The Soul of Sabunda: A Reflection of the Biafra Civil War

By Ozioma Ezeogu

This is a fictional story based on true life story. With a sizeable land mass with the rising sun from the East of the black continent, the Sabundan territory paraded some of the best climatic conditions anywhere.
The gradual but certain development of the people’s natural and more effective patterns of agreeable integration was rudely arrested by a foreign colonial power (The advent of a white colonial power in the early twentieth century). It was an unlikely cocktail which they had put together.
The Sabundan Air Force bombed Harbor City in the south of Zanda with fatal consequences. The battle line had been drawn and joined as the Zandan Times broadsheet screamed in its headline, “The Soul of Sabunda Is Dead.”

Directors of Bisike series:
Paul O Ibeh PhD ([e-mail])
Barrister Callistus Anyanjo ([e-mail])

Praise for Ozioma Ezeogu

“A fascinating combination of a fictional story based on real life story
that revealed the many secret evils by some sorts of
presumed superpowers which led to the shackle of darkness
in that part of the world till date”
— Paul Ibeh


“ Very imaginative. It will satisfy anyone that reads this novel to bear
in mind that, even through the valley of darkness,
the rising sun” will always come from the East.”
— Callistus Anyanjo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press UK
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982281908

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Copyright © 2020 Ozioma Ezeogu.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-8191-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-8190-8 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:   08/10/2020

CONTENTS

The Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

The Epilogue

This work is dedicated to the memory of my late

parents, Rufus Unaegbu Ezeogu (aka ‘Master’) and

Irene Nwaibari Ezeogu (aka ‘Nwunye Master’).

THE PROLOGUE

T his is a fictional story of mind-boggling contradictions. With a sizeable land mass and stituated on the sunny equitorial reaches of the black continent, the Sabundan territory paraded some of the best climatic conditions anywhere.

The country was endowed with a myriad of viable mineral resources under its grounds and yet it ranked as one of the most beggarly nations on earth.

In the early nineteeth century, Sabunda did not exist. Rather, bands of fiefdoms and tribal clans reached out across farmlands and national boundaries to one another in trade and occasional belligerent exchanges.

Commercial intercourse which was mostly woven around produce comparative advantages had opened up most of the tribal settlements to new and sometimes frosty civilizations.

The advent of a white colonial power in the early twentieth century accelerated the process of assimilation and integration.

However, the extent to which that process of integration of peoples of diverse socio-cultural and poltical orientation fitted in was to play out fully in the succeeding decades.

And as the years wore on it became increasingly clear that the process of integration and assimilation was largely improvised and mostly inconvenient. The patch work was coming apart at the seams even before it came together.

The gradual but certain development of the people’s natural and more effective patterns of agreeable integration was rudely arrested by a foreign colonial power. It was an unlikely cocktail which they had put together.

And the new nation which emerged in the middle of the twentienth century from this mishmash was a tinderbox that was clearly set to explode at any moment.

And it sure exploded.

The unlikely political contraption called the Republic of Sabunda inadvertently yielded to internal political and social contradictions and hence to a colossal implosion of sorts.

The incipient military forces, brandishing a toga of righteous indignation struck at the soul of the Republic, even if unsuccessfully so. And a chain of untoward events ensued and nearly dismembered the young nation.

And the military almost committed class sucide as erstwhile comrades-in-arms pitched belligerent tents on each of an unwholesome and painful divide along very strange parochial considerations. The soul of Sabunda was on very tenuous and improbable lynch line.

The ensuring patricidal war which came home to most communities across the land in very graphic experiences threw up two principal belligerents, Generals Jack Simon of the Republic of Sabunda and Dickson Ogbuagu Uzoma of the Peoples Socialist Republic of Zanda as all diplomatic footwork to avoid the fireworks proved abortive.

Two sister countries had engaged their armed forces and they threw in all available resources in men and materials in a vicious dog fight with untold bloody consequences.

General Uzoma told the pacifist Dr. Oseloka Okongwu, "…well the ball is not in my court…so you may have to head back to Gezim City and inform the tin gods there that we are ready for any options they may throw at us…"

And then it happened.

The Sabundan Air Force bombed Harbor City in the south of Zanda with fatal consequences. The battle line had been drawn and joined as the Zandan Times broadsheet screamed in its headline, "The Soul of Sabunda Is Dead."

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1

T HE YOUNG, erudite and at once brash and urbane Lt. Colonel Dickson Uzoma meditatively surveyed his audience on this momentous and grave occasion. You could almost hear the drop of a pin.

They were astute politicians, labor leaders, the professional elite, student leaders; heads of town and village associations and assorted representatives of the people.

They understood and shared in the pulsating angst of the moment. They came from all corners of the Mangrove Region, at the express invitation of the military administrator.

THE FEDERAL Republic of Sabunda was coming apart. The signs had been there for years as socio-political stress continued to gnaw at the delicate hemlines pretending to hold the jaded multi-colored fabric together.

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IT WAS a caustic and impossible dry season of the year in the Mangrove Region of Sabunda. The atmosphere of Eguna City, the capital of Mangrove Region was grim, tense and expectant. Hordes of human and vehicular traffic had headed into the city in crisis proportions.

The teeming numbers of the dead, maimed and dispossessed had arrived in the city with a common story of persecution, armed uprising against their kith and kin with intent to exterminate, and ethnic profiling.

And a consensus on revenge or at the least, justice rang out loudly in the dusty and dry air.

And a clarion call went out.

The big, white-colored colonial clock held aloft by the city-gate arch chronicled the time of day.

It was 06:00pm.

THE MANGROVE Regional Assembly building had lost its usually exultant shine and flamboyant color. There was a serene, if eerie and foreboding disposition to its gait today.

The place wore an unlikely mournful face accentuated by the sanguinary events of the day and the sacking of ebullient and colorful parliamentarians who held court there. That sad incident had taken place a couple of months earlier in the year.

"Our fathers and elders…" Lt. Colonel Uzoma began.

We all have been witnesses to the gory and wicked events of today…how the Federal Authorities of Sabunda have chosen to allow the killing and maiming of our people for no just cause…and as I speak, massive massacres are still going on unrestrained…and all that the authorities in Gezim City are telling me is that they are appealing for calm…, he continued, feeling the words heavy in his mouth.

"And now, our fathers and elders, do we allow this precipitate genocide to continue…? Do we stand by and let our people be cut down and their properties looted…? Our men have been killed and our women and children have been abused…what do we do?" Lt. Colonel Uzoma asked with a frustratingly painful bang of his clenched fists on the table.

The atmosphere in the hallowed parliamentary chambers was electric with anger and hatred for the perceived perpetrators of such heinous acts on the peoples of the Mangrove Region.

Elders of Mangrove Region…, he resumed.

"I must request and have your well-considered opinion on the appropriate approach and action…I have to have your response in the next 21 days…our lives are in grave danger…" Lt. Colonel Uzoma concluded.

The gathering quickly dispersed like a cloud ladened with water and hastily prospecting for where to drop its payload.

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DICKSON OGBUAGU UZOMA was a rebel of sorts. Sir Livinus and Lady Ngozi Uzoma was a very rich couple. Sir Livinus had made tremendous wealth from the export of agricultural produce and transportation services all over Sabunda and indeed the west coast of the new country.

They brought up their three children to respect hard work and honesty. Their children were very well catered for but they had also noticed earlier on in their parenting chores that Dickson, their second son was different in very many significant ways.

The boy Dickson Ogbuagu had a peculiar and perhaps stubborn mind of his own; a curious mind which he had sometimes subtly demonstrated on occasion.

He was brilliant, exploratory in nature, inquisitive, unconventional in attitude and style; and a recluse. The father had then decided to send him abroad to the United States of America to attend a preparatory school. He was only five years old.

The boy’s personal guardian in the USA, Mr. Udensi Ifeadi, a consummate disciplinarian, was to confess later to Dickson’s parents that their ward was difficult to control.

At 25, young Dickson had completed a master’s degree in Political Philosophy. He took naturally to the arts.

The gift of the garb was second nature. Oratorical skills had become clearly manifest in the young man. It was part of that incipient curious nature of the boy Dickson.

He was the only black person in a class of mostly white post-graduate students. And he also turned out to become the best overall student. The superlative grades he had posted every semester were adequate proof.

It was unprecedented.

There was a long-standing convention at the Morgan Moore College, Illinois. Postgraduate liberal art students were expected by the faculty at Morgan to engage in mandatory social moot courts in order to sharpen their leadership and oratorical skills.

And it was the turn of the postgraduate class of 1955. The issue at stake was the foreign policy choices of independent nations and the stability of the global environment, a focus on the interdependence of nations.

YOUNG DICKSON was to litigate the issue against a very capable and resourceful white classmate Reginald Fox, before a distinguished panel of college faculty and students.

The argument anchored by Reginald emphasized the social and cultural values of the United States of America which saw it through the depression and had therefore sustained its claim to the ultimate political and technological global power.

He further argued that his country had evolved over a long period of time with tried and tested socio-political and economic development models which could stand as benchmarks for especially developing nations.

And having stabilized its social and political space the USA was entitled and indeed most deserving of the respect of the international community which must give it due deference at all times in the concert of global socio-political and economic choices.

And as he pressed on the homerun, the appreciative audience rallied a stringing ovation. The heat was on as his co-contestant warmed up for a response.

And Reginald Fox sat down to surf the accolades of an appreciative distinguished audience.

And it was the turn of Dickson Uzoma.

His practice of calculatively and exploratively studying the audience before a speech was ingrained early in life. It was not any different today. And he took on his opponent headlong.

He characterized the USA as an Achilles with a soft under belly, a vunerable heel. Dickson argued that a society that had lost its grip on coherent moral and ethical values had no justifiable claims to the higher grounds of global leadership.

Dickson opined that the cultural and social values of the US were antithetical to the fundamental values construct of most of the rest the world, especially Africa.

It would therefore amount to cultural suicide for the rest of humanity to weigh in with and support models which detracted from the basic assumptions of life and living elsewhere, Dickson argued, drawing wide-spread nods of approval from the audience.

The American society cannot lead the world…its unbridled hegemony can only precipitate chaos and internecine resentment around the globe… America must choose today to reform itself… the American mind must be restructured…the United States of America is not the world…

"A society which bays at the global vocal minority’s vicious campaign to vilify the irreducible content of wholesome social and moral platforms has clearly lost the political and indeed moral leadership muscle necessary for pulling the world from the brink…" Dickson railed on.

The United States of America has lost its commitment to the basic truths which are espoused in its ‘Magna Carta’ as propounded by its founding fathers…their founding fathers believed and contextualized the truth that all men are born equal…that all men must follow the path of the Supreme Creator of the Universe…the path of truth and life…that all human relationships must be anchored on the premise of the love of God and basic inalienable rights…

…the USA has done away with the great Thomas Jefferson in a blinding chase after the ogre of dialectical materialism…mainstream American today neither believes in God nor practices the fundamental pillars on which the creation of the United States of America was largely erected…how then can this country lead our common humanity?

AND for close to thirty minutes of near filibustering, the audience and indeed the panel were held spell-bound by such specious postulations and radical thought. It left Reginald Fox doodling.

Dickson Uzoma won the contest. And, surprisingly so and for unclear and perhaps strange reasons for a bunch of highly opinionated audience whose enduring argument had often been that their country had become the best thing that happened to the earth.

Dickson returned to Sabunda on the eve of Christmas of 1956 on the express orders of his father. Sir Livinus wanted his clever son to study law and later join him to run his agriculture and mineral produce business.

"But, Philosophy… what was that?"

He was enraged at what Dickson elected to study.

The boy indeed agreed to study law after a first degree in sociology. But his non-conformist nature took over and Dickson opted for a postgraduate degree in political philosophy and modern thought.

"Son… you are