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This time the above headline is from 9th of July 1967, and guess what ? this is just 3 days after the war had started, and a British reporter for the People Newspaper, was on ground to see and file this report.
The reports, states that about 2000 british and other Commonwealth citizens were trapped inside the Biafran enclave, and that British oil interest were under threat due the ongoing war. It mentions that Obudu and Obolo have already been captured by the Nigerian forces, and 500 Biafran soldiers captured and taken as POWs, along with a big cache on weapons.
The Biafran authorities however refuted these claims by the Nigerian government, with Ojukwu making a very profound pronoucement to his troops, that each Biafran troop should “Bring back 10 heads of Northern Nigerian soldiers”, One can deduce from this quote, that Ojukwu and Biafra at this juncture, didn’t want to fight with the entire Nigerian nation, but only wanted to fight Northern Nigeria. This makes sense in that it was Northern Nigeria that killed thousands of Eastern civillians living in the North – which was a direct cause of the ensuing war and the attack by Nigeria on Biafra actually came from the North, with a Division led by a Northern Officer Lt Col Mohammed Shuwa, and most of its troops were from the North.
The rest of the report talks of claims and counter claims of the deployment of Mercenaries by both sides and a visit to Lagos by a British minister to discuss the oil embargo instituted against Biafra by Gowon.
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