Federal Nigerian Army Blunders of the Nigerian Civil War - Part 2
By
Nowa Omoigui
The year 1968 opened up in earnest, continuing a
pattern that had been set on September 2nd 1967 when Major General
Yakubu Gowon declared “total war” against Biafra in response to the Biafran
invasion of the Midwestern Region/State of Nigeria. Up until that time, “Operation
Unicord,“ as the federal “internal security” operation against the breakaway
Biafra (Eastern region of Nigeria) was called, was described as “Police
action.” Increasingly violent shooting went on side by side with increasingly
cynical talking.
As the war raged, various external actors sought
ways to resolve various elements of the crisis in favor of one or the other of
the contending forces. These included the Commonwealth, World Council of
Churches, Organization for African Unity, and various nations, among other state
and non-state actors. Both Nigeria and Biafra conducted a furious war to
influence international opinion by various means. Both entities send delegations
abroad for this purpose as well as to shop for weapons and ammunition. For
example, former Eastern Region Premier Michael Okpara and former Nigerian
President Nnamdi Azikiwe were roving Biafran ambassadors to some East African
and Francophone countries. In the wake of Azikiwe’s diplomatic offensive,
Tanzania, Gabon, Ivory Coast and Zambia recognized Biafra. Importantly, on
August 1st, General de Gaulle of France openly
acknowledged already ongoing support for Biafran self-determination. But there
were other pro-Biafran forces in the background. Biafra also sought and got
support (of varying quantity and quality) from Israel, Portugal, Rhodesia, South
Africa, the Vatican and non-state actors like Joint Church Aid, Holy Ghost
Fathers of Ireland, Caritas International, MarkPress, US Catholic Relief
Services, etc.
Meanwhile, federal delegations visited many other
African countries to stem the tide of Biafran recognition and obtain official
OAU backing, considerably enhanced by the sympathy of the OAU Consultative
Committee on the Nigerian crisis. (The members of this committee, led by
Emperor Selassie of Ethiopia were Cameroun, Congo Kinshasha, Ghana, Liberia and
Niger). At the same time Nigeria was negotiating with countries like Belgium,
the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Italy, West Germany, Hong Kong, Spain, Poland,
the USSR, and the United States for weapons and other items of military
ordnance. In August, for example, Dr, Okoi Arikpo was dispatched to the USSR on
what was described as a goodwill visit coming exactly one year after a “cultural
pact” between both countries – negotiated by Soviet Ambassador Alexandr Romanov
- had resulted in the supply of Mig-17 fighter aircraft to Nigeria. The
Nigerian international shopping list in 1968 included Artillery, Armoured
fighting vehicles, shells, battle rifles, rifle ammunition, machine guns, side
arms, etc. In the background, peace talks were stuttering in London, Kampala,
Niamey, and Addis Ababa, as international concern increased about relief for
civilians caught in the fighting.
On the battlefield, however, facts were being
created and recreated on the ground and in propaganda. In March, Onitsha
finally fell to federal troops of the 2nd Infantry Division, after
many bloody unsuccessful attempts. In April, Abakaliki was captured, followed
in May by the fall of Port Harcourt to troops of the 3rd Marine
Commando Division. On July 30th, an increasingly confident Colonel
Benjamin Adekunle, GOC of the 3rd Marine Commando Division announced
to the Press that he would capture Owerri, Aba and Umuahia (O.A.U) within two
weeks. Nevertheless, it was not until August 15th, 1968, that Major
General Gowon announced that the “final offensive” which would bring the war to
an end would begin on August 25th. Following this announcement, Aba
fell to federal forces on September 4th followed on September 16th
by Owerri. But by the time Okigwe was taken on October 1st, it was
evident that all was not well with the “final offensive.”
For quite some time, federal radio reports
notwithstanding, it had not been all losses for the Biafran Army. In April,
Biafran troops overran federal units at Onne, Arochukwu, and Aletu, followed in
May by another of the many recaptures of Afam Power Station. This pattern was
to continue when Ikot-Ekpene, Oguta and Enugu-Aku were seized from federal
troops in September and Colonel Adekunle’s Operation “OAU” ended in calamity
near Umuahia in October. In fact, unknown to the public, the scale of the
loss was such that the 3rd Marine Commando Division was reduced to
one-third of its original 35,000 man size before Operation OAU! By
November, Owerri’s line of communication was being threatened, and as Colonel
Oluleye put it, the 3rd Marine Commando Division was “reeling back to
east and south.” Interesting reports surfaced in the international Press that
the federal “final offensive” was being stoutly resisted by Biafran troops,
courtesy of French weapons and ammunition.
Indeed, the French operation, beginning in
September 1968 and directed by M. Jacques Foccart was code-named “Operation
Mabel”. Foccart was the Secretary-General of the Franco-African Community.
In collaboration with the French Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs, he
used Ivory Coast, Gabon, and Sao Tome as staging and resupply points for gun
running to Biafra with the full connivance of the French Secret Service.
However, following aggressive diplomatic representations from Nigeria, Fernando
Po (now called Equatorial Guinea), and Cameroun refused to cooperate with
Foccart. Indeed, none of Nigeria’s Francophone neighbors – Benin, Cameroun,
Chad, and Niger – supported Biafra.
But it would be simplistic to think that it was
all about French weapons and ammunition. Long before General de Gaulle publicly
declared support for Biafra and began sending in large consignments of weapons,
the federal Army had already begun betraying bad habits that would eventually be
brilliantly exploited by cunning Biafran commanders and determined Biafran
troops thoroughly familiar with the ground. First was the sheer size of the
area of responsibility allocated to the 3rd Marine Commando, for
example. They were stretched across a vast area of jungle and riverain creeks
called the “southern front” extending 150 miles from the Orashi river through
Owerri, Aba and Ikot Ekpene to Itu along the Cross-River. The second factor was
the federal tendency to rely on main roads for advance. The third was the
notorious tendency (particularly among units of the 2nd and 3rd
Divisions) to rush in to seize objectives without securing and vigorously
patrolling lines of communication and flanks. The 2nd Division took Onitsha
like that with no contingency for securing control of the Onitsha-Enugu road.
During the 3rd CDO Division dash to Umuahia, no effort was made to
secure lines of communication either. To amply this dangerous tendency,
fourthly, federal battalions, brigades and divisions rarely acted in
coordination and GOCs often-disobeyed higher command from Lagos. Fifthly, the
many hastily recruited and trained federal troops, although initially
enthusiastic, were unfamiliar with the ground and superstitious about darkness,
making nighttime operations highly unattractive, for fear of “juju”. Lastly,
such daytime operations as were carried out, again, particularly in the 2nd
and 3rd Divisions, were characterized by heavy expenditure of
ammunition and poor fire discipline. The sheer volume of fire they could
deliver ‘at anything that moved’, was the basic source of motivation for the
average federal soldier as he carried out “clearing operations.” Junior
tactical level leadership was seriously lacking outside the 1st
Division, which had the benefit of retaining the core of the old Nigerian
Army. Planners, for example, projected 5 million rounds of ammunition for
the 3rd Marine Commando Division alone at the beginning of Operation
OAU in 1968. But even more startling, in planning for offensives
after May 1969, the AHQ projected a minimum of about 15 million rounds of
7.62-mm rifle ammunition for each division, supplemented by another 15 million
rounds held in reserve in Lagos. All of this was to be purchased from the USSR,
Spain and the UK. In other words, enough ammunition to kill the entire 60
million strong population of the country at that time! This does not
include Mortar and Artillery shells, etc. This “ammunition mentality” was
amplified by reassurances that Biafran soldiers were unarmed or poorly armed.
But as federal casualties mounted and it became apparent that Biafran soldiers
could also be well armed (albeit only from time to time), federal soldiers
became increasingly reluctant to take risks on patrol – unless numerical and
firepower advantage were overwhelming.
To these ‘bad federal habits’ must be added
certain “good habits” and advantages of the Biafran soldier. The first was that
they were very highly motivated and determined, fighting on home ground. To
federal troops the battlefields might have been little more than places on maps
and abstract names of hamlets, villages, and towns populated by misguided
civilians. To Biafran troops they represented the safe haven of ancestral lands
held by generations of their people, homes, farms, burial grounds, places of
ritual significance etc. The role of such motivation became increasingly
apparent as federal divisions crossed from the usually pro-federal or neutral
minority areas of the eastern region into the core Igbo areas whose fear of
“genocide”, dating back to the events of July – September 1966, was constantly
reinforced by Biafran radio. Biafra clearly had the edge in psychological
warfare. The second was the enterprising and recurrent ability of Biafran
units and sub-units to penetrate federal lines, sometimes even operating far in
the rear of supposedly captured federal areas – where they could rely on a
sympathetic population. The third was the ability of some Biafran commanders
to resourcefully exploit the natural terrain in defensive positions (including
concrete bunkers) well connected by all-weather communication trenches. Such
defensive positions were often set up to cover strategic roads and demolished
bridges as well as any lines of federal retreat from pre-positioned Biafran
home-made minefields. The problem, though, was that the defensive positions
were often not deployed in depth, and Biafran soldiers were chronically short of
weapons and ammunition, inspite of heroic scientific efforts to produce their
own.