The Biafra Story: Part Seven

"The Biafra Story: Part Seven"

At the outbreak of the war, the Biafran army was poorly equipped. It had only 32 modern rifles to be shared amongst 10,000 combat personnel, most of whom lacked uniforms. As a result, Biafran civilians eagerly volunteered their personal clubs, rifles, and machetes for the war effort. On the field, Biafran soldiers moved in pairs, sharing a single rifle so that if the first were to die, the second would pick up the weapon and continue fighting.

The Nigerians, on the other hand, had over 100,000 troops and were supplied arms, tanks, and modern vehicles and equipment primarily by their former colonial master, the United Kingdom, in addition to the Soviet Union and the United States.

In criticizing how Western powers fueled the flames of the genocide that threatened to wipe the Igbo off the face of the earth, in his book "Nigeria Biafra and Boko Haram: Ending the Genocides Through A Multi-State Solution" Osita Ibiem writes: "It is claimed that Britain had 300,000,000 pounds in investments (less than a billion pounds in today's value) and 16,000 of its nationals in Nigeria at the start of the war. And they believed the best way to protect their interests was to support the Muslim North in the conflict. So Britain supplied so many arms and personnel to the Nigerian side - enough to wipe out the entire population of Biafra." In his personal history of the war, "The Republic of Biafra: Once Upon A Time In Nigeria", Dr. Onyema Nkwocha writes: "In fact, history will prove that it was wrong for Nigeria to invade a fledging country without provocation whose people, for fear of their lives and personal security broke away from an oppressive union and established their own independent sovereign nation. It was wrong then, it is wrong now and it would be wrong a 100 years from today."#TheBiafraStory

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