The Future That Vanished: A Biafra Story

By P.J. Odu

In Colonial Africa, a British Commodore in command of the newly formed Royal Nigerian Navy in the late 50s recognizes the future potential of a young man recruited as a cadet and proceeds to lay down a growth plan for him. The story recounts the making of a career naval officer in the prestigious Royal Naval College in England and in the Indian Navy as the young man acquits himself honorably by rising to expectations. However, politically motivated events interrupt the promising future. A summary of the political history of Nigeria enables the reader to understand the events that led to the secession of Biafra. The authors war diary is used to narrate the part played by the Biafra Navy during the civil war that ensued and after it was all over.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462819713

P.J. Odu

Biography The author, whose life is detailed in this book, immigrated to the United States in 1972 where he settled and raised a family shortly after his career in the Nigerian Navy ended as a result of the Biafra war. He is retired from a career in computer systems where he ran his own business developing and selling point-of-sale solutions for vertical markets such as tobacco shops. He lives in California with his wife who is a retired nurse. They have three daughters all of whom live in California.

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Copyright © 2009 by P.J. Odu.

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Growing up in Colonial Africa

Chapter Two

In Search Of A Career

Chapter Three

Commodore A.R. Kennedy,

Royal Nigerian Navy

Chapter Four

Rule Britannia—Life in the British Navy

Chapter Five

Commodore Kennedy’s Plans Unfold

Chapter Six

Political History—Why Biafra?

Chapter Seven

Peace Overtures—The Aburi Accord

Chapter Eight

Police Action—The Onslaught Begins

Chapter Nine

Biafra War Diary—The Fray

Chapter Ten

Coping With Life In Biafra

Chapter Eleven

Biafra War Diary—The aftermath

Chapter Twelve

In Search Of A New Career

Appendix One

Appendix Two

Appendix Three

Prologue

This narrative was meant for my daughters IJEOMA, CHINEDU and NKECHI because they have asked me for it. My friend Jack Leaming refers to it as my memoirs, and I told him that memoirs are for important or famous people. These are just stories I should have told my children while they were growing up by way of sharing some of my life’s experiences. Unfortunately, I am a very private person, generally slow to initiate a colloquy about myself. Although I will respond to specific enquiry, generally I do not volunteer information about myself. It had always sounded vainglorious to me. Besides, I suspect that my service training in naval communications where secrecy is highly recommended, may have also contributed in rendering me taciturn. Another reason we missed out on the narratives was the hustle and bustle inherent in our lifestyle. Very little time was available during the day or at the end of it for storytelling, especially not with that popular invention called the television readily available and infinitely loaded with mystery, drama and entertainment. But, I can make amends for this shortcoming on my part through the medium of the written word.

By recording these experiences in writing, I know I will include details that I might gloss over in a verbal narration. I was already on the far side of 30 years old when the first of my children was born, and by that time I had already used up a promising naval career in half the time usually allocated. Those years coincided with the most eventful, the most dangerous (for people in my chosen profession) and the most dynamic period in the history of the most promising black African nation in the world. My progeny have the right to ask how I grew up to become who I am, how I fared during that period, what caused my future to vanish and whether I affected, effected or infected anything along the way. I have attempted to condense the political history of Nigeria and to distill as much of the revolutionary events as possible while retaining the facts, the chronology and enough of the horror to educate them and convey (if humanly possible) the emotions that pervaded both sides of the conflict that has now shaped millions of lives including mine.

The only reason why I am publishing these writings is that my brother Mark Odu, who is a published author himself, has recommended that I do so. He said it would be a tribute to my friends and colleagues with whom I served in two navies in the same country as well as for those who died for what they believed in—namely, that they were protecting their homes and heritage from our brethren from the North who would rather see us perish. With that consideration in mind, I fervently regret not going to press earlier than now and I apologize to my colleagues who may have passed on without seeing their names in print or their heroics lauded. I have no hankering for recognition or acclamation; otherwise I would not have waited for over forty years to write about this. This narrative is also meant for anyone whose relatives fought with me to defend Port Harcourt from seaborne attack. It is also meant to recognize those forward-looking Biafrans who had the good sense to build houses in their villages and who were generous enough to surrender their properties (including automobiles etc.) to those of us in the military. Historians will probably never mention them, but they too served. I have mentioned names that I remember, but it is not to be construed that those I have not mentioned are undeserving in any way.

When one has attained the apex of one’s professional training at the age of 23, it is reasonable to expect a dynamic and upwardly mobile future to follow unless circumstances beyond one’s control align themselves in such a way as to cause the future to vanish. First there was peace, then there was a military coup followed by a counter coup; then there was wanton massacre followed by mass exodus; then secession, police action and a full-fledged civil war took a bite out of the future and it vanished.

Chapter One

Growing up in Colonial Africa

My father, Jacob Oguguom Odu, of blessed memory, was born in the village of Amohuru Nguru in Aboh-Mbaise Local Government Area, part of Imo State in Nigeria sometime before the end of the19th-century. That is as accurately as anyone can say. It is equally as difficult to guess how old he was when he started working for the Nigerian Railway Corporation. But records are available which indicate that he was hired as a laborer in 1914 when construction began in Port Harcourt on the rail system for Nigeria. As the rail line progressed from Port Harcourt northwards, he grew in rank and lived in various towns along the route, and by the time I made my long-awaited appearance in April 1941, he was a Sub Permanent Way Inspector. Apparently that rank had never been attained before by an indigene of Nigeria. This was regarded as a senior service post, reserved for expatriate officers. At that time, my father was stationed at a place called Lafia, now part of Plateau State. Lafia, at that time, was a small town of a few thousand people mostly comprised of Hausa natives and a few traders and artisans from the southern tribes, mostly Igbos. Everyone else who lived in this small town was in some way connected with the Nigerian Railway Corporation. The rail line at the time was the ‘main street’ of this tiny community. Apart from the train station and the Railway staff housing, there was little else by way of impressive structures when the rail line first passed through Lafia.

I was born on Easter Sunday April 13th 1941, just as the household was preparing to attend Sunday services. It is fair to assume that my father was very disappointed at not having had a son sooner than me. He had his first daughter named Christiana in 1928; his second called Florence in 1931; his third, Elizabeth in 1933 and the fourth daughter, Maria in 1935. Even if I had not been told, I could have guessed that my father was also frustrated at not having an heir to his name, a very important status symbol to an Igbo man especially in those days. He must have felt that a hiatus was called for and so six years passed before he tried again to have a son. With the birth of his first son in 1941, he was encouraged to try again and my brother Mark was born in 1944, three years later, almost to the day. But then, in 1947 my sister Anna was born signifying that the quota for male offspring had expired.

I must assume that whatever memories I have of Lafia must have registered during the last two years my father lived there from 1948 till the end of 1949, because they remain vivid. I was aware of a distinction between us and the native Hausa tribesmen primarily because we were not allowed on the other side of the tracks. We always seemed to live on the opposite side of the tracks from the town. The local market which was obviously frequented by our servants was situated on the other side of the tracks from us, but at my age, they were forbidden from taking us along with them. Since our school and church were on our side, there was nothing to attract my brother and me to the other side of the tracks. We grew up without real day to day contact with the natives. I only picked up a smattering of the local Hausa language years later.

I remember the layout of our compound in Lafia. Apart from the main house, there were several huts along the periphery of a semi-circle in the back of the house, forming a rather large open, unpaved courtyard. I remember that there were fruit trees like paw-paws and vegetable gardens my mother or someone grew. One of these small huts was where my mother was sequestered to deliver my sister Anna. The other huts must have served as accommodation for the several servants we had. Speaking of servants, one stands out in my mind. His name was Egbujor. He was the son of my father’s youngest sister. I remember he gave me my first music lesson. He used to tap out musical rhythms with his fingers on his bare stomach, and soon enough, I was doing the same. I wish someone had shown me a musical instrument or even told me about music. I might have become a musician. But of course, no one can teach what they don’t know themselves. However, he also taught me to kick a tennis ball to and fro. He recounted to me later that whenever I missed kicking the ball back to him, I would cry and that would cause my father (if he was around) to berate him for letting me miss. Perhaps his diligence encouraged my interest in soccer long enough to be good at it later. And when I started school in January 1946, I rode on his back all the way there.

My formal education began at St. Williams Catholic School Lafia one cold ‘harmattan’ (cold dry weather prevalent in the northern part of Nigeria) morning in 1946. I remember that our school was the furthest point we could go in a southerly direction from our house. The C.M.S. (Church Missionary Society) School was the first cross road south, and then there was the Railway Rest House which appeared to be hidden in a grove of mango trees, dozens of them. Finally, there was our school. I suspect that the entire distance from our house covered less than a mile. The road north from our house ended in the Trolley Boys’ Quarters, perhaps 200 yards away. The rest was open country consisting of short grass and shrubbery as far as the eye could see. One would have to look on the other side of the railway tracks to see any other houses and signs of habitation.

My father’s duties required him to ride up and down the train tracks on a trolley car driven by four stalwart men and although they were commonly referred to as trolley boys, they were indeed family men. I understood that his job was to inspect the railway tracks to ensure that they were well maintained and of course to order appropriate repairs and maintenance work to be carried out. The head trolley boy, Christopher Oparaji, had a son Jude, who was older than me, and a daughter Bibiana, who was about my age and another daughter Cecilia who was in between. Cecilia might have been spastic, because I remember that she was definitely slow in the uptake. The Trolley Boys’ Quarters was a long rectangular building divided into four large single room apartments with a spacious verandah in front of each apartment and a hut in the rear, which served as a kitchen, one for each family. Some of the trolley boys had 5 or 6-member families. I had spent a few days with the Oparaji family once in 1949 in their one room habitat. On that occasion, my father had been on leave and we had all gone to our village in Amohuru Nguru. My school was set to reopen a few days before my father was due to return to Lafia, so I had to be escorted back without the rest of my family in order to resume school. The man Christopher and his wife slept on the only bed in the room and all of us kids spread out on several mats on whatever floor space was available. I seem to remember that it was fun.

I also remember being stung by a scorpion one evening as I was playing around our house behind one of the lounge chairs in our parlor. I remember feeling a very sharp pain in the area around my ankle as if someone had applied the glowing end of a cigarette to my naked skin. Of course, I had no idea what it was. But my scream prompted some excited reaction from everyone in the room. The adults in the room guessed correctly and quickly searched the area behind the chair and found the scorpion scurrying away in a futile attempt to live another day.

Mada—1950

Early in 1950, my father was promoted to Permanent Way Inspector and transferred out of Lafia to make room for someone else. Apparently that was another trail blazing promotion marking the first time a Nigerian had attained that rank. Obviously his responsibilities had increased, but I really could not say how except that he had SPWI’s reporting to him. We moved to a bigger house at a place called Mada just north of Lafia. This was the last stop on my father’s life-long journey along the railroad tracks of Colonial Nigeria. He died here and needless to say, my relationship with the Nigerian Railway Corporation ended here too. I have fond memories of Mada. I was nine years old and I was in Standard three (grade 5) at the time. My brother was only 6 years old, in Class 2 (second grade). My older sisters had all left home for college, or in the case of my oldest sister, married. Anna was barely three, so she stuck closer to my mother than to us. I do not remember growing up with my older sisters; consequently no camaraderie ever existed between us while I was growing up.

Just like Lafia, Mada was mostly a railway town. Although it was smaller in population than Lafia, it was more important to the railway system because it was a major rest stop for train personnel. Train guards, drivers and their firemen had rest houses here. Our house was much more imposing, perhaps even bigger than the one at Lafia; the yard was certainly bigger, so that anyone could see that the residence was meant for a superior ranking Railway official. Once again our house was located on the opposite side of the tracks from the small town of Mada. In the absence of movie stars and sports superstars, my heroes were engine drivers and train guards. I hung around them often enough that I became friends with one guard called Mr. Tamunokere. The Guards’ rest house was adjacent to our compound, about one or two hundred yards away; so it was little effort to hop over there whenever Mr. Tamunokere was in town.

There were numerous mango trees in our compound in Mada. One or more of the trees had low, flat and inviting branches on which I liked to relax. When mangoes were in season, we usually awoke to find the compound littered with ripe mangoes, especially if there had been a little wind or tropical rain during the night. The servants were then obliged to set up sales stands in front of the house close to the railway line where they sold mangoes three for a penny. Our night watchman was a native of Obowo in Imo State, and his name was Agumbe. In the absence of radio and television, he used to regale my brother and me with animal fairy tales whenever he took up watch and it was not raining. I still remember some of those stories. Our school was across the tracks, perhaps half a mile from our house. I do not recollect the name of the school, but I remember that the teachers were all Igbos and it was also a Catholic School. I had a blackboard and an easel set up in the verandah in front of our house where I used to play ‘school’ with some of the other railway kids. I was always the teacher.

My brother and I were so immersed in the Railway system that we could tell what train passed at what time, which of the trains carried passengers and which were goods trains; whether they were early, on time or late. In some cases, we could tell who the driver or guards of the passenger trains were. I do not remember how we got all that information, but we were seriously in the know, of such matters. There were express trains and there were suburban trains. The latter were passenger trains that stopped at every station along the track and I could name every station from Port Harcourt to Kafanchan (in their proper order) and tell you the major stations where the express trains stopped (they had to top off their water tanks) and where the train staff was relieved. There were two very prominent (among train travelers anyway) beggars. Yes, beggars! One was Adamu. He looked like an old man to me, but he was probably about 35 years of age and he was blind. He played a flute, perhaps it was a penny whistle, excellently and he wore special African dancing beads on strings around both ankles. He danced what I can now call an Irish jig to the precise sound of his penny whistle with such dexterity that everyone was mesmerized. All of a sudden, and in the middle of a beat, he would stop and open his hand and demand gratuity—or was it payment for his talents? He had perfected the art of begging. Perhaps I should say, he had turned begging into an art form. I still remember one of his tunes.

The other accredited beggar was a woman whose name was Okoko. She was slightly disfigured in her upper body and blind in one eye, and she had a limp, as if her left leg was shorter than her right. She sang and played a locally made tambourine with obviously practiced efficiency. She played fast rhythms and shook her body in unison and was just as entrancing as her male counterpart. These two beggars must have received a license to operate, because I never heard of them being harassed by the train guards or railway officials. No one knew where they lived or what station they got on or where they got off. I heard rumours many years later that Adamu had died a rich man, and why not? He had no overhead!

On October 22nd 1950, my father died rather suddenly, and my life changed irrevocably. My brother and I were never aware of the precise circumstances of his death. We were not even conscious of any changes in our daily lives that might have led us to suspect that anything was amiss. We were used to our dad being away most of the time, sometimes for days on end. A few days after the above date, we were bundled into a southbound train and we found ourselves in the village. I still remember how my mother conveyed to my brother Mark and me the fact that our father had died. She told us that my father had said that he would not live with us anymore. I do not think I understood it to mean that he had died, but I cried nonetheless because I understood that we would be living without him from then on. I simply missed him and have done so ever since. My father’s demise impacted my future and that of my brother much more that it affected my sisters. My older sisters had already been set on their career paths; one was already married with children and Anna was hardly weaned from my mother’s breast, so only my future and that of my brother hung in the balance. Unfortunately, it was decided to separate us. My brother Mark was to go and live with our uncle Simon at a place called Moroa River, another railway town just north of Mada populated by Igbo traders. I was to live with my sister Christiana and her husband in Onicha Uboma. My sister Anna remained with my mother, a position she occupied faithfully for eighteen years, until my mother died in 1968. I will forever be grateful to her for looking after our mother while the rest of us siblings pursued our various career paths in life.

Preparing to be educated

Onicha Uboma is one of the most remote locations on this planet to which I have travelled. My definition of remote is: any place you do not pass on your way to somewhere else. You have to be going to Onicha Uboma to get there. Hence, other human beings living on this planet had not cast any influence by whatever means on the people of this remote village. This was where Mr. J.W.S. Eneremadu, my brother-in-law was the headmaster of All Saints Catholic School, and where I completed my primary school education. I spent the last two months of 1950 under my sister’s roof as well as the entire years of our Lord 1951 and 1952. I have no fond memories of this period. I remember climbing out of the remote hole that was Onicha Uboma on more than one occasion in 1952 to take entrance examinations to various secondary schools one whole year before I was academically eligible to do so. The usual grade for attempting the entrance examination to secondary schools was Standard 6. Perhaps I was smart, or perhaps I was motivated to escape from my environment but in due course, I received acceptance notices from three Colleges that invited me to attend an interview.

One was Bishop Shanahan College in Orlu; the other two were Government Colleges. One was in Afikpo, and was just starting. I was to be a first year pioneer if I chose to attend that school. I don’t remember the third college. But what determined my choice of BSC was this: One of the teachers at our school was a native of Amandugba, a town purportedly close to Orlu, and he was willing to send his house boy (older than I was and a trusted relation of his) to accompany me there, so that I would not get lost. Our journey to BSC in the summer of 1952 was uneventful. We got there on time and my interview with the Principal was brief and successful. Those of us who had been invited for the interview had been asked to bring a deposit of one pound ten shillings (about $3) towards the first term’s school fees in the event that we were accepted. So, I paid the deposit and secured a receipt for my sister. I remember this event because when I turned up at the start of the school term I handed over the full fees of £13 my sister had given me and was pleasantly surprised to receive a refund of one pound ten shillings. It turned out to be my pocket money for the term, as my sister had omitted to give me any. If she had remembered, it would certainly not have been more than five shillings (50c). So, I was a rich boy that term.

Upon completion of my interview, we had set out for the ‘motor park’ to find transport back to our station. Unfortunately, the last transport to our hole in the wall had departed. My guide thought it would be prudent for us to sleep in his village for the night and gave me the impression that his village was just around the corner from the motor park. His village turned out to be considerably farther than he had let on. We walked until it was dark and continued walking until the moon was at its zenith. It was actually more than 6 miles away. However, his family fed us and provided us with mats to sleep on for the night. The following morning, we were conveyed on bicycles to the motor park in Orlu where we found transport back to Onicha Uboma.

In January 1953, I packed my portmanteau and left for the boarding school—on a bicycle transport. Bishop Shanahan College was a Catholic Secondary School run by Marist Brothers. When I joined BSC, the Principal was Brother Conleath (Irish). The others were Brother Cormac (Irish), Brother Becket (Australian), Brother Aloysius (Irish), Brother Damian (Scottish) and Brother Marcellus (English). I mention their names firstly because I happen to remember them, but more importantly because people in the know have described the Marist Brothers as some of the most accomplished educators in the world. Since their chosen profession precludes any