Nigeria: Anybody’s War

“If Northern soldiers set one foot in side Biafran soil, not a single inch of Nigerian territory will be safe from our attack.” That was the vow of Biafra Secessionist Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu just before Nigeria’s federal troops, led by Major General Yakubu Gowon, invaded Ojukwu’s Eastern Region six weeks ago. Ojukwu was slow to make good his threat. But last week, having fought his attackers to a standstill, he was ready to take the offensive. In a swift twelve-hour drive, he captured the federal government’s oil-rich Midwestern State (pop: 2,500,000) with impressive ease.

The operation began in the predawn hours when more than 100 trucks carrying hundreds of Biafran troops rolled across the Niger River Bridge that connects the Biafran town of Onitsha with the Midwestern town of Asaba. There, the troops split into two columns—one heading south toward the seacoast, the other sweeping west to the state capital of Benin. With nice timing, Biafra sympathizers in Benin were already staging a military coup against the Midwestern governor, and the city fell with hardly a shot. Other towns soon followed, including the bustling southern port of Warri. That night, a Biafran B-26 bombed three heavily populated suburbs in the federal capital of Lagos; next morning, the plane hit the Nigerian air force base at the Northern administrative capital of Kaduna. In between times, it dropped thousands of leaflets on federal territory, warning of “the terrible consequences of continued collaboration” with Gowon. “Now that we are on the offensive,” Ojukwu announced over Radio Biafra, “we shall not relent until every single enemy soldier on Biafran soil is destroyed, more territories of Nigeria liberated, and the enemy vanquished.”

In Lagos, Gowon promised to escalate his response. “From now on,” he said, “the forces of the federal military government will reply with heavier blows to every act committed by the rebels and will pursue them in an all-out drive until the rebellion is completely stamped out.” So far, Gowon’s 15,000 troops—double those of Ojukwu—have barely won a foothold in Biafra. But Ojukwu’s forces are spread thin, and the more territory they invade the more vulnerable their lives will become. It is still anybody’s war.

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