Struggle for Control of the Hinterland of the Bight of Biafra: The Untold Story of the British Military Expedition to Igbo Land (1830-1930)

By Dr. Frank Nwabueze Ihekwaba

This book tells the story of the people of Igbo land at the middle of the nineteenth century, when Europe and Europeans held the dominant power over the lives and affairs of many peoples in Africa. This dominance, however, was never supposed to be total or absolute. Nevertheless, it managed to cast a constricting shadowwith its associated, if unhealthy, ambienceon the day-to-day lives of the people using the overwhelming military and economic power at its disposal at a time when Africans were either recovering from five hundred years of stupor brought on by its own dark ages (AD 11001600) or the shock and paralysis that followed the Moroccan (Mohamedan) and Spanish-mercenary-assisted mayhem and chaos of 1591 against the African kingdoms of West Africa.

But the white man would soon lose most of his political and economic opportunities, and some of the absolute attributes he had mustered over the years the moment Britain and the other European races saw themselves as divinely appointed to right the wrongs of mankind. He would, from then on, render himself vulnerable to the tide of African enlightenment and progress, which was then building up everywhere, once the trade by which he had gained his ascendency over the other races of mankind began to decline. In addition, European ascendency witnessed an unusual reversal of luck when its residual strengths, recently boosted with the development of some newer types of weaponrythe Maxim machine gun in the UK (1883) and the Mauser Machine gun (1891) in Germanyweapons whose astonishing power and versatility had not previously been seen or tested in any battlefront, became more widely available to European and non-European troops. These, however, could not provide definitive answers to all the tactical and strategic imperatives of the developing new battlefront which European armies had sought. Nevertheless, these new weapons became celebrated after they were successfully used to hold the line and repel hordes of brave native fighters armed only with machetes and spears (South Africa) and bows and arrows (Kitcheners Sudan), enabling British forces to claim easy victories over the native forces; several Victoria Crosses would be won on both battlefronts by the British army. The success of the campaigns clearly went to the heads of the victorious army commanders. Thus were sown the seeds that would grow, leading to the idea of invincibility of the white man in the battlefield and the tragic events that preceded the First World War (19141918).

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504998376

Dr. Frank Nwabueze Ihekwaba

Dr. Frank Nwabueze Ihekwaba, MB. ChB (Edin), FRCS. FICS. FWACS, Postgrad. Cert. Immunol. is a retired Senior Lecturer in Surgery at the University of Liverpool, and Consulting Surgeon to the Royal Liverpool Hospital, England. He was, formerly, Senior Lecturer in Surgery, University of Ibadan, and Consulting Surgeon to the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria. Educated at the Government College, Afikpo, (1953 -1957), and at the Norwich City College, Norfolk, England, (1961-1962), he went up to Edinburgh University where he studied medicine. Upon graduation, he took up several appointments at major UK and US hospitals. He returned to Nigeria to take up an appointment as Senior Registrar at the University of Ibadan in 1975, after which he was offered a Lectureship; this was followed by a Senior Lectureship in Surgery. An offer of a Research Fellowship in Surgery by the Trust Fund for Surgical Research in the Commonwealth, Oxford, England in 1981 took him to several research centres in the UK. In 1987, he was appointed Commissioner of Health in the Imo State Government. At the end of his service, he returned to Ibadan, proceeding, in 1991, to the UK for his Sabbatical Leave from whence he was appointed to various positions at major UK hospitals and research centres. He retired in 1999. He now spends his time between the UK and Nigeria, indulging his life-long passions and interests in writing, military history, and farming.

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CHAPTER 19

The Strategic Military Balance of Forces at the Eve of War ‘A Numbers Game…..’

Innate Belief Psychology of the Igbo mind and the Intervention of the Missionaries Who Preached Piety Meant That the Igbo ‘Countries’ Had Already Lost the Struggle Even Before the First Shots Were Fired

The Military Balance of Forces

Military historians and strategists have in the past urged that in a war between two equally trained and equipped forces, the side with the larger number of men has tended to win the victory. This view was based upon the fact that larger attacking forces have better opportunities to encircle or outflank the defenders. This view discounts a great number of important variables.

For one, it ignores the strategic war plan of one or the other of the combatants. If the attacking army put into the field a large force of men, the defending forces could themselves blunt their effectiveness by deploying sufficiently large forces so as to render ineffective the attacking force’s encircling movement. The ‘doctrine’ of numbers also ignores the use made of, or the approach brought to, the battlefield by one or the other of the warring sides in terms of its knowledge of the terrain - the hills, the valleys, the salients and ravines, the foxholes, and the rivers and streams, these last, in the combat area, especially, were they to be fordable or not.

Generally, the view concerning the size of forces, also, ignores the courage and determination of one side or the other, especially, where the struggle was between an imperial army which had purchased the services of its troops with money, and hence commanding little or no loyalty from them when the contest became an issue of life and death, and a national, anti-imperial, freedom-loving people, for whom defeat would mean humiliation, captivity, oppression, exploitation, colonization, exile or death, for its leaders.

The reality, of course, was that events and situations were never so carefully balanced. The British Expedition Force in Igboland, so heavily equipped and expertly officered, was carefully shipped out to the battlefield with a programme of warfare which had anticipated and exploited the divisions among the Igbo city-states; ‘divide and rule’. Such divisions meant and ensured that no ‘tribe’ or ‘country’ went to the aid of its neighbour when the British invading forces attacked it. Given this situation, the classic doctrine of piecemeal and sequential conquest of one ‘tribe’ after another, followed by occupation and control of territory by means of garrisoned fortified camps, was confidently put into operation. The result was that whatever strategic and tactical advantage the Igbo tribes had naturally enjoyed by their greater numbers, was lost by the fatal divisions that had for so long dogged them.

The upshot of these unfortunate, if unedifying series of circumstances, was that no matter how well leaders, commanders, and the men, strove to secure for their side strategic advantages as they approached the battle, it was often the side whose war plan and tactics gave it the edge that won the laurels –luck on the day of battle counted for less. Given this important and unalterable fact, we may now consider in what way and by how much this fact was modified, assisted, or blunted, by the strengths of the personnel and the nature and size of the materiel possessed by each side.

Igbo City-States Personnel

Strength of Forces

Most of the forces of the Igbo city-states were essentially militia; there were no standing armies in the real sense of the expression as generally understood by Europeans. It was, of course known that a large number of ‘Abams’ not engaged on their farms could readily be called up at a moment’s notice, especially during the dry season when work on the farms had been wound down.

At full mobilisation, the ‘combined Igbo armies" potentially had numbered 100,000. This potential ‘force’ was, for more than 200 years, hopelessly divided and often mutually antagonistic to each other. Only a few (the ‘Abams’, the Ezza, the Adda, Arochuku, Nkwerre, and certain states among the Ika Igbo clans across the River Niger) by virtue of possessing the necessities, the tradition, and the wherewithal to wage war which were available to them, were capable of offering effective and credible defence of their borders and their assets. Many, however, did not chance their luck too often, nor did they fancy the outcome of conflict, and so did not generally embark upon unnecessary and risky military adventures without the support of the ‘professionals’ from the head-hunting clans of the eastern (Bende) districts.

Materiel

Light and Heavy Weapons

As we have shown in previous sections of this work, the broad sword (Mmaogu), Spears, Javelins, Daggers, Flintlocks, Percussion cap locks, Snider rifles, Winchesters, Reconditioned Mausers, and Nkwerre made guns – the so-called ‘Bonny guns’, were the commonest military fare for the combat forces of the Igbo city-states. A few cannon pieces (5-inch, 6-inch, etc.) were also available, especially to the larger city-states in the interior such as Arochuku, Nkwerre, and Umunoha. The actual numbers of pieces in each category varied.

The British Expedition Forces (BEF)

Personnel

This was a regular army. It had garrisons at various locations such as at Bonny, Fernando Po, Opobo, Warri, Asaba, Bida, Old Calabar (Duke Town), Ediba (Cross River), etc. At peak, it numbered probably 12000-15000 men including regulars from many British Army units, the Indian Army, the Canadian, Australian, and British West Indian armies. These provided the officer corps.

The rank and file - the foot soldiers on the front line, were drawn from the Yoruba, Gold Coast Hausa, Nigerian Hausa, countries, as well as from the Kru countries of the Liberian and Sierra Leonean coasts.

Training was incoherent, indecisive, and often peripatetic; the aim was the production of ‘automatons’ to ‘hold the line against savages’. They would be the ones to pay the highest price that advanced the cause of ‘empire’ for Britain.

Carriers were recruited from the Benin country.

Light and Heavy Weapons

These weapons consisted of bayonets, Lee Enfield rifles (Mark V), Lee Metford high explosive cartridges, modern Winchester rifles, and revolvers. Their guns (heavy battlefield guns) included French-made MM guns, and British Mountain guns (howitzers and cannon - 5-pdrs, 7-pdrs, and 12 1/2-pdrs.

The main frontline attacking weapon for searching and destroying enemy positions was the Vickers-Maxim machine gun. The Colt rapid fire automatic gun was also sometime brought into action against the Igbo forces. Most of the stocks in British hands were, however, shipped to South Africa where the Boers were already bloodying the forces of the Imperial Government. Despite this extenuating demand elsewhere, each Expedition soldier on the British Expedition side was always issued with 150 rounds of ammunition whenever a patrol went out or when a column rolled out to ‘punish truculent natives’.

Courage vs. Superior Arms

It is often difficult and meaningless to measure or assess the outcome of a struggle between a man who is armed with a cutlass and another who has a rifle and is supported by a Maxim machine gun. Yet, such was the scenario in this unequal struggle.

Excluding the courage, determination, tenacity, and vision, of the planners and leaders of the opposing forces and their supporting attributes, we may immediately see that the war that the British Colonial Office, in concert with its War Office, imposed upon the Igbo peoples, resolved itself quickly into a numbers game. How many men did each side put into the field of battle? What was the quality of their training and state of preparedness? How many rifles did these men bring into the combat arena and, what was the efficiency and effectiveness of these Small arms?

Should the heavy weapons - the artillery pieces such as the ‘Millimetre guns’ (howitzers) and cannon that fired a variety of heavy, high explosive shells such as ‘double common’, case shot, and shrapnel, each of which spewed out lyddite), and machine guns - also be considered in the equation? How effective were these in the unique jungle terrain where mobility was restricted by unfordable rivers and streams, and the ever present tangled under-growths, beneath which lay, hidden, poisonous reptiles such as boa-constrictors, pythons, and other venomous creatures of the African forest? What about the effects of climate, and an atmosphere, dominated and conditioned by a trying sun, with its alternating, or concomitant, periods of heat and humidity, compounded by continuous rains, the seasonal dust-laden Harmattan winds, as well as enteric diseases, mosquitoes, and fleas?

Above all, what was the sense of commitment of the soldiers on each side? Were they well-adapted to these difficult and pestiferous conditions? Were these men free and willing participants and ‘volunteers’ who joined a crusade against their mortal enemies, or were they press-ganged into something they did not understand? What about the pay? Could the soldiers be described as men who saw an opportunity to prove their machismo, while earning a humble wage, even if death may come knocking at their camp doors the very next day? Were these soldiers, hirelings and mercenaries, or touts, prostitutes, and social outcasts, in search of a bad dream?

The important numbers were the weaponry, their efficiency, their power, and their mobility. Training and experience in tactical manoeuvres added somewhat, to these numbers. Everything else in this struggle ultimately counted for little or nothing. This judgement, taken to heart in any future conflict within the local area or beyond it, would save many widows and minimise the hardships and sufferings of generations of orphans. The Imperial powers were aware of it and have remained so aware, since their nasty experiences in the American Revolutionary (1775-1783) and the Crimean (1854-1856) Wars.

The ability of the Imperial aggressive forces to seek out and compel the Igbo forces to stand and fight set-piece, positional warfare, in engagements that permitted them to deploy the full might and terror of their dread weapons in the combat arena was crucial to victory and the ultimate outcome. But their ability to survive for long periods in an inhospitable jungle terrain begin to diminish significantly and contribute adversely to the military equation and how it was balanced, only if the Igbo forces understood and exploited and utilized the sheer weight of their collective and combined numbers, and the size and vastness of their terrain, especially, if they were able to extend the duration of the struggle. This extended duration could never be achieved by matching bullet for bullet, or by matching blow for blow. It could only be achieved by the delivery of single, well-timed and well-aimed, blows for the enemy’s ten blows; the people’s single blows, for maximum effectiveness, must be extended, delayed, cunningly delivered, and devastating.

Possible Outcomes of War

Military historians and theoreticians often, and generally, did not give or accord any hope of success to small, but ambitious, polities fighting wars to shake off the shackles that Imperial European states sought to throw at them to bind them. The Europeans had expected to easily rope in these polities and hold them as colonies and plantations for a century-long period of exploitation and humiliation. Many examples attest this view.

In the struggle that we shall detail in the sections that follow, the pre-hostilities judgement was that the duration and the outcome would be untidy and imprecise. In some quarters, the odds favoured a short war, especially, among certain groups of white traders on the coast, as well as among some experienced coastal Igbo middlemen there. Others, though, believed these assessments to be unrealistic and remote, citing the resilience, industry, resourcefulness, and genius of the forces of the various Igbo city-states which they saw as capable of breaking this given wisdom of the past. These clans, they suggested, although, hopelessly divided amongst themselves and mutually antagonistic to each other, if they fought hard enough and organised themselves better, were seen as capable of forcing one of several possible outcomes.

A Stalemate

A stalemate could be induced consequent upon a prolonged, unending conflict, brought about by the difficulties encountered by a foreign power in encompassing the great size of the country, and overcoming the fighting skills and resources of the various city-states. The possibility of a decisive early victory claimed by a European Imperial aggressor that desperately and determinedly sought a place in the sun, by utilising its enormous and sophisticated fire power would, should it come to pass, be a victory won in a field of blood. This would be very messy, and lead to a prolonged struggle; Africans do not readily admit that they have been fairly beaten by a superior force. Given the demands elsewhere, especially in South Africa, the price for Britain could be prohibitive. Victory for this Imperial polity, in such a situation, was often achieved by the application of the well-known policy of ‘total war’.

Total War

The policy of total war and the tragic human implications that went with it, were, in every age and in every clime, regarded as one of the most odious political and military strategies conjured up by the deranged mind of man during what must have been the final stages of his progression into rank insanity. Characterized, chiefly, by a series of desperate moves at the centre of which lay a programme of violence and scorched earth by which, to achieve them in their entirety, towns, villages, farms, barns, and homesteads of the enemy, often, the unarmed and defenceless indigenous peoples, were destroyed, plundered, and set ablaze by the aggressor army. This action was resorted to, in order to compel the enemy to submit, not to a tactically superior force, but on account of the severe pressure brought on him, to quit the battlefield unconditionally, to save his population from so inhuman a punishment as was previously unknown in warfare.

The coup de grace in this policy of ‘total war’, took the form of large-scale arrests of the leading men of the country, this being extended to every person of importance in the state, including elements of the ruling hierarchy. Rape of the womenfolk, together with summary trials and instant and savage executions of identified leading figures were used as the final means of inducing fear and terror upon the poor, the agricultural and village-based communities, and other lower layers of society.

Those of the people who were lucky enough to be spared such brutal experiences, in the midst of such dire situations, were forced to escape into the forests where they remained until their leaders - or those of them that were still free - capitulated.

This policy, which was rare among African peoples, but very familiar to European antiquity (see ancient accounts of towns and villages ‘laid waste’ (Caesar’s ‘Gallic Wars’, 58-51 BC; ‘The Battle of Cannae’, 216 BC, ‘The Punic Wars’; Hannibal) - was much practised in the past, and was in progress and actively being pursued by British troops under General Roberts in various districts of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal in South Africa just as the British Expeditionary Army got under way in the hinterland of the Bight of Biafra.

Pyrrhic Victory

A Pyrrhic victory, in which the aggressor state, though gaining victories in isolated battles, found his forces over-extended and exhausted. Unable to conclude the campaign decisively to his undisputed advantage, he resorts to burning the crops and property of the enemy, to brigandage, and to wholesale desecration of sacred artefacts. Such a victory, clearly, is no victory at all.

The enemy, on the other hand, equally exhausted, over-extended, and unable to deliver the blow that would bring finality to the struggle, finds himself claiming one half of a defeat in the same time that his opponent was claiming one half of a victory. Neither group, being no closer to mastery and ascendency over the battlefield, often saw the struggle as a chronicle of wasted time. Such an outcome, when seen from a distance, often had the habit of appearing unappealing and untidy. In reality, however, it generally bore hard and insightful lessons for both parties to the conflict. King Pyrrhus of Epirus in ancient Greece in BC 3, found himself in a similar situation in the many wars he fought against the Romans.

The Use of Missionaries to Complement the Efforts of the Men at Arms

Study of the strategies employed by different European states that sought the establishment of colonial dependencies in Africa and Asia during the last one quarter of the 19th century, throws up very valuable lessons for any would-be Imperial adventurers of the future.

When the fighting became hard, and the losses in men and materiel begin to mount, it often was considered wise to stop fighting in the hope that other methods of maintaining pressure upon the enemy might bring advantage where bullets were clearly not succeeding. It generally was the case that the opposition itself, in these situations, was also tired and exhausted. Such situations of mutual exhaustion, historically, had often favoured the aggressor state. In changing his war stance, the Imperial aggressor invariably had done his sums and worked out in his mind that nothing was lost by his change of gear; everything there was now available to facilitate his gain.

In the age that saw obedience to the call of the sacred spirits and the ancestors, the veneration of the deities, and the magic that was the priesthood that claimed a special relationship with Him whose abode lay in the heavens, this eminently miserable and inconclusive stalemate often suited the man who could, in the instant, invoke the power of the God of the Judaeo-Christians whose ‘Word’ and ‘Good News’ resolved and assuaged all conflicts and misunderstandings. The ‘Word’ was peace; and the ‘Good News’ was the message, his message, as given in his Bible.

Thus we find that as the 19th century drew to a close, and the 20th crept up to succeed it, our Imperial Colonial adventurer was able to turn his misery and misfortune into advantage. The fresh troops he now was marching into the field of conflict were men - ordinary men, though now cassock-clad; their fingers, twitched nervously. They would be the ‘troops’ who counted out the rosary as they put up a brave face of ‘courage’. The arms they bore, nothing to compare with the Lee Enfield rifles and Maxims that had already brought untold pain and sorrow to the poor of the world, but something much more unlikely and surreal. These ‘arms’, magical in their own special way, had the power to ‘melt’ the human spirit and render it incapable of standing by, or defending, itself.

Retreat from the battlefield or ceasing to engage the enemy - in what might be seen as a contrived ‘stalemate’, was thus not only a tactic of surrender, it was also another way of calling on ‘fresh re-enforcements. By falling back, and ceasing to fight, the white Imperial adventurer had done no more than remove himself from the theatre of conflict, saving himself all the trauma, expense, and time needed to fight, conquer, and hold down, a rebellious and truculent ‘tribe’, in a struggle which he knew he could never win, but one that committed him to a prolonged stay in a hostile environment where his European officers and men were not welcome. By sending in his cassock-clad, Bible-clutching, columns, the European trader-adventurer was making a statement that the same objective he had long pursued might be reached by another way, a better way, which was safe, and tidy.

Belief Psychology

That ‘better’ way was the road that took advantage of the vulnerability of the African mind to influences and pressures exerted by his culture and his belief systems.

In a culture that made individuals subject to a belief psychology that, though making no sense, superficially, compelled everyone to order their lives according to specified rules, mend their ways, pray at the crack of dawn daily, harbour no ill will to anyone, extend peace to the neighbour, and trust the creator in everything, it was inevitable that here was a situation where the conjurer, the magician, and the opportunist, would have a field day amongst a population that was more gullible than sensible. Despite having invested so much of his life from the moment of his birth, in standing up for that which was his, the African, now was ready to succumb to the trickery and sweet words of angels from ‘over the seas’.

How did the countries and tribes of the Igbo prepare themselves psychologically for the threats that loomed in their horizon? Not for them, the sophisticated political and ideological systems that had failed to protect the weak and the poor the world over. Not for them the search for a white knight who could shield them from a ‘protector’ who was about to devour them himself, nor could they depend upon those secular mantras that failed to be heeded by an uncaring and busy world when they were raised by the smaller nations of the Balkans and the Near-East.

What they wanted and needed - these village and rural dwellers of the world of the Igbo, was an opportunity to live in the quiet embrace of the spirits of their ancestors and the deities of their lands, unmolested by those of other lands. They did not know enough of the deities of the lands of the Judaeo-Christians to make an intelligent decision on the matter, notwithstanding that the Europeans had urged that their God was the senior and the all-conquering divinity of the Universe.

Thus, after all the hard talking - after the military engagements that lacked resolution had been kicked into the long grass by stalemate in the battlefield - after the political arguments to rope in the people into an unwieldy and suspect ‘protectorate’ had been abandoned as unlikely to yield any useful results that could lead to the African yielding up his land, Britain finally made up its mind to bring ‘the natives’ of the hinterland of the Bight of Biafra to heel.

A Void That Needed To Be Filled

Before it acted, however, the Imperial Government in London, through its surrogate vehicle on the coast, the ‘Southern Protectorate Government’, sensibly felt the need to prepare for the eventual consequences of the void that its actions would have left behind, viz, a ‘conquered country, lacking any of its older credible leaders, viable social institutions, men of authority, reasonably efficient trading systems, and safe roads and waterways, especially, in the far interior.

If it decided that the next wave of its assault on the natives after the military phase might have been concluded, was an attack on the mind of the natives, using the vehicle of the ‘Word’ - the Judaeo-Christian Bible - how would it judge the extent of its success and over what span of time?

This matter greatly exercised the minds of several middle level officials at ‘Government House’, Old Calabar, immediately before, and soon after military operations were launched, and we shall see that a lengthy debate, which continued even along the corridors of power in the Colonial office in London, ensued between those who saw the possibility of the power of Chuku trumping that of the new ‘God word’ of the white man. In the view of some of the missionaries with long experience of the area, the new faith and its church needed to be carefully, but forcefully supported before they were introduced to a pagan society ‘in need of salvation’. Since it was uncertain, however, whether, or by how much, there was, of the desire to embrace the message of the white man, many men of wisdom and experience needed to be recruited towards the prosecution of this important project.

The Bible and the ‘God Word’

What should be the role of the Bible in the colonial adventure now in the making and in progress?

The white man’s Bible, as much a symbol of peace as it was a weapon of conquest and salvation, always had seemed to possess a mesmeric effect on those to whom it was meant to influence. But that was only to those individuals who were judged by the white man as likely to ‘believe’. Its contents - insubstantial, intangible, immaterial, as received by the eyes and ears of the ‘native’ to whom it was never originally directed, even if it was powerfully explained, had great difficulty competing with the simple, real-life, down to earth ‘instructions’ of the priesthood of Chuku.

While the ‘God Word’, used in prayer, only touched the ordinary, physical, needs of the people - it could not address the spiritual conceptions of the people, since they were deemed to be pagans and therefore beyond salvation until they were baptised - Chuku took care of their spiritual, physical, emotional, and health needs, combining these services that had been available to the people over their many generations with an insightful and helpful peek into their ancestral past as well as a confident and enlightened look into the future. No ‘God Word’ or Bible came close to doing this for the people. In the words of the old men of many a village square, a ‘real’ channel existed between the living and the ancestors. This channel could be felt and ‘touched’, and ‘was exercised’ daily during invocations at dawn - invocations that assessed and took the pulses and senses of the ‘native’ mind, charting them to the higher realms of human understanding where they attained an inseparable oneness with the deities. By this means, the native’s piety and religious passion, his prayerful zeal and patience, and his daily vows, were tested to the full and laid bare for all to see.’

The white man’s message, rigged and snared on all sides with twigs and thorns that spoke the language of greed, and was directed towards the sole objective of being in control of a market that exercised and guaranteed market power, required to be carefully nurtured and tended. To be successful in the way he wanted it to be, namely, as a means of ensuring ‘open roads and open markets, freedom to navigate and trade on the waterways’, excess profit, and ‘law and order’, a great deal more needed to be done to make it widely known to the natives. This was the only way that end-point which always was the white man’s ultimate objective - the exploitation of the native - could be achieved. Ideas that had no chance of permanence, or any hope of surviving the next few years, some people had urged, ought to be quickly identified and scrubbed.

All of which meant that progress could not be taken for granted. It could come, but it could not be guaranteed; it could arrive after a very long time.

As we shall show in later sections of this work, for the Igbo tribes, in the years between 1900 and 1912, the ‘God word’, rather than the ‘instructions’ of the various oracles of the land would become their instrument of ‘Faith’ only if it was carefully managed. And it was the Europeans themselves, who decided how and when it should be used. By ‘sensibly’ applying it to the reasonable advantage of the Imperial Government in England, the ‘missionaries’ - the ‘handmaidens of Imperialism’ - advised and saw to it that the Bible replaced the gun in the maintenance of the mores of society, even if it was this latter that guaranteed their safety.

And if the finger of the white man that previously lay on the trigger now preferred to rest itself on the hoe, happily tilling the soil of ancient Igboland, the finger that now rested on the edges of the lectern, gently turning the corners of each Bible page, was now unmistakably Igbo, and black - a worthwhile exchange of roles, if any was possible.

As for the people, time, and the urgent needs of the Imperial Government in London, would decide what the future held. The Imperial ‘Undertaking’ to bring civilization to the native tribes had not been undertaken lightly. Following the successes made by the missionaries of the Presbytery of Biafra; others of like faith, using the same Bible, Bible tracts, pamphlets, and catechisms, would attempt to plough the same or similar furrows in the ‘Lord’s vineyard’. Inevitably, they would come into conflict with the ancient vested interests and guardians of the Igbo Sun cult. And the attempt to ‘convert’ the deeply religious villager, turning him away from his ancestral beliefs and the deities of his land would be the spark that would threaten stability in many districts. Intervention in this area, the missionaries had discovered, would be the quickest and the most effective route in undermining the power, the authority, the reverential fear and respect, and the age-old essences that held the traditional society together. It was also the most dangerous area of the daily business of Igbo society.

The most important institution that succumbed to these interventions and blandishments brought and offered by the Imperial and missionary activists over the period that would follow their entry into Igboland was the Ozo - the institution of the sacred priestly nobility of the people. Other nobility institutions that had come down over several centuries would also suffer as time went on.

It was the fear of this loss of control by the deities of the land, and the implications this would have on the overall structure and relationships between the various ‘countries and tribes’, the political and trading systems, and the bases of power and power brokerage, among the powerful city-states of the land that dictated who struck first and where.

But the struggle needed a provocation. The fire required to be lit; but the fuse could not be lit without a flint. And it was the provocation represented by the encroachment of the missionaries of the Presbytery of Biafra in the lower Cross River district that forced the priestly hierarchy of Chuku at Aro Chuku to act to end the rut brought on by the white man’s creeping progress into the hinterland of the Bight of Biafra.

Eight days after a decision was taken at Arochuku to go to war against the Imperial forces, a mighty conflagration broke out in the depths of the lands of the Ibibio, to the south of Arochuku, where the white man had made his home. He was, to all intents and purposes, extremely comfortable here, in what will be his new place in the sun.

CHAPTER 20

Ikorofiong: A Raid too Far The Aro Launch a Pre-emptive Strike on European Controlled Villages on the Cross River

(4th October 1901)

It Gave The British Something To Think About ….

And Left Them to Count the Cost

The god of war hates those who hesitate

Euripides: Heraclidae, c. 425 BC

Too Much Waitin De Burn Di Heart’

(A Kru Proverb)

The Abams Are Restive As Obegu and Akwete Await Their Turn Terror in the Dead of Night

The strategic little town of Ikorofiong lay on the western bank of the lower Cross River. Its people, and those who had come to it in late times - including mission workers of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland - did not have a care in the world as, day after day, the sun rose up in the eastern sky. It would set in the western horizon just as it had done from the beginning of time.

The people of this little town, accustomed to a routine that was both simple and punishing, lived their lives by the day; not once did they bother to make arrangements that compelled them to count the passage of time by more than two days. It was always like this from the time they came into the world; always like this, it seemed, that things would continue to be. They woke up at dawn, and repaired to their farms. They dug, scraped, pulled, cut, slashed, and dragged one tree stump, shrub, or weed, until exhaustion or the baking sun called time; that was the routine. Sunset, the cosmic signal, when it began its triumphal daily act of mercy by which it saved, and saves all who would otherwise labour unto death speaks quietly to each man. It says: go and take a rest. Go to your humble homes, it seems to say; go, the day is done.

That a British military expedition into the southern provinces of Igboland had become inevitable - some observers around the estuary of the Cross River even believed it a certainty. It did not require much in the way of skill, experience, or soothsaying, on the part of the villagers - many of whom always saw the world go by without making a song and dance of it - to read the significance and meaning of the slow build-up of men and materiel on the dock side of Duke Town, Calabar, now euphemistically called Old Calabar. Even the Efik natives themselves knew that something heinous - something big, was about to be unleashed.

Based upon this ‘certainty’ during the first two months into 1901, those in the area who felt themselves at greatest risk and who believed themselves to be most exposed to any such operation - both in their own home districts, as well as in the other areas where their people had dispersed themselves, especially, in all the coastal polities that lay on the Bight of Biafra - decided that urgent action against the white man had become an imperative. It was the Aro of Arochuku who saw themselves in this rather uncomfortable and unenviable position. On behalf of the people of this clan, therefore, and on behalf of the peoples of the Abam Confederation, the priests of Chuku decided that the rot must be squashed.

Uncertainty, however, would continue, fanned and promoted by those who thought that the Igbo people might be reading the signs incorrectly. They urged caution. In biding their time - judging that the picture needed to be better clarified - the Aro leaders and the priesthood of Chuku decided to hold their hand and watch events prove themselves. They did not have to wait for long. The old ditty known to many a cut-throat on the coast told them so. It was the signal.

By the waterside were gathered, many ants, many beasts,

After the season of rains, after the blood-red wine and feasts,

They labour’d to soothe their master’s pride and ire

Wounded by the leopards of the forests that will not bow or tire

Before the evil one, before he with toeless feet,

That here, along the fatal road once did beat

The hearts of men and women, innocent black souls, They carried away, chained in pairs in cavernous ship’s holes.

Here, once, was the haunt trod by pirate and priest

Of Old England, who came to joust and feast;

To Old Calabar they came to snatch young men, the poor,

Such evil they did that all good men abhor; That they might in their own clime, live rich and jolly,

E’en though they everywhere had wreaked wickedness and folly

Drunk with rum, drunk to drown,

By the shores of Calabar in Old Duke Town

Upon their labours great and small Upon this earth, all men they call Lend us your time! Lend a hand!

In groups they gather, the guns to land By the waterside they came to strain and labour

To earn their pay and do the white man a favour (Who say one thing and then does another For none they cared, nor man nor brother)

Drunk with rum, drunk to drown

By the shores of Calabar, in Old Duke Town

These far-seeing and enterprising go-getters were soon to persuade themselves in their belief, after word reached them from the southern coasts, as well as through the series of messages channelled through their long and convoluted lines of communication inland, that the white men were determined to act against them and their kinsmen, the Igbo. With their own eyes, they were witnesses to the activities of the groups of hard drinking oafs and louts that daily lay about debauching by the dimly lit eateries by the riverside and shores of Duke Town. They did not wait for the British to make the first move, however.

In early July1901, as the British stepped up their war rhetoric as well as their preparations at ‘Old Calabar’ - with the ‘British Consulate Hill’ on Duke Town, the water-side and port area, and the water channels and creeks daily humming with ceaseless activity like the channels and crevices within an anthill - the Aro decided that it was time to act. The repeated threatening messages which Ralf Moor, the ‘High Commissioner’ had sent their chiefs, irritative and unwarranted in their view, urging them to ‘desist from their ‘illegal practices’, ‘to face reality’ - the reality of a new order in which the white man, an alien visitor, presumed himself to be the ‘government’ of the land - was t

Figure%208.jpg

Fig: 8 Map of Cross River

The Aro themselves had, for some time, envisioned a detailed plan, which had been worked out for a surprise attack sufficiently deep and into, and within the Cross River estuary, close to Creek Town. This plan was now refurbished and activated. All operatives who were to participate in it were alerted and provisioned. The action envisaged, it was hoped, would warn off and teach the white traders and their friends who had come to ‘preach God way’ to beware. It was also intended to teach those who were undecided as to who held ‘the ultimate power and authority in the area’, as well as those who ‘come with force to take our market’, and ‘upset our customs’, a valuable lesson. That lesson was encapsulated in two words: ‘keep off’! On account of the heightened and evidently tight security situation in the area, however, a limited operation was considered preferable - in the first instance.

A Pre-emptive Strike against Ikorofiong

Early in October 1901, on the second day of the full moon, a dawn raid on two villages about 18 miles west of the riverside town of Ikorofiong on the Cross River was carried out. The villages were attacked without warning. The raids were unopposed by the natives.

Destroyed in one fell swoop, the inhabitants were put to flight. Beyond the cluster of villages furthest away and lying to the west of Ikorofiong, a trail of fire led into the forest. Another trail, seemingly unconstrained, made its way in the direction that traced the habitations of those that were perceived to be the white man’s friends. Those among the natives who could not escape fast enough became the first casualties of a war that would change the face of this corner of the hinterland of the Bight of Biafra. They numbered 11 men - mostly farmers who had been surprised.

The attack on these villages on the outskirts of Ikorofiong had left them in flames. Yet no attempt had been made to loot the property of the inhabitants; they were only a community of peasant, and possibly migrant, farmers. The only great asset of the villages - for all they were worth at the time - was the ‘increasing presence and interest’ of the missionaries of the Presbytery of Biafra.

In truth, the attacks were not directed at the villagers themselves. They had been intended to convey a message - a stern massage to the ‘white man’; a symbolic warning to the traders on the coast and those who ‘preach God way’ to stay away. Unfortunately, it was the poor villagers of the little town on the outskirts of Ikorofiong who bore the brunt, and became the first victims, of this warning from hell. And a costly and painful warning it turned out to be.

In the nearby sprawling village that was closer to Ikorofiong, a mere three miles away, the war was carried to its very centre, leaving men and women, and their children in confusion. These were poor folk; nothing was taken. The raging fires were the only things the attackers left behind. That was the message the attackers wanted the white man to ‘see’.

It was uncertain who had actually carried out these raids. One fact seemed certain, however. The raids had been ordered by the chief priest of Chuku, the sacred oracle at Aro-chuku. It would later become clear that the raids had been the handiwork of operatives from the Akunakuna clan, ancient allies and mercenaries of the Aro. The aim of the action had been to slow down or halt the activities of the white people who were extending their access and reach beyond what was considered permissible or reasonable. It was hoped that the attack would, ultimately, compel them to withdraw from the area. The intentions and expectations of the Aro and their allies were amply realised. All the missionary workers up and down the Cross River were immediately withdrawn - and sent down to Duke Town.

Ikorofiong was, for the Presbytery of Biafra, an important mission centre with great promise. It had, in the early 1880s, been identified by the Presbytery as a potential centre for a major evangelisation effort that would see the mission extend its Gospel work and lead to a rapid penetration of the surrounding districts. This expectation would later, with great effort and enterprise, be realised. It became an active base for the mission’s missionary, medical and educational work, attracting, thereto, an influx of several other local tribes, especially, the Efik who would become the dominant group in this wholly Ibibio district.

The importance of Ikorofiong, of course, lay in its strategic location. Perched by the western bank of the lower Cross River highway, it gave easy access to the up-stream tribes. Downstream, it led to Duke Town and the coast. Westwards, along the Enyong creek, it gave access to routes and channels that led directly into the heartlands of the Ibibio. In the view of the Aros for whom this region had always been regarded as their ancient stamping grounds, it was imperative that the white man was denied access and freedom to use and exploit these valuable attributes and resources. The creeping encroachment into this territory by the white man, therefore, would clearly not bode well for the Aro and the other Igbo of the area; it would spell disaster to the local businesses of the region, threatening entrenched ancient rights and opportunities. Hence the reason for the Akunakuna raid. The ‘Abams’ did not participate in this raid. They would wait for their turn to prove their power and their ferocity elsewhere. They did not have to wait for long.

Obegu - A Second Front The Obegu War

(21November 1901)

A Pre-emptive Strike by Abam Confederacy Forces against the City-State of Obegu on the South Coast Is The British Pretext For The Imperial Forces To Open Hostilities Against The Igbo ‘Countries and Tribes’

On 21 November 1901, approximately six weeks after the Ikorofiong raid, a second co-ordinated attack was launched on the ancient and prosperous market town of Obegu on the south coast of Igboland. This attack was well aimed - at the centre of a city-state that, between 1898 and 1901, was well on the road to becoming a ‘client state’ of the British Imperial interest supervised from the island of Fernando Po.

The attack had long been in preparation; it was clear that the planners had had time to move a sizeable number of ‘Abams’ from the Bende district to the area. We are able to offer details of this military operation, thanks to the fortuitous presence at Obegu during the period, of some Nkwerre people, long term, long-distance traders throughout the Ukwa district who, personally gave its details to this writer in several interviews between 1955 and 1987 (Iheacho Uzomaka, Interviews).

Historians have long been in dispute concerning the real causes of the Obegu War that commenced on 21 November 1901. Although the British had long advanced their preparations to attack Igboland somewhere along one of its borders, it is reasonably certain that the pre-emptive attack on Obegu by the ‘Abams’ masterminded by the Aro in collaboration with the Nkwerres who procured the weapons, was the event that hastened the British plan of operations in the area. This attack by the ‘Abams’ was, in the view of many Igbo ‘stranger elements’ in the area at the time - specifically, the Nkwerres, a perfect God-send for the white man. It literally presented the ‘Southern Protectorate Government’ at Old Calabar and the British Admiralty in London, with the perfect pretext - a licence of sorts - to invoke the provisions of its 1873 treaty with Obegu. It was imperative that this Imperial power acted, and was seen to act, swiftly by the other city-states on the coast which were also parties to the ‘protectorate treaties’ signed by them with Britain.

In responding, on behalf of its ‘friends’ on the coast, Britain could legitimately – and it did - argue in defence of what was, in effect, an unexpected and unwarranted, intervention in the affairs of the Igbo region - that it was merely acting within the provisions of its treaties with its allies on the Bight of Biafra. But this line of reasoning would clearly hold little water. Everyone knew that its consuming interest in the region dictated that it early found a way to breach the defensive perimeter of the ‘closed’ territory that was the Igbo homeland.

The ‘Abam’ attack on Obegu would be cited by the British Government as the signal ‘provocation’ that ‘finally’ led it to impose war on the ‘Igbo countries and tribes’ on a scale and with a ferocity that was previously unheard of nor anticipated. Clearly, while its long-term strategy in the region had long been worked out, its immediate intentions - poorly articulated and generally confused - as demonstrated by its decision to attack the Igbo countries from four points almost simultaneously - appeared to have been uncertain. In both situations, however, the British Imperial aim had been to conquer and hold the ‘countries and tribes’ of the Igbo nation ‘permanently’ as its colony.

Absence of Legal Instruments

There are no records that attest the existence of understandings and or compacts that show that the British Government and its ‘consulate’ at ‘Old Calabar’ - from the time it came to the region during the 1820s - had acquired any legally enforceable rights over and above those specific to, and enjoyed by, the Igbo countries and tribes. No Igbo kings, chiefs, or representatives - as free agents, sovereign in every particular - were consulted before Britain presumed to ‘extend to the peoples who dwelt in the territories inland of the Bight of Biafra’, those articles of the ‘treaties’ it had ‘signed’ with the ‘chiefs’ of the ‘Calabar district’ that purported to grant