People without history are people without identity. Most recently and quite unfortunately, the Nigerian government intentionally expunged history from her education curriculum.
The personal and bizarre tales of Biafrans have been succinctly subjected to obliteration. The pre and post civil war experience still needs to be told so our kids would actually understand how it all started.
However, these stories and events ain’t meant to stir more controversy or with vengeance intent but to drive home the tears of a fallen nation.
Below are the brief story of how it all happened “fifty-something” years ago…
According to personal narratives by Femi Fani-Kayode…
“The massacre began at the airport near the 5th Battalion’s home city of Kano.
A Lagos-bound jet just arrived from London and as the Kano passengers were escorted into the customs shed a wild-eyed soldier stormed in brandishing a rifle and demanding ‘Ina Nyamiri?’–Hausa.
“…‘where are the damned Ibos?’.There were Ibos among the customs officers, and they dropped their chalk and fled, only to be shot down in the main terminal by other soldiers.Screaming the blood curses of a Moslem holy war the Hausa troops turned the airport into a shambles..
“…bayonetting Ibo workers in the bar, gunning them down in the corridors and hauling Ibo passengers off the plane to be lined up and shot.From the airport the troops fanned out through downtown Kano,hunting down Ibos in bars,hotels and on the streets. One contingent drove…
“..their Landrovers to the railroad station where more than 100 Ibos were waiting for a train and cut themdown with automatic weapon fire.The soldiers did not have to do all the killing.They were soon joined by thousands of Hausa civilians,who rampaged through the city armed..
“..with stones,cutlasses,matchets and home-made weapons of metal and broken glass.Crying ‘Heathen’ and ‘Allah’ the mobs and troops invaded the Sabon Gari(strangers’quarter)ransacking, looting and burning Ibo homes and stores and murdering their owners.All night long and into..
“…the morning the massacre went on. Then,tired but fulfilled,the Hausas drifted back to their homes and barracks to get some breakfast and sleep.Municipal garbage trucks were sent out to collect the dead and dump them into mass graves outside the city. The death toll will…
“…never be known, but it was at least thirty thousand. Somehow several thousand Ibos survived the orgy and all had the same thought: to get out of the North.”
– Time Magazine London, 7 October, 1966.
Below is a statistical detailed tale of the worst Genocide and pogroms meted to the Igbos..
OJI RIVER KILLING OF HOSPITAL STAFF AND PATIENTS:
2nd August 1968, Nigerian atrocities in Biafra.
in a hospital outside Enugu, the vandals shot all fourteen Biafran nurses who
stayed behind and then went down the wards killing the patients as well. And
sadly enough, according to Mr C. N. C. Nnolim, these Biafran civilians
massacred by the Nigerian soldiers were not even buried but left in the open air to be devoured by vultures and wild beasts. Also in May 1968 the Nigerian vandal soldiers entered the little
village of Amurri and removed fourteen people, including a prominent Obe
trader, Mr Ngwuocha and from Ozella Awkunanaw. In June 1968, the vandals removed about 500 People, men, women and children. Just Like the fourteen who were
removed from Amurri, nothing has been heard of them over since then and Means that that were the end of them…
OKIGWE 30TH SEPTEMBER 1968
The Nigerian vandal army that entered Okigwe murdered two International
Committee of the Red Cross delegates in Biafra, two missionaries, several
other foreign relief workers and over 100 Biafran civilian, men, women and children. The slaughter was unprovoked.
ASABA 700 IGBOS MEN KILLED:
The brutal episode whatever its cause dramatically reinforces evidence of
genocide..
November 26th 1966 issue that “Perhaps 8,000 Igbo civilians were massacred when
Mid-West was conquered by troops under Col. Murtala Mohammed. Col.Benjamin Adekunle’s men killed over 2000 Biafrans when Mid-West village of Ishiagu was taken. Federal troops shot at women and
children as they moved with Automatic weapons through every hut. Between 100
and 400 men died.
Asaba was one of the centres of mass killings of the natives. On the 5th October one Okwudalue, one of the traditional rulers welcome the Nigerian troops. The villagers were summoned, Then Soldiers with rifles went into every house drawing out everybody and telling them that those who failed to turn up
would be regarded as enemies. The people rushed out in thousands and
everywhere were filled up with shouts of ‘One Nigeria’. Chiefs and prominent
women dressed in their traditional white clothes to welcome the troops.
There were dancing and drumming all over the town.
Suddenly the crowd were surrounded by soldiers and on the orders of the commanding officer, bullets
were sprayed on them. They were mercilessly massacred and the victims were unaccountable, but they were not less than two thousand.
The women were carried away to Agbor where they were forced to serve as ‘comforts’ to the soldiers. Some were forcefully married and some served as a sex slave to Hausa/Fulanis
SAPELE AND WARRI
Sapele and Warri massacres, was another tragedy, another unforgettable genocide committed by Nigerian Government during the genocidal war. 450 were killed, this was very
much underestimated. They killed about 1,000.
“When the Nigerian vandals entered Sapele they joined forces with the hiding Urhobo soldiers to unleash yet another pogrom against Biafrans. They stripped some captured Biafran men naked and used them as an object of caricature by ordering them to stretch their hands upwards and to dance and sing ‘Ojukwu call me’. They were beaten up mercilessly captured Biafran women were among in this gruesome attack by Nigerian soldiers. Then they were finally shot .. Many other young Biafrans had their hands tied
behind them and shot before they were pushed into the river. The mass killing of people continued for days …
Since 7th November 1967 till 1968. it was recorded that over one million lives have been lost in this
senseless war and about 85% of these are civilians. Dominance O. Cinneide was right when he said: “And how can the civilised world continue to stand by while a cruelly wronged Biafra is under attack from an army that confirmed its intentions by the further slaughter of thousands of civilians
after the capture of Asaba, and the occupation of Benin and Calabar”. Those that were victims of this brutality must be remembered on 30th May!.
WE MUST REMEMBER THEM!.
#RememberThe30thMay
The video below is an excerpt from the Movie, Half a yellow sun ☀ by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie depicting exactly how it happened from the above narratives…
