A LETTER THAT ELICITS PASSON, INGENUITY, COURAGE, LOVE AND LONGING FOR BIAFRA Dear Editor Eastern Pilot Newspaper, Ndeewo, nwannem! My hand is outstretched in greetings to you for your bold effort in establishing the medium to speak up for a once gallant race, but whose manhood and pride have now been taken away by lesser tribes. It is a calamity that Ala-igbo is lying prostrate, trampled all over by Lilliput tribes, while its sons and daughters are busy chasing naira and kobo, according to rules set by jawless strangers. Ndigbo is today like the felled Iroko tree which old women now climb all over. My name’s Chike Emenike, resident in Lagos. Earlier this year I made an unsuccessful attempt to reach Sao Tome-based oil billionaire, an Iboman named Chief Emeka Offor, with the hope to urge him to establish a national daily newspaper with the sole mandate to speak for Ndigbo, since The Champion and The Sun newspapers have failed to reflect the views of Ndigbo, in the same way as the Lagos-Ibadan axis of the Nigerian press does for the Yoruba and Mid-West peoples. The North has theirs, The New Nigeria, The Daily Trust, etc., as their mouthpiece newspapers. I’ve worked in an Ndigbo business committee with Governor Peter Obi, long before he went into politics and became governor. He is not an Ibo-interest advocate. Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe has been a friend from way back when he worked as a manager at SCOA, in Lagos in the early 90’s. Senator Clement Anene (Annie) Okonkwo became an acquaintance in 1993, and I’ve had cause to write to Senator Uche Chukwumerije on account of his exploits as Biafra’s wartime Information Minister. None of these well-paced Ibo sons, to my knowledge, is interested in doing something to fight the media hegemony of the other races against Ndigbo. That’s why your current effort is crucial and deserves every support it can get. As I said earlier, I’m Chike, a nephew of late educationist and A-list novelist, John Munonye, who helped establish Biafra’s Ministry of Education in Umuahia. John was a classmate and associate of Prof. Chinua Achebe. I recall Prof. Achebe and Prof. Kodilinye (then VC of UNN), both visited us a few times at Owerri where I lived with John and his family in 1970. A month after the war in 1970, John took me from our home town to Enugu where he joined a few others to restart the East Central State Ministry of Education. We slept on bare floor and lived on an accumulated royalty (from civil war years) of 3000 pounds sterling paid him by publishers, Heinemann of London via there Ibadan office, on his first book “The Only Son”. He had been posted to Owerri in June 1970, to establish the Alvan Ikoku College of Education. He brought his family to Enugu from the village and then enrolled me at the Government College, Owerri, where I completed my High School education, interrupted for three years by the civil war when we fled Port Harcourt. Earlier, I got to participate in the war by some element of luck and sheer audacity at age 14. War-time village life was boring and I was restless. On account of this I readily agreed to escort an uncle to the army selection grounds (Orlu Township stadium) that cold harmattan morning on January 2, 1968. He was a carpenter, a muscular man with both age and height advantages. I had none of this. So I saw that I was clearly ineligible for enlistment in every respect. All around the stadium you saw barrel-chested Ibo men with yam-sized calf muscles, puffing their biceps and straining to be unleashed to face the “vandals”. Thousands of them, including my uncle got selected. But I was ignominiously tossed out of the selection parade by a stern-looking ramrod straight Sergeant Major, who caught me bluffing on tiptoes and shoved me aside by my under-pant. The suppressed laughter of a few hopeful would-be recruits nearby, added to my humiliation. Successful recruits, my uncle among them, proceeded to the trucks waiting to convey them to the training school. It was there that my uncle happily gave me some money for my fare home and a message for his young wife, for no one in the village knew we had gone for “army selection”. You should’ve seen my uncle’s joy at the great privilege of being selected for training as a Biafran soldier. It was the in-thing, the sole mark of bravery, to been seen in a Biafran Army uniform. To bear a bandaged limb as a soldier who had seen action, was the ultimate attraction to the womenfolk. That’s why the crowd gathered. But today, thousands of other anxious grown men had not been as lucky as my uncle, and were asked to come back and try another day. It was at this point that Providence took over. As I walked out of the stadium gate thoroughly dejected, a military Landrover jeep was driving in. A voice from the vehicle called out, “Hey you, what are you doing here?”. Startled, I looked across to find an officer beckoning me over. And how excited I felt at this extraordinary event, seeing my “master” back at Stella Maris College, Port Harcourt. Senior Boniface Okoye was a Sixth Form student (for the HSC) before schools were shut in July of the previous year, 1967, following the outbreak of the war. Okoye was my “master” in the boarding house. I served him, bringing his meals from the refectory and running sundry errands, just like all other juniors did for other seniors. Now he had two stars on his epaulette as an officer of the Biafran Army, having been trained at the Hill Top Military Academy, Enugu, and was the head of the recruitment team on this occasion. He was clearly delighted to see me. But his countenance changed the moment I answered his question as to what I was doing there. “Go home, my friend!”, he barked at my request to be assisted to enlist. “This is not the Boys Scout!” The other occupants of the vehicle eyed me disdainfully and chuckled. But I was undaunted. As they drove in, I turned around and followed suit. I tagged along wherever he went, keeping a safe distance. To cut the story short, I bluffed my way through, dropping his name and pointing him out when necessary, and so managed to smuggle myself into one of the lorries conveying recruits to the Army Training School at St Dominic’s Secondary School, Ugiri. After the rigorous training that lasted for about four months, my Contigent was first taken to the Ihube Garrison at Uturu, Okigwe, where we stayed briefly. From Ihube we were moved to Otuocha, Aguleri, the HQ of the 57 Brigade, commanded by a certain Col. Joe Achuzia. There we met our would-be Company commander, a Capt. Ifeka. Taking one look at me at the first parade presentation, the man declared that I was a misfit and openly questioned how I got recruited into the army. New troops drawn from the Brigade to make up the number in our Company, looked at me strangely. But I drew support from my six friends with whom I had been in the last five months from the training school. We shared a common corner in the hostel (a primary school classroom) and called ourselves the “chain-gang 7”. True to his threat this cruel-looking tall officer instantly appropriated me as his batsman, saying that was all he thought I would be good for. Terribly injured by this turn of events, I rejected the posting as fast as he had made it and promptly bolted away from his quarters when I was told a batman was simply a houseboy. I insisted I wouldn’t be relegated to the background without the possibility of seeing combat action. How else would I go home bearing a bandaged arm or leg and receive the adoration of grown men in the village who hadn’t the nerve to go fight our enemies? This thought emboldened me. So the line was drawn early and clearly enough. And the running battle of attrition thus started between us. He had me frog-marched and locked up in the guardroom for disobeying orders, and was released only on the night of our departure for our first combat mission two days later. Once released I refused to be anywhere near him. But each time he caught me he had me severly punished. Our mission as directed by the Military High Command, and relayed by the Brigade Commander, was to launch into Nigerian territory, behind enemy lines, and take the town of Adoru, near Idah in today’s Benue State. We learnt this action was to distract the vandals and prevent an imminent push to retake the university town of Nsukka, or something like that. We succeeded in this mission, routing the enemy encampment at Adoru by morning and razing the town later that night. This success was reported by both Radio Biafra and the BBC radio. But we suffered a 30-man loss to unexpected sniper attacks and heavy mortar fire triggered by betrayal from local people who had been utilized as recces. This diminished our strength to 150 men. We held the town for a week. I remember I turned 15 there, thinking about it while on my beat as the sentry that night. The next morning, my friends marked it for me by contributing their own rations of the meat of a goat that was caught and killed that morning for the Platoon we belonged to. The eldest of my friends, Nonso, was about 21 and in Form Four at DMGS, Onitsha. Chuka, 18, was big for his age and in Form Three at St. Joseph’s Secondary School, Aguleri. He was so happy when it turned out we were heading to his home town. In some ways our closeness made our days in the frontline sometimes appear like a Boy Scout outing, especially in between actions. I was the smallest both by size and age, and they all appreciated this and called me “obele” (the small), offering their protection and support at all times. For it never ceased to amaze them how I got the nerves to withstand the rigours of life in the forward lines. Something tragic was soon to happen, following an obvious sabotage by indigenes of the Nsukka area who worked clandestinely for the enemy. We were hurriedly asked to retreat from Adoru in the afternoon of our seventh day. We later learnt that this was to save us from being cut off and encircled by the advancing enemy forces. We marched in a single file for hours, along foot tracks through bushy and hilly terrain, to the Biafra/Nigeria border, tensed and apprehensive for much of the time because of the hurried nature of our withdrawal. It was close to dusk when we finally got to the rendezvous on the Biafran side where military trucks were waiting to take us to an unknown place. The officers among us spoke in conspiratory tones, leaving in its wake a sense of foreboding among those of us who were sensitive enough to pick it up. At best of times our commander did not smile or joked, now he seemed frantic and on edge. I kept well away from him. We arrived at a Primary School compound somewhere said to be around Onuiyi, Nsukka, close to the Onuiyi-Haven country home of the then still living Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. It was already very dark now and the sense of foreboding in me was heightened when the officers set about hurriedly deploying our men to a forward line that was apparently not far from where we were. The first batch of troops went with the few available vehicles. Then information came that the trenches were shallow, in an unfamiliar terrain, alongside unfamiliar troops from as yet unknown battalions. The night air itself smelt of danger. Despite of our good efforts my gang couldn’t get us all into one of the vehicles at a go. So we suffered inevitable separation in the confusion. Because of my wounds I narrowly missed the wagon car that included the last of my friends. When the vehicle returned, my personal enemy, the Commander who was no longer on talking terms with me, ordered me not to board it. He barked out an order to the Medics to “take away this idiot and bandage his bleeding knees and have him locked up till tomorrow morning”. It was as if I was hit with a sledge hammer. I wept bitterly, thinking of my friends, of the possibility of not being able to link up with them. For the first time since Ugiri, I felt alone and it was awful. One of the nurses, a female Corporal, did her best to comfort me after treating my wounds. I could not sleep. As early as 5am the next morning a barrage of mortar fire shook the area surrounding the school premises. By 7am, the compound itself was hit and the Medics embarked upon hurried evacuation of patients and personnel, myself included. I limped and was helped into the vehicle. In summary, of the seven of us in the gang, Nonso was the last I was to see, carried on a school blackboard by two weeping soldiers. One of his legs had been blown away from the hip joint and it now hung on just a tendon. A rush of blood flowed down the board behind the soldiers bearing him. Defying the pain I leapt from the truck and wen to clutch at his dangling hand. “Obele, look after yourself!”, he said amid clenched teeth. Then he shouted “Biafra must win!”. As the Sergeant in charge of the Medical Unit was considering the best way to transport him down to Adani, my Nonso died, right there in front of me. And something also died in me. I swore I must kill an enemy, someday, somewhere, somehow, as long as this war lasted. I clambered back into the truck and sat in an anguished reverie, lost in a world of my own, wishing nothing but death. I thought of my mother who didn’t know where I was, and then of Nonso’s mother who would not know that her son was now dead. I was still in a daze when I was asked to alight from the truck at Adani. Hundreds of civilians, children, old men and women with belongings on their heads, were trooping towards Adani from the direction we had come. I learnt that the vandals overran Onuiyi town and burnt down the home of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. They advanced for more than five kilometers thereafter, aiming to cross the Adani River bridge before nightfall. But the Biafran Army engineers blew the bridge to halt their advance. Getting to Adani would have meant merely pushing down to the Anambra River, cross it and take Otuocha, Aguleri, the HQ of Acuzia’s 57 Brigade. From Otucha, they would easily connect the Onitsha and Awka axes of the war. This was out of the question. It was not to be allowed to happen. When I left the Medics after having my wound re-bandaged, I rejoined what was left of my Company later that evening. To my shock I found that only 53 men of the 150 that had arrived the Onuiyi area yesterday, made it down here to Adani. The rest were killed, including Chuka, Nonso and the rest of my chain-gang 7. I even heard some were captured by the enemy as a result of the hurried nature of the deployment there. Oyibo, a jolly, loquacious fair-skinned fellow who had been everyone’s friend right from the training school, was reportedly taken alive. Although an illiterate taxi driver at Aba before he joined the Biafran Army, handsome Oyibo was highly self-opinionated and argumentative. He was said to have ignored the counsel of the others and broken cover when surrounded by enemy soldiers and had unknowingly waved down an enemy military Land-Rover, thinking it was a Biafran vehicle, much against the advice of his colleagues. Perhaps it was the scale of the loss and how it happened that drove Capt Ifeka mad. His eyes bloodshot, he attempted shooting a fellow officer following an argument at a regrouping meeting of officers that night. When he was prevailed upon to back down he suddenly turned the Browning service pistol on himself, but it was swiftly knocked away by a vigilant officer nearby. It was in this raging frame of my mind that he sauntered into where I was with the Medics and threatened to first shoot me, and then the Medic Sergeant, for not having me locked up as ordered. The commotion was enormous and it took a group of officers to save me and lead him away sobbing and sweating profusely. The dreaded Col. Joe Achuzia emerged at the camp that evening and there was this great fear of him everywhere, among officers and men alike. True to his sobriquet as “Air Raid” he suddenly appeared like an enemy fighter jet and everyone was taking cover. Tales abound of how he would think nothing of shooting an officer, talk less of an other-rank soldier, that showed the slightest sign of cowardice. But the evening finally passed without further incident. The Brigade Commander regrouped us and a new 59th Battalion was created, to be commanded by Capt. Ifeka. Its HQ was at Awkuzu, far away from Adani. We arrived Awkuzu around September, 1968, just days after Col. Joe Achuzia had accomplished what remains one of the greatest military feats which dealt a crushing blow to the enemy at the Ifite Ukpo stretch of the axis of the Onitsha-Awka-Enugu theatre of the war. The enemy, under the command of General Murtala Mohammed or so, had sought to open the blocked corridor between Onitsha and Awka, with a view to marching down and linking Enugu. This would have isolated the entire northern third of Biafra. A convoy of over 100 arms and ammunition-laden military trucks and tanks were involved in this operation. But Achuzia decimated them with an ingenious plan. This is a story I will tell another time. But I was in the company of my commander, with whom I had at last found favour after I saved his life. We were at the Ifite Ukpo junction, two days after our arrival at Awkuzu, when he led a group of white foreign journalists who visited the still smouldering ruins of enemy war gear. The point here is that the man, Colonel Joseph Achuzia, is a living military legend, a brave and audacious soldier, a warfare economist, an extra-ordinary combatant who Ndigbo must recognize and appreciate in his lifetime. The field accomplishments of Gen. Obasanjo, Gen. Murtala Mohammed, Brig. Benjamin Adekunle, etc., for which Nigeria handed them its rulership on a platter, all of them combined still stand diminished before the awesome achievements of Col. Achuzia (and to some extent Col. Onwuatuegwu) for Biafra in the field of battle. Please, my brother, do me this great favour. Let me have the contact phone number, e-mail address or whatever, of the good Colonel. I’d be eternally grateful if you could do this for me. I’ve longed to see him and shake his great hand, and tell him he will remain my hero forever. The oppressive Nigerian nation may hinder and block him out as they like the way they did Ojukwu, Philip Effiong, Madiebo etc., but they will never subdue the great man’s spirit. I read his interview on Page 9 of your Vol.10, No.171 edition, triggering this lengthy reminiscence. I hope you don’t mind it. Now regarding what should be done to address the ignorance of Ndigbo about the great role having a powerful media muscle in a polity plays for a majority group like us, I’ll come round to it soon, now that I have somewhat introduced myself. There is also the need to have the circulation of the Easter Pilot improved in Southern Nigeria in particular. I’ll offer my ideas on all of this in my next mail to you which, of course, will be nowhere as lengthy as this. It will be after I’ve heard from you with my request. Until then, I wish you God’s enabling Blessings and more power to your pen as you undertake this herculean task. Ndigbo are annoyingly apathetic to media matters and reading culture; they are painfully apolitical and naïve quite unlike the Yorubas. Remain blessed. Cheerio! Chike Emenike
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 09:55:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015