General Alani Akinrinade (rtd), in this interview with Editorial Board Chairman SAM OMATSEYE, FEMI MACAULAY and OLAKUNLE ABIMBOLA speaks on the Nigerian Civil War, Alabi Isama’s book and other issues.
Are you acquainted with the book by Alabi Isama?
Yes; when he first wrote a draft or what I call perhaps a draft. It was in three volumes, big volumes and then he gave them to me to read. His first idea was that I should get it into a printable form. But I looked at it and told him that it would be the work of professionals. They know how to put it together. As far as I was concerned, there was so much tautology in it. One issue was brought out three times. It looked like the book of an angry man. The professionals would really sit down, look at it, get the facts out correctly and make it readable. But I had no problem with the facts, figures and things which he put in the book. It was just the presentation that I had reservations about. But that was many months, or maybe two years ago.
General Alabi Isama said in his book that Obasanjo, in his My Command, misread the 3rd Marine Commando battle tactics at Onne for the entrapment of your troops, when it was indeed a decoy. Would you like to corroborate Osama’s claim?
Yes, it was for me, in military terms, a tragedy – a tragedy in the sense that we lost more men and some equipment in the process which ought not to happen. But there were issues which led to that tragedy. I suspect that if anyone wants to be fair, he would now lay out all those issues and then weigh them against what the result was. But Obasanjo did not. Like I told Alabi, if you read Obasanjo’s book, you would be nauseated to the point of vomiting. But when he insisted that he wanted to read it, I got him two copies, not just one, if he really wanted to make himself unhappy.
Obasanjo himself was not party to all those issues. He was in Ibadan at that time. It was (Benjamin) Adekunle who was in charge of 3 Marine Commando and the GOC. I was commanding Bonny, and we had an operational plan. I had been to see the divisional commander. I was not part of his division. The 15th division I commanded was an independent brigade; and we reported straight back to Lagos. But for the purpose of continuing operation in the riverine areas, the main objective was to capture Port Harcourt. We were very near, but we couldn’t get there by ourselves. So, if the Third Division was going into Port Harcourt, we had a very major role which we could play to secure Bonny channel, to make sure there was no interference; and also, if it was possible, stage enemy diversion from Third Division troops. That was the whole purpose. I had been to Calabar. We sat down in Adekunle’s headquarters. We all agreed to it. Then when the Third Division troops got to Opobo, I took a boat and found my way to Opobo to reconfirm that that operation was still on. Now when they left Opobo to cross the Imo river (the idea was if they were crossing the Imo river, a very substantial river because it went towards the Niger Delta estuary, and they were using pontoons to cross, since there was no bridge), it was necessary for us in Bonny to stage some operations to divert enemy attention from them, so that they could safely cross. That was what we didn’t do in Onitsha; and that was why we lost maybe up to 2000 to 3000 (soldiers). In Bonny we had what you call a brigade but I didn’t have more than 1,500 men, even though we called it a brigade. It was out of that small group that I had to take out maybe about maybe 500 men to go and do the operation. It was strictly an assault landing, in which case we had nobody on the other side. All we needed to do was to take boats and get into Onne. The village was just a few kilometers to the main road that led to Port Harcourt. So if we succeeded in getting to Onne and move out of Onne, we would have cut off everybody by the river crossing. That was the whole idea. We were supposed to be supported by artillery from those who are crossing; we were supposed to be supported by a little bit of air power. But what happened was that because they started crossing late, everything was concentrated on Bonny, so we didn’t get any support at all. Then secondly Lagos, who promised to send me a few equipment before the date, failed to do so. Col. Femi Oluleye was rear commander in Lagos. We landed in Onne all right, but instead of being there for say 24 hours, and the Third Marine Commando troops joining us, they never did. Even though Adekunle assured me that they had started to cross, they never did. So by the time we got to Onne, there was no help coming from anywhere. So we had to move out of Onne and go to Bonny again. It was in that process that we must have lost, maybe about 200 men. That was what happened. So when Obasanjo put what he didn’t understand in his book, I was just laughing because he didn’t know what happened there; and I think you don’t go around making comedy out of a very terrible tragedy. For me, 10 soldiers lost in an operation was a tragedy: what are you doing as an officer? What is your plan? What are you thinking about? So…
(Cut in) That means without your operation there, Third Marine would not have been able to enter Port Harcourt?
That’s right. But what Obasanjo didn’t say was that when the crossing now started, we repeated the operation and this time, we succeeded. But that first one was premature, absolutely premature and I take responsibility because it was stupid. I was their commander. Whether the GOC did or didn’t do his part, for me, was immaterial. Men are put under your charge as commander and I was responsible for them. We lost about 200.
There was this guy Azuatalam, a Biafran officer – what was the story? It was said the guy was very brave and that and you fought him for five hours before finally capturing him?
Yes it was Makanjola’s front, God bless his soul. It was my brigade but Makanjuola was the battalion commander in the area. When that skirmish was over, what really interested me about Azuatalam was that he wasn’t the commander there, he was one of the officers we captured when the operation was over. When finally he got to my headquarters and I looked at him, he was such a nice little boy and he was not really a soldier at such – I mean, not a trained soldier but he had secondary school certificate. He was a smart boy: he worked with me for about two or three weeks. So, I persuaded Adekunle: why don’t we send him to cadet school so he could really become a proper officer? Adekunle agreed and we talked to Gen. Gowon and we sent him to Lagos, and they sent him to Sandhurst and he became an officer. He’s in Port Harcourt now.
He is still a soldier?
I was a bit disappointed on that score. By the time he made captain, I think I was a general then, the next thing I knew was that he had left the army. He left as captain. So, I looked for him in Port Harcourt, I got him, he told me he wasn’t getting real satisfaction out of the job. He thereafter became a marine fellow, repairing boats and things like that.
But it looks like you don’t want to talk about your own exploits in the place; the five hours that Alabi Isama talked about when you chased after him, he said he ran out of bullet, nd you ran out of bullets but you had to go get him?
Yes, but you know when you have a unit you give them work to do. Unfortunately, the civil war was not the conventional war taught in school, where the commander sits at the back and he gives order; and expects his lieutenants to carry out the operations. Unfortunately you had to wake up at five o clock in the morning to make sure, even though your officers were there at the frontline, to get them to start the operation. You had to hang around in the evening to make sure that the operation was carried out. That was how 3rd marine commando worked throughout the operation and that’s why Alabi, even though he was chief of staff, for a long time was always at the front. You would do most of your writing works at night and this same night you travel round to join your troops at the front to make sure that the operation went well, otherwise nothing might happen. So I was there. It was normal. It happened every day. You got out there, you got surprises, you had to adjust yourself and get on with it.
Yes, another fault: there again, we made another big blunder because we wanted to get to Uli Ihiala at all cost, so we thought if we got to Owerri, we could follow the Orashi river right up to Owerri lake, land on the other side – that is Oguta; and then come out. I think less than five kilometers from Oguta was the main road that links Owerri, Ihiala, Nnewi. So, if you came out of that road, the war was as good as over.
That was Pincer 2 strategy?
Yes, that was short cut. But then we sent Makanjuola there and he landed. He spent about two/three days there but unfortunately all the reinforcement that was supposed to come to Owerri, to now push a little bit to divide the front properly, never happened. So, the rebels concentrated on Makanjuola and they pushed him back to Oguta Lake. There were quite a number of small tragedies that happened during the war. But in this case we didn’t lose too many troops because we were smart enough to get out in time.
You must have been very trusting sir, the Azuatalam guy was a Biafran officer. He could have been a traitor. To have converted him from Biafra to Nigerian army, was that not a big risk?
Maybe. But I think at that stage of the war, we had come to the point where a lot of the so-called rebel officers-Biafran officers, even their men, seemed to think that whenever they were captured, that the war was over for them. That the loyalty they were talking about and the fervent Biafran thing about everybody singing the anthem and this and that didn’t go beyond when things are comfortable…..That’s my impression right from when I was in Second Division, to the operations in the Midwest. That was my impression. Each time you captured anyone and you treated him well, he forgot about the Biafran thing.
Isama himself talked about Third Marine Commando; that Boro was the one training them; that when they got there, he trained them and at first he was sleeping with one eye open. But he discovered that the people were not a threat, after which he relaxed.
My first encounter with riverine area was when I was abruptly posted to Bonny to go and take over the place but I did. I had three officers who I can never really forget. The first one was called Amangala George. He was a school principal, he had a master’s degree, he was my adjutant, I inherited him there. He was not a soldier but he was very intelligent
He was Biafran?
No! I think he is from Yenogoa. I am talking about the people who came from the riverine areas and then we had not captured Port Harcourt but we had Bonny so it was Bonny now that I met this George, he was my adjutant. Not a soldier but a make-shift soldier, he would just put on uniform and we started teaching him the regimen of how to fight. But he was a good administrator. He administered my headquarters. The other one was Yanayo , he was also a school teacher and the third one was Nottingham Dick. If you remember, Nottingham Dick was one of the persons sentenced with Boro. So, you can see these were people who had been involved, in one way or the other, in the liberation of the riverine areas. It was not really as articulated as it is today, as the area has now been carved into Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. Back then, it was Kalabari, Ndoni, Andoni, Ijaw, the pure riverine areas. That’s what Boro stood for but Port Harcourt, of course, used to be their headquarters. So, I met these three people there and I learnt a lot from them. First I had never done any canoeing or boating but in Bonny, there was no way of surviving for an officer. There was no way you could go looking at your troops without you really being able to use a canoe or to use a pontoon; and there was nothing worse than asking people to do things which you could not do yourself. So, I had to learn how to use a canoe, how to use a speed boat, things like that. So those were the things we learnt from people like Boro. Unfortunately, he went to Okrika and he got killed there. Many people got killed but that of Boro was significant because of what he stood for. But what Boro stood for we have refused to address till tomorrow. But if we don’t address these issues, Nigeria is not going to go very far.
Could you substantiate a bit on that sir?
Well, Boro formed what he called Niger Delta Volunteer Force and he was saying they didn’t want anybody to come and mine their oil and all that. Later on they gave it a name. They called it resource control. Some people later still called it restructuring of the system. That’s what Boro stood for. He decided that the only way to get attention was to go around molesting the oil companies and the rest of these insiders, he didn’t make it habitable for foreigners who were digging oil in the place. Well, he died during the war. The whole thing died down after the war because you had to do reconstruction, things like that. But there was a resurgence of it, championed by Saro-Wiwa (Kenule). Again, he approached it from a very sophisticated intellectual angle. But Instead of listening to him, they hanged him. They organized some people to lie and do whatever was needed to get rid of him. Now the third phase of it is the militant agitation involving Asari-Dokubo and co. What did we do? We gave them amnesty, we make them into tin gods and empower them. They are all billionaires now. But we haven’t solved the problem because tomorrow it is going to come back to us again. A new generation of them will come up, rebels with a cause. You cannot get rid of such a rebel unless you remove his cause. You are always going to get supporters for it until we go to the riverine areas and really set the place right.
When I was in Bonny around 1967-68, if you could paddle a canoe and you got a basket and you went on the Bonny River, you could catch Cray fish, if they taught you a little bit about this thing. You could go to Okrika, at low water, and catch periwinkle –a basketful of it. All those things have disappeared and we are saying that the people don’t have a reason? Well I’m sorry for them. All they do now is to want to hold the presidency, which the Yoruba held for eight years and were worse off for it. When they hold it for eight years, they would also be worse off for it. So really it is either we sit down and really resolve this problem in the interest of everybody, not just in their own interest but in the interest of everybody. Let’s recognize the problems that we have in the country.
That was one lesson I learnt during the war – Lesson because I could see in practical terms how they live in the riverine areas. Those of us who say they are very lazy people don’t even know that sometimes they go out for a whole week in the water catching fish, going from fishing pond to fishing pond and now when they come back to the village and they are sitting down in the morning to drink kaikai and all that, then you’ll say these people are just drunkards. But look, that is their lives. That is the dictation of living inside the creeks and bog where they live. Unless you sit and study, understand these issues, you won’t understand the problems; and you would understand even less the people.
The question of people threatening us that they have kept their arms in the creeks and whenever we don’t do their bidding they are going to go back into the creeks, I take seriously. You know Boko Haram, and all that. So, let’s go to the root of these issues. I thought it was a privilege for me to have served in Bonny and in that riverine area, to go round meeting the people, seeing the villages and the way people lived, the conditions in which the people lived and what is their livelihood. I know we took 90 percent of their livelihood out of them. So if we get the oil, give them the money and let them go and organize themselves.
I want to ask a question that may seem philosophical. I can take the difference in perspectives in civil war literature. What I can’t understand is the difference in facts in the narratives. Who is to be believed and why, in view of the distortions here and there?
But you also know that even in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples went with Jesus, all of them were supposed to be present but when they wrote, their versions were different, here and there: language, expressions, perceptions and interpretations. That’s why we have so many; Mark, Luke; and everybody wrote his own. I think that is one. But you will find that the facts are very close. In the case of the war, I expected that would happen. However, if you can’t correctly interpret whatever happened, you could at least narrate things as they happened. In that wise, those who were physically present there would have a much better account of what really happened.
Isama was present there, Obasanjo was present there. Yet you find Isama coming out with counter points to Obasanjo’s own version?
Yes, I think if Obasanjo had concerned himself strictly with the short time that he was in 3rd Marine Command and told factually what he saw, maybe his book would not have been so nauseating. But he didn’t. He embellished it. If you were not party to things, you don’t talk about them. If you are told about these things, you can verify them before putting them down in a book. I don’t think Obasanjo took enough pains to really find out about things, all in the process of trying to justify his stand or position. Why was Obasanjo the only general officer commanding present there at the formal signing of documents ending the war? How can he justify that? Was he the only person that fought the war? I don’t know why Nigerians didn’t ask questions: are you the only one who fought the war? He couldn’t get the other GOCs to be part of the formal surrender: of the First Division, Second Division, those who did it before and those who succeeded them and even Adekunle that Obasanjo succeeded. Why wasn’t Adekunle present there? These are issues which Nigerians ought to have asked; are you the only one that fought the war?
You were not even there when the war ended, you were sitting in Port Harcourt. The matter had been settled in Owerri ever before you showed up. Achuza is still alive today and people can ask him. That made people like Alabi angry about Obasanjo’s claims. That’s why I said when I saw the draft, I told him it is a book by an angry man. Don’t destroy a very good book because you are also angry that somebody had done it in a very derogatory and incorrect way. So, that was why I thought somebody should edit the book. I only got a final copy of the book yesterday (July 7) when I visited him; and even then I have not been able to read him to see exactly how much the original copy has been altered. But I suspect he got some very good people to tinker with it.
He suggested in the book that actually you were the person instrumental to the final surrender push. You were the one they really surrendered to. Would you want to tell us the last seconds of the war?
Yes, I was the chief operation officer for Obasanjo and then like I said, at least in the Third Marine, when you order an operation, it is better for at least the chief operations officer, from headquarters, to be there when the execution takes place. So, in the last two days of the war, I had to move myself to Owerri. As soon as we got back to Owerri, I decided to stay there so that we could continue the operation. In the night, one of the officers came and woke me up and said that some rebels were looking for the GOC. They brought them to me. Their leader introduced himself and said that …
Do you remember his name sir?
Achuzia. We call him Air Raid. He wasn’t my friend anyway because he killed my friend in Port Harcourt. So, we talked…
What friend did he kill in Port Harcourt?
Halliday, the owner of Silver Valley.
He wasn’t a soldier?
No he was just a business man. He shot him in the front of his children and his wife. Till today one of his daughters never recovered from that trauma. She’s in America today. So Achuzia said he needed to get a message to the GOC. I explained to him that I wasn’t the GOC, I was only the operation officer for the division. However, my GOC was in Port Harcourt; and that I was prepared to do anything to minimize the carnage going on, if the talk was surrender. I said okay. It was 5 o’ clock that morning and we were supposed to start the final push; but that I had enough authority to stop it. But how was I sure his side would keep to the arrangement such that after we lost the momentum, we would not go back to fighting again? So I said, let’s go and see Effiong. Where is Effiong? I asked. He said he was in Amichi. How far away was Amichi? He said about a few minutes drive. So about 5: 30 in the morning, we left our own headquarters, I followed him. My brigade commander, Ola Oni, said he was going with me but I said no way! I told him, if in two hours you don’t see me or you don’t hear from me just start the operation, don’t worry about where I am, it doesn’t matter. So I took another young officer to follow me so we got to the vehicle and I noticed that as morning was coming, people were not interested in the war anymore. The Biafran soldiers sat down beside the road like refugees. Nobody had guns. Even for those that still had uniforms, you could see that for them, the war was over. Then, Achuzia made a request: just in case anything happened to us, he wanted us to visit his wife – can I call on my wife just to tell her that I’m okay because when I was coming here she said they were going to kill me? I said okay , why not? So we went to his house, in a small village. He had a very nice place and I said you people said you were fighting a war; and yet you can keep a bungalow like this in this place! So, we joked about it so he brought a brandy bottle and we poured libation and we drank and I assured the wife, a European, white lady, that the war was over.
So we now drove to Amichi. Getting there, the time was now like 6: 45-7 in the morning and people were already anxious to find out what had happened to Achuzia. As we came out of the vehicle, among those who trooped out were three of my classmates: Ben Gbulie, Iheadigbo, Nwakwe! Then, some of my juniors were there too. So, I forgot what we came to do there, and were laughing and busy back-slapping, saying we were all so stupid to have allowed this thing to go on for this long,
So where is Effiong, I asked. They said he was upstairs. We went upstairs and I met General Effiong. We were very close at the Army Headquarters before. Then he said something of an honourable surrender and all that. But I told him I didn’t care whatever he called it. All I knew was that the war was over; and they didn’t have one chance in hell of negotiating anything. If I were you, I told him, I would just give up and let everybody go home. So, we just argued about that a little bit and that was that. I told him I would have to take proper instruction from my GOC, since I had sent him a signal that I was leaving Owerri, to check some stories about rebel surrender. So, Obasanjo left Port Harcourt for Owerri. I came back around 11: 30 am, since we had spent so much time drinking and pouring libation. Shortly after, Obasanjo arrived and I briefed him and he said he wanted to see Effiong. So, he did. We then drafted a speech and agreed that Effiong should go to the radio station nearby to read the speech, saying the war was over; and that everybody should stop shooting. That was it.
Thereafter, we agreed everybody should come to Port Harcourt, en route to Lagos. But as Obasanjo and the former rebel officers were leaving Port Harcourt for Lagos, I called our rear commander, then Lt. Col then, Emmanuel Abisoye. I told Emmanuel that these people were coming to Lagos; and that he should get accommodation for the visiting party and also get all the other divisional commanders. The idea was that the former rebels, the Nigerian divisional commanders and Obasanjo would go to Dodan Barracks for the formal surrender ceremonies. But it never happened that way. Abisoye arranged the accommodation. But the rebel officers never showed up. Obasanjo had lodged them in another place. When Abisoye eventually met Obasanjo, he told him he should alert and bring the other divisional officers to the surrender ceremony. But I blamed Abisoye, telling him he should have told Gen. Gowon. Anyway, Obasanjo didn’t call anyone and Abisoye was the only one who followed him.
I think Obasanjo has a very acute sense of history and I think he was dying to be something someone had never been before and do something nobody had done before, not just in the military but also during his presidency. So, I think that was what motivated him and that is the reason people like Mohammed Shuwa, people like Murtala Muhammad, people like Ibrahim Haruna and Benjamin Adekunle never showed up at that armistice. So, he took all those photographs and then put them in his book. I thought that was very uncharitable.
Was there any reaction by these excluded commanders?
Nobody bothered. They were not like Obasanjo, all those people. These were just soldiers. I don’t think they were thinking of history or whatever. Their attitude was: let’s just get this job done and get on with it.
We also learnt that from Isama’s book; he said that there was this long trip that George Innih took to Arochukwu, while you were getting the surrender?
Yes, George was supposed to join us a day before because we had finished all the operations in the sector. He was supposed to bring most of his brigade to come and join us in Owerri, so together we could do the final push to Uli Ihiala …
So Innih’s was on an Israelite’s journey?
By the time he eventually came back, the battle was over.
Isama also said in his book that Obasanjo was clueless about where you were at the surrender, and that he was looking for you, moving from one place to the other?
Yes but we finally met in Owerri and I took him back to see Effiong.
Interestingly sir, it was you I think who suggested Obasanjo to Gowon as GOC to succeed Adekunle?
Yes, but those were very sad stories!
Isama described Obasanjo as clueless and lacking depth. I just wonder: if you had seen Obasanjo in that light, would you have made the recommendation to Gowon?
Those of us in Third Marine Commando knew we couldn’t post any officer to the division, who was not strictly southern, a Yoruba for instance, and expect him to succeed in the place. The way the place was structured, the people who either volunteered or were posted to serve there were mainly from the Yoruba West. So there is something about trust and you know this, and the third division needed very high handed discipline because of the terrain where we were, the people amongst whom we were operating. You cannot afford to upset them as such and you cannot operate in a place where you are tearing down the town. We had to keep the population ….and therefore we needed someone who understood what it was all about. Now if the idea, what happened in 1966 during the coup was anything to go by, it was a bit difficult for a northerner to operate in the southern part and get the trust of everybody. It was difficult. Murtala tried it and he did very well but when you look at the make-up of his divisions, they were mainly westerners.
So you are confirming too that, as I asked Isama, that this war was actually inspired by the Hausa Fulani but the brain and the execution was by the Yorubas?
Yes, really because they took part in some of the operations. If we had gone by what was happening in the northern sector and the rest of them, that war could have lasted like 10 years. It was the southerners who really injected some form of impetus into the war. There was this talk about in the present South-South, the Niger Delta. The people were friendly; they were supporters of federal government. But if you antagonized them, you wouldn’t get anywhere. Also, many of these people were also victims of the pogrom in the North. That was why I suggested Obasanjo to Gowon.
The problem with Adekunle was that he was a very tired man. He had done well but he was tired. The law of diminishing returns had set in and he was getting a little bit irrational. Only yesterday (June 30) Isama gave me a book written by Adekunle’s son, one of his sons. I had never seen it before. But just going through, I now realized Adekunle had written in letters to Gowon, about all sorts of things; and in those letters he had insinuated that people were talking about him trying to take over the government and this and that. All these didn’t occur to me but I thought these were illusions. People must have been telling him: that he was the black scorpion, that he was bullet-proof and this and that; and all that was beginning to get into his head. We at the front we were beginning to see irrational behaviours and I said you can’t enforce, and I start taking orders that I know patently did not make sense. People started getting killed and that’s why I left 3rd division. I just came to Lagos and said look, if you people don’t have control over your GOC, I have no reason to serve under him. I left 3rd Marine and I came back to Lagos.
The Obasanjo thing, I’m still curious. Apart from ethnicity which you said was important, what attributes did you see?
The Nigerian Army was short of officers as at that time, we didn’t have too many choices anywhere. In any case, none of us had been to any war front apart from Congo. I just believed then that first of all, you couldn’t bring a northern officer to 3rd Commando as the GOC, it’s not going to work. Then, Obasanjo had been to Staff College or something. So, he had enough to recommend him to do a job that Adekunle was leaving. I think he had enough qualifications. He was an engineer officer. He wasn’t an engineer but he was posted to the engineering corps and there he learnt a lot on the job. He was also rear commander of Second Division in Ibadan. So, there was no reason he shouldn’t take over the Third Division from Adekunle. I was thinking in terms of writing him a confidential report or anything like that. He was my senior, anyway . We were just talking about possible replacements: there was Wole Rotimi there, there was Oluleye; there were very few anyway
And Abisoye?
Abisoye was already commanding the rear of 3rd Commando.
There was this claim by General Isama that Adekunle indeed tried to kill both of you. Could you shed more light on that?
Adekunle, when he was tired and became a bit irrational and started taking decisions, difficult to understand in military terms and refusing discussions, refusing what we thought was legitimate and reasonable advise, we just thought we had had enough. And then Alabi talked about the final situations, and two of us sat down and wrote a battle plan, which we submitted to him for discussion and eventual approval. But instead of discussing the plan, Adekunle wrote a scrap of paper: “Tactics Lesson 101. When am I expecting more tutorials?” So I said wait, this man has gone bunkers, so we had to leave. But as we went back to our headquarters, his provost officer came and told us that the GOC was going call a meeting and would ambush us and get us killed. But I told him Adekunle won’t do a thing like that. But he said sir, I know what I am talking about. So I said okay, what do we do? So I just decided: why should I serve under a man who will organize to get me killed – for what? So, I decided to get out of there. So, we commandeered ammunition and went back to Lagos. That’s why I’m not interested in writing my war memoirs. I think there are too many dirty things …
How did the army high command take that? Was that some sort of desertion or what?
(Laughs) I think most of the officers in the front were really getting out of their elements. I think we were all getting crazy a little bit in some ways. For me, I just felt I didn’t want anything from anybody, anymore. I didn’t start the war, am I supposed to finishe it? So, why should I do things that I don’t want to do? I admit: It was a question you should never ask in any army but everyone was getting crazy as the war was taking its toll. So, I just disappeared. I just went to Takwa Bay, took a small chalet, and started living there.
Just like that?
Yes! So that’s why I said I think we had all gone crazy. I was living in Takwa Bay until finally they found out that I was there. Gowon wanted to see me and I went to see him. At the meeting, it was on an evening, everyone was there: Gowon, Baba (Akinwale) Wey (Rear Admiral, chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters), David Ejoor (chief of Army staff), Hassan Usman Katsina, Adegbola (Police DIG)and others. But from the setting, it was far from a war meeting. It was more of an administrative one which, at war time, seemed rather amusing. I told them Adekunle had gone crazy; and that I didn’t want anything to do with him again. But Gen. Gowon insisted I should go back to 3rd Marine Commando to which I rather angrily retorted that I didn’t start the war. It was in the heat of this discussion that I suggested: “why don’t you send Obasanjo there?”, when it was clear Adekunle would be recalled. By then, a lot of things were happening in 3rd Marine Commando, reverses that suggested Adekunle was tired. So, he was recalled and Obasanjo replaced him. But when Obasanjo got to 3rd Marine, he found the division was not such an easy place. He needed some officers to assist him. It was then he insisted that the only way he would stay as GOC was if Isama and myself came back. That was how both of us went back.
The reverses of Owerri led to the dusting up of Pincer 2. Obasanjo was apparently not aware of it until you radioed him that surrender had come. What was Pincer 2 all about?
It wasn’t anything complicated. We had suggested it to Adekunle before but he said it was Tactics Lesson 1. So of course, the thing died a natural death. But we had the documents and we knew the situation in that sector of the war. We needed to capture three cities for the war to end: Owerri, Aba and Umuahia (OAU). Incidentally, there was some Organisation of African Unity (OAU) thing; and Adekunle decided we needed to do something dramatic before the OAU event, evidently inspired by the similarity in the OAU abbreviation. We now launched a frontal attack on Owerri, from which we lost too many men. Though we got close, we could not capture the town. So, to plan these three operations we were able to seal one: the Aba one. We were able to seal from Aba to Umuahia but we couldn’t seal the Owerri one and we were already in Aba, so he wanted us to now go up to, at least, Owerri.
So sir if it were to be today, it would have already been okay, with Aba and Umuahia meaning AU?
AU yes, so we said no you couldn’t do that, he said no, we have to. Then we had a young brigade commander who was going to be responsible for the operation. So I had been able to see him and I had told him that the operation was not on. So he took Edet?, I said this thing is not on but he was a much younger officer than I was. So when we now got to the other group, I didn’t say anything. All he himself could say was, ‘yes sir, yes sir’. So, the Owerri battle was settled. But we didn’t have enough troops. We could manage what we had and get to Owerri. But we couldn’t hold the town. Adekunle said don’t worry: by the time we get to Owerri, he would have got enough reinforcement from Lagos. But I insisted we should get reinforcement first before starting the assault. When my protest became too much, Adekunle said what was my concern – after all, Edet, not I, was the brigade commander! Edet, of course, could not say no, for he was a much junior officer. So I told Adekunle: “Sir, tomorrow by five o clock, I will personally be there and we will get into Owerri. Since you said we can hold it, it’s your responsibility, not mine. He said yes, why not? That was how we went into Owerri. We got there but as I feared, we could not hold it. I was even surprised that we lasted that long in the town. There was also the Umuahia tactics debate before the action was aborted. Because of my strong reservations about Adekunle’s preferred tactics, one of my classmates, Shande, came to tell me and Alabi that the GOC called him a coward. He felt bad.
For a soldier that was …
He was my classmate, we went to school together. But Shande got killed in the Owerri assault, a death that was probably avoidable. There were quite a number of tragic stories. They ought not to have happened. After putting all of these together, I decided this man had gone crazy. That was why Alabi and I left.
How would you grade Obasanjo and Adekunle because you worked with both of them?
Adekunle did a much difficult and much better job. Obasanjo simply took over Third Division after they had gone all the way from Calabar, all the way to the northern point of Obubra, all these areas in the present day Cross River, Akwa Ibom and Rivers states. The war, in all those places, were over. 3rd Marine were already in Igbo land. What Adekunle should have done was to change tactics a little bit, be less ambitious about what we were doing, and to know that we needed to commit more troops in a place where the people were not our supporters. In the riverine areas, we got a lot of support from people. They showed us the creeks, it was a very complicated place to operate in. That was why when Asari Dokubo decided that he was going to get nasty, I told people you won’t be able to stop them, if they have arms. They don’t have to be very smart, they live there. But you don’t live there. Your soldiers can’t live 24 hours on water in a canoe and eat there and sleep there and fight from there.
Making comparisons: Isama called Obasanjo bossy and Adekunle listening?
At the beginning, Adekunle had enough honesty. In every war, you change command, you change people but we didn’t have that luxury in the Nigerian Army. The Nigerian Army didn’t have the luxury of, say, moving three officers out and replacing them with fresh ones. That affected people like Adekunle. Also, I didn’t know who was playing politics with him because until I now read some of the papers now published, as letters he was writing to Lagos, people accusing him that he had ambition of becoming the head of state or anything. At that point, he did not want to listen to anyone, any more. His brusque rejection of our proposed operational order, which he dismissed as Tactics Lesson 101, was high-handed. We should have argued it. That was what he used to do. But now, he was changed, as he appeared to know everything. And it was bound to be disaster after disaster. That was why a new GOC had to take over.
Losing Owerri and moving troops back gradually towards Elele was a bad time for the GOC. By that time he had disorganized his headquarters. He came back from Lagos one day and said he was accused that his whole division was Yoruba. He said so. So, he reshuffled his key men: me, Isama, Ayo Ariyo and now put relatively junior officers, who could not face these top men in charge of sectors, just to prove his division was not exclusive Yoruba territory! Whatever he was thinking, I had no idea. But the new operational officers could not give instructions or challenge the actions of these more senior officers in the front. That led to more reverses and confusion.
General Gowon, what sort of commander-in-chief was he?
I think he was too nice for a soldier.
Too nice?
Too nice, in the sense that he is a very polished person. I can say that because I grew up under his tutelage. So, I know him from his bedroom, to the office, to everywhere. He was too understanding sometimes, and it is very difficult to extract a yes or no answer from Gowon. That is his nature: “I mean, honestly, you boys…honestly, well…honestly.” It’s very difficult to get him to say yes or no! Very difficult!
So how come he lasted that long as head of state if he was vacillating?
For most of his time the army was busy. We got into the war, we fought almost three years out of his tenure. Thereafter, we resettled and there was this big problem. I think the army was too preoccupied with itself: you know we had lost many officers, too many. We had wounded soldiers all over the place, so nobody had time to address the issue of governance until about 74, four years after the war, when people started turning attention to governance, and agitation in the army started that they wanted back all the officers for military duties. All the military governors were senior to me – very good officers. We wanted all of them back in the Army. In any case, what were they doing there?
Then the story would come: two governors were travelling to this event; then they went to Kontagora. They went to the Keffi Guest House, and they were told there were no drinks except champagne. And they said, okay, we would manage it! (general laughter). These people were just enjoying themselves and we in the army were just running around. So, we wanted them to come back and help. Why don’t they get civilians to be governors in place of these officers sorely needed in the military. That agitation culminated in the coup that removed Gowon.
I don’t know if anybody had written about it, but about four months before the coup that ousted Gowon, there had been big commotions at Army Headquarters. Gen. David Ejoor, our army chief of staff, was told to go to Dodan Barracks and tell them off, insisting that officers holding political positions must return to the army. But Ejoor could not do it. So, we called a meeting of all senior officers in the commander-in-chief’s office, that’s what happened. We got all the senior officers, we went to Dodan barracks and we had a meeting with Gowon and we gave him an ultimatum to announce a definite exit date by the military? That was when Gowon started losing grip. There and then. Our chief of staff (Ejoor) couldn’t do it. This was how we started losing grip. Gowon was not a very forceful person. I think he leaves you as a senior officer to make your own decision. But you can’t do that, as commander-in-chief.
I had this debate with Isama and he wouldn’t go that far and I said from his own account of the war, the GOCs were just doing what they wanted and there was no overarching strategy which would say this is where you have gone, stop and so on. For instance, Shuwa was just moving from village to village, he seems to have no plan and then there was the instance of Gowon (and you were there) asking Muritala not to cross the Asaba bridge but he still did and nothing happened?
That’s why I said he seems to leave you finally to do what you like but you don’t do that as a commander, you take responsibility for what would have happened. Therefore, you have the last say. You can debate, you can discuss but the last thing you are going to do, is what you are going to do. I heard, the moment we got to Asaba, Murtala said we were crossing the bridge. I told him wait a minute, you know I have stomach ulcer. Before we leave Midwest and go to the other side there, I’m going to get to Lagos and see my doctor and collect enough medicine from him before coming. So, he said okay. I could go for five days.
Now the argument that preceded that was that there was no way we were going to cross. And we made suggestions as to what we should try to plan and see whether it was possible but we thought it was possible to move out of Asaba, leave maybe half a brigade because we didn’t need more than that because the bridge had been broken anyway. The bridge was still intact as at that time but we had intelligence report that it had been mined. So we asked that we could go to Idah, it didn’t matter, we could do it leisurely, even if we had one ferry. We could do it over one month and get our troops across to the other side and then divide the sector into two. We take the right hand one, which would end up in Onitsha ; and Shuwa could keep going to Umuahia. My GOC said, are you really suggesting that I should go and share boundary with that renegade?
Who is that ?
Shuwa. They were classmates at Sandhurst; they were my seniors. I spent only one term with them because they were passing out when we got there. I said if you can’t share boundary with Shuwa, who else are you going to share boundary with? He said no don’t give me that, we are going to cross this bridge. I drove back to Lagos and I went straight to Dodan barracks. Gowon was so happy to see me and he said well-done boys. I said but there was trouble. He said what? I said my GOC wants to cross the Niger into Onitsha. I told Gowon we would never get there, since the bridge had been mined. Gowon said, don’t worry, we would stop him. I had spent like three days; then went to Abeokuta to spend one night there with Olu Bajowa, because he had a training depot. So, I went to see what was going on there, to talk about the kind of people they were sending to us. I told him I thought it would be better if we had the permission to extend the training for about one month, since people being sent to the front hardly knew the difference between the gun’s barrel and its butt. I said these people are just coming to die.
After the night, I drove back to Asaba and I had with me Ike Nwachukwu. The reason was simple: I couldn’t leave him anywhere. He was operation officer but I couldn’t leave him. I didn’t trust that I would find him when I came back. They could probably kill him because he was Igbo. So, every time where I went, I said let’s go. I took him to Lagos, we came back. By the time we came back, the operation had been carried out and the disaster had happened. So, we came to a salvage operation. That same morning we arrived, they had landed at Onitsha and trouble had broken out and they had pushed them back. By the time we arrived in the afternoon, we just met stranglers, fleeing for life. That was the first operation.
But he insisted we had to repeat the operation. I said well, there are two conditions: you know my brigade, we have served you so well. Virtually we fought 95 percent of the Midwest all the way from Okene to Benin, from Abudu to Asaba. We have three brigades; one had gone and come back. Talk to the other brigade, let him go and do it. I give you one condition if you are able to secure a proper base there, I promise you I will cross the sea with you and that day we will get to Nnewi. The day we cross, we will get to Nnewi before sun down that’s the only thing I can promise. He agreed.
In the meantime, I added, I wanted to take my brigade back to Iluche. I wanted not just to rest but to do some training, to do some recapping for my officers, and I’d got enough trucks to take them, since you couldn’t train or do anything in Asaba, and I didn’t want my men sitting down idle in the trenches. He agreed. But I asked him about the equipment for the second crossing, so that I could use them in my battalion’s training, cross from Iluche to the other side, and see how adequate they were. But the equipment was so ragged there was no way we could do what we planned. I would get into trouble because the river had so much heavy current, so you needed some powerful boats, which we didn’t have.
Then the next thing he said Daramola had agreed to do the second operation. I said okay; I had agreed to follow him if he could secure the bridge. That was the agreement. I got my tools ready to follow him just in case, you never know there might be some surprise success. But again, there was defeat, tragedy and confusion. Indeed, one of Daramola’s officers, Bassey Inyang, a signal officer who still had his riffle with him, came out of the canoe that brought him from the front to the bank at Asaba. Bassey, how was it? I asked. Sir, he replied, they were shooting at us! I laughed: you were expecting roses? Even then, he (Murtala) thought of doing the crossing the third time.
The third time?
Yes, the third time. But we debated and debated until he abandoned the idea.
So I came back to Lagos and I said I wasn’t going to serve in Second Division anymore. I told them that despite my alert, they could not stop Murtala from his disastrous crossing. He did it two times and each time we lost officers, good officers. I told them I didn’t want to return to the division.
Gowon didn’t stop him?
He didn’t.
