Table Of ContentBIAFRA’S WAR 1967-1970
A Tribal Conflict in Nigeria That Left a Million Dead
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BIAFRA’S WAR 1967-1970
A Tribal Conflict in Nigeria That Left a Million Dead
Al J. Venter
Helion & Company
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Published by Helion & Company 2015
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Text © Al J. Venter 2015
Photographs © Al J. Venter unless noted otherwise
Front cover photo by Peter Obe; rear cover photo open source.
ISBN 978-1-910294-69-7
eISBN 978-1-912174-31-7
Mobi ISBN 978-1-912174-31-7
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For Freddie, with grateful thanks…
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
1 Lagos and a Nigerian Army Mutiny
2 A Day Later: Back in the Firing Line
3 Biafra: The Build-up
4 Hostilities Take Shape
5 Air Attack in Warri Harbour
6 The Conflict Escalates
7 Frederick Forsyth’s Biafra
8 A Broader View of Hostilities
9 The Conflict That Created Médecins Sans Frontières
10 Flying Soviet MiG Fighters in the Biafran War
11 Biafra’s Aerial War of Attrition
12 The Rebel State and its Bombers
13 Gibson and Son: Into Biafra on Supply Runs
14 Nigeria’s Enigmatic Leader: General Yakubu Gowon
15 How Washington Assessed Nigeria’s Civil War
16 The Media and Biafra
17 A Retrospective Nigerian Military View of the War
18 Biafra’s Mercenaries: A Diverse Bunch of Professionals
19 Colonel Jan Breytenbach Takes On the Biafran War
20 Keeping Biafra Alive: From the Air
21 A Portuguese Mercenary Aviator tells his Story
22 Notes from the Diary of a Mercenary Fighter Pilot in Biafra
23 The Air Attacks Continue
24 Fault Lines: Nature of the War
25 The Next Great African War – Christian against Muslim – and the Role of Boko Haram
Bibliography
Foreword
Every war has its cathartic moments for those involved – and Biafra was no exception. It was also very
different from all the other conflicts I’ve witnessed from up close – sometimes too close, which is why I
am almost deaf. In my case, this West African conflict was a life-changing experience that I never quite
got over – and for several reasons…
I’d arrived in Lagos only a week or two after the first army mutiny had taken place, when on 14 Janu-
ary 1966 a dissident group of junior officers – mostly of Ibo extraction and led by Major Chukwuma
Kaduna Nzeogwu – violently overthrew the Nigerian Government.
Having been recruited as a shipping specialist by the British company John Holt, my job was largely
transport-related and I was posted to Lagos’ Ikeja Airport – the country’s international air transport hub.
Only six months later was I to discover that it was at Ikeja where the second army mutiny had started to
gel. The only difference this time was that it was mainly soldiers from Nigeria’s Islamic north who were in
the driving seat. As the phrase suggests, it was ‘payback time’.
In the second – retaliatory – coup, the first place targeted was Ikeja Airport, followed by the head-
quarters of the Nigerian Police, State House, the naval headquarters at Apapa, and the offices of the na-
tional radio station. Other government civilian and military agencies and installations were taken over
soon afterwards.
My first chapter details that bloody battle on the outskirts of Ikeja Airport – a singular event which set
off a chain of more drama that resulted in the civil war. I was on my way to work, and inadvertently I
stumbled into the aftermath of that bloody early-morning fire-fight that involved dissident army units and
armour. The Battle for Ikeja lasted less than an hour and was the brainchild of Lieutenant-Colonel Murtala
Muhammed – after whom the airport was subsequently renamed.
It is worth mentioning that prior to the second army mutiny, my job entailed a considerable amount
of travel throughout Nigeria. During the course of these duties, I met a lot of people both in civilian and
government roles – including quite a few military types in the various hotels and bars along the way.
In those days, everybody could freely express their opinions; the all-encompassing security apparatus
for which Nigeria became notorious in subsequent military governments only came afterwards. British
author Frederick Forsyth told me when we got together in Washington 30 years later that he still didn’t
dare visit the country: ‘I’m pretty sure they would kill me if I did,’ were his words.
In the early days following the revolution, it didn’t take much gumption to appreciate that there were
some serious things taking place, both in Lagos and in Northern Nigeria. You could actually sense that an-
other army coup was imminent. I even predicted as much in several magazines for which I was writing at
the time – including the now-defunct News Check, as well as the mass-circulation Huisgenoot (both pub-
lished in South Africa). It is all on file for those interested in looking back on those almost forgotten chap-
ters of Africa’s post-independence history.
I was also doing the odd story for United Press International in London at the time, but their editors
scoffed at the premise that more Nigerian violence might follow – so, apparently, did Britain’s intelligence
agencies. Like Washington, they were (as the saying goes) caught with their pants around their ankles.
Nigeria’s first Prime Minister, Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, assassinated in Northern Nigeria during the Ibo-led army
coup d’état in January 1966. (New Nigerian, Kano)
When I started reporting these sentiments back to my bosses at John Holt, they were appalled. It took
no time at all for the order to come down from the top: ‘instead of meddling in political matters, you
should concentrate on your work’ was the gist of it – but then, when it happened at midnight on 29 July
1966, even the British High Commission in Lagos was found wanting. Effectively, the first shots of the Bi-
afran War had been fired…
Looking back at those events, and my subsequently going into Biafra itself – my first real experience of
a war – it might be trite to say that I was severely affected by the plight of thousands of emaciated and
starving children encountered at every turn. I was – rather severely so – and I don’t believe I ever got over
it.
Three decades later, while covering the civil war in Sierra Leone, I spent a bit of time at the Murray-
town amputee camp on the outskirts of Freetown and that horrific experience haunted me for months –
something I go into in some detail in one of my earlier books about that country’s insurrection.1
Biafra had the immediate effect of changing my entire approach to what was going on in Africa at the
time – South Africa included. I went back to my home in Cape Town and saw it as a challenge to prevent
the same kind of thing happening in South Africa. It also meant that I spent the next two years working on
what I still regard as one of the most important projects on which I have been involved: the effects of
South Africa’s apartheid racial laws on the people traditionally referred to as ‘coloured’. This society,
today about three million strong – perhaps more – did not happen by accident. The majority of mixed
blood emanated from three centuries of social intermingling at the southern tip of Africa.
I suppose I could have tackled the apartheid problem in its entirety, but South Africa’s so-called
‘coloureds’ – Mestiço or Mulatto in Portuguese, or Kleurlinge in Afrikaans – were all around me and my
family where I lived in Cape Town. The maid who looked after my infant son was ‘coloured’; so was the
crew that cleared our garbage and the man who helped me at the local filling station – as well as the ma-
jority of those folk who served my meals in that city’s restaurants (very much as it still is today).
A Biafran ‘parking lot’ at Owerri later in the war, with rather futile efforts at trying to screen the vehicles from strafing So-
viet- supplied MiG-17s flown by South African and former RAF mercenary pilots. (Author’s photo)
A Biafran mortar team. (Author’s photo)
