Drums of Defeat

"Fellow Biafrans, where will you run? We ran away from Lagos, and fled northern Nigeria by the thousands. In the battlefields, we ran and allowed the enemy to advance. Must we also run in our homeland? Face the enemy and fight him--street by street, house by house. This is the moment to die bravely for Biafra."

The frantic call to arms, broadcast by Radio Biafra, thundered across Nigeria's secessionist Eastern Region last week like the throb of primitive war drums. It was directed at Biafra's Ibo tribesmen, who set up an independent country to escape persecution, but few were in a mood to heed its challenge. Four months after Rebel Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu declared Biafra's independence, federal troops under Major General Yakubu Gowon slashed deep into Ibo territory, rained shells down on the Biafran capital of Enugu and sent frightened Biafran soldiers and civilians fleeing by the hundreds. The fall of the tiny breakaway republic (pop. 12 million) seemed only a matter of time.

Rampage of Death. For Lieut. Colonel Ojukwu and his Ibos, the beginning of the end came, oddly enough, partly as the result of a considerable initial victory. Last August, in a lightning attack, Ojukwu's forces swept westward out of Biafra and captured Nigeria's oil-rich Midwestern state. But the drive left Ojukwu's 7,000 troops stretched dangerously thin over 39,000 sq. mi. Rather than strike back, Gowon quietly built his troop strength to 42,000 men and kept adding heavy arms, ammunition and jet planes, which Ojukwu could ill afford. Then, two weeks ago, after Ojukwu's Midwestern administrator proclaimed the "autonomous, independent and sovereign republic of Benin," federal troops poured across the border in force and raced toward the Midwestern capital. By the time they reached it, Biafra's outnumbered troops had fled, along with many Ibo civilians and $5,600,000 from the Benin treasury.

Bypassing shops chalked with "soul brother," Benin's non-Ibo residents went on a rampage, looting and wrecking businesses owned or managed by Ibos. Many Ibo civilians were handed over to northern soldiers, who competed with each other for the fun of shooting them. Hundreds of Ibo bodies, many stripped and shot full of holes, were scooped into dump trucks and carted off to common graves or to the nearby Benin River. Others were left to rot in the blistering sun.

Three Alternatives. Blaming Biafra's defeats on "the treacherous acts of Gowon's collaborators" within his own army, Ojukwu executed four of his top officers. By then, 3,000 federal troops were roaring across Biafra; in a few days they had reached the outskirts of Enugu and begun shelling it from the high green hills overlooking the capital. "Fathers and mothers," Gowon asked the Eastern Ibos, "rise up and save your loved ones and homes. Lay down your arms, not your lives. The war is against Ojukwu, not against the Ibos."

The Ibos were terrified that further resistance might trigger a huge massacre of the kind that cost them many thousands of deaths in Northern Nigeria last year. As for General Ojukwu, he had to decide whether to surrender and throw himself on Gowon's mercy, stay in Enugu and fight to the death, or flee to the Ibo heartland south of Enugu, where he could carry on a guerrilla war. Whatever choice he makes, Biafra seemed doomed.

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