Former
Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, has written yet another
explosive piece on one of the most horrific events that has ever taken
place in the history of Nigeria.
Femi Fani-Kayode
This essay is about one of the most horrific events that has ever
taken place in our history and one of the most graphic examples of
ethnic cleansing that took place during our civil war.
It is an event which mortified the civilised world and which
brought our nation and Armed Forces opprobium, disdain, contempt and
shame.
It is an event that turned the earth red with blood and the sky black with death on the accursed day that it took place.
It is also an event which successive governments have attempted to
brush under the carpet, forgetting that we owe it to God and to the
slaughtered innocents to establish the facts, set the record straight
and let the truth prevail.
Whether anyone likes it or not what happened in Asaba on October
7th 1967 will constantly be revisited and one day, when history is
taught in our schools, it will be a reference point for all that is
sordid, unclean and reprehensible about our turbulent and ugly past.
One day it will remind us of the depth of the brutality and sheer
callousness that often prevailed in the old Nigeria and hopefully we
shall garnish that reality with the firm resolve that such a thing will
NEVER happen again.
The facts are as follows. The Commanding Officer of the Second
Division of the Nigerian Army that retook Asaba from Biafra was Lt.
Colonel Murtala Mohammed. He was to become Major-General Murtala
Mohammed and our nation’s Head of State within the next eight years.FEMI
FANI-KAYODE
One of his key officer’s and the man that actually led the soldiers
into Asaba on that day was Lt. Colonel Ibrahim Haruna (better known as
Lt. Col. IBM Haruna).
He was the commanding officer whilst one Major Ibrahim Taiwo, who
actually gave the orders for the massacre to commence, was his second in
command.
According to Wikipedia, “the Federal troops entered Asaba around
October 5 1967 and began ransacking houses and killing civilians
claiming they were Biafran sympathisers. Leaders summoned the
townspeople to assemble on the morning of October 7 hoping to end the
violence through a show of support for “One Nigeria.”
Hundreds of men, women, and children, many wearing the ceremonial
akwa ocha (white) attire paraded along the main street, singing,
dancing, and chanting “One Nigeria.”
At a junction, men and teenage boys were separated from women and
young children, and gathered in an open square at Ogbe-Osawa village.
Federal troops revealed machine guns, and orders were given, reportedly
by Major Ibrahim Taiwo, to open fire.
It is estimated that more than 700 men and boys were killed, some
as young as 12 years old, in addition to many more killed in the
preceding days.
The bodies of some victims were retrieved by family members and
buried at home. But most were buried in many mass graves without
appropriate ceremony.
Many extended families lost dozens of men and boys. Federal troops
occupied Asaba for many months, during which time most of the town was
destroyed, many women and girls were raped or forcibly “married,” and
large numbers of citizens fled, many not returning until the war ended
in 1970″.
Permit me to give a more vivid account.
When the Federal troops “liberated” the town of Asaba from the
Biafran Army, they invited all the young boys and old men into the town-
centre for a briefing.
Most of the men that were of fighting age had fled the town and
retreated into the east with the Biafran army. The people left behind
were mostly women, children and the elderly.
At Ogbe Asawa the old men and young boys were asked to come out and report in the town square.
Consequently no less than 1000 boys, some of whom were as young as
10 years old and elderly men, some of whom were as old as 80, left their
homes and proceeded to the town centre for what they believed would be a
pep talk and a happy reunion with Nigerian soldiers.
They neither carried nor possesed any weapons and they offered no
protest or resistance. As a matter of fact history records that many of
them went to the town centre with great hopes of reconciliation and big
smiles on their faces believing that they would find favour with their
Nigerian “liberators”.
When they got there they were lined up in neat rows and, within the space of one hour, every single one of them was dead.
Those that were not shot to death were hacked to pieces and
bludgeoned to death with knives, cutlasses, cudgels, axes and bayonets.
Some were beheaded whilst others had their organs and private parts
cut off and were badly mutilated. Worse still many had their eyes
removed.
Rivers of blood flowed through the town square as swarms of flies
and hordes of vultures nested and feasted on the bloated corpses of the
slaughtered innocents.
The stench of death and rotting flesh was compelling and
overpowering whilst the entire community was stunnned with horror,
frozen with fear and gripped with terror.
Each and every one of them lost someone on that day and, as the
bodies of both the young and old were thrown into mass graves, the
entire town was thrown into weeks and months of weeping, wailing,
mourning and gnashing of teeth.
Other than the pre-meditated, cold-blooded and utterly callous
“murder by starvation” policy of Gowon’s Federal Military Government
which led to the death of over one million Biafran children, this event,
which came to be known as the “Asaba massacre”, was undoubtedly the
single most horrific and brutal act of genocide in the Nigerian civil
war.
Clearly those that were behind it forgot that the blood of the
innocents and martyrs never goes to waste. They also forgot that the
Lord of Hosts is a God of vengeance and the Ancient of Days always
rewards and repays.
34 years later, in 2001, during the tenure of President Olusegun
Obasanjo and in front of the Justice Oputa-led Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, Colonel IBM Haruna (who by that time had become a
Major-General and was the Chairman and leader of the Arewa Consultative
Forum), said the following words under cross examination in front of
millions of Nigerians who watched the event on live television.
He said, “as commanding officer and leader of the troops that
massacred 500 men in Asaba, I have no apology for those massacred in
Asaba, Owerri and Ameke-Item. I acted as a soldier maintaining the peace
and unity of Nigeria”.
He went further by saying:
“If General Yakubu Gowon apologised, he did it in his own capacity. As for me I have no apology”.
The fact that these were mostly defenceless little boys and elderly
men who bore no arms, who carried no weapons, who offered no resistance
and who were non-combatants during the war had no bearing or impact on
the reasoning or thinking of this man.
He expressed no remorse and no regrets for his reprehensible
actions and he offered no compassion or sensitivity towards his harmless
and trusting victims.
And neither did he have any empathy with or sympathy for the families that they left behind.
His mindset and attitude was sociopathic in nature. He refused to
recognise or accept the fact that his actions were not only barbaric and
utterly evil but also completely unnatural.
This was a man who, under the administration of General Yakubu
Gowon, was bestowed with the distinct honor and privilage of being
appointed as Federal Commissioner of Information and Culture (the
equivalent of Minister of Information and Culture) in our country, yet
he openly expressed his pride and joy in slaughtering hundreds of
innocent children, defenceless elderly men and helpless senior citizens
in the name of “keeping the peace” and ensuring “Nigerian unity”.
Such impunity and callousness has rarely been seen in the annals of
world history. Not even Hitler’s Nazis that gassed 6 million innocent
Jews and Gypsies to death in concentration camps during the Second World
War spoke with such pride and joy about their sheer barbarism and
horrendous atrocities either at the Nuremberg Tribunals where they were
put on trial or at any other time after the conclusion of the war.
Worst still the open and public expression of this inhumane and
utterly primitive attitude and sentiment by IBM Haruna proves more than
any other that ever since the beginning and indeed right from the start
southern Nigeria has been under the cruel yoke and bondage of the most
inhuman form of subjugation, slavery and repression.
We were (and still are) held together as a nation by nothing other
than the fear of heartless and ruthless men like IBM Haruna and the
force of arms.
I sincerely hope that one day this wicked man who has no milk of
human kindness flowing through his veins and who is incapable of
harbouring any compassion faces jusice for his heinous crimes.
That is the least we could do to appease the souls of those that
were so cruelly and brutally murdered in Asaba and give them the justice
that they are screaming for from their graves.
Interestingly, Major Ibrahim Taiwo, the officer who actually
ordered the soldiers to shoot the civilians and who reported directly to
Lt. Colonel IBM Haruna on that fateful day, was himself murdered nine
years and five months later on February 13th 1976.
He was killed alongside General Murtala Mohammed, the then Head of
State and the civil war Commander of the Second Division to which they
all belonged, during an attempted coup by Colonel Bukar Dimka.
What an irony and strange twist of fate this was. Surely there is a lesson to be learnt there.
May the souls of those that were massacred in Asaba on October 7th
1967 continue to rest in peace and may the Lord continue to strengthen
and comfort their families and loved ones. Happy Easter!
About the Author:
Femi Fani-Kayode was former Minister of Aviation and spokesman for the Goodluck Jonathan Campaign Organisation.
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