ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From The Notebook, International Socialism, No.32, Spring 1968, p.5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Andrew Miller writes: At the time of writing (6th January) prospects of an early end to the bloody war of attrition being waged in Nigeria seem increasingly remote. In the virtual absence of hard news in recent weeks one can only surmise a virtual stalemate after more than seven months of war. Despite federal government successes which followed Biafra’s UDI and its initial gains, the warring sides have reached an impasse. Military casualties are heavy on both sides – reports indicate a total of 40,000 to 50,000 killed. The plight of people in the war zones is desperate, with the distinction between Ibo soldiers and civilians disappearing as both stand to resist the advancing federal forces, while Biafran soldiers take savage reprisals against non-Ibo tribes in the South-East State. That the war is no longer a purely domestic matter is apparent from the support outside countries are giving to the two sides. The federal government has made large purchases of Mig fighters and other arms and equipment from Russia, while Biafra is being supplied with material (and men) by Portugal, Spain, and, probably, South Africa. Either side accuses the other of employing mercenaries in both training and combat capacities, and federal charges at least appear fully substantiated. There appears no possibility whatsoever of any negotiated political settlement. General Gowon and the federal government remain adamant that the war will continue until Biafra renounces secession and agrees to rejoin a revamped federation. The rebels for their part refuse to yield until the independence and integrity of the Biafran State is recognised, claiming that federal forces are bent on the extermination of the 14 million strong Ibo population. Any prospect of outside mediation can likewise be dismissed. The six-man OAU Heads of State mission, which had no powers to mediate in the dispute, proved a non-starter. Attempts by other African leaders to intervene have been met by firm rebuffs from the Federal government, which is insistent that it will brook no outside interference in its internal affairs.
Space in the Notebook does not permit any attempt to unravel the tangled events that have led to the present tragic situation. Certainly the British must bear some responsibility – as architects of an unwieldy and unworkable federal structure dominated by the North – which Nigeria inherited on attaining independence in 1960. The corruption and incompetence that characterised successive civilian governments, the military coups of January and July 1966, the subsequent Ibo massacres in the North and the bloody reprisals in the East, the failure of the Aburi meeting held in Ghana at the beginning of 1967, and the establishment of the rebel State of Biafra in the former Eastern Region in April, now appear as successive stages in the tragedy being enacted in Nigeria.
Western socialists can do little but stand aghast as the last act is played out. To claim that one side in the dispute is more deserving of our support than the other is fallacious – centrists and soggies can be left to draw parallels between ‘brave little Biafra’ and ‘brave little Israel,’ or to simplistically counterpose a reactionary, feudal North and a progressive, Christian East. Amidst the ruins, the collapse of the weak forces of the Nigerian Left is complete, its leaders in neither Lagos nor Biafra able to rise above a narrow ethnic chauvinism, while a developing class consciousness on the part of Nigeria’s workers and peasants has disappeared in the face of a resurgence and strengthening of ethnic and tribal loyalties. The prospects for Nigeria, its 50 million people, and any sort of progressive movement are bleak indeed.
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 18.6.2008