The BBC aired the documentary Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War today, directed by the grandson and son of Godwin Alabi-Isama, a former army commando who fought on the side of the federal army during the war, which lasted from 1967 – 70.
The civil war is a highly-charged issue in Nigeria, especially among the Igbos, who, as part of the old Eastern Region, attempted the doomed secession that culminated in the war. So a documentary made by relatives of a soldier from the federal side, widely-acknowledged to have been responsible for multiple atrocities during the war, was problematic to some, to say the least.
Judging from reaction on social media, some Igbos felt that they alone should be able to tell the authentic story of the war. This begged the question: Who and what is stopping them?
Indeed, Nigeria would benefit from an accurate accounting of the civil war from all sides. And for many years, the wounds of the war have been swept under the carpet in a country that only recently lifted a ban on the study of history in the secondary school curriculum. While many Nigerians know there was a civil war, very few understand why it happened, or have bothered with the details. They should heed the warning of American linguist Noam Chomsky: “Education is not memorising that Hitler killed 6m Jews. Education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required. Education is learning how to spot the signs of history repeating itself.”
Watch it here:
The Good
So most right-thinking Nigerians should welcome this stab by Meji Alabi and his uncle Leke Alabi-Isama at educating them about the civil war. The filmmakers attempted to strike some balance by airing the views of people on the federal side and the rebel side without editorialising themselves. What people like Alabi-Isama said must come with a health warning as it’s unlikely he would self-incriminate. Some of his claims were also based naturally on his own understanding, noting that being a witness doesn’t always translate to expertise.
He claimed the coup led by Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu in January 1966, which started the chain of events that resulted in the civil war, “messed up everything”. An alternative view would be that the coup actually happened because “everything was messed up” by the politicians that took charge after independence in 1960.
Former BBC reporter Martin Bell confirmed what most informed Nigerians knew – the BBC was “disrespectfully in the pocket of the British government”, and British interests were driven by the oil in the breakaway Eastern Region. Not much has changed nearly 60 years later with the BBC still the mouthpiece of the British establishment and oil still playing a major role in wars involving the British government.
The war crimes committed by the federal side, involving bombing civilians in schools, markets and hospitals in the Biafran enclave, was common knowledge among those that wanted to know. But there was no harm in bringing this information to a wider audience, especially when it was humanised by one of the contributors, Constance Nwoke, who was seven during the war. She captured the barbarity of war with: “War affects the innocent more than the people that organised it”.
The Bad
The filmmakers bordered on making Alabi-Isama the main man. Yes, he was an officer in the war, but perhaps the victims deserved more airtime than him. Michael Aaronson, a British aid worker during the war, spoke pertinently about how the “underlying political causes of the conflict remained”. The film didn’t go into detail about this, but Aaronson alluded to it when he spoke about corruption, the stealing and selling of humanitarian relief material.
This was well-known on the rebel side at the time. It should serve as a warning to current advocates for separatism, who seem to think that the problems that bedevil Nigeria would vanish in a new state of Biafra.
Aaronson also condemned his government for being an accomplice in genocide against the Biafrans. History is repeating itself today with the British government’s role in genocide in Gaza, where an Israeli blockade has also resulted in mass starvation.
The Ugly
The film performed a public service in exposing to a wider audience the shamelessness of the likes of Obafemi Awolowo and Colonel Benjamin Adekunle in openly admitting to war crimes. Awolowo was the federal commissioner for finance during the war and de facto deputy to dictator General Yakubu Gowon. Adekunle was Alabi-Isama’s boss as commander of the 3rd Marine Commando Division. Awolowo said airily that “unity” of the country was more important to him than the treatment of civilians. He was reported as saying: “All is fair in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder”. He just couldn’t see that such genocidal statements don’t foster national “unity” among the victims.
Adekunle told a French radio reporter: “I want to see no Red Cross, no Caritas, no World Council of Churches, no Pope, no missionary, no UN delegation. I want to prevent even one Ibo from having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves and when our troops march into the centre of Ibo territory, we shoot at everything, even things that do not move.” Two of his soldiers, including Alabi-Isama confirmed his murderous tendencies.
Alabi-Isama sounded repentant and said “we forgot the people that were suffering”. One of those on the receiving end was Cornelia Ginikanwa, who tries to “block out things that are too bad” as a means of coping with the painful memories.
Alabi-Isama quite rightly called the war a “disaster”, which didn’t “achieve anything meaningful” and was “unnecessary”, with a “victory turned to tragedy”.
As Nigeria continues to teeter from one crisis to the next, tragedy after tragedy, with some thinking salvation lies in separatism, this documentary is timely and could achieve something meaningful if more Nigerians learn from the mistakes from the past in order to avoid repeating them.
