There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (19 page)

Death of the Poet: “Daddy, Don’t Let Him Die!”

I was driving from Enugu to Ogidi one afternoon, where I lived following the bombing,
with my car radio tuned to Lagos. Like all people caught in a modern war, we had soon
become radio addicts. We wanted to hear the latest from the fronts; we wanted to hear
what victories Nigeria was claiming next, not just from NBC Lagos, but even more ambitiously,
from Radio Kaduna. This station, also known as Radio Nigeria, was notorious as the
mouthpiece of the Nigerian federal government; it only reported Nigerian military
victories and successes, and those of us caught in a conflict wanted to hear balanced,
unbiased news. We needed to hear what the wider world had to say to all that—the BBC,
the Voice of America, the French Radio, Cameroon Radio, Radio Ghana, Radio Anywhere.

The Biafran forces had just suffered a major setback in the northern sector of the
war with the loss of the university town of Nsukka. They had suffered an even greater
morale-shattering blow with the death of that daring and enigmatic hero who had risen
from anonymity to legendary heights in the short space of eighteen months: Major Chukwuma
Kaduna Nzeogwu. Christopher Okigbo had begun to talk more and more about Nzeogwu before
his enlistment, but I had not listened very closely; the military did not fascinate
me as it did him. In hindsight, I wish I had listened—listened for all our sakes.

I was only half listening to the radio now when suddenly Christopher Okigbo’s name
stabbed my slack consciousness into panic life. “Rebel troops wiped out by gallant
Federal forces,” the announcement proclaimed. Among the rebel officers killed: Major
Christopher Okigbo.
¹

It’s rather different when a soldier is killed in battle—they get the body. I don’t
know what happens, but if they can identify him, and if they think they can make capital
out of it, they immediately announce it. The killing of officers is something of which
they are very proud. Christopher was a major.
²

I pulled up at the roadside. The open parkland around Nachi stretched away in all
directions. Other cars came and passed. Had no one else heard the terrible news?

When I finally got myself home and told my family, my three-year-old son, Ike, screamed:
“Daddy, don’t let him die!” Ike and Christopher had been special pals. When Christopher
came to the house the boy would climb on his knees, seize hold of his fingers, and
strive with all his power to break them while Christopher would moan in pretended
agony. “Children are wicked little devils,” he would say to us over the little fellow’s
head, and let out more cries of feigned pain.
³

Christopher fell in August 1967, in Ekwegbe, close to Nsukka, where his poetry had
come to sudden flower seven short years earlier. News of his death sent ripples of
shock in all directions. Okigbo’s exit was totally in character. Given the man and
the circumstance it was impossible for everyone to react to the terrible loss in the
same way. The varied responses, I think, would have pleased Okigbo enormously, for
he enjoyed getting to his destination through different routes.
⁴

—

I remember visiting Okpara Avenue, the site of the Citadel Press, soon after the war,
and I was appalled at the scale of destruction that had befallen that small building.
It is important to mention that a number of buildings in the vicinity had been unscathed
by the conflict, but this one was pummeled into the ground; chips of the concrete
blocks scattered everywhere had been pulverized as if with a jackhammer. It was the
work of someone or some people with an ax to grind. It appeared as if there was an
angry mission sent to silence the Citadel—for having the audacity to publish
How the Leopard Got Its Claws
—a book that challenged the very essence of the Nigerian federation’s philosophy,
depicting the return of the spurned former ruler to vanquish and retake his throne
from the wretched and conniving usurper. Having had a few too many homes and offices
bombed, I walked away from the site and from publishing forever.

A few months later my friends Arthur Nwankwo and Samuel Ifejika decided to establish
a publishing company that they called Nwamife Books. One of the new company’s first
publications was a compendium of stories that chronicled the harrowing war years.
I submitted a contribution to that important anthology, and then took the opportunity
to persuade them to publish
How the Leopard Got Its Claws.
They agreed. The talented Scandinavian Per Christiansen illustrated for the work,
and effectively united the prose and poetry in a visual consonance. I was grateful
to see the manuscript Christopher and I had worked so hard on back in print.

M
ANGO
S
EEDLING

Through glass windowpane

Up a modern office block

I saw, two floors below, on wide-jutting

concrete canopy a mango seedling newly sprouted

Purple, two-leafed, standing on its burst

Black yolk. It waved brightly to sun and wind

Between rains—daily regaling itself

On seed yams, prodigally.

For how long?

How long the happy waving

From precipice of rainswept sarcophagus?

How long the feast on remnant flour

At pot bottom?

Perhaps like the widow

Of infinite faith it stood in wait

For the holy man of the forest, shaggy-haired

Powered for eternal replenishment.

Or else it hoped for Old Tortoise’s miraculous feast

On one ever recurring dot of cocoyam

Set in a large bowl of green vegetables—

This day beyond fable, beyond faith?

Then I saw it

Poised in courageous impartiality

Between the primordial quarrel of Earth

And Sky striving bravely to sink roots

Into objectivity, midair in stone.

I thought the rain, prime mover

To this enterprise, someday would rise in power

And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall

Toward earth below. But every rainy day

Little playful floods assembled on the slab,

Danced, parted round its feet,

United again, and passed.

It went from purple to sickly green

Before it died.

Today I see it still—

Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months—

Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage.
¹

Refugees

Enugu fell to the Nigerian army a few months after Christopher fell in battle. I fled
to Umuahia with my family to stay with my sister-in-law, Elizabeth Okoli, who had
moved there from Aba. Lizzy was a nurse working in Umuahia-area hospitals tending
to the war wounded. Her story is quite remarkable: Lizzy was educated at Queen’s College,
Lagos, and in England, and was known in those days as the “Queen of Sheba,” because
of her grace and beauty. She was well regarded for her clinical skills and her intellect
and would become the chief nursing officer of Anambra state in a new incarnation following
the civil war. Elizabeth was a bit of an enigma and an eccentric, and a former Mrs.
Odumegwu Ojukwu to boot, but she never wanted to talk about that! My brother Augustine
and his family were also in Umuahia. Shortly after our arrival, as I have mentioned,
I was sent abroad as an envoy for the people of Biafra. Christie reports that Umuahia
was subsequently strafed very close to where my family was staying.

After the bombing that barely missed Lizzy’s residence, my family moved to Ezinifite,
a town north of Umuahia in the Aguata local government area of present-day Anambra
state. I returned from my short trip abroad and rejoined my family there. It was there
that we visited a family who in the past had sent one of their sons to live with and
be educated by my father.

Now we were refugees, and this family who had received the magnanimity of my parents
opened their homes and their resources to us—the three Achebe families—Augustine’s,
John’s, and mine—and we moved into the quarters offered to us. It was a large estate.
The head of the household lived in the largest of about four houses. The sons, who
were also married, had homes built within the family compound. The sons gave each
Achebe guest and their families a room and a parlor.

Finding food in Ezinifite was a difficult proposition. The women had to wake up very
early in the morning—about 4:00
A.M.
—to attend the daily markets to procure food. When the Nigerians found out where the
open markets were and started bombing them, the women moved their commercial activities
into dense forests. Christie remembers one of the early morning markets she went to—the
villagers from the surrounding towns and hamlets would congregate in these markets
to sell their fresh vegetables, fruit and chicken, and other household wares. If one
had the money—one could use the Nigerian pound and the Biafran pound interchangeably—there
were a variety of expensive, locally grown legumes, pawpaw, mangoes, bananas, and
plantains, and other vegetables and fruits to purchase. The traders coveted the Nigerian
pound, because it was particularly valuable in the black market and for purchasing
and smuggling goods and food across the border. The Nigerians bombed the market a
day after Christie visited the market. She remembers vividly:

The bombardment from the Nigerian Air Force on this day was particularly heavy, as
if the pilots had been upset at not discovering the market sooner. Most of the bombs
fell before dawn. In the morning we discovered the most harrowing of sights. One image
still haunts me till today: that of a pregnant woman split in two by the Nigerian
blitz. That was a horrendous experience for most of us, and we were all very frightened
after that.
¹

The Nigerian air force intensified its bombing exercises soon after this incident.
Word had reached the Biafran authorities that the Nigerians had classified information
about the location of civilian “hideout shelters.” Our hosts were understandably concerned
for our overall safety and built makeshift bunkers throughout their compound. The
bunkers were built of mud-and-clay bricks and clearly were not structurally capable
of withstanding a shelling, but we were grateful nonetheless, because they were large,
comfortable spaces underground, away from the houses that would be obvious targets
of the Nigerian air force. Whenever we heard the siren we all rushed to the bunkers
for safety and waited out the air strikes.

The Biafran government had issued a public safety warning to all citizens to abstain
from wearing clothes of light colors like white or cream or sharp colors such as orange,
purple, or red that could be easily spotted by the Nigerian air force. The Nigerian
pilots approaching their chosen targets would often switch off the engines of the
planes, then fly very low—treetop level—before they would begin the bombing onslaught.
One could see that the plane crew was pushing out these bombs with their hands, tossing
them out from an open aircraft door or shaft! Occasionally when the Nigerians used
their aircraft guns to shoot at civilian or military installations, we noticed that
some of the bullet cases were from large hunting ammo usually reserved for wild game.
²

On this particular day we did not hear the siren or the planes; no one knew that the
Nigerians were in the air. When we noticed a plane zooming in for the kill we rushed
into the bunkers and looked around to account for everyone, counting all the children.
To our horror we realized that our third child, Chidi, was not there.

We looked out and saw the toddler in his white diaper taking his time, walking from
the gate of the compound toward one of the houses. People tried to prevent Christie
from leaving the bunker to rescue the infant for fear that her heroism might reveal
the site of the bunker.

One said: “Leave him, he is innocent, nothing will happen to him.” Clearly unconvinced
and ignoring their advice, Christie dashed out from the bunker, grabbed the baby,
and arrived inside seemingly in time to avoid notice.

During our stay we had a number of confrontations not just with the Nigerian army
but with nature. As we ran from one zone of attack to another we often ended up seeking
shelter in mud huts deep in the hinterland. One particular episode comes to mind:
Christie had hung up a brown and black dress on a palm frond door that opened into
the room shielded by a thatch roof in a mud building we were staying in. Exquisitely
put together, these homes are ideal for the wet, damp weather of the tropics and provide
cool solace from the often uncompromising elements.

The one downside of this ancient architecture is the fact that mud buildings serve
as an elaborate ecosystem of insects, arachnids, rodents, amphibians, and reptiles—in
other words, an entomologist’s and a zoologist’s dream! So on this day, as Christie
put on her dress, she received a sting that produced excruciating pain. We rushed
to her side and discovered that a centipede had engaged her skin in a tenacious battle.
The villagers quickly relieved her of the vermin with a hot object warmed in a coal
fire. Though we were reassured that this was not a species that was poisonous, we
slept in our car that night. We would have other narrow escapes with scorpions, serpents,
and blood-sucking larvae, and became very vigilant.

My nephew, Uche Achebe, had left to join the army from our Ezinifite base around this
time. Uche, a bright lad, later became a surgeon and was at one point the medical
director of Nigeria’s National Orthopaedic Hospital in Enugu. In any case, things
were not working out very well for him in the army during this period. Uche is a practical,
rational person by temperament, and he noted that the Nigerian army was quickly approaching,
and there were so many bombings that cost the lives of scores of Biafrans on a daily
basis. He lamented the fact that the Biafrans were not well equipped and appeared
to be in perpetual retreat. Compounding this desperate situation, he observed, was
the fact that the Biafran people were becoming disenchanted.

Unfortunately, Uche made his observations known to one of his fellow army officers,
saying something to the effect of: “If we are not able to do this, why don’t we give
up?” He was subsequently reported and arrested for treason. In the end, after some
intervention from several sources, he managed to escape court-martial.

Irony plays a wicked game with life. The Nigerian army took over Ezinifite very soon
after the prophetic statements of my nephew, and we fled once again, this time to
the beautiful lakeside town of Oguta. We had a fairly quiet spell in Oguta, because
the Nigerians had been repulsed prior to our arrival. The locals credited this victory
to Ohamiri, the goddess of Lake Oguta, who protected the Oguta people.

From time to time, one could hear the artillery shelling as the federal government
troops tried on multiple attempts to obliterate the Uli airport, which was near Oguta.
The federal troops at that point had not discovered that there were two airports—Uli
was the earlier one, which was very close to Oguta and the nerve center of Biafran
relief efforts. A second, smaller airport, less well-known, was in Nnokwa and was
also used for military missions.

Nnokwa is a little-known ancient village that played a vital role in Igbo cosmology
and in the development of its civilization. The townsfolk were particularly noted
for their role in the transmission of the knowledge of Nsibidi, an ancient writing
first invented by the Ejagham (Ekoi) people of southeastern Nigeria, and then adopted
and used widely by their close neighbors—the Igbo, Efik, Anang, and Ibibio. The very
existence of this alphabet, dating back to the 1700s without any Latin or Arabic antecedent,
is a rebuke to all those who have claimed over the centuries that Africa has no history,
no writing, and no civilization! But we always knew of the beauty of our culture,
and one can understand why Nnokwa was a place to be protected by the Biafrans at all
costs.

In Oguta, we moved into my friend Ikenna Nzimiro’s uncle’s house—a huge mansion. Some
joked that it was as large as Buckingham Palace. One could see that the mansion was
virtually empty, as those who lived there, including the staff, had all fled. The
“mother of the house,” if you like, Nzimiro’s elderly auntie, stayed behind with one
or two of her attendants; she seemed ill and did not appear very often. Nzimiro’s
uncle had died several years before the conflict. With her blessing we were given
luxurious quarters and had quite a comfortable stay.

It was during our sojourn in Oguta that Christie started a school to keep the children
of our hosts and the Achebe children engaged in their studies. Christie had books
that she had bought from shops, and she used these to teach the children, with Chinelo,
our first child and daughter. Each child started from the last class they were in
before the war broke out, and then graduated after they completed the lesson plans.
Despite the chaos and madness all around, some privileged children, at least, still
went to school.

From Oguta we would be driven out to the Shell compound, aka Shell Camp, in Owerri
after the city had been recaptured by the Biafrans. In the colonial era Shell Camp
was the residential quarters of some colonial officers and Shell senior officials,
before Royal Dutch/Shell BP moved their permanent quarters to Port Harcourt in present-day
Rivers state, in the Niger River Delta area. Shell Camp in those days was a fairly
lovely part of town, a neatly manicured estate with well-maintained bungalows and
lawns, telecommunications facilities, good roads, and a reliable water supply.

Christie was expecting a baby and was ill during this time. She was moved to a Roman
Catholic hospital of high repute in the region, admitted by the physician on staff,
and cared for by the nursing sisters, a number of whom were from Europe. We heard
during her hospital stay that the Nigerians had finally broken through the blockade
mounted by the Biafran soldiers, rearmed, and launched a second offensive, pushing
closer to Owerri. It clearly had become quite serious when we noticed Biafran soldiers
coming into the hospital to warn the clinical staff to leave and evacuate all the
patients. Christie was summarily discharged.

When we returned to Shell Camp we saw that the area had been infiltrated by the Nigerian
army, some wearing mufti, who watched us closely. We noticed that the entire estate
was almost deserted. The main roads were jammed with civilians trying to escape before
the Nigerian troops arrived. Some of the federal forces who had already entered Owerri
would snicker at the civilians; some would wave cynically. It was eerie and frightening.

We picked up the few belongings we had in the house and jumped back into the car.
During the war years one never really unpacked; one always had the belongings in the
trunk of the car and took only the absolute necessities into the temporary shelter
that you found yourself in. We decided to get off the major thoroughfares, so we meandered
through the rural areas, villages, and hamlets and arrived in the village of Okporo.
This pleasant community holds a special place in Biafran lore, because it was the
site of a special hospital for children run by Caritas, and it was one of the sites
chosen to gather sick babies for the famous airlift of Biafran babies to Gabon and
Ivory Coast organized by international relief agencies.

I recall visiting a clinic that had been hastily set up by one of the many foreign
nongovernmental organizations (NGO) during this time. They had chosen an abandoned
secondary school complex and set up shop in what must have been the cafeteria. There
were bullet holes in the limestone and concrete walls and pieces of glass shattered
on the floor, suggesting a recent gun battle. The patients were strewn on the shiny
red laterite floor on bamboo and raffia mats—the adults in one section and the children
in the other. It was raining on that day, and the holes in the corrugated iron roofs
provided a steady stream of water that dripped directly on some patients (who appeared
not to care) and collected in puddles throughout the building. The visitor was greeted
by the strong smell of vomit, diarrhea, and other bodily fluids that are kept private
in sunnier times. In the distance one could hear the screams of pain from what appeared
to be a makeshift operating room, where surgeons performed procedures with woefully
limited anaesthesia.