Word: ojukwu
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Physical Ruin. The symbol of Biafran resistance is Lieut. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, a brooding hulk of a man who leads his people's military effort and speaks for their pain. With an Oxford education, a rare gift for rhetoric and a deep sense of the tragedy encompassing the war, he is endowed with the best that the white man has given Africa and beset by the worst of Africa's many ills. Ojukwu is also probably...
Resplendently uniformed, Biafran leader Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu launched into a 2-hr. 10-min. speech that borrowed at one point from Haile Selassie himself. "There is no precedent for a people being victim of such injustice and being at present threatened by abandonment to its aggressor," he said. "It is in order to denounce to the civilized world the tortures inflicted upon my people that I resolved to come to-Geneva." He was quoting the Emperor's plea to the League of Nations in 1936, after Mussolini's troops had overrun Ethiopia. "I was defending the cause...
Grave Mistakes. Ojukwu insisted that Biafra would not surrender its independence to Federal Nigeria. The Nigerian federal government, represented by Chief Anthony Enahoro, demanded exactly that. Enahoro's tone was, however, more conciliatory than before: "It may be that history will decide that there are no angels on any side in the recent history of Nigeria. We have all made mistakes, grave mistakes." Still, there was no mistaking his point that Nigeria would not agree to secession. "I cannot conceive," he said, "of any mutually acceptable proposal that does not envisage the unity and territorial integrity of Nigeria." There...
...Still, Ojukwu's regime had some reason to take heart, even though the federal vise was tightening: in the midst of the renewed fighting it received an unexpected boost from President Charles de Gaulle. In a communiqué, the French government declared that the conflict should be settled "on the basis of the right of peoples to govern themselves"-the first such commitment favoring Biafra by a European nation. "This strengthens our hand at Addis," exclaimed Biafran Information Minister Ifegwu Eke. "And if the talks break down, our African friends will be prepared to take the issue...
...further strengthen Biafra's hand in Addis, Ojukwu unilaterally declared a cease-fire while the talks are in progress: the Biafrans would launch no new attacks and only fire when fired upon. With the Nigerians aggressively on the move, that is not likely to reduce the level of violence much. But it will improve Biafra's image with the representatives of the Organization of African Unity, who are sponsoring the peace talks, and perhaps ultimately bring African pressure on Lagos to follow suit...