Biafra
Sir: 'There was no genocide', declares Lady Hunt (Letters, 21 January), who then goes on to claim that 'that fact' was 'proved by the reports of the international observers representing Britain, Canada, Poland, the UN Secretary-General and the Organisation of African Unity'. Some fact; some proof!
The complicity of Britain in the NigeriaBiafra war isn't exactly a debatable point, as even the British Government itself acknowledged. In fact, many Biafrans did and do regard Britain as the enemy, and Nigeria only as proxy, since the war between Nigeria and Biafra by themselves strictly ended in September 1967 with the fall of the Mid-West. (Ask Harold Wilson, who in 1970 went to a Lagos victory party given in his honour by Yakubu Gowon.) And as w)th Britain, so indeed, in substance, with Canada. The UN Secretary General was U Thant, whose campaigns against Biafra are very much on record. And the Organisation of African Unity was the same one which felt called upon to seek peace between Nigeria and Biafra, but which, outclassing even its own self, was then led by Haile Selassie (who else?) to Lagos, the capital of one of the belligerents, and without so much as bothering even to listen to Biafra's case, drunkenly pronounced itself delighted and satisfied with the Nigerian programme. And isn't Poland a satellite of Soviet Russia, which in turn was Britain's ally and bedfellow in the war? In the light of this record, I ask Lady Hunt if this was her idea too, of an independent observer, and especially if she can't see that the British Government and their High Commissioners, with such red hands, could not be credible observers? In short, is Lady Hunt, too, unable to appreciate the rudimentary requirement of justice that a party to a dispute should never be appointed, let alone arrogate to itself the role of, an arbiter in the same dispute? Lady Hunt speaks of 'Biafran propagandists' coming down to a figure of one million for the total number of Biafran people killed, and further claims that 'it is now known that the true figure is something like a tenth of that' (italics mine). I presume that one such group of 'Biafran propagandists' was David Hunt and his British superiors, to whom also, the said 'true figure' is supposedly known.
Apparently Mr Auberon Waugh did strike some sensitive and nervous chords. And poor Lady Hunt—maybe that she has a conscience that pricks. Certain British Prime Ministers and their Cabinet Ministers (especially Foreign Secretaries) and High Commissioners have got no such problem. And apparently never had.
Uyammadu Chukwuma 320 Pendleton Way, Oakland, California 94621, USA
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