By admin
This week, I bring you a great article; a great topic. So how should I start ? Well the the headline above is actually double-headed, so maybe i’ll start by saying that despite the huge support Nigeria and Gowon recieved in terms of heavy guns, light arms, bombers and jet fighters, here he is in March 1969 still appealing for more arms from Britain and Russia etc.
The above shows like I have always maintained, that the Biafran were never an easy walkover as most Nigerians have been told, in fact, they (Biafrans) aside from manufacturing their own weapons, and some sources say it was about 56% of their entire arsenal, they also captured a lot of weapons from Nigeria plus the corrupt Nigerian field officers were rumoured to have also sold weapons to the Biafrans too (shocking to say the least).
The article says that the Nigerian field commanders have been unable to finish the war because they were running out of supplies and needed replenishments. This is incredible because the Nigerians were always lavish with field weapons from the get-go of the Biafran war, so much so, that the British General Alexander became very critical of them and their inefficiency. It still took another 9 months of intense fighting before the Nigerians finally overwhelmed Biafra, but more to do with Biafra’s internal affairs problems than the military prowess of the Nigerians, as will be explained in future topics.
In the another headline, Gordon Brook-Shepherd of the British Telegram paper, claimed that the Russians were now blackmailing Nigeria, in order to become its sole arms supplier and edge out the British and others, but the British also used the above excuse to stiffen their stance to continue supplying Nigeria, despite calls for it to halt its arms supply due to indiscriminate bombing of Biafran civilians.
Apparently the Russians were meant to supply Nigeria with 20,000 rifles (AK47s), but only supplied 5,000, which put Lagos on the back-foot and despairing, because this was the time that Biafra was mostly having its best time of the war and were even on the offensive. The blackmail continued with Russia threatening to open embassies in all the 12 states of Nigeria and were also pushing Nigeria to pay for weapons in kind, using Cocoa to barter, which the Nigeria had no choice but to acquiesce initially, but I guess the wisdom of Chief Awolowo prevailed and Gowon started to put his foot down against the policy, which was said had been one of the things that ruined Ghana and Nkruumah with the governments ending up pledging future crop harvest to the Soviet Union.
My guess is that the blackmail didn’t last long, because Nigeria actually recieved the game-changing soviet 122mm artillery pieces which it used to shell Biafran into capitulation, plus the fact that the Nigerian ambassador to Russia Brig George Kurubo, was very profuse in his praise of Russian unalloyed support as the sole reason why Nigeria was able to win the war: here’s a link to NY Times of Mr Kurubo venerating the Russians.
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