By admin
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Dear Biafranwarreports readers, I wholeheartedly salute you for your increasing support and readership of our website, which has been set up to provide historical information and education to all and sundry with regards to the devastating civil war that took place almost 60 years ago.
I must apologise once again for the drip drip manner of article delivery to our audience, I believe that you’re more hungry for Biafran war historical stories than you are being fed, so I’ll try and crank it up a bit – I know it’s been promised before and not done, but please we’re going through a phase and hopefully the light is at the end of the tunnel.
Now that I have your attention with that boring rant above, let’s get to it. Well that headline above came about because the Kampala peace talks between Biafra and Nigeria in Uganda on the 23rd of May 1968, has collapsed after both sides failed to find a common ground ab initio, to bring about peace.
The Biafran government wanted cease fire as a precondition but the Nigerian government wanted renunciation of session as their own precondition. With no side willing to compromise, the talks collapsed.
But as referenced in other articles on this website, the loss of the oil city of Port Harcourt by the Biafran forces was a big blow to Biafra at home and diplomatically abroad, to compound their problems was the fact that the loss occurred during the talks, this bolstered the Nigerian government’s position and attitude towards the peace talks, in that they were in a better position not to negotiate at all. The Biafrans who were now in a weakened position still held their position of ceasefire.
This prompted Chief Anthony Enahoro, the Nigerian minister for information to fire a warning shot at the Biafran peace talk contingent as seen from our headline; that if Biafra maintains the same position for the next peace talks in Addis Ababa; Ethiopia, then the talks will also fail.
Chief Enahoro was reacting to the Biafran Information Minister, Mr C C Mojekwu’s communique, released in London. Chief Enahoro maintained that all talks were to be held in the belief of a one-nation state of Nigeria and not a bilateral talk with Biafra.
He also rejected Biafran government’s call for a referendum in Biafra to determine where the ethnic groups in Biafra will want to be. He said that it wasn’t only the Igbo people that comprise Biafra – Col Ojukwu did call for referendum in the minority areas though.
Finally Chief Enahoro warned that the Nigerian government was going to order its forces to resume aggressive attacks on the Biafran forces in order to conclude the war. This article was in the Guardian newspaper.
In other news attached for our readers, a decision was being reached to supply food to the starving population of Biafra via a land corridor. You must remember that the Nigerian government offered this to the Biafrans, in order to stop the relief flights which were being suspected by the Nigerian authorities of bringing ammunitions into Biafra.
The Biafran government rejected this request and claimed that the same Nigerian government that was responsible for killing millions of Biafrans, couldn’t be trusted to feed them. There was fear in Biafra that the food supply would be poisoned.
Of course the Biafran government also feared that the land corridor would stop the air relief, which was actually the way Biafra obtained weapons, since the Nigerian government had already successfully blockaded the young nation.
This report in the Telegraph, pointed out that the British High Commissioner; David Hunt – who wasn’t a fan of Ojukwu and Biafra, had actually visited parts of Biafra and confirmed that the starvation story in Biafra wasn’t an exaggerated claim by the Biafran government. This report by Mr Hunt seemed to anger a Nigerian colonel who called the diplomat- misguided.
Enugu, rather than Port Harcourt which is nearest to the sea and has a seaport, was chosen because the Nigerian military officers in the Rivers area were opposed to feeding the Biafrans via a land corridor, hence the plan was to dock in port harcourt harbour and then fly to Enugu and then drive inland.
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