Word: nigerias
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...training, was the federal Nigerian governor of the Eastern Region and thus held the key to all its resources. True to his profound belief in Nigerian unity, Ojukwu first argued against outright secession and urged Easterners to settle for a radical loosening of ties with the rest of Nigeria. The ruthless slaughter by the North, he pleaded, was "the final act of sacrifice that Easterners would be called upon to make in the interest of Nigerian unity...
...gain a new foothold in Africa by backing the likely winner) were soon providing Nigerian military commanders with every kind of weapon they wanted. Automatic rifles and endless rounds of ammunition, heavy artillery, mortars, rockets, grenade launchers, antiaircraft guns, Czechoslovak Delfin jets, Russian MIGs and Ilyushin 11-28 bombers?Nigeria ordered and got them all. The result was an unhappy precedent for Africa: the Nigerian conflict became the first African bush war fought with modern weapons...
...tribes. Trained at Britain's Sandhurst military school, Gowon once shared barrack quarters with Ojukwu, but has neither his intellect nor his strong interest in politics?a fact that probably does not displease his Northern sponsors. He is an affable, unassuming leader who has shown considerable skill in keeping Nigeria united during a civil war that he himself once predicted would be nothing more than "a short, surgical police action...
...When the federal troops attack, their strategy is to saturate Biafran positions with wanton bursts of 76- and 90-mm. artillery fire, move forward quickly, then dig in and wait for the artillery to catch up. Such tactics, or at least the attitude behind them, are not confined to Nigeria's federal troops; they are commonplace with most African armies. Moreover, federal commanders have built up an army to match the scale of their weapons orders ?almost a tenfold increase on their 8,000 regulars. Inevitably, the volunteers included unemployed youths and street-corner thugs who planned to serve...
...Sweepers. As the war progressed, the chants turned into terrible reality. In captured village after village, frontline troops were followed by ragtag "sweepers" from Northern Nigeria. They nailed Ibo tribesmen to the walls of their wooden huts, then sprayed them with automatic-rifle fire or set torches to their clothes. "Mop-up" soldiers raped women, sometimes lined up whole villages to be shot. The Ibos concluded that the Hausa tribesmen fully intended to use the war to systematically exterminate them. This fear, more than anything else, has hardened the Biafran determination to fight on to the end. "We shall...