The Fall of Biafra by Gbulie Ben

Author:Gbulie, Ben [Gbulie, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-02-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

THE OBITUARY NOTICE

I fled, and cry’d out Death;

Hell trembl’d at the hideous Name, and sigh’d

From all her Caves, and back resounded Death.

John Milton.

ALL THROUGH that Thursday night, guns boomed across Owerri and Umuahia Provinces. The whole of Ekwereazu pulsated with the familiarly sinister sound of exploding artillery shells. Houses shook, vibrating in resonance. Even the ground quivered and shuddered, while tension continued to mount.

​ In that prevailing state of darkness, streams of refugees poured out of the riverine areas of Mbaise: surging into Ekwereazu which was already teeming with displaced Biafrans; spilling into the adjoining towns and villages; creating a bedlam all their own.

​ Under the circumstances, nobody under Mr. Nweke’s roof could have even a wink of sleep. Quite on the contrary. His dependents, notably women and children, trembled under their blankets – most of them cringing and crouching, all huddled up against each other.

​ At a stage, I could not help feeling a premonition that really chilled me. Indeed, while I sat up that night, listening not so much to the rumbling sound of artillery as to the heavy tread of the evacuees as well as the anguished cries of both the sick and the wounded, I could not help stirring with an intense sense of doom.

​ So alarmed was Mr. Nweke himself [56] that, shortly after midnight, he yanked off his bedclothes, struggled to his feet and, having thrown a handy wrapper round his tall frame, hurried out of the house: determined, it seemed, to catch up on what was happening. But he reappeared soon afterwards, panting out a vital piece of intelligence in a tone that rang with horror. The enemy had crossed the Imo River!

​ Later on, as I made my way back to Owerre- Nkworji, my head pounded with that two-night-old forecast made oracularly by His Excellency: to the effect that it was bound to be nunc dimittis for Biafra no later than twenty-four hours after the enemy had succeeded in crossing the strategic river. At the same time, I could not help conjuring up all kinds of ugly scenes to which an outright military defeat was liable to give rise to: an abrupt but total breakdown of the social order to which we Biafrans had grown accustomed in the past thirty months; an indiscriminate, genocidal massacre of both soldiers and civilians, all in the name of mopping-up operations; looting, pillaging and rape; taunting victory parades, particularly in Lagos and at Kaduna; marathon interrogations interspersed with torture; even Nuremberg-type trials as well as kangaroo courts, with convictions based on perjured evidence; public executions by firing squads; deportations, especially of pro-Biafra aliens; widespread anti-Igbo measures, including suppression of liberties, calculated to destroy for good the much-envied Igbo psyche… My thoughts spun round and round in concentric circles, the blood pulsing through my veins.

​ Perhaps significantly, the weather that morning was as cold as our people’s ultimate fate was uncertain – the harmattan wind whipping relentlessly past my station wagon, whimpering audibly. Lines of refugees stretched for miles en route out of Ekwereazu.

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