By admin
Greetings once again dear readers of Biafranwarreports.com, it’s good to be back, bringing you all the stories and reports and books etc, about the Biafran war, no matter how great and small they are, no matter how exciting or boring they are, our aim, remains to bring you all the information we can find about the Biafran war, wherever we can find.
May I also use this opportunity to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your readership of this new blog site and your continued support, and I pray for your continued and sustained visits to this learning site. Let’s keep it up !
Well let’s get to it then ! This week, I bring us two reports for you to learn from and to refer to in your various debates and discourses: The first is an outburst by Gen Gowon during an interview with the British journalist; Andrew Fyall of the Daily Express, where when confronted with report that the Nigerian airforce has again deliberately attacked a busy market in the Biafran capital of Umuahia, killing 43 civillians, mostly women and children, he flew off the handle and raged with the question – Does Ojukwu take me for a military Nitwit ?
General Gowon reiterated the perennial Nigerian Government warning and stance, that the war was an internal affair and that the whole world should keep out of it. This is my opinion more than any other factor was the main reason why Nigeria won the war and Biafra lost. Because this factor meant Biafra couldn’t get the true diplomatic and hence military backing it desperately needed to successfully prosecute the war, hence the Biafran war remains the only war in the aftermath of the 2nd World war, where the UK, USA and Russia, were on the same side, quite puzzling and astonishing, especially when paired with the fact that the Vietnam war was equally raging at the same time and that the 3 world powers chose different sides, with UK-USA backing South Vietnam and Russia-China backing the North ? truly needs to be studied.
In our other report from March 1969, the Nigerian army claimed that it had cut the remaining Biafran territory in two, therefore putting her on her kness or ‘last legs’, but as we all now know from the hindsight of history, this wasn’t the case as not only did Biafra recapture the city of Owerri, it then went on the offensive and pushed the Nigerian forces back to the outskirts of Port harcourt, threatening the recapture of the oil and seaport city it had lost a year ago and moreso, it took an additional 10 months of brutal fighting before Biafra finally collapsed on the 12th of January 1970.
Another issue touched on this small report, was that of arms supply by Britain, which insisted that it was only still supplying the Nigerian government with only 15% value of its total arms aquisition, but other sources say the British were also giving 75% discount to the Nigerians on these arms sales – hence why the Nigerian Finance minister and defacto Prime Minister, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was able to brag, that he was able to prosecute the war without borrowing a penny.
The report also claimed that the British army was running low on its own small arms supply, due to it being shipped off to the Nigerians to prosecute its war.
Please click on image to enlarge and leave a comment below:
