28, 1968
The Day of the Long Night
My destination is Onitsha, brothers and sisters. Let nobody stand on my way, for anything that stands on my way would be crushed.
Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Mohammed, in Radio Midwest, Benin City, Nigeria, circa September 21, 1967.
For record purposes, however, let me state fearlessly that I saw hundreds of unarmed [Igbo] civilians being shot at sight in Benin City when [Nigerian] Federal troops arrived to liberate the city from [Biafran] rebel soldiers.... There appeared to be a fleeting period of lunacy in which Midwesterners gladly identified their Igbo compatriots to be shot down by Federal troops.Giwa Amu, former Solicitor-General of Midwestern Nigeria, reflecting on the civil war in the March 16, 1983 issue of the Sunday Observer.
Continued shelling of Onitsha by Nigeria soldiers from the Asaba banks of the River Niger.
November 19-24, 1967:
Several civilian targets were bombed by Nigerian bombers flowned by Russian and Egyptian mercenaries. Their targets were residential areas in Onitsha including the General Hospital, Dennis Memorial Grammar School, Christ the King College, Anglican All Saints Cathedral Onitsha, and the Magistrate's Court.
On three nights, Nigerian soldiers unsuccesfully attempted to cross the River Niger and capture the commercial city of Onitsha. Each time Onitsha was successfully defended by Biafran soldiers. Nigerian army actually captured downtown Onitsha and looted and set its famous market on fire. Biafran army succeeded in re-capturing Onitsha within three days. An entire battallion of Nigerian army were trapped and wiped out.
Volunteers from Ogidi went to Onitsha to help bury soldiers.
The ensuing face-to-face combat was within walking distance from our neighborhood. The Biafra soldiers used the civilians as human shields and lied to us that the gunshots we were hearing were their routine training exercise. The amazing thing was that we believed their story. We stayed I saw soldiers shooting at each other.
As we ran from from Odoakpu quarters of Onitsha, the streets were crowded with fleeing people. The streets were littered with bodies of people hit by the shellings.
Nigeria soldiers make three unsuccessful attempts to capture Onitsha. We lived at Odoakpu section, which is closer to the banks of the River Niger during the first attempt.
After the first attempt, we fled to Inland Town quarters of Onitsha called Umuasi village during the second and third attempts. During the second attack on Onitsha, soldiers who were ordered to go to the war front ran to our backyard (6C Wilkinson Road) to change into civilian uniforms. I recall seeing a Biafran soldier in the crowd as we fled to Ogidi.
1968
March 31, 1968: Biafran army won their biggest battle by ambushing and destroying a 96-vehicle column of Nigerian soldiers. The humiliating Abagana defeat prompted General Gowon to remove Col. Murtala Mohammed as the General Commanding Officer of the Onitsha sector.
Onitsha was finally captured by the Nigerian army.
Fled to Awka-Etiti with overnight stays at Oba, Nnewi, and Nnobi. After two months at the residence of an Awka-Etiti family, we moved into one of the refugee camps at Awka-Etiti --- a classroom of the now defunct Saint Joseph's Primary School. The majority of the residents at this refugee camp were survivors and escapees from the Asaba Dance of Death of October 1967.
My postal address: Chukwurah, Refugee
St. Joseph Refugee Camp
Awka-Etiti, Biafra
We were the only refugees from Onitsha in our camp. Most were those that fled the early October 1967 massacres in Asaba by troops commanded by General Murtala Mohammed.
April 26, 1968: In an article entitled "Nightmare in Biafra," Sunday Times (London, 4/26/68, p.12), a war reporter wrote: "I have seen things in Biafra this week which no man should have to see. Sights to search the heart and sicken the conscience I have seen children roasted alive, young girls torn in two by shrapnel, pregnant women eviscerated, and old men blown to fragments, I have seen these things and I have seen their cause: high-flying Russian Ilyushin jets operated by Federal Nigeria, dropping their bombs on civilian centres throughout Biafra ... At Onitsha - the 300 strong congregation of the Apostolic Church decided to stay on while others fled and to pray for deliverance. Col. [Murtala] Mohammed's Second Division found them in the church, dragged them out, tied their hands behind their backs and executed them."
Sounds like fiction? Another eyewitness, William Norris, wrote in "The Times" of London of Thursday, April 25, 1968: "There is ... a young English doctor, Dr. Jan Hyde and his wife who worked in a hospital near Onitsha until they were forced to leave when the Federal troops moved in. The Hydes tell a horrifying story of the Apostolic Church near their home, where the congregation decided to stay and pray for deliverance instead of fleeing before Federal advance ... "
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