the Biafra Story (1969) by Frederick Forsyth Read Free Book Online

but to make the request, if civil war was to be averted between rival units of the army.
    This was important for three reasons; it explains why the accusation that the whole affair was an Ibo plot to overthrow constitutional rule and install Ibo domination of Nigeria was an invention adduced long after the coup and at variance with the facts; it belies the later suggestion that subsequent massacres of Easterners living in the North were excusable or at any rate explicable on the grounds that 'they started it all'; and it throws light on the conviction to this day of LieutenantColonel Ojukwu that Ironsi's accession to power was both constitutional and legal while that of Lieutenant-Colonel Gowon six months later after Ironsi's murder was illegal and therefore invalid.
    Chapter 3.
    The Man Called Ironside
    JOHNSON THOMAS UMUNAKWE AGulYI-IRONSI was born near Umuahia, a pretty hill town in the centre of the Eastern Region, in March 1924. He was educated partly at Urnuahia and partly at Kano in the North, enlisting in the army as a private at the age of eighteen. He spent the rest of the Second World War along the West African coast and returned in 1946 as a twenty-two-year-old Company Sergeant-Major. Two years later he went to Camberley Staff College for officer training and returned in 1949 as a Second Lieutenant to West Africa Command Headquarters, Accra, and thence to Ordnance Depot, Lagos. Here he transferred to an Infantry regiment. As a Lieutenant he was A. D. C. to the Governor, Sir John Macpherson, and, a newly promoted Captain, attended the Coronation in London in June 1953. Becoming a Major in 1955 he was named equerry to the Queen on her tour of Nigeria in 1956. In September 1960 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and got his first command, the Fifth Battalion at Kano. The same year he commanded the Nigerian contingent of the United Nations force in the Congo against the Katangese and showed he was more than a staff officer. When the Austrian Medical team and the relieving Nigerian soldiers were besieged by the rebels, he flew in alone, in a light plane, and personally negotiated their release. The Austrian Government decorated him with the Ritter Kreuz First Class.
    In 1961 and 1962 he was Military Adviser to the Nigerian High Commission in London and while there was promoted to the rank of Brigadier. He then did a course at the Imperial Defence College. In 1964 he returned to the Congo as Com- mander of the entire U. N. Peace-Keeping Force with the rank of Major-General, Africa's first officer to hold that command. During operations there he confronted single-handed an enraged mob in Leopoldville and persuaded them to disband. These and similar exploits earned him the affectionate nickname of 'Johnny Ironside'.
    On his return to Nigeria he reverted to Brigadier and took over the First Brigade, but soon succeeded Major-General Welby-Everard, the last British G. O. C. of the Nigerian Army, and again became a Major-General. He was, said a British civil servant speaking later and choosing his words carefully, 'a very upright man'.
    The new regime started well. It was backed by enormous popular support. All over Nigeria, including the North, people rejoiced at the end of the rule of the corrupt politicians and hoped for a new dawn. The last of the plotters of January had been brought peacefully out of their hiding places and were detained in their various regions of origin. Loyalty to the new regime was pledged by the NPC of the North, the Action Group of the West and the NCNC of the East and Midwest, even though the politicians of these parties were out of power and some were detained. Support also carne from the trade unions, the students'union and the Emirs of the North. Foreign correspondents noted the popularity. A columnist in the African World noted in March: 'The favourable reception accorded to these constitutional changes by different sections of the Nigerian population clearly shows that the army