Here is another update on 2021 summer reading book blogging series:
"The Nigerian Army and the "Liberation of Asaba: A
Personal Narrative"- Stanley I. Okafor
"This [is] a personal narrative of what I personally
saw of the activities of the Nigerian military in Asaba. ...To describe these events
as a nightmare is an understatement. My father, Mr. Nma Okafor, a senior civil
servant in the government of what was then the Midwestern State, was killed.
Also killed were his junior brother, Mr. Chukwuemeka Okafor, a police officer,
and his first cousin, Mr. Sunday Okafor, a technician in self-employment.
My father and his brother were based in Benin City, while
his cousin was based in Jos. His cousin returned to Asaba in the wake of the
mass killings in the north. My father and his brother returned home just ahead
of the arrival of Federal troops in Benin City.
When the fall of Benin City became imminent, my father sent
eh rest of the family home to Asaba, while he alone stayed behind in Benin, at
his job. The first nightmare of the family was when my father failed to arrive
at Asaba with the rest of our people who had fled from Benin when it fell to
the Federal troops. We could not sleep during the night. ..I was asked to go in
the direction of St. Patrick College (SPC) in case I would see him driving into
town. SPC was then at the entry point to Asaba.
We live in Cable Point Asaba, which is the opposite of the
town from SPC. Around Catholic Hospital, I saw his car in the distance, driving
towards me and as the care moved nearer, I heaved a sigh of relief when I
realized it was actually him. The care was completely smeared in mud, as if it
had been in a safari rally.
When the fall of Asaba became imminent, some relations came
to our house in Cable Point and told my father that we should all go into
hiding in the bush, way out of town. He said there was no need for such action.
All that was needed was to be polite and friendly to the troops. It turned out
that he was wrong.
Before going further with this narrative, it must be
stressed that the phrase ‘fall of Asaba’ is misleading. There was hardly any
battle for Asaba as the Biafran troops simply retreated into their territory
(Biafra) and blew up the Onitsha end of the Niger Bridge to halt the advance of
the Federal troops. This makes it even more difficult to figure out the
rationale for the scale of the massacres in Asaba. Okocha, (1994) includes a
list with 378 names which was compiled by the International Red Cross. But he
rightly stressed that the list is not exhaustive, which is correct. For
example, my father and Sunday Okafor were listed, whereas Chukwuemeka Okafor
was not. Clearly the number of people massacred in Asaba is much larger than
378.
Before the Federal troops entered Asaba, they shelled the
town for over twenty four hours from beyond SPC. The pounding was ferocious. As
Achuzia (1987) observes, the intensity of the bombardment of Asaba made it
obvious that the intention of the Federal troops was total war, and not police
action as claimed by the federal government. During the period of the bombardment
one could hear the shells whistle overhead then explode beyond our house, with
neighboring houses taking direct hits sometimes. We were lucky that none of the
shells hit our house. But it was a period of heightened anxiety as we all
clustered on the lee side of our house during the day time.
It would appear that the troops entered the town at night
because not too long after we woke up with two armed soldiers with fingers on
their triggers, entered our compound and ordered everyone to go to the police
barracks. As it turned out, the troops were mostly interested in men because
the very young, the infirm and the aged were exempted. Thus, my paternal
grandmother was spared the ordeal of a four kilometer walk to the police
station. In my mind, I thought it was a standard routine procedure, and that at
the police barracks the townsmen and women would be addressed by military
officers and told what to do and what not to do. But my expectations were
shattered when, after some two kilometer walk, somewhere near the Federal
Ministry of Labor office on Nnebisi Road, I saw two men, lying flat on their
backs, with the tops of their heads blown off, obviously from close range.
Brains and blood smeared the ground around their heads. From their outfits one
could tell that they were men of one of the white garment churches, probably
returning from night prayers. They both wore long white garments, one with a
bell in his hand, and the other with a lantern which was still burning.
This sight sent chills down my spine, and I immediately knew
that all was not well, contrary to my earlier expectation. I remember walking
behind my father most of the way to the barracks, dumbfounded by the gory sight
I saw earlier, and not knowing what lay ahead. All along the way, I saw looting
by troops. Household items were being loaded onto trucks: cookers,
refrigerators, radiograms, furniture etc. Cars were stolen. In other cases car
engines were dismantled and loaded onto trucks. When we got to the barracks I
lost sight of my father and I never saw him again.
There was a mammoth crowd at the barracks, all sitting on
the ground. We were kept there from morning till about 5 p.m. Every once in a
while, a soldier would announce if anyone in the crowd knew Mr. X or Mr. Y,
promising freedom to whoever would volunteer information and take soldiers to
the residence of the named person. The purpose of this offer of freedom was
obvious and I am not aware if anyone took up the offer. Also every once in a
while someone would be fished out of the crowd, taken to the back of one of the
buildings and shot. Thereafter silence would descend on the crowd after an
initial but brief outpouring of grief. No one knew who would be next. Death
stared everyone in the face.
When I got home in Cable Point, I was told that my father
had come home earlier, in the company of two or so officers (I cannot remember
the exact number now), and that he had taken them back in his car. While in our
house, my paternal granny said they were entertained with a bottle of White Horse
whisky. They took the remainder of it along with them. Apparently my father was
well known to one of the officers. The feeling was that my father was in the company
of friends and was therefore safe. Those who saw him leave the barrack in the
company of the officers felt the same way. But he was never seen alive again.
Evening came and right came, and my father did not come
back. At night we reenacted the vigil we kept when we were expecting him from
Benin. At the sound of any vehicle, we would peep through the window only to
discover it was a military jeep. Morning came and my mother left home in search
of my father. Word had gone round that men were the main targets, and so it was
unsafe for me to be out in the streets. Not too long after my mother left home,
we saw her coming back, supported on both sides by two people, barely able to
walk. The message was clear and we all broke down. My elder brother was working
in Shell Port Harcourt when the war broke out and so I was the most senior male
at home. I had to pull myself together and comfort my younger ones. My mother was
distraught but my paternal granny was highly philosophical about her son’s
death.
It is hard to know the circumstances of my father’s death.
Was he dispossessed of his car by his ‘friends’, asked to go home and then ran
into one of the many murderous bands of soldiers unleashed on Asaba? Was he
dragged out of his car and then shot by the ‘friends’ he had earlier
entertained at home? Was he killed in the day time or at night? We had no
answers to these questions and still do not have answers to them. My mother found
his body about one kilometer from our house in the compound of the Udobis, with
gunshot wounds on his chest. Since it
was unsafe for men to be out on the streets, I could not see his body and so
could not pay my last respects to him. It was the lot of my mother and my
granny to clean the body and bury it in a shallow grave at the Udobis. It was
there until 1985 when it was exhumed and re-buried in my elder brother compound
on the eve of the traditional burial ceremonies for my father.
Back again to 1967. Later in the day that my father’s body
was found, we heard a gunshot in the neighboring compound. Women were wailing
and crying. A young man had been shot and two elderly men were ordered by the
soldiers to dump the body in the Niger. Our house is close to the Niger; about
100 meter from it. Shortly after, the two soldiers crossed into our compound. I
was outside the house, along with my elder sister and the younger ones, all of
us still in state of shock occasioned by my father’s death. I had my little
sister in my arms. One of the soldiers, the leader in fact was clearly of
northern extraction. He was a regimental sergeant major (RSM). He was tall,
black and big. He was drinking straight from a bottle of beer in one hand while
the gun was held with the other.
As he came closer, he ordered me to drop my little sister
and follow him to the bank of the Niger. We knew what that meant and we all
started begging and pleading for my life. My elder sister was hysterical and asked
to be shot instead. As if incensed by our pleas the RSM threw away his bottle
of beer (obviously looted from a nearby shop), cocked his gun and asked me to
move. At that point I got angry. I was angry because he was incensed by being
asked to spare a life. So I put my little sister down and told him we should
go. I do not know what happened, but my mother who had been speaking Hausa to
the RSM all along must have said something that made him change his mind. What
I do know is that at some point my mother gave him #30 pounds. He then warned
that I should not be seen by any soldier, either in our compound or on the
streets; that they had instructions to shoot and kill any male above five
years, and that my younger brother was not even safe.
The rest of my family then decided I should hide in the ceiling.
I then went up into the ceiling through the many-hole in the box room. I was
provided with cushions form some chairs in our living room. I placed them at
the top of one of the living room walls, they were fairly comfortable to sleep
on. The ceiling was my home for two weeks,
with potty, face towel and all. I placed the cushions at a vantage point
from where I could see the movement of soldiers in and out of the house, and so
positioned myself safely in case they decided to shoot into the ceiling during
any of their frequent calls. Fortunately our ceiling was never shot into. The
soldiers did shoot into ceilings in some homes. It was hot and
mosquito-infested up in the ceiling. But these inconveniences meant little in
the face of death. After two weeks, when the killings had abated somewhat, I
came down from the ceiling and left Asaba with the assistance of the Red Cross.
I escaped the house-to-house killing, which was one dimension of the massacres in Asaba. The greater tragedy was represented by the mass killings. As indicated earlier, these are reasonably well documented (Okocha, 1994). The large crowd that went from the police barracks to the traditional part of the town were joined by many more, and organized an impromptu dance to welcome the soldiers in an obvious effort to placate them. The troops separated the men from the women, and opened fire on the men, killing them in hundreds. All these detailed in (Okocha, 1994). There are mass graves in Asaba, the largest of which is probably the one in Ogbe-Osowa. I hope that someday the international community will come and dig up these mass graves in order to establish the scale of atrocities committed against Asaba people; an urbane, cosmopolitan, non-violent and non-aggressive people. I hope, too that someday the Asaba community will erect a befitting memorial to its sons and daughters murdered in cold blood by federal troops; a memorial with their names boldly inscribed on it.
The crimes and human right abuses perpetrated by the federal
troops in Asaba are unimaginable. They murdered, they stole, they looted, they
raped. My father’s care was recovered about a year later in Lagos, from an
officer who became a military governor of one of the states. Some people were
made to dig their own graves into which they were shot. Some were marched to
the bank of Niger and shot there. These new strategies were adopted in order to
avoid the problem of dealing with large numbers of bodies which the military
faced in the killing fields of Ogbesowa. Okocha (1994, p. 65) describes one of
the episodes as follows:
We dug another grace for ourselves. Before we were told to jump into the grave, two other brothers came in. One was an undergraduate of Ibadan University, the other was a civil servant. Both of them were dumped into the grave covered. The two were members of the Oyana family, but I have forgotten their first names now.
Why this Scale of Atrocities
The answer to this question was suggested earlier. The scale
of atrocities can be explained in terms of the character of the officers and
men of the Nigerian military, and of the boundary effect. Concerning the issue
of character, a pertinent question is what manner of humans can kill, loot,
steal, and rape with glee and reckless abandon? Maybe psychologists and
psychiatrists are best placed to characterize such humans. These are men who
have no regard for human life, human rights, human dignity, and the rule of
law. These are men for whom impunity and recklessness are central elements of
their culture. It is only such men, who can behave the way the federal troops
did in Asaba. Clearly a group with this culture should not be in charge of the
affairs of humans.
Sadly, Nigeria has been in the hands of this group for more than 50
years. From military to militricians. Do we therefore need to stretch our
imagination in order to figure out the origin of the level of violence and the
erosion of values that today characterize Nigerian society? Most probably not.
From Asaba massacre to Odi massacre, it is one long line of mass murder in a continuum
genocidal tendencies and behaviours.
The character of the officers and men of the Nigerian
military is the main factor responsible for the tragedy in Asaba and Odi. Other
factors are secondary or contingent. These factors would have been
insignificant but for the character factor. One of these other factors is the
boundary effect. Boundaries are barriers to the movement of people, goods and
services. Boundaries can either slow down movement or stop it completely. When
this happens, the phenomenon that is moving, crowds or intensifies in the local
area. If it is a positive phenomenon, the area benefits. But if it is negative
phenomenon, the area is negatively impacted.
The blowing up of the Onitsha end of the Niger Bridge turned
the Niger into an effective barrier to movement and so led to the congregation
of soldiers in Asaba. They thus had the opportunity and time to commit
atrocities. Each time the troops suffered reverses in attempting to cross the Niger,
they took it out on Asaba people. Had the troops crossed over to the east in
pursuit of Biafran soldiers, the federal troops would not have committed
atrocities in Asaba; at least not on the same scale as they did. But the
boundary effect is contingent on the character of the troops. A disciplined and
highly professional military, whose officers and men have some minimum modicum
of civility, will not massacre unarmed civilians simply because they are forced
by circumstances to congregate in their midst. Had the character of the
Nigerian troops been otherwise, the boundary effect (or any other factor, for
that matter) would have been of no consequence. Therefore, the character of
Nigerian troops is the fundamental reason why they perpetrated the scale of
atrocities they committed in Asaba. The effects of all other factors are
contingent.
The tragedy that befell Asaba during the civil war at the
hands of Nigerian troops escaped the attention of the world when it happened. The
full extent of the tragedy is beginning to come to light as survivors of the gory
events tell their stories. The federal government, and indeed Nigeria were
lucky that there were no satellite TV networks like CNN during the civil war.
The gory event would have been beamed to the world and the outcome of the war
may have been different. But it is important that the relics fo the gory events
such as the mass graves in Asaba be visited and documented, it is also important
that a memorial be erected for the victims of the massacre by the Asaba
community.
The kind of humans who committed the atrocities witnessed in
Asaba and Odi should never be allowed to be in charge of the affairs of men.
Their culture of impunity, disregard for the rule of law and for human dignity
is one that is not suitable for governance. The current state of the Nigerian
economy and society is largely the aftermath of the dominant role of the
military/militricians and their culture in governance. Recent revelations in
various panels and commissions clearly indicated that the looting and
destruction perpetrated in Asaba and Odi were extended to the resources of the
nation.
References
Okocha, E. (1994) Blood on the Niger: An Untold story of the
Nigerian Civil War. Lagos: Gom Slam
