The Asaba Massacre S

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-14078-3 — The Asaba Massacre S. Elizabeth Bird , Fraser M. Ottanelli Frontmatter More Information

The Asaba Massacre

In October 1967, early in the Nigerian Civil War, government troops entered Asaba in pursuit of the retreating Biafran army, slaughtering thousands of civilians and leaving the town in ruins. News of the atrocity was suppressed by the Nigerian government, with the complicity of Britain, and its significance in the subsequent progress of that conflict was misunderstood. Drawing on archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic and interviews with survivors of the killing, pillaging, and rape, as well as with high-ranking Nigerian military and political leaders, S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli offer an interdisciplinary reconstruction of the history of the Asaba Massacre, redefining it as a pivotal point in the history of the war. Through this, they also explore the long afterlife of trauma, the reconstruction of memory and how it intersects with justice, and the task of reconciliation in a nation where a legacy of ethnic suspicion continues to reverberate.

s. elizabeth bird is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. She has published over 80 articles and chapters on popular culture, media, heritage, and memory, as well as ﬁve books, one of which won an Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, while another was awarded the International Communication Association’s Outstanding Book Award.

fraser m. ottanelli is Professor of History at the University of South Florida. He has authored and co authored four books and several articles and essays on radical movements, ethnic history, and com- parative migration in the twentieth century. He currently serves as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), an educational non-proﬁt dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights.

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-14078-3 — The Asaba Massacre S. Elizabeth Bird , Fraser M. Ottanelli Frontmatter More Information

The Asaba Massacre Trauma, Memory, and the Nigerian Civil War

s. elizabeth bird and fraser m. ottanelli University of South Florida

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www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107140783 DOI: 10.1017/9781316493168 © S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli 2017 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2017 Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Inc. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-107-14078-3 Hardback ISBN 978-1-316-50616-5 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To the people of Asaba

Contents

List of Figures page viii List of Maps xi Acknowledgments xii Prologue xvi

1 The Road to War and Massacre 1

2 What Happened at Asaba? 21

3 Causes and Consequences 62

4 Surviving the Occupation 114

5 Reclaiming Memory in an Age of New Media 148

6 Trauma, Identity, Memorialization, and Justice 179

Sources Consulted 218 Index 232

vii

Figures

1.1 Lt.-Col. Murtala Muhammed (center), along with Col. Godwin Ally (left) and Col. Francis Aisida, both brigade commanders with the Second Division, near Benin City, September 23, 1967. Photo courtesy of Associated Press. page 17 2.1 Niger riverbanks, looking toward Asaba, Asaba-Onitsha ferry crossing. Photo by Simon Ottenberg, c. 1959–1960. Simon Ottenberg Collection, EEPA 2000-007-0764, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. 22 2.2 Students at Asaba Girls’ Grammar School perform Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – the “hole in the wall” scene, 1963–1964. Photo by Carol Kimmons. 24 2.3 Midwest Premier Dennis Osadebay leads a motorcade through the Cable Point area of Asaba during the December 1964 general election campaign. Photo by Eric Strauss. 25 2.4 Col. Ike Omar Sanda Nwachukwu (center, looking through ﬁeld glasses), and his troops survey the situation at the Niger bridge. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Adoke. 34 2.5 The Onitsha end of the Niger River Bridge, after it had been blown up by retreating Biafran troops. Photo by Ahmed Adoke. 34 2.6 Federal troops progress up a street in Asaba’s Cable Point District, past houses destroyed by shelling, October 1967. Photo by Bill Norris, courtesy of The Times.37

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list of figures ix

2.7 Members of the extended Isichei family at the ordination of Father Patrick Isichei (center, parents Flora and Francis Okafor Isichei on either side). Others pictured include Osi (ﬁrst row standing, far right) and Emmanuel (next to Flora), both killed at Asaba; Celestina (next to Osi); Victor Izegbu (back row, far right). Asaba, 1966. Photo courtesy of Victor Izegbu. 43 2.8 A home in Cable Point, Asaba, after the arrival of federal troops, October 1967. Photo by Bill Norris, courtesy of The Times.52 2.9 Col. Ike Omar Sanda Nwachukwu (center), with other ofﬁcers, leaves a ferryboat used for the failed attempt to take Onitsha. Photo courtesy of Ahmed Adoke. 59 3.1 A typical news image of Biafran starvation, July 1, 1968. Photo by Kent Gavin, Daily Mirror, courtesy of Mirrorpix. 63 3.2 A woman combs through abandoned belongings looted from homes. Cable Point, Asaba, October 1967. Photo by Bill Norris, courtesy of The Times.91 4.1 The Uraih family in Kano in 1962, celebrating the admittance of oldest son Ben (sitting far right) to medical school in Britain. Sitting: Paul (killed at Asaba in 1967), baby Robert, Mrs. Veronica Uraih, Victoria, Ben. Standing: Anthony, Ify (on stool), Lucy Chineze, Emma (killed in 1967), Ubaka. Father Robert Uraih and son Medua not present. Photo courtesy of Ify Uraih. 126 4.2 S. Elizabeth Bird interviews Felix Onochie, who is showing a photo of his brother Emmanuel, killed in the “second operation.” Photo by Fraser M. Ottanelli. 131

x list of figures

4.3 Refugee camp at St. Patrick’s College, Asaba, 1968. Photo by Brad and Jean Abernethy, courtesy of AFSC. 132 4.4 Portions of meat laid out for refugee meals. Two cows were slaughtered each day, yielding portions for more than 2,000 people. Refugee camp, St. Patrick’s College, Asaba, 1968. Photo by Brad and Jean Abernethy, courtesy of AFSC. 134 4.5 Families line up outside the Catholic Mission to receive food and other supplies. Asaba, late 1968. Photo by Brad and Jean Abernethy, courtesy of AFSC. 139 5.1 One of several commemorative family plaques in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Photo by Fraser M. Ottanelli. 149 5.2 Composite photo showing Rose Nduka-Eze, who was killed in Asaba, holding her older son Anthony and with younger son, Chuck, superimposed. Courtesy of Chuck Nduka-Eze. 151 6.1 The October 7 monument at Ogbe-Osowa, Asaba. Photo by S. Elizabeth Bird. 204 6.2 Asaba Commemoration Day Procession, 2012. Survivor Dr. Ify Uraih is center front. Photo by Fraser M. Ottanelli. 205 6.3 Detail from an outdoor mural at the home of Dr. and Mrs. E.A.C. Nwanze, depicting the Oct. 7 massacre. Created by Tony Nwalupue. 207 6.4 Community members view “The Most Vulnerable Nigerians” exhibit. Asaba, 2012. Photo by Fraser M. Ottanelli. 208 6.5 The Mungo Park House Museum, Asaba. Photo by S. Elizabeth Bird. 211

Maps

1.1 The four regions of Nigeria, 1963–1967. Cartography by Bill Nelson. 6 1.2 The advance of Biafran troops into the Midwest Region. Cartography by Bill Nelson. 13 2.1 Location of Asaba along the Niger River. Troops approached via Okpanam-Asaba Road, heading to Cable Point, and then to the recently constructed Niger Bridge. The exact route from Cable Point to the bridge is unclear, since roads have changed significantly since then. Cartography by Bill Nelson. 33 2.2 Asaba, 1967. Townspeople came out from the five quarters to parade along Nnebisi Road, ending in the massacre at Ogbe-Osowa. Other massacre sites – the High Court, police station, and football field – are also marked, as are the locations of the Isichei and Uraih family houses. Cartography by Bill Nelson. 45 6.1 Current state boundaries within the area that was once part of the former Midwest and Eastern Regions, showing the approximate boundaries of Anioma. Cartography by Bill Nelson. 187

Acknowledgments

During our seven years of research, including eight visits to Nigeria, we have depended on the support and assistance of many entities and individuals, all of whom made this work possible. First, we gratefully acknowledge the support of several grants from the University of South Florida (USF), notably from the Ofﬁce of Research, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Humanities Institute, as well as our home departments of anthropology and history. In particular, we thank former Vice President for Research Karen Holbrook, who believed in the value of our work and provided some funding at a crucial time. We acknowledge the hard work of Maryann Cairns, who as a doctoral student in anthropology at USF spent many hours transcribing interviews, often making valuable suggestions for our work. Cartographer Bill Nelson created the maps with great patience and attention to detail. We acknowledge our colleague Erin Kimmerle, whose forensic work in Nigeria led to the connections that began this research. Most recently, we were fortunate to receive a Collaborative Research Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), which has funded research expenses and release time for writing; we deeply appreciate this support, which has allowed us to complete our work. We also thank Dirk Moses and Daniel Jordan Smith, who both wrote letters of support to the ACLS. This book builds and expands on several previously published pieces: S. Elizabeth Bird, “Reclaiming Asaba: Old Media, New Media and the Construction of Memory,” in M. Neiger, O. Meyers, and E. Zandberg, eds., On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age, London: McMillan Palgrave, 2011, 88–103.

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S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli, “The History and Legacy of the Asaba, Nigeria, Massacres,” African Studies Review, 54: 3, 2011, 1–26. S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli, “The Asaba Massacre and the Nigerian Civil War: Reclaiming Hidden History,” Journal of Genocide Research, 16, 2–3, 2014, 379–399. S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli, “Breaking Four Decades of Silence: The Challenges of Reconstructing Collective Memory in Post-Civil War Nigeria,” In Bird and Ottanelli, The Performance Of Memory as Transitional Justice, Cambridge, UK/Mortsel, Belgium: Intersentia, 2015, 135–152. S. Elizabeth Bird, “Rebuilding Memory in an Age of New Media: The Case of the Asaba Massacre,” in A.H. Hansen, O. Hemer, and T. Tufte, Memory on Trial: Media, Citizenship and Social Justice, Zurich: Lit-Verlag, 2015, 85–99. In Nigeria, we thank the members of our Community Advisory Board and many more people who have assisted our work in myriad (non-ﬁnancial) ways. Emma Okocha introduced us to Asaba and its sad history; his work underlined the need for a well-documented and reliable account of that history. Chuck Nduka-Eze has been a good friend and occasional critic, whose observations and insight have kept us on track. Chief Dr. Louis Odogwu, former president of the Asaba Development Union, and his wife Marcella have welcomed us to their homes in Benin City and Asaba, and introduced us to many key people in Asaba. Chief Philip C. Asiodu has graciously hosted us several times, facilitated meetings with key individuals, especially former federal military ofﬁcers, and has committed support to the Mungo Park House Museum initiative. Prof. E.A.C. Nwanze and his wife Victoria have also welcomed us to their home, and assisted with our work, as has Mrs. Martina Osaji. Celestina Isichei-Isamah and her brother Rev. Father Patrick Isichei shared the story of her letter and gave us much useful background information. Victor Izegbu and Juliana Edewor have hosted us, offered advice in several areas, and given their support to the Mungo Park House project. Renny Nwosa

xiv acknowledgments

has become a dear friend, guiding us around Asaba, and sharing his knowledge of Asaba culture and tradition. Richie Omo, with his unfailing enthusiasm and love of Asaba, has been an inspiration, as has Emeka Okelum Okonta. We appreciate the support of HRM Prof. Dr. Joseph Chike Edozien, CFR, the Asagba of Asaba, who received us at his palace in Asaba several times and gave his official approval for us to conduct interviews in Asaba. Most of all, we thank Dr. Ify Uraih, who has been a steadfast friend and ally throughout the work. He has provided endless logistical support, arranged meetings with survivors, and offered advice whenever needed. Like everyone else we met and worked with in Nigeria, he always provided encouragement, but never tried to influence the direction our work should take. Ify, we are deeply grateful. We each have those we wish to thank: S. Elizabeth Bird: The Nigerian Civil War was the first major international conflict to make an impact on me while I was growing up in Britain in the 1960s. Like most in my generation, my memory of the war is dominated by the searing images of starving Biafran children; I knew little about the larger context of the war. I am grateful for the opportunity to learn more and to tell a story that has long been neglected. During this work, archivists and librarians at all the collections visited were generous with their time and expertise; all are listed in our sources. In particular, I thank Don Davis at the American Friends Services Committee Archives; he went out of his way to locate hard-to-find documents for me, and provided copies of photos at no charge. As the research progressed, I developed an active presence on social media, through which I was able not only to keep in touch with Nigerian friends, but also to learn much new information. In particular, I thank Ed Keazor, Chika Omeje, Max Siollun, Joseph Anene Okafor, and Emmanuel Mordi for sharing their knowledge and experiences. Members of the Nigeria Nostalgia Project Facebook group thoughtfully responded to our work on several occasions, as did

acknowledgments xv

members of the groups Proudly Asaba, Ahaba Forum, and Asaba Development Association. On a more personal note, I thank my husband, Graham Tobin, for his love and patience throughout this research. When the project began, I did not expect it to become such a meaningful part of my life; he has supported and encouraged me throughout. I thank our sons Thomas and Daniel Tobin, who have both grown into wonderful young men; Dan also provided the narration for our video. And I remember my parents, Tom and Eileen Bird. My father enjoyed following my work in Nigeria, and he would have liked to see it completed. Fraser M. Ottanelli: I am grateful to a special group of friends for their camaraderie and support as I embarked on this new journey, especially Vasco Lionel Bonini, Peter N. Carroll, Tami Davis, Phil Levy, Theresa Lewis, and Mary Anne Trasciatti. Some of my debts of gratitude are not for the ﬁrst time. One is to my parents, Ann Fraser Ottanelli and Vittorio Ottanelli, who never wavered in their interest in the new directions of my research even when, as in this case, it caused them some apprehension. The other is to my sons, Carlo and Vittorio Benadusi Ottanelli, who as they make their own way in the world continue to be a great source of pride and happiness. Together, we appreciate the work done by Cambridge University Press to bring this book to fruition. Lew Bateman encouraged us to bring the proposal to Cambridge and worked with us until his retirement in 2016. Maria Marsh, Claudia Bona-Cohen, Victoria Parrin, Jeevitha Baskaran, and James Gregory have provided support and assistance whenever needed. We also thank the anonymous reviewers who read the proposal and made many useful suggestions. As always, any errors that remain are ours. Finally, and most important, we both thank the many people of Asaba who agreed to tell their often painful stories. All our interviewees are listed at the end of the book; many others also spoke with us informally and shared their memories. These stories form the backbone of this book, and it is dedicated to them.

Prologue

In the summer of 1967, Celestina Isichei was preparing for her ﬁnal college exams, looking forward to a career as a teacher and to marrying Peter Isamah, her long-time sweetheart. Soon she would be home in Asaba, a peaceful town on the banks of the Niger River. Celestina knew about the ominous events that were worrying her friends and family – that war had broken out in Nigeria that July, and people were on the move across the country. But surely it wouldn’t last, nor should it affect her family of educators and professionals, who considered themselves to be loyal Nigerians. Yet that October, Celestina sent an anguished letter to her older brother Patrick, a Catholic priest and student at Oxford University. She described the catastrophe that had descended on Asaba, which now lay in ruins, its male population decimated and its women and girls terrorized. She described how their 16-year-old brother Osi had been shot in front of her, and how their brother Emmanuel, a young married father, had been slaughtered along with hundreds of others in a sustained killing spree. She listed all the family members and neighbors who were now dead, many hastily buried in common graves. It seemed incomprehensible that soldiers of her own government had done this, and she desperately wanted Patrick to make it known in the wider world. Celestina’s letter reached her brother, who tried to get someone to pay attention. But Asaba’s fate caused barely a ripple. Even with the end of the war, through years of military rule and then the country’s return to democracy, the tragic events of Asaba remained ofﬁcially unacknowledged. For decades, the memory of the massacre was preserved in the recollections of the survivors, while Celestina’s letter, the only account of the Asaba Massacre written in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, remained ignored in an Oxford archive.

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prologue xvii

In the pages that follow, we tell the story of that massacre, as seen through the eyes of survivors and supported by available archival sources. We describe the sustained horror that befell Asaba during the Civil War, and we examine the immediate and long-term consequences, exploring the lingering impact of such a traumatic event, even decades afterwards. And we show how a full understanding of Asaba changes the accepted narrative of the progress and history of the war. The Asaba massacre was, unfortunately, just one of the atrocities that marked that conﬂict, but we argue that it was actually a pivotal event that contributed to prolonging a war that claimed well over a million lives. We examine how and why the massacre happened, and how the Nigerian Federal Military Government, supported by Britain, worked to keep the world from learning about it. Finally, we explore the process of memory formation, as new media offer opportunities to reclaim the story of Asaba. And we suggest that while the bitter burden of memory can serve to divide and to feed resentment and continuing ethnic tension, an active academic/ community collaboration that helps “recalibrate” memory may offer opportunities to reach a more complete understanding of a nation’s troubled history, and even open the door to reconciliation.