You Must Set Forth at Dawn (18 page)

“We like to look at the so-called worst-case scenarios,” I explained. “If you stay out of Gowon's government, you will hold a very strong card. For a start, the war—if it comes to that—will lose much of its moral backing and international support. You wear the hat of leader of the Yoruba people—that's nearly one-third of the national population. It's a powerful card. To take that card away from you, there are desperate soldiers who will stop at nothing. Sir, if you are killed, I leave you to imagine the consequences. I merely want you to know that we have the means of making you totally inaccessible for weeks, months, and even of smuggling you out of the country.”

I was conscious of exaggerating our underground facilities, but what I claimed was not very far from the truth. Since the abrupt end to the Leaders of Thought conferences that had been designed to establish the basis for continued democratic coexistence, we had begun to prepare for every kind of eventuality.

Out of the blue, Awolowo said to me, “One thing I have made up my mind about—I have not led the Yoruba people so far as to have our land turned into a battleground.”

I had no idea where his thoughts had taken him, but he continued to speak in that vein for some moments, as if his mind were elsewhere, pondering some decision. Then he leaned back in his chair, fixed his gaze on me through his wire-rimmed “grandpa” lenses that had become, like his cap, his distinctive public symbol. Speaking almost softly, wistfully, he revealed the little-known story of his nocturnal encounter with Ojukwu, the Eastern leader, just a week before.

The 1967 eve-of-secession delegation of national public figures, authorized by Yakubu Gowon to engage in dialogue with the Eastern leadership, had been led by Obafemi Awolowo, and the formal, well-publicized meeting between the two sides had lasted nearly all day. The Easterners had listed their grievances and demands, spoken with all apparent seriousness, and seen their guests off to their chalets. Late that same night, however, Awolowo was disturbed by a knock on the door.

It was Ojukwu himself. He admitted that he had waited till late into the night so as to be able to speak to Awolowo in strictest privacy. Sure, said Awolowo, but he also insisted that at least one or two persons join him. That was agreed, and Awolowo called the adjoining chalet and woke up the police commissioner for the Western Region, Olufunwa, and a close political aide.

Accompanying Ojukwu was a small team that included a professor of history from the University of Ibadan who, like other Easterners, had fled to their beleaguered state. Years afterward, in 1996, during the struggle against the Abacha dictatorship, the same don introduced himself to me at a meeting in the United States and revealed his participation in the nocturnal meeting of thirty years earlier. His account was a consistent and detailed confirmation of what Awolowo confided in me that afternoon.

Odumegwu Ojukwu's mission was unambiguous, Awolowo told me. “The young man had come to inform me that the East had decided on secession and that there was no going back. All that was left was the announcement of a date. He said, ‘Sir, I have come not to argue but to inform you. It has been decided.'

“It was clear that any discussion was futile,” Awolowo continued. “After all, we had done nothing but talk all day. Ojukwu confessed that he had agreed to meet the delegation at all only out of respect for my person. Biafra had already made a decision.

“I was not surprised,” the chief admitted. “I did one thing, though. I made one request of him—in fact, I insisted on it. I said to Ojukwu, ‘At least let us in the West—me, specifically—have a minimum of two weeks' notice before you announce the decision.' And he promised. Yes, he promised me that much.”

I hesitated but could not resist asking. “Why two weeks? You told him you needed two weeks—to do what?”

Awolowo gave one of his enigmatic smiles. “You know Olufunwa, the police commissioner?”

I nodded yes.

“Well, apart from me, he is the only one who knows the answer to that question. And he's not likely to tell you, either.”

I did not press him.

Hardly had Awolowo's delegation settled back into federal territory than Ojukwu declared an Independent State of Biafra. The date was May 30, 1967. A short while after, Chief Awolowo agreed to serve as minister of finance under Yakubu Gowon.

The federal government had, however, made a preemptive move. On May 27, Gowon had abolished all four regions and split the nation into twelve new states. This achieved the goal of dangling before the entities that were newly carved out from the East the attraction of their own autonomous governance, with all the resources of the oil-soaked Niger Delta. Between the two strokes, loyalties in the former Eastern Region were split. War appeared inevitable.

AS THE RUMBLE of the drums of war became truly deafening, I found myself in Stockholm. That outing was for the first conference of African and Scandinavian writers in the serene setting of Hasselby Slott, initiated by Swedish PEN. It was bliss to get away from the newly overheated nation space of Nigeria and interact with others of one's professionally acquired tribe. It was on that occasion that we met, most of us for the first time, Per Wästberg, the Swedish novelist who was actively involved with African liberation movements in Mozambique, Angola, South Africa, and so on, though we did not suspect it at the time. Per was a close associate of several of Africa's liberation warriors, especially Eduardo Modliane of Mozambique—even today he remains one of the most consistent rescue stations for beleaguered African writers and dissidents. On a personal note, it was Per who introduced my work to Swedish readers.

Within Nigeria, our writers-and-artists clan had been scattered by the coups and countercoups, massacres and consequent insecurity, and now it was flung to the four winds by the secessionist movement. Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo (the poet of
Heavensgate
and
Labyrinths,
and a volunteer from the Western imbroglio), Cyprian Ekwensi, Gabriel Okara, and others were holed up in the breakaway state. J. P. Clark, Mabel Segun, Amos Tutuola, and others— all founders and animators of the Mbari Creative Arts movement of Ibadan— were stuck on the federal side. It had never been much of a close family; we all tended to do our work independently, meeting occasionally, mostly for planning creative workshops, exhibitions, readings, and other special events. However, the poet and playwright J. P. Clark and I had been quite close to Christopher Okigbo—all three of us having been based in Ibadan in the early 1960s—and now I experienced something close to the sadness of a family breakup. I had hoped that Chinua, Christopher, and others would come to Stockholm. In that tranquil atmosphere, we could attempt to form, across the belligerent regions, a common front against the looming war. I was against the secession, but only for practical considerations: I doubted Biafra's ability to survive the inevitable onslaught from the federal side. Not for one moment did I consider the secessionist movement itself an act of moral or political felony— it was simply politically and militarily unwise.

No one turned up from the Biafran side. If someone had, I never would have needed to embark on my fateful mission to Biafra. Far more likely, I would have taken up the invitation of an attractive young lady whom I met in Stockholm, an air hostess, to go hunting reindeer with her father, then traveled to Greece for that nation's autumn wine festival, a cultural indulgence of many dimensions that I had promised myself ever since I had first recognized in the Greek deity Dionysus a long-lost sibling of my personal demiurge, Ogun.

Ogun had other plans for me, however. War was declared—no, not in such terms; at the beginning it was simply a “police action.” Very few people in the nation were fooled.

AFTER STOCKHOLM, FRUSTRATED BY the absence of our Biafran colleagues, I traveled to London, this time to carry out a series of recorded “conversations” at the Transcription Centre for African Arts and Culture, a center of activity— and respite—for a relay of African writers and artists. It was run by the art historian, critic, and broadcaster Dennis Duerden. The center was funded mainly by an American foundation, the Farfield, that was later proven to be affiliated with the CIA, though none of us knew it then. Dennis, a loose-limbed Englishman with a shock of hair who somehow, even in a new suit, succeeded in looking permanently rumpled, enjoyed the unpredictable assistance of one of my associates at the time, Aminu Abdullahi.

Urbane and seemingly unflappable, Abdullahi, a stocky Hausa with a conspicuous single cicatrix on the side of his head, was easily the most passionate and knowledgeable African lover of modern jazz that I ever knew. He could tell an improvised riff by Dizzy Gillespie from one by Miles Davis after only a few notes, and his collection of LPs—long-playing records, now dinosaurs—overflowed his guest room in Dennis Duerden's home into the passageway. It would be much, much later before I would discover that Aminu was the cousin of M. D. Yusuf, then head of Nigeria's secret service, the “E” branch, and even worked for him—if not at the time, then certainly later. That did not diminish the genuineness of his concern about Nigeria's lurch toward all-out war.

A few sleepless nights spent brainstorming in Dennis Duerden's apartment resulted in a decision: someone would have to go to the East and have a talk with Ojukwu, head of the secessionist state, and meet with Chinua Achebe and other leading writers and intellectuals in Biafra. What was required, we concluded, was a revocation of the declaration of secession and the calling off of all hostilities. Then, using our international connections to invoke the aid of neutral countries such as Sweden, with her sound credentials of assistance to African liberation, we would facilitate a return to the conference table. Aminu declared himself ready to make the journey, but there was an insurmountable obstacle: he was not only a Northerner, he looked it, and his accent was a straightforward giveaway. It was difficult enough for even a Southerner, a non-Biafran, to enter the now-xenophobic entity called Biafra. A Northerner who entered that breakaway enclave was unlikely to survive his first step. I volunteered to go in his place.

FINALLY I COULD RETURN to Nigeria unburdened by a sense of impotence. The very night of my reentry, I was ensconced at my favorite place for both innocent and dubious undertakings: Femi Johnson's house. I gathered my usual group together and outlined what I had brought back, quite fortuitously, from London. The discussion was not complicated—every voice stressed the need to find language that would convince Ojukwu that the Igbo were not abandoned. That sense of rejection, of isolation, was what stood in the way of any form of rapprochement between the federal government and the breakaway Biafra. It went beyond politics, moved beyond the implacable Biafran hostility toward Yakubu Gowon's government. The orbit of guilt, as assigned by Biafra, had now expanded to include the Yoruba West, whose people, the Biafrans felt, had betrayed them. Such a Biafran position was rationally untenable. One had only to recall the coups and countercoups that had resulted in a West that was thoroughly invested by the military, mostly of Northern and Middle Belt origin, thus leaving the West bereft of any military clout or bargaining power. The perception of the West's indifference, or leaning toward the federal cause, had taken root, however, and it was not subject to reasoning.

There and then, in Femi Johnson's house—and all other accounts of this origination can be authoritatively disregarded
²⁵
—was coined the expression that would later feature in many commentaries, achieving its maximum notoriety in the military incursion of Biafran-led forces into the Midwest Region: “the Third Force.” In the confrontation between the federal side and the Biafran, a third force, opposed to the civil war and prepared to mobilize against it, had become a necessity. If Nigeria was the thesis and Biafra the antithesis, then the Third Force resulted from the synthesis—all impeccable dialectics, lacking only an organized movement and the necessary force to back it up!

When, after Femi returned from his insurance brokerage office and settled down to dinner, I told him I was going to Biafra, he lost his appetite in mid-morsel. “Madness, madness, nothing but madness! You'll get shot for nothing.” Crossing the firing lines meant, for Femi, crossing the boundaries of sanity. It was not much of an argument, as I had already made my decision. In the end he offered a well-reasoned bit of advice: I should at least speak with someone from the federal side before venturing across.