because the defeated who took civilian hostages (both elderly women, men and children) that they could not feed by themselves but refused to accept food through supervised corridors, starved to death. While I have no reason to defend the Queen of UK, I am told that Queen Elisabeth II's government supported Gowon to commit genocide against the Igbo. What is the evidence for that?  Chidi somersaulted backwards referring to "photos from Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II's credible independent BBC of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkor Biafran children. Human head is not a hat shelf, it contains brain to think.
S. Kadiri  


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Sent: 15 September 2022 06:03
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
 
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 16, 2022, 3:43:42 PM9/16/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
"there is a need for rounded narratives"-Oluwatoyin Adepoju 

"rounded narratives" on the war or on the matter of the Biafra Genocide?

-CAO.

On Friday, September 16, 2022, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
it seems the biafran command's management of biafran civilians as well as their response to the issues around food relief need serious scrutiny.

there is a need for rounded narratives.

toyin

On Thu, 15 Sept 2022 at 21:20, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​If there had been war tribunal after the civil war, Ojukwu and others would have been convicted of war crimes for taking civilian hostages and refusing to accept relief supplies to non-combatants. In Nigeria where everything is up-side-down and people think with the heart and not the brain, the defeated in a war want to put the victor on trial for genocide because the defeated who took civilian hostages (both elderly women, men and children) that they could not feed by themselves but refused to accept food through supervised corridors, starved to death. While I have no reason to defend the Queen of UK, I am told that Queen Elisabeth II's government supported Gowon to commit genocide against the Igbo. What is the evidence for that?  Chidi somersaulted backwards referring to "photos from Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II's credible independent BBC of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkor Biafran children. Human head is not a hat shelf, it contains brain to think.
S. Kadiri  



Sent: 15 September 2022 06:03

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

unread,
Sep 16, 2022, 8:12:21 PM9/16/22
to usaafricadialogue
I think I've said my bit.

The Biafran tragedy was partly the fault of Biafra's leadership.

I see that you have refused to address that argument, even though myself earlier and Kadiri later have given examples that are unavoidable.

The insistence on unqualified critique of Nigeria's war conduct and silence or whitewashing about Biafran leadership's problematic decisions in that war makes it harder for many Nigerians to adequately credit the Biafran tragedy.

Also, those in the Midwest and the SS and SE minorities  who suffered at the hands of Biafra await recognition of their suffering by the Biafrans and their descendants.

It does not seem to be forthcoming.

But the self appointed spokespeople for Biafra want Biafra's suffering acknowledged in a way that is not agreeable to all parties in that conflict.

So, where shall we start from?

Thanks

Toyin

Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

unread,
Sep 17, 2022, 3:40:32 AM9/17/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
"So, where shall we start from?"-Oluwatoyin Adepoju

We start by accepting the truth evidenced by Awolowo's "starvation is a legitimate instrument of war" a statement made to justify Gowon's Policy of blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra, which saw that many children and the elderly died as a result and the well documented attrocities on the civilian population of Biafra of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Saturday, September 17, 2022, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think I've said my bit.

The Biafran tragedy was partly the fault of Biafra's leadership.

I see that you have refused to address that argument, even though myself earlier and Kadiri later have given examples that are unavoidable.

The insistence on unqualified critique of Nigeria's war conduct and silence or whitewashing about Biafran leadership's problematic decisions in that war makes it harder for many Nigerians to adequately credit the Biafran tragedy.

Also, those in the Midwest and the SS and SE minorities  who suffered at the hands of Biafra await recognition of their suffering by the Biafrans and their descendants.

It does not seem to be forthcoming.

But the self appointed spokespeople for Biafra want Biafra's suffering acknowledged in a way that is not agreeable to all parties in that conflict.

So, where shall we start from?

Thanks

Toyin

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 00:52 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
it seems the biafran command's management of biafran civilians as well as their response to the issues around food relief need serious scrutiny.

there is a need for rounded narratives.

toyin

On Thu, 15 Sept 2022 at 21:20, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​If there had been war tribunal after the civil war, Ojukwu and others would have been convicted of war crimes for taking civilian hostages and refusing to accept relief supplies to non-combatants. In Nigeria where everything is up-side-down and people think with the heart and not the brain, the defeated in a war want to put the victor on trial for genocide because the defeated who took civilian hostages (both elderly women, men and children) that they could not feed by themselves but refused to accept food through supervised corridors, starved to death. While I have no reason to defend the Queen of UK, I am told that Queen Elisabeth II's government supported Gowon to commit genocide against the Igbo. What is the evidence for that?  Chidi somersaulted backwards referring to "photos from Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II's credible independent BBC of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkor Biafran children. Human head is not a hat shelf, it contains brain to think.
S. Kadiri  



Sent: 15 September 2022 06:03

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 17, 2022, 8:59:26 AM9/17/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

So far The Geneva Convention has not been mentioned in this thread.


The Sandhurst-trained Ojukwu and other top Nigerian military brass who trained at Sandhurst and Aldershot were also aware of what’s not permissible in war…

Since then there have been so many other wars, all over the world 


Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

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Sep 17, 2022, 11:03:23 AM9/17/22
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Mazi Cornelius,

Even if there is no Geneva Convention, is it conscionable to do what the Gowon administration, with the support of the British Queen did? Even if that convention permits it, is it right?

More unonscionable being the efforts to justify the crime against humanity and the denials later.

The slave trade was legal when it was ongoing, yet some persons of conscience saw to its abolition.

-CAO.

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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Sep 17, 2022, 11:20:45 AM9/17/22
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Oga Chidi,

Those who are localized in that box beyond which you don't want to go are likely to be isolated there.

Thanks

Toyin

On Sat, Sep 17, 2022, 08:40 Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
"So, where shall we start from?"-Oluwatoyin Adepoju

We start by accepting the truth evidenced by Awolowo's "starvation is a legitimate instrument of war" a statement made to justify Gowon's Policy of blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra, which saw that many children and the elderly died as a result and the well documented attrocities on the civilian population of Biafra of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Saturday, September 17, 2022, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think I've said my bit.

The Biafran tragedy was partly the fault of Biafra's leadership.

I see that you have refused to address that argument, even though myself earlier and Kadiri later have given examples that are unavoidable.

The insistence on unqualified critique of Nigeria's war conduct and silence or whitewashing about Biafran leadership's problematic decisions in that war makes it harder for many Nigerians to adequately credit the Biafran tragedy.

Also, those in the Midwest and the SS and SE minorities  who suffered at the hands of Biafra await recognition of their suffering by the Biafrans and their descendants.

It does not seem to be forthcoming.

But the self appointed spokespeople for Biafra want Biafra's suffering acknowledged in a way that is not agreeable to all parties in that conflict.

So, where shall we start from?

Thanks

Toyin

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 00:52 Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
it seems the biafran command's management of biafran civilians as well as their response to the issues around food relief need serious scrutiny.

there is a need for rounded narratives.

toyin

On Thu, 15 Sept 2022 at 21:20, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​If there had been war tribunal after the civil war, Ojukwu and others would have been convicted of war crimes for taking civilian hostages and refusing to accept relief supplies to non-combatants. In Nigeria where everything is up-side-down and people think with the heart and not the brain, the defeated in a war want to put the victor on trial for genocide because the defeated who took civilian hostages (both elderly women, men and children) that they could not feed by themselves but refused to accept food through supervised corridors, starved to death. While I have no reason to defend the Queen of UK, I am told that Queen Elisabeth II's government supported Gowon to commit genocide against the Igbo. What is the evidence for that?  Chidi somersaulted backwards referring to "photos from Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth II's credible independent BBC of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkor Biafran children. Human head is not a hat shelf, it contains brain to think.
S. Kadiri  


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sent: 15 September 2022 06:03

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Salimonu Kadiri

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Sep 17, 2022, 3:21:50 PM9/17/22
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​Chidi,

Death is the ultimate death of all human beings and while talking about the death we should absolutely refrain from telling lies against the dead, remembering that one day we too are going to die. What Awolowo actually said was published in the London Financial Times of June 26, 1969 and recited in the London Daily Telegraph of June 27, 1969, which is as follows: ALL IS FAIR IN WAR AND STARVATION IS ONE OF THE WEAPONS OF WAR. I DO NOT SEE WHY WE SHOULD FEED OUR ENEMIES FAT IN ORDER FOR THEM TO FIGHT US HARDER. The statement was in reaction to the widely publicised statement by the International Red Cross at the time that Colonel Joe Achuzie led Biafran soldiers were not only raiding relief stations in Biafra and seizing food but also hijacking incoming relief supplies meant for Biafran civilians to feed soldiers. Obviously, Awolowo's statement was not a government's policy statement directed at unarmed civilian Biafrans but against Biafran soldiers. Remember that Awolowo's statement was made almost a year after Ojukwu had rejected Gowon's offer of international supervised land relief supply routes from Nigeria to Biafra (see Chinua Achebe's, There Was a Country, p. 211). The statement was also made 26 days after Ojukwu's June 1, 1969 Ahiara declaration in which he condemned Biafrans for slaughtering cows to Christen their new-born babies and throwing parties at weekends while the war was ongoing. With the above evidence you are guilty of deliberately quoting Awolowo wrongly (starvation is a legitimate instrument of war) and mischievously omitting part of the statement which indicated clearly that the Biafran Army was Awolowo's target for starvation and not the civilian population. 
S. Kadiri 


Sent: 17 September 2022 17:19

Cornelius Hamelberg

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Sep 17, 2022, 3:21:50 PM9/17/22
to USA Africa Dialogue Series

Dear Chidi,

In my humble view, in all such circumstances, it is preferable that instead of lambasting our dearly departed Her Majesty who you refer to as “ the British Queen”, at this very time you could be more circumspect and more considerate by referring to the proper decision-making authority, as the case may be  - either the British Government or the Foreign Office

N.B. The British monarch is not some kind of dictator, some kind of Ozymandias sitting on the throne or merely rubber-stamping decisions about war and peace.  Is that how you think that the second world war was pursued for instance, as a direct conflict between the Führer und Reichskanzlerand King George VI?

At secondary school for A levels, we studied the British Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria. - and at a later period, the state of the English Language and its Literature, during the so-called Victorian era and did not get any impression of decrees coming from the throne and not from the British Parliament - including the War Office and of course the Old Colonial Office. 

 Did  Emeka Anyaoku bring up these matters before, during or after the period 1990 - 2000 when he was Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, 1990 - 2000, and if so, exactly how did such discussions go? 

Crudely put, the persistent rumour that sought to explain what looked like Britain's ambivalence before, during and after the Biafra war was that massive oil deposits had been discovered in the region being claimed as Biafra and of course that also brought up the spectre of who was going to be in charge of all that oil and its proceeds, who would better serve British interests, landlocked  Biafra or the Federal Government of Nigeria? 

Of possible interest to some of the pundits on this thread:

Monarchy, British Espionage, Fabianism & Esoteric Imperial History Vs Jay Dyer

 

 




Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA

unread,
Sep 18, 2022, 8:17:08 AM9/18/22
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com
"All IS FAIR IN WAR AND STARVATION IS ONE OF THE WEAPONS OF WAR. I DO NOT SEE WHY WE SHOULD FEED OUR ENEMIES FAT IN ORDER FOR THEM TO FIGHT US HARDER"

The above is even more horrific than the one you labelled the misquoted version. Is all really fair in war? Should all be fair in war? These questions are of course for men and women of conscience.

Awolowo wanted to stop Biafran soldiers from hijacking relief materials and ended up killing many children and the elderly and that is right?

Mazi Cornelius,
The organs you referenced were/are all appendages of "Her Majesty's government".

-CAO


On Saturday, September 17, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi,

Death is the ultimate death of all human beings and while talking about the death we should absolutely refrain from telling lies against the dead, remembering that one day we too are going to die. What Awolowo actually said was published in the London Financial Times of June 26, 1969 and recited in the London Daily Telegraph of June 27, 1969, which is as follows: ALL IS FAIR IN WAR AND STARVATION IS ONE OF THE WEAPONS OF WAR. I DO NOT SEE WHY WE SHOULD FEED OUR ENEMIES FAT IN ORDER FOR THEM TO FIGHT US HARDER. The statement was in reaction to the widely publicised statement by the International Red Cross at the time that Colonel Joe Achuzie led Biafran soldiers were not only raiding relief stations in Biafra and seizing food but also hijacking incoming relief supplies meant for Biafran civilians to feed soldiers. Obviously, Awolowo's statement was not a government's policy statement directed at unarmed civilian Biafrans but against Biafran soldiers. Remember that Awolowo's statement was made almost a year after Ojukwu had rejected Gowon's offer of international supervised land relief supply routes from Nigeria to Biafra (see Chinua Achebe's, There Was a Country, p. 211). The statement was also made 26 days after Ojukwu's June 1, 1969 Ahiara declaration in which he condemned Biafrans for slaughtering cows to Christen their new-born babies and throwing parties at weekends while the war was ongoing. With the above evidence you are guilty of deliberately quoting Awolowo wrongly (starvation is a legitimate instrument of war) and mischievously omitting part of the statement which indicated clearly that the Biafran Army was Awolowo's target for starvation and not the civilian population. 
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 17 September 2022 17:19

Sent: 15 September 2022 06:03

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Salimonu Kadiri

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Sep 18, 2022, 10:07:35 AM9/18/22
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​Awolowo did not kill any child and elderly in Biafra. The Biafran children and elderly that died were under the government of Ojukwu who was responsible to feed all his subjects under the war. Awolowo was not a soldier and Gowon who was a soldier had no soldiers inside Biafra to monitor that relief supplies sent to Biafra for civilian's sake were not confiscated by Biafran Soldiers. All is fair in war, if not the U.S., would not have thrown hydrogen bomb into Hiroshima and Nagasaki in retaliation to Japanese air attack on America's Pearl Harbour during the World War II. It is a plain error of judgement to classify Awolowo's statement as horrific. Would it not have been senseless for Awolowo to state that food should been sent to feed Biafran soldiers so that they would be able to fight Nigerian army harder? What does your conscience tell you about Ojukwu's refusal to accept Gowon's offer of opening internationally supervised relief-supply land routes from Nigeria to Biafra in June 1968, a year before Awolowo's statement which was not even a government policy? What do you say of the Red Cross marked Aircraft ferrying weapons that was shot down by the Nigerian Air Force in 1969 over Biafra instead of relief supplies?
S. Kadiri  


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Sent: 18 September 2022 04:17
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Ibukunolu A Babajide

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CAO,

I do not intend to get involved in this debate but I want to correct a historical error and propaganda. When during the NADECO days in London, Baba Anthony Enahoro told us that this statement attributed to Chief Obafemi Awolowo was made by him when as Information Minister in Gowon's war cabinet, he met and was interviewed by a foreign  journalist.

The Biafran Okonkwo Ndem propaganda machinery attributed it to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and like so many factual hustorical errors of the time endures till today. 

You can resume your debate. This is the narrow point I want to make. 

Cheers. 

IBK

On Sun, 18 Sept 2022, 2:17 pm Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA, <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
"All IS FAIR IN WAR AND STARVATION IS ONE OF THE WEAPONS OF WAR. I DO NOT SEE WHY WE SHOULD FEED OUR ENEMIES FAT IN ORDER FOR THEM TO FIGHT US HARDER"

The above is even more horrific than the one you labelled the misquoted version. Is all really fair in war? Should all be fair in war? These questions are of course for men and women of conscience.

Awolowo wanted to stop Biafran soldiers from hijacking relief materials and ended up killing many children and the elderly and that is right?

Mazi Cornelius,
The organs you referenced were/are all appendages of "Her Majesty's government".

-CAO


On Saturday, September 17, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi,

Death is the ultimate death of all human beings and while talking about the death we should absolutely refrain from telling lies against the dead, remembering that one day we too are going to die. What Awolowo actually said was published in the London Financial Times of June 26, 1969 and recited in the London Daily Telegraph of June 27, 1969, which is as follows: ALL IS FAIR IN WAR AND STARVATION IS ONE OF THE WEAPONS OF WAR. I DO NOT SEE WHY WE SHOULD FEED OUR ENEMIES FAT IN ORDER FOR THEM TO FIGHT US HARDER. The statement was in reaction to the widely publicised statement by the International Red Cross at the time that Colonel Joe Achuzie led Biafran soldiers were not only raiding relief stations in Biafra and seizing food but also hijacking incoming relief supplies meant for Biafran civilians to feed soldiers. Obviously, Awolowo's statement was not a government's policy statement directed at unarmed civilian Biafrans but against Biafran soldiers. Remember that Awolowo's statement was made almost a year after Ojukwu had rejected Gowon's offer of international supervised land relief supply routes from Nigeria to Biafra (see Chinua Achebe's, There Was a Country, p. 211). The statement was also made 26 days after Ojukwu's June 1, 1969 Ahiara declaration in which he condemned Biafrans for slaughtering cows to Christen their new-born babies and throwing parties at weekends while the war was ongoing. With the above evidence you are guilty of deliberately quoting Awolowo wrongly (starvation is a legitimate instrument of war) and mischievously omitting part of the statement which indicated clearly that the Biafran Army was Awolowo's target for starvation and not the civilian population. 
S. Kadiri 



Sent: 17 September 2022 17:19
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sent: 15 September 2022 06:03

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
"What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra..."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so much for presentation of "facts".

"In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces."-Salimonu Kadiri.

Remark: so the photos, etc, from credible independent sources(BBC and others)of deaths from the bombings of civilian residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools and those of kwashiorkored Biafran children, etc, are all fake?

-CAO.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​Chidi, 
I am not a professional word-twister like the usual Nigerian lawyers who contrary to mathematical truth would insist that two-third of nineteen is twelve. War is cruel and that is why in war innocent civilians always perish. Nigeria-Biafra war could not have been different from that phenomenon even though more people died on the side of Biafra than Nigeria. Concerning Nigeria/Biafra war, it would have been intellectually honest if you have elaborated on what constituted half-truths and out of context postulations in my submission as you claimed. You will always have problem if you read the history of Nigeria/Biafra war the way you want it to be and not as it actually happened. If I may ask, on what basis are you talking of 'the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration?' What happened was not a military blockade but military encirclement of Biafra, reduced into a small enclave after the Nigerian forces had captured Nsukka - July 1967; Bonny Island - July 1967; Ikom a key town on Biafra's border with Cameroon - September 1967; Enugu - October 1967; Calabar - October 1967; Afikpo, Ugep, Ediba, Itigidi and Obubra - February 1968; Ikot Ekpene - March 1968; Port Harcourt - May 1968; Aba and Owerri - September 1968. In every town and village captured by the Federal forces, Ojukwu saw to it that civilians were forcibly evacuated with the retreating Biafran forces. As at September 1968, only Umuahia was controlled by Biafran forces and it was that September 1968 when starvation broke out in the Umuahia enclave that Ojukwu dispatched a Biafran delegate to France to solicit for more weapons to continue the war. On 7 September 1968, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Dr Michael Okpara, Dr Kenneth Dike and Francis Nwokedi leading Biafran weapon negotiators arrived in Paris. With the military situation in Biafra, France thought it was useless to increase delivery of arms to Biafra. Consequently, Azikiwe advised that Biafra should enter into peace negotiation with Nigeria, which Ojukwu rejected. Thereafter, Azikiwe absconded from the delegate and sought political asylum in England. That same September 1968, Gowon's government offered to open supervised land routes of relief supplies to Biafra which Ojukwu rejected, according to Chinua Achebe. While you in 2022 is inventing a history of genocide supposedly committed by Nigeria against the Igbo in the 6th July 1967 to 15th January 1970 civil war, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, addressed the Eastern Consultative Assembly in December 1968 saying that, "OUR REAL VICTORY LIES IN OUR ABILITY TO PREVENT THE EXTERMINATION OF OUR PEOPLE BY A HEARTLESS ENEMY. IN SO FAR AS THESE AIMS ARE CONCERNED, WE HAVE NOT FAILED (Biafra: Ojukwu's Selected Speeches, Vol. 1, p. 353)." Ojukwu prevented genocide by going to war, he claimed. Please Chidi, take note that fact is sacrosanct while fiction is a practical joke.
S. Kadiri 


From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sent: 14 September 2022 06:34

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Today's Quote
Salimonu,

I, of course expected your usual inclination to denialism in the matter under reference and your usual presentation of half truths and out of context postulations as "facts".

This is not about sophistry and/or rhetorics, it is about civilian lives(flesh and blood), especially that of children and the elderly lost in great numbers as a result of the blockade of foods and medications supply routes to Biafra by the Gowon administration with the support of Queen Elizabeth II's government and the inappropriate actions of the reckless and ruthless Nigerian Airforce pilots and army commanders.

-CAO.

On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:
​It is too early to revise the history of Nigerian civil war. It is a pure revisionism of history to state, "The Aburi agreement by Ojukwu and Gowon would have stopped the civil war through which the genocide was executed but Britain prevailed on Gowon to renege." The Aburi agreement was not between Ojukwu and Gowon. The Aburi Nigeria's Supreme Military Council meeting held in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967, was attended by the following people : Lt-Col. Yakubu Gowon, Colonel Robert Adebayo, Lt-Col. Odumegwu Ojukwu, Lt-Col. David Ejoor, Lt-Col. Hassan Katsina; Commodore J.E.A. Wey, Major Mobolaji Johnson, Alhaji Kam Salem, and Mr. T. Omo-Bare. Secretaries at the meeting were, Mr S.I.A Akenzua - Permanent Under-Secretary, Federal Cabinet Office; Mr P.T. Odumosu - Secretary to the Military Government, Western Region; Mr N.U. Akpan - Secretary to the Military Government, Eastern Region; Mr D.P. Lawani - Under Secretary, Military Governor's Office, Mid-West Region; and Alhaji Ali Akilu - Secretary to the Military Government, Northern Region. The Nigerian Supreme Military Council meeting in Aburi was necessitated because Ojukwu as a member refused to attend any such meeting in Nigeria after July 29, 1966 coup that toppled the military government of Ironsi. 

Contrary to Chidi Anthony Opara's claim, the Aburi agreement was fully implemented through Decree No.8 of March 1967 with an addition that the Federal Military Government could declare a State of Emergency in any part of the Federation provided three of the four regional governors consented to it. Three of the regional governors then, were in the South. Ojukwu rejected Decree No.8 in its entirety and on May 26, 1967, he convened his so-called Eastern Consultative Assembly which he addressed and gave three alternatives to choose from. The alternatives were: (i) accepting the terms of the North and Gowon and thereby submit to domination by the North, or (ii) continue the present stalemate and drift, or (iii) ensuring the survival of our people by asserting our autonomy. Ojukwu assured his audience that the East was prepared to defend itself and that, "There is no power in this country or in Black Africa to subdue us by force." On 27 May 1967, the Eastern Consultative Assembly unanimously passed a resolution mandating Ojukwu to declare the sovereign Republic of Biafra. That same day, Gowon declared a State of Emergency throughout the whole country, abrogated Decree No. 8 and divided the country into twelve new states. May 30, 1967, Ojukwu unilaterally declared the Eastern Region as a Republic of Biafra. On 6 July 1967, police action to arrest Ojukwu and his rebellious gang was initiated by the federal government led by Gowon.

Chidi Anthony Opara asserted, "Genocide was however conceived and executed when it became difficult to defeat Biafra through police action as initially hoped by Gowon and his advisers." 
Chidi's assertion is fictional. It was after the invasion of Mid-West by the Biafran Forces on 9 August 1967 that the Federal Government changed its police action to total war. Towards the end of September 1967, the entire Biafran troops had been expunged from the Mid-West and on October 4, 1967, the Capital of Biafra was captured by troops led by, the then, Major Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma. Ojukwu fled to Umuahia. With the capture of Enugu, the Federal Government had hoped that Ojukwu would renounce secession but he stubbornly continued the war from his new capital Umuahia which was captured on 22 April 1969. So, the proclamation of total war instead of the original police action by the Federal Government had nothing to do with conceived genocide and difficulty to defeat Biafra but invasion of the Mid-West in 1967.

"Aside from the deliberate bombing of hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas," Chidi wrote, "genocide denialists do not see the blockade of food and medical supply routes to the Biafra Area by the Gowon administration..." In the anal of history of war, Nigeria is the only country in the world that has ever invited International Observers to follow her soldiers at the war front and to report on the behaviour of her combatants. A government that wanted to commit genocide would not have invited international observers to come and witness it. After visiting Nigeria on August 17, 1969, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe returned to London where he had taken refuge after absconding from the Biafran delegation to Paris in September 1968. On 28 August 1969, Dr Azikiwe addressed the press and said among other things, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, ........ why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless? (p. 255, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Effiong)." Ojukwu himself that led Igbo into the war was asked by Barnaby Phillips in a BBC interview, 13 January 2000, titled, 'Biafra: Thirty Years On', if he, Ojukwu, felt responsible for the Biafran war?  Ojukwu answered rhetorically, "Responsibility for what went on? How can I feel responsible in a situation in which I put myself out AND SAVED THE PEOPLE FROM GENOCIDE? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/596712.stm   
​Ojukwu said he saved the Igbo from genocide by going to war and Chidi is still claiming in 2022 that genocide was committed against the Igbo in the same war between 1967 and 1970 in Nigeria, who should we believe? The music of Nigeria/Biafra war stopped on 15 January 1970, but some deaf Nigerians not hearing that the war music has stopped are still dancing.

In his swansong, 'There Was a Country,' Chinua Achebe wrote that by rainy season of 1968, Biafra was completely surrounded and Biafrans were harboured in a narrow corridor around Umuahia (p. 209). By the beginning of dry season of 1968, Biafran civilians and soldiers alike were starving, Chinua Achebe wrote on p. 210. Thereafter, on p. 211, Chinua Achebe revealed, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure .... decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out of land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies." The international relief agencies could equally inspect food supplies from Nigeria through many of the land routes entering the surrounded Biafran enclave. It was plain that Ojukwu wanted to airlift weapons, out of the sight of Nigerian authorities, and not food into Biafra. That there was no scarcity of food in Biafra, Ojukwu in his 1st of June 1969 Ahiara Declaration complained that while the war was ongoing, people were throwing parties and slaughtering cows to Christen their new born babies. Obviously, in the Igbo cast system, Diala Igbo inside Biafra were not starving but the inferior Osu/Ohu-Igbo and non-Igbo ethnic minorities forcibly evacuated into Biafra.

Chidi Anthony Okpara claimed that the Nigerian forces bombed hospitals, schools, markets and civilian residential areas deliberately during the civil war but he failed to acknowledge that the Biafran forces converted hospitals, schools, markets and residential areas to military barracks from where they were firing rockets at the Nigerian forces. Against the rule of engagement, armed Biafran soldiers wore red-cross uniform to attack Nigerian forces, to which Benjamin Adekunle protested in 1968. Chinua Achebe narrated his personal experience about the Biafran forces taking shield behind civilian homes and public institutions to attack the Nigerian Army. On p. 172-173 of his, There Was a Country, Achebe wrote, "We had gone to bed on one particular night - my family, Augustine and his family, and Frank and his family. WE DID NOT REALISE THAT BIAFRAN SOLDIERS HAD SET UP THEIR ARMORY OUTSIDE MY FATHER'S HOUSE, ON THE VERANDA, THE PORCH, AND OUTSIDE IN THE YARD. .... On this particular night we were oblivious to what was going on outside our father's house. While we were sleeping the Biafran army was turning our ancestral home into a military base of sorts. No one asked us for permission. They did not knock to ask or to inform. In hindsight, what happened next was enough to have caused sudden cardiac arrest in some people. We all were awakened violently from sleep by a loud ka-boom, followed by the rattling of the house foundation and walls, indeed of the entire house. A number of people who were asleep fell off their beds, violently ushered back into reality by the vibrations, the shock, and the noise of the artillery fire outside. The men in the house went outside to find out what was going on. A COLONEL WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF THIS EXERCISE EXPLAINED THAT THEY HAD DECIDED TO USE OUR HOME AS A TACTICAL BASE BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THEM A LOGISTICAL AND STRATEGIC ADVANTAGE AS THEY SHELL THE ENCROACHING FEDERAL TROOPS." Would the Nigerian Army have committed any crime by bombing Achebe's ancestral home from where Biafran forces was shelling Nigerian forces? That is the question those who have capacity to tell lies with cosmetic beauty will never ask and much less answering it.
S. Kadiri  




Sent: 12 September 2022 09:48
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Founder/Publisher of, www.publicinformationprojects.org)

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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