Alliance of the feudal North and decadent West

Frederick Forsyth, in his controversial book The Making of an African Legend: The Biafra Story, writes: “Victors write history, and the Biafrans lost.” It should be recalled that at the end of the civil war in 1970 General Yakubu Gowon famously declared that there were no victors and no vanquished, even though it is clear to all that the civil war established the military power clique that superintends over the country to this day. At independence in 1960 Nigeria was said to stand on a tripod of East, West and North. The civil war ensured that the North in alliance with the West defeated the East. The oppressed minorities of course took sides with the victors. That is a simple historical fact, and any other embellishments only exist to serve expedience. Samuel Johnson in his History of the Yorubas writes: “Light and civilization with the Yorubas come from the North.” According to Michael Crowder in The Story of Nigeria, “When the British occupied Nigeria they had almost no contact with the large Ibo and Ibibio population of the East, whilst already many Yoruba had received English education and provided a small intellectual elite in Lagos. Population pressures and land hunger in the East forced many Ibo and Ibibio to migrate to the cities of the West and North, where they proved remarkably successful as clerks, railway workers and storekeepers.”

In The Trouble with Nigeria Chinua Achebe writes: “Nigerians of all other ethnic groups will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo… The origin of the national resentment of the Igbo is as old as Nigeria and quite as complicated. But it can be summarized thus: The Igbo culture being receptive to change, individualistic and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials for advancement in Nigerian colonial society. Unlike the Hausa/Fulani, he was unhindered by a wary religion and unlike the Yoruba unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind of creature, fearing neither god nor man, was custom-made to grasp the opportunities, such as they were, of the white man’s dispensation. And the Igbo did so with both hands. Although the Yoruba had a huge historical and geographical head-start the Igbo wiped out their handicap in one fantastic burst of energy in the twenty years between 1930 and 1950.”

The fear of the other tribes could not have been assuaged by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s statement, to wit: “It would appear that the God of Africa has created the Ibo nation to lead the children of Africa from the bondage of the ages…” When Majors Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Patrick Nzeogwu struck to end the wobbling First Republic, the coup was tagged an “Igbo Coup” even though the plotters had planned according to them to release Chief Obafemi Awolowo from prison and compel him to rule the country. On why the coup-makers wanted Awolowo as the leader of the country, Major Ifeajuna wrote in his unpublished manuscript: “Chief Awolowo launched forth his party on a platform of tribalism, and for his parochial and partisan approach to national issues, he got deserving blame. But probably in the later Awolowo of after the 1959 Federal election that began the fiasco, our people saw for a second time an image of honesty, courage and discipline… In time he came to win the respect and admiration of even his greatest detractors, and what was more, he came to represent a rallying point for the young and the intellectual, for all that sought progress and nationhood for our country.