At 6:30a.m on the 11 August, NNS Enugu left Bonny River and was on recce in Escravos River in case there were militarised speedboats, tugs or barges lurking somewhere. There was none.At 9am, NNS Lokoja disgorged two additional rifle companies at Escravos and quickly established defensive positions there. On the 13 August, MV Bode Thomas added more supplies, equipment and personnel reinforcements. The build-up continued.
To the annoyance of Adekunle, who was arguably the most successful war commander in Nigeria’s military history, a new Division was created and called 2nd Division. It was headed by Lt Colonel Murtala Muhammed. Adekunle’s formation, despite the success of his mission so far, was not upgraded to divisional strength. With the addition of 31st and 33rd Battalion, he was upgraded to 3rd Marine Commando Division. Muhammed’s comprised three brigades 4th, 5th, 6th. They were commanded by Lt Colonels Godwin Ally, Francis Aisida and AlaniAkinrinade.
Their mission imperative was to rout the Biafran forces from the Midwest by invading from the West, Northwest and North.
Ally’s 4th Brigade (which was to be later commanded by Major Ibrahim Taiwo of the 10th Battalion because a sniper fire hit Ally in the chest in Asaba and almost killed him) was at the Ore, Ofosu, Okitipupa sector, holding a defensive alignment against Banjo’s advance. Akinrinade’s 6th Brigade was tasked with Owo-Akure sector and Aisida’s 5th was the command brigade in Okene with Auchi and Ubiaja being their strategic objectives.
Benin, Agbor and Asaba were their operational objectives.
All the brigade commanders were waiting for a sign. In his report of 24 August 1967, Standish Brooks, US Defence Attaché wrote: “Murtala Muhammad does not want to fight a piecemeal campaign without a series of logical and successive objectives being assigned and without reasonable capabilities to achieve the objectives at hand.” Bisalla, the Chief of Staff (Army), said of Murtala: “I know him. When he starts, he wants to go all the way to the River [Niger] before he even thinks of stopping.” Buthe needed the sign first and his brigade commanders were waiting too.
Besides the military communication units, the army headquarters in Lagos, at times, used the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation to transmit information to all the divisional headquarters and brigade commanders. It could be done during radio programmes, news bulletins or radio jingles.
The public heard these secret codes, but thought they were part of the show. But on the 20 September 1967, at 8a.m, NBC broadcast the sign the field commanders had been waiting for. “The frogs are swimming; the frogs are swimming.” The CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) monitored and recorded key signals, statements and speeches about the war from every radio station in Nigeria, Biafra and neighbouring countries.
And they shared them with American Diplomatic/Consular units, CICSTRIKE (Commander In Chief STRIKE Swift Tactical Response In Every Known Environment), ACSI (Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence), CINCMEAFSA (Commander in Chief Middle East/South Asia and Africa South of the Sahara)and DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency).
Brooks, the attaché posted to Nigeria, analysed The frogs are swimming intelligence thus: “This informed the 2nd Division and the guerrilla bands operating in various areas of the Midwest that elements of Adekunle’s 3rd Division are already ashore from the Escravos/Forcados creeks.” Hastily marshalled Midwestern militias had been dealing fires to the Biafran occupiers. It was reported that Urhobo, Ijaw and Itsekiri swimmers were diving underwater and organising surprise attacks on Biafran units and formations along the Ethiope River. In Benin too, they reminded themselves they were the city of Ovonramwen Nogbaisi and the Biafran forces were the latest version of the British expedition forces of the 19th century.
Rapidly, young men were organising themselves into deadly underground resistance groups. Old people, who could not fight, were contributing money and their dane guns; young women, like Moremi, were reported to be offering their bodies to get close to these Biafran forces and poison their food.
The frogs are swimming. Adekunle and his 3MCDOs left their Escravos base at 3a.m and were blazing towards their objectives on speedboats. The boats held a platoon of 26 troops and the ones that carried a Land Rover each could only take 12 soldiers. With NNS Enugu providing the operational support, seven hours later, they had secured the ports of Koko and Sapele.
They forked into two columns. One headed towards Warri and by 22 September, it had captured the Warri Port and the ECN power station in Ughelli. The frogs are swimming. The other column headed northeast to Agbor on Sapele/Agbor Road. A northern column from the 6th Brigade of the 2nd Division was also heading south east to Agbor via Ehor-Agbor Road. The next day, Agbor fell. To keep up the momentum, Lagos sent in 5,000 German G3 7.62 rifles to be issued to marine commandos.The riverine operation of the 3MCDs was billed to be defining in its ruthless efficiency because the federal government wanted to use it to send a message to the oil companies suspending royalty payments who their boss was between Nigeria and Biafra. The American secret cable of 3 July stated that Shell-BP was convinced that “Biafra was here to stay and that Ojukwuwould be kind to the company.”
Within seven days, Ore, Benin, Agbor, Asaba, Kwale, Warri and Sapele fell. Ojukwu fled. The 3MCDs were asked to pull back from Agbor and Kwale and the Ethiope River was made into the inter-divisional boundary with the 2nd Division. On 29 September at 1550hrs, CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service recorded Adekunle on Benin Radio warning Midwesterners: “not to take advantage of the presence of federal troops to engage in looting, murder, and other criminalities.” Addressing the people of Warri, western Itshekiri and Agbor, he warned against using soldiers to achieve “personal vendettas.” Adekunle reminded his listeners that “he has powers to impose
martial law in coastal areas, but does not wish to do so.”
He then signed himself off as General Officer Commanding Nigerian Coastal Sector. It was not only Adekunle, made colonel after the successful Bonny Island landing, that promoted himself without the approval of Lagos. On 21 September, Murtala Mohammed went on the same Benin Radio, as monitored by the CIA, to “officially confirm the complete liberation of the Midwestern state except Agbor and Asaba” as the GOC of the 2nd Division when he was only a lieutenant colonel. He then announced: “On behalf of the head of the Federal Military Government,” the appointment of “Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Ogbemudia as the temporary administrator.”
Gowon and the Federal Executive Council were reported to have been “shocked” but they “regularised the appointment since Ogbemudia was the most appropriate for the job.” Another document titled Military Campaign in the Midwest stated: “Ogbemudia’s father is of mixed Benin-Ika extraction, as his home village near Agbor is inhabited by a tribally mixed people. Ogbemudia’s mother is ‘pure Ibo’ from the East.”
Later in the evening, Ogbemudia addressed the people. The CIA was listening, too. He asked all workers to resume work in the morning of 22 September and nullified all the appointments and promotions made by the Biafran regime. He asked the people not to “pay back Ibos in their own coin” and announced the the lifting of the curfew imposed by the Biafran regime. However, he advised people to stay indoors after 10:00pm “to allow the federal troops to complete the operation of mopping few relining stragglers.” But why after 10pm in the night?
On Wednesday 20 September 1967, federal troops opened fire on a Catholic Convent in Benin City. There was only one nun there and she managed to escape with a few injuries. The soldiers subsequently said they were told by the local people that some Igbos were hiding behind the convent, hence their decision to shoot at anything that moved. While Bishop Patrick Kelly was giving spiritual comfort to one Igbo civilian, who was badly wounded, some soldiers approached him, enquired whether he was yet dead.
When the Bishop said he was still alive, they promptly killed him. The bishop wrote a report to the Irish ambassador, who passed it to Gowon and the American ambassador.
The cold-blooded massacres in Midwest were not monopolised by the federal troops only. A confidential report of 15 October 1967 recorded that “as the Biafrans retreated from Benin to Agbor, they killed all the men, women and children they could find who were not Igbos. The town of Abudu, one of the larger places between Agbor and Benin lost virtually of its population with the exception of a small proportion that fled into the bush”.
Anthony Charles Stephens, an expatriate teacher from Britain, was killed when he refused to surrender his car to the retreating Biafran forces. Father Coleman, an Irish priest, said before Biafran troops left Agbor “without a fight”, they killed off most of “non-Ibo men, women and children.”
In general, the American confidential report stated, non-Igbo Midwesterners were very anti-Biafran throughout the occupation. For weeks, many of them hid northerners in their homes from the Biafran troops who set out to kill them. The document continued: “Nearly all rejoiced when federal troops came in. The only town that was an exception was Ehor where, even after the federal troops arrived, the local populace was protecting the Igbo soldiers and tried to confuse the federal troops.”
However in Benin, there was no intention to confuse. “The civilians were busy pointing out the Ibos,” the document stated. The federal troops set up “two big camps to serve as safe havens in a school for the Ibos. The women and children were taken there,” the report said. But the men? Sam Idah, Director of the Benin Cemetery on Ifon Road, told the American diplomats on 21 September 1967 that 24 hours after the federal troops arrived, 1,258 bodies had been buried there. “Trucks from the Ministry of Works and Transport and from Benin Development Council were used to haul the corpses to the open pits,” he said. Reverend Rooney, a Catholic Missionary with Benin Public Service, said: “A total of 989 civilians hadbeen killed that day in the city.”
Ambassador Elbert Matthews noted that “with the capture of the Midwest and the fall of the Biafran capital within days, the Federal Government senses eventual military victories and was in no mood for outside criticisms”. The massacres went on unchecked. Their report in the international media encouraged some diplomatic recognition for Biafra and arms shipments, which prolonged the war for another 27 months.
Damola Awoyokun/London
