Word: umuahia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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With the federal capture of Owerri two weeks ago, Nigeria's civil war entered a new and perhaps final phase. Secessionist Biafra, now less than one-tenth its original size, holds but one important town: Umuahia. Should it fall, Lieut. Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu would lose his last physical claim on breakaway statehood and be forced, if he is still able, to carry on his fight for Biafra's Ibo people from the jungle. As it advanced slowly but steadily on Umuahia last week, TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes joined Nigeria's 3rd Marine Commando division. His report...
Lucky Devil. By all meteorological reckoning, the worst rainy season in years should have tapered off by now, permitting the sun to steam dry the tangled greenery that stands high and thick over Nigeria's equatorial south. But on the narrow dirt roads leading to Umuahia, the deluge stopped as if to tease, then resumed this week in full force...
...stranglehold tightened last week on Biafra, where the secessionist forces of Lieut. Colonel Chukwuemeka Ojukwu are encircled by the federal Nigerian army. Only three cities remain in Biafran control: Umuahia, Owerri and Aba. Of these three, by far the most vital to Ojukwu is Aba, a trade and rail center of 100,000 before the war and Biafra's provisional capital. It was at Aba that Nigeria's 3rd Division, moving steadily north from Port Harcourt, aimed its assault...
Wartime Democracy. His dedication to Ibo nationhood dates from the same day as his now luxuriant beard, which he let grow during the 1966 fall massacres "as a sign of mourning." He sleeps from dawn to midmorning, lives and works in his tightly guarded Umuahia villa. He evacuated his wife Njide-ka and two small children after a bomb was dropped near his home. Slouched at his desk, pacing the grounds impatiently in darkness, chain-smoking State Express filter cigarettes, he is a lonely figure in his besieged land. Ojukwu often is pictured in Nigerian propaganda as a power...
Once again, thousands of civilians took to the roads and the bush, fleeing before the new offensive, and towns like Aba, Owerri and Umuahia were choked with the homeless, the destitute and the starving. Yet somehow the Biafrans continued to hold on against superior forces and firepower, training with sticks, fighting back with the motley array of weapons they have managed to pick up from European arms markets in recent months. They fared less well on another front: there was still no agreement on relief measures for starving Biafrans. As a result, hundreds, perhaps thousands died every day, and their...