My Biafran Story

I was in primary two at St. Mary’s primary school, Umuopara, Nguru, Mbaise when the war started. Fighter jets were flying over our school and when it became unbearable, we had to go into the bush to continue studying. I was only eight years but I started to see emergency platoons. I don’t know who summoned them but I started to see traders, secondary school leavers, tailors, in their work dresses, coming together and chanting war songs, “Nzogbu, enyimba enyi, nzogbu enyimba enyi!” After hearing of the pogroms in Lagos, Kano and how Igbo soldiers were massacred in barracks, people were saying, “We’re ready, enough is enough.” They absorbed them into the army and they started forming sectors all over Igbo land.

As a kid, I had a privileged life. We had a fleet of cars in our garage – Cortina, Beetle and others. My mother drove me to school every day and by the age of four I was already answering phone calls. But the war shattered it all.

When the tensions started to build up in 1966, I was almost twelve years old and because we could read the papers, we were fairly engaged in national issues and knew what was happening in the country. The first and second coups had happened and it was exciting as young people like us looked forward to more action. We were reading about Major Nzeogwu, the counter coup, and how Ironsi was abducted, this Major General JT Ironsi, who could fight in the Congo without getting a scratch on his body as long as he held that insignia of a crocodile. It was all very exciting.