Al J Venter - Biafra Genocide

Political map of Nigeria. (UN)

July 1967January 1970

The war that followed was a savage and often brutal battle for dominance between Federal forcessupported by Britain and the Soviet Union (obviously the oil that lay under Biafran earth had a lot to do with that unlikely alliance)and a tiny enclave that was soon completely surrounded by its enemies. Much of what took place during almost three years of bitter fighting is both confused and puzzling because it all happened in a comparatively small region where travel was perilous because of Nigerian jet fighters hitting anything that moved on the roads. Also, the front could often move three or four times in a single day.

Accurate reports of what actually went on between the warring parties were invariably sketchy for several reasons, the first being heavy levels of censorship imposed on all news reports (and access) pushed out by news hacks and independent observers by the Lagos government. In contrast, that did not happen that often with Biafran events because, simply put, there was nobody there to report on it. None of this authors reports or scores of photographs were ever censored by Ojukwus representatives.

Nigerias restrictions were severe. For instance, the MiniCon rocket attack on the merchant ship Titania on which I was travelling and which was hit by rocket fire while moored in the Warri roadsteadnever made news. I wrote my report, hired a boat to take me into Warri town, and submitted the story to be telegraphed to the Daily Express in London (for which I paid a bundle); it was spiked by Federal goons. My editors never saw it. More salient, actual sequences of events, battles, attacks and the rest sometimes made little sense because both the Federals and Ojukwus people channelled everything to do with hostilities through their respective public relations people, the latter in Geneva. The truth is that both would do their best to either obfuscate what actually happened or embellish it. That made nonsense of some events which would simultaneously appear the next morning in competing newspapersthe Times or the London Daily Mail , for instance and might indeed have happened on different continents the way they were presented.