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By Etim Etim

On Sunday, July 19, Gov. Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State formally apologized to the Igbo community in the state for the state’s role in the Nigerian civil (1967-1970). Addressing Igbo leaders from different parts of the state at Government House in Jos, the governor stated that Plateau people were ‘’deceived into going to war’’ under the military régime of Gen. Yakubu Gowon, expressing regrets for the atrocities the Igbos suffered and urging reconciliation. Incidentally, Gen. Gowon is from Plateau.  The governor asked for the Igbos and Plateau people to put the sad experience behind them and forge a united future. He praised the entrepreneurial spirit of the Igbos, commended them for their contributions to the socioeconomic development of the state and described them as integral part of Plateau State’s progress.

The governor further asked Igbo business owners to train and employ young Plateau indigenes. ‘’I apologize to the Igbos so that we can put the past behind us and continue to foster unity.  We have become one family…because our people were deceived into going to war, and we regret it. We must close that chapter and move forward’’, Mutfwang said. In their response, the Igbo leaders welcomed the governor’s gesture, describing it as a major step toward healing. The community subsequently endorsed the governor for a second term ahead of the 2027 elections. The endorsement was announced by President-General of Igbo Community in Plateau, Chief Chidi Onah’’. But what’s the context and significance of this apology?

Between May and September 1966, thousands of Igbos and persons who were mistaken for Igbos (including Akwa Ibom people) were murdered in several parts of Northern Nigeria, including Plateau State, in what was then the largest pogrom in Africa. In his autobiography, A journey in Service, Gen. Babangida wrote: ‘’apparently, what started as an attack on Igbo officers became an attack on Igbo officers and civilians alike. Unfortunately, the violence got out of control and spread to parts of Bauchi, Sokoto, Katsina, and Zaria… According to Official Army Records, no less than 213 predominantly Igbo officers and other ranks were killed during that period’’.  Headless corpses were loaded in trains in Kano and other northern cities and dispatched to Enugu, the headquarters of the Eastern Region. The scenes were too gory to behold!

The genocide was triggered by the suspicions among Northerners that the January 15 1966 coup, led by Major Chukwuma Nzeokwu, was specifically designed to eliminate key Northern civilian and military leaders. The pogrom was therefore to avenge the deaths of the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello; Prime Minister Tafewa Balewa and other prominent Northern leaders who were killed during the Nzeokwu coup.

 In May 1967, Col. Emeka Ojukwu, military governor of the Eastern Region, announced the region’s secession from Nigeria and declared it Republic of Biafra.  The 30-month civil war that followed was fought between the Nigerian Army made up of mostly Yoruba and Northern soldiers and the Biafran soldiers made up of mostly Igbos in the South East and some elements from the neigbouring ethnic minority groups. Among the Nigerian army were many soldiers and officers from Benue-Plateau State (now Benue and Plateau States). Together with their Fulani, Hausa, Kanuri comrades, the soldiers from Benue-Plateau waged a war of attrition against the Igbos in the Biafra. Over two and a half million people died in the conflict.

During the war, Nigerian soldiers committed severe acts of brutality, barbarism and massacre against civilians in Biafra. Markets were routinely bombed and hundreds of women and children killed. Many people are still talking about the Asaba massacre till today. In October 1967, Nigerian Second Infantry Division, led by Col. Murtala Mohammed (he became Head of State five years after the war and was brutally murdered in a coup attempt only six months into his reign) rounded up and killed hundreds of men in cold blood in the area. They were accused of sympathizing with the Biafran forces.

I was only six years old when the war broke out, but I still bear vivid memories of Nigerian soldiers marching into our village early one morning some time in 1968, chasing villagers into the bush and setting homes on fire. My parents and four siblings (one was a baby) ran into the bush and emerged some villages away where we camped as refugees. Our house was completely burnt down.

To weaken the resolve of Biafra to fight on, the Gowon military régime also implemented a policy of mass starvation of Biafran people, leading to many children starving to death. Even Red Cross and other humanitarian agencies were prevented from sending aids into the breakaway region.  Children and old people were dying in droves from starvation inside Biafra. In today’s world, Gowon and his commanders would be tried for war crimes!

This is the background to Gov. Mutfwang’s apology to those Igbo leaders assembled at the Government House. But I am not quite sure if the people he was addressing were even born before the war. No matter. But more important, what motivated the governor into making the apology. Was it to entice the Igbo community to endorse him, or was the governor riven by guilty conscience for what he was not personally responsible for? He was only two years old when the war broke out. Did his parents or relatives play a part in the mass killings of the Igbos and other persons from South Eastern part of Nigeria before and during the war? Undoubtedly, Plateau people participated actively in the genocide of the 1966 and fought actively on the Nigerian side during the war. My friend, Etowa, told me that his father, from Obubra in Cross River State, was killed in Jos, mistaken for Igbo, during the pogrom.

Long after the war and the genocide that preceded it, another type of mass murders are happening in the Middle Belt. Almost every day, in the last two decades or so, Plateau and Benue people are being murdered by the same Fulani people with whom they fought as comrades in arms during the war. This time, the killers are not soldiers, but terrorists and herdsmen. They’re killing, maiming, raping women and seizing their land. The whole of the Middle Belt of Nigeria, including Kogi, Benue Kwara and Plateau States, are now the killing fields of Nigeria. Fulani militias, descendants of those who perpetrated the pogrom of 1966, are executing a second wave of genocide, this time not against the Igbos, but against the Tiv; Berom; Igala; Ebira and even Okun people of North Central. This is what President Trump refers to as ‘’Christian Genocide’’ in Nigeria. But before the current wave of ‘’Christian Genocide’’, there was Igbo pogrom! And this is why Mutfwang is apologizing.

This must be Karma at work.  It has probably occurred to the governor that his people are simply reaping what they sowed in the 1960s.  But he should remember, as author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, ‘’sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences’’. I have read many accounts of the 1966 genocide and the civil war that followed, notably Gen. Alexandar Madiebo’s ‘’The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War; ‘’ Ben Gbulie’s ‘’The Five Majors’’ and Godwin Alabi-Isama’s ‘’The tragedy of Victory’’, among others. Indeed, history sometimes repeats itself in a rather farcical way!