Introduction
Three Ijaw diplomats won the Biafra/Nigeria war for Nigerian Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. They were (1) Ambassador Joe Tonye Fubara Iyalla, 1928-2019, from Bakana in Rivers State (2) Ambassador Blessing Akporode Clark, 1930-2022, from Kiogbodo in Delta State, and (3) General George Tamunoiyowuna Kurubo, 1930-2000, from the Bonny Island in Rivers State. This is how they achieved the impossible at a time when the Christian West, except Britain, treated Gowon like a leper at the behest of the Islamic north:
Igbos dominated the diplomatic corps in the First Republic, 1960-1966. With the declaration of Biafra, Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Biafran leader, inherited the very best diplomats. By 1968, his foot soldiers convinced American President Richard Nixon that the Biafra/Nigeria war was a jihad waged by the Islamist North against the Christian Biafra. So convincing were the Biafran diplomats that the president’s wife, Mrs. Patricia Ryan Nixon, went into the street to collect alms for starving Biafran children; just as her husband was on the verge of arming Ojukwu.
It was at this point that Ambassador Iyalla spoke up. He maintained that the war had nothing to do with religion or jihad because he was an Ijaw man and a Christian from the former Eastern Region like Igbos. That Ijaws were Christians even though they were with Gowon. The conflict, he claimed, was purely politics triggered by Ojukwu’s ambition of annexing unwilling Ijaw territories.
Iyalla’s argument settled it and from then Nixon quietly distanced himself from the Biafran question. Had America armed Biafra, Gowon would not have been able to shift Ojukwu’s foot in a thousand years. Also note, only an Ijaw diplomat could steal the show for Gowon as Yorubas, Hausas, Tivs, Binis, Fulanis, etc, were seen as biased parties in the conflict.
In the United Nations, UN, Ojukwu’s diplomats again succeeded in casting the conflict as an international one between two countries- Biafra and Nigeria. So successful were the Biafrans that the General Assembly decided to take a vote on the conflict. Had that happened, the vote would have given Ojukwu the legitimacy he desperately needed.
But just before the vote was taken, Ambassador Clark cautioned the world body to back off from Nigerian internal problem; being what the crisis was all about. He reminded the UN not to violate its own Charter of non-interference. So brilliant was Clark’s argument that the world body steered clear of Biafra not to set a dangerous precedent capable of consuming it. Ojukwu was defanged.
In Russia, Gowon’s ambassador, General Kurubo, brought the neutral Soviets leadership to Gowon’s side. He convinced Premier Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov that the war was all about the contestation for the Ijaw man’s vast oil and gas fields. That Ijaws were firmly on the side of Gowon and not Ojukwu. Any country that helped Gowon win the war would get a piece of the pie. The Soviets leader said he was backing Gowon. The long-range Mig fighter jets Andropov gave Gowon menaced Biafra not minding the ingenuity of Ojukwu’s crack pilots like the legendary Captains August Okpe and Ibikari Allwell-Brown of the Tactical Air Command of the Biafran Air Force, BAF.
At the same time that the three Ijaw diplomats were active in the centers of power, Major Isaac Adaka Boro and a handful of Ijaw boys were blazing away in the marshlands of the Niger Delta. In other words, the Ijaw leadership was able to proffer the two most important indices of power, namely, diplomacy and military. Gowon won the war on 15th January 1970.
The question worth asking, therefore, is how did minority Ijaw emerge the ultimate arbiter of power in 1968. This is bearing in mind that a decade earlier the same Ijaw bitterly complained to the departing British their fear of being swallowed wholesale by their immediate majority Igbo neighbour in an independent Nigeria. The Ijaw Magic of 1959-1969 is worth understudying if only to understand what we are not doing today that made us weak and how to correct our mistake.
What is Nationalism
In his Magnum Opus, “Africa and the International Political System,” Professor Lawrence Baraebibai Ekpebu defines power as the ability to influence. It thrives on a number of elements not limited to a country’s size, population, strategic location, natural and human resources, quality of diplomacy, quality of leadership, and military. Importantly, he singles out diplomacy and military as crucial in the survival of a nation, “The military element of power is a crucial element in that where diplomacy fails and the chips are down, the ability of the armed forces to deliver the goods remains the only alternative to survival and victory” (p.12).
The “goods” could only mean a group’s “national interests,” being integral to our working definition of nationalism. National interests could be energy, water resources, security, trade, agriculture, private business, etc. Nationalism is the amount of power wielded by a self-conscious group aimed at ensuring its own survival and victory in relation to similar powers by its neighbours. Ekpebu opines power is not static. Rather, it entails a dynamic state of affairs in which empires rise and fall and the relative power of nations are in continuous movement of rising and falling.
Other ways of maximising power include conquest at the expense of the conquered, alliance aimed at increasing the elements of power available to the contracting nations through their combined strength, and correspondingly decreasing those of the enemy, and through sound diplomacy whereby a nation increases her friends and reduces her enemies. The ultimate aim is to increase one’s power while minimising that of the enemy (p.13).\
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In “Why the West Rules-for Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future,” Ian Morris identifies two human agents in the maximisation and minimisation of every known nationalism. The first is the “exceptional genius” whose diplomacy or military prowess propels his people ahead of their neighbours. Alexander the Great, Shaka Zulu, Isaac Adaka Boro, Dedan Kimathi, Nelson Mandela, Harold Dappa-Biriye, Jomo Kenyata, Jaja of Opobo, Steve Biko, etc, were all exceptional geniuses who brought reprieve to their worlds.
Ekpebu notes that this genius, or individual, as his people’s representative, plays important role in the empowerment of his society within the international political systems, “The unique character, decisions and actions of an individual especially if he is the Head of State of a country…evoke international reactions and relations usually unique and peculiar to the man and his circumstances….” (pp.20-21).
The second agent is the “bungling idiot” whose very utterances and actions set back his society by many decades. A society stuck with this dangerous character soon fragments into adversarial camps as corruption, waste, systemic failure, energy crisis, armed rebellion and weak military become the order of the day. Fully aware of his own incompetency, his stock in trade is arson, assassination and genocide.
The devious idiot is obsessed with Chain of Divinities as he liberally funds religious houses and holy men to pray for him; all in his bid to secure for himself a favourable place in the hereafter. This contrasts him with the exceptional genius whose Chain of Energies ensures the funding of research and production aimed at making his society self-sufficient in energy, food and medicine here on earth.
Recurrent duality
In the creek town of Ogulagha, Delta State, Miabiye Kuromiema was elected 5th President of the Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, in a keenly contested election. It rained the whole night but that did not stop delegates from voting nor Kingsley K. Kuku, the IYC 2010 Election Presiding Officer, from announcing Kuromiema winner. Then in his inaugural address days later, Kuromiema rattled Nigerians declaring he was fusing the “jaw-jaw” of Biriye with the “war-war” of King Koko to defend the Ijaw national interests. His listeners were askance as his declaration could mean anything. Amnesty was already in place.
Recall the IYC had the ambiguous motto of “By Any Means Necessary.” It was largely Allen Onyema’s Foundation for Ethnic Harmony in Nigeria, FEHN, that convinced the IYC leadership under Dr Chris Ekiyor, Kuromiema’s predecessor, to drop its hardline stance and accept the Kingian Non-Violence Philosophy as practiced by Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Onyema, a true friend of the Ijaw nation, saved thousands of lives convincing Ijaw youths to accept non-violence.
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His efforts received a boost from the 2009 IYC Committee on Security and Economic Development in the Niger Delta. Members of this all-important committee actually entered the creeks, including Camp Five operated by Tompolo, and told everyone to stop fighting and accept amnesty. Dr Felix Tuodolo (pioneer IYC President) was committee chairman. Other members were T.K. Ogoriba, Asari Dokubo (2nd IYC President), Oyeinfie Jonjon (3rd IYC President), Dr. Chris Ekiyor (then incumbent 4th IYC President), Sargeant Weri Digifa, Dan Ekpebide, Mike Wenebowei, Udengs Eradiri and Claudius Egba.
Biriye’s “jaw-jaw” is euphemism for “diplomacy,” “treaty” or “dialogue.” He typified the finest principles of diplomacy as Ijaw Treaty Mandatory to Nigerian Constitutional Conferences leading to independence.
Equally so, King Koko’s “war-war” is another name for “war” or “armed hostility.” King William Frederick Koko, Mingi VIII of Nembe, 1853-1898, sacked the Akassa trading station of the Royal Niger Company, RNC, in January 1895. The company angered him by unilaterally preventing Ijaw merchants from exporting palm oil directly to Europe to entrench monopoly. He retaliated by fitting out a flotilla of 50 war canoes and 1500 soldiers. His attack killed 25 men with 70 taken prisoners; including 32 Europeans he later executed.
Patterns of history clearly show Ijaw nationalism oscillates between war and diplomacy. No discourse on the subject matter can make sense without addressing this recurrent duality. Secondly, whichever end the pendulum swings depends on some action as peaceful Ijaws detest injustice. For instance, it was when the powers that be blatantly spurned Biriye’s diplomacy that the impatient Boro stepped forward and carried out his violent revolution. Is anyone listening to Pa EK Clark today or must another Boro emerge from obscurity? Armed struggle is the option to avoid.
Therefore, a historical survey of this oscillating phenomenon is absolutely necessary as events of the 19th Century seem to resonate strongly in the period under review. Pre-colonial Ijaw City-States of Andoni, Okrika, Bonny, Opobo, Kalabari and Nembe fought wars among themselves while executing treaties with European powers. But in post-colonial Ijaw all their wars were directed against their neighbours and Nigeria while relying on diplomacy to stabilise the home fronts.
(To be continued in Part 2).
Akamande, Email: [email protected], is Leader of Thought of Izon Ebe.
