Word: ojukwu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...from the sea, Ojukwu faced an overwhelming problem: how to feed a nation of 7,000,000 by air. A consortium of Catholic and Protestant relief agencies organized an air force of lumbering four-engine propeller airplanes to supply Biafra despite protests from Gowon that they were prolonging the war and violating Nigerian airspace...
...Ojukwu badly wanted recognition from other African nations, but only four-Gabon, Ivory Coast, Tanzania and Zambia-obliged him. Outside Africa, support was even harder to find. In August 1968, at Charles de Gaulle's instigation, the French government announced that "the present conflict must be resolved on the basis of the right of people to govern themselves." But France never formally recognized Biafra while supplying it for war. During the 1968 U.S. presidential campaign, Richard Nixon urged Washington to "speak out against this senseless tragedy and act to prevent the destruction of a whole people by starvation." Ojukwu...
...only other nation that recognized Biafra during its short lifetime was Haiti. TIME Correspondent James Wilde recalls that officials there dissolved into laughter when Ojukwu read them the cable signed "President for Life Duvalier." They began to chant in derision, "President for Life, President for Life." Champagne was broken out, and the group got gloriously drunk toasting Haiti's President for Life...
...eight battalions against Biafra. The results were discouraging. Nigerian soldiers refused to fight at night because they were afraid of juju (evil spirits). Regardless of the size of the force opposing them, they would not advance more than a mile at a time without laying down an artillery barrage. Ojukwu, meanwhile, was building his army to a high...
...together from supplies on hand. A resourceful government agency known as the Research and Production Directorate was staffed with Ph.D.s educated in U.S. and British universities. They dreamed up portable oil refineries, homemade antitank rockets, drugs and a highly effective land mine made from cooking utensils and christened "the Ojukwu kettle." Nothing went to waste. One visitor to the hungry country grimly realized that he had seen neither a rat nor a dog anywhere...