Word: yakubu
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Though Nigerian Strongman Major General Yakubu Gowon insists that only military objectives are hit, the raids against civilians were, in fact, recently intensified to two-a-day strikes on all Biafran towns. During the six days I spent in Biafra, civilian bombing casualties totaled 300 dead by actual body count. I saw jets repeatedly release payloads on populated townships where not a single military installation was within range...
...adamantly against surrender because they fear that they will be massacred. The killing of many thousands of Ibo in Northern Nigeria last year led to the civil war, and the Northern-dominated army has given Biafrans little cause to believe that they can escape the same fate. Major General Yakubu Gowon, the head of the federal government, has tried to keep his men in line, but without much success. Ragtag recruits who "mop up" after Gowon's armies have joined local tribesmen brandishing machetes and cutlasses in "Ibo hunts." In the Midwest, they rounded up thousands...
...primitive war drums. It was directed at Biafra's Ibo tribesmen, who set up an independent country to escape persecution, but few were in a mood to heed its challenge. Four months after Rebel Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu declared Biafra's independence, federal troops under Major General Yakubu Gowon slashed deep into Ibo territory, rained shells down on the Biafran capital of Enugu and sent frightened Biafran soldiers and civilians fleeing by the hundreds. The fall of the tiny breakaway republic (pop. 12 million) seemed only a matter of time...
More versatile with their press releases than they have yet been with their guns, the commanders of Major General Yakubu Gowon's federal army of Nigeria shrugged off the recent loss of their country's Midwestern Region. The unexpected victory of the rebel Biafrans from the east was only "a temporary setback." When the Biafrans penetrated the Western Region as far as the crossroads town of Ore last week, Gowon's spokesmen called it "the last desperate move of the rebels before their total collapse...
...Northern soldiers set one foot in side Biafran soil, not a single inch of Nigerian territory will be safe from our attack." That was the vow of Biafra Secessionist Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu just before Nigeria's federal troops, led by Major General Yakubu Gowon, invaded Ojukwu's Eastern Region six weeks ago. Ojukwu was slow to make good his threat. But last week, having fought his attackers to a standstill, he was ready to take the offensive. In a swift twelve-hour drive, he captured the federal government's oil-rich Midwestern State...