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The case of Biafra: Ireland and the Nigerian civil war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Enda Staunton
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Extract

In the 1940s and 1950s, irrespective of the government in power, Irish foreign policy faced strong domestic pressure to remain within parameters defined by religious sentiment, anti-communism and anti-colonialism. Yet two contrasting attitudes, corresponding to party allegiances, were nonetheless discernible: that of Fine Gael, which held constantly to a pro-Western line, and that of Fianna Fáil, which was capable of occasionally departing from it. By the 1960s the two approaches had converged, as Fianna Fáil under Seán Lemass repositioned itself more clearly in the American-led camp, a change most strikingly exemplified by Ireland’s response to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Yet before the end of the decade an issue was to arise in which Dublin’s Department of External Affairs was to find itself steering a course independent of forces both within the country and outside it.

The war which erupted in Nigeria in the summer of 1967, when its Eastern Region seceded, was to reverberate across the world, causing a response in Ireland unequalled by the reaction to any foreign civil conflict between that of Spain in the 1930s and that of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It was to bring about the greatest emotional involvement with an African problem since Ireland’s participation in the Congo conflict, leading directly to the foundation of the Africa Concern and Gorta organisations and marking a turning-point in the nature of Irish overseas aid.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 124 , November 1999 , pp. 513 - 534
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1999

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References

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2 Ibid., pp 236–44, 289.

3 Ireland and Africa’, Africa Report, Apr. 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, Fl/20).

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12 Ibid.

13 For the best narrative history of the conflict see Jorre, John de St, The Nigerian civil war (London, 1972).Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 ‘To all missions’, 12 Sept. 1967 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/3/A).

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Dáil Éireann deb., ccxxxiii, 1477–9; ccxxxiv, 499 (24 Apr. 1968).

19 Ciaran Carty in Sunday Independent, 24 Mar. 1968.

20 Irish Press, 2 Sept. 1969.

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24 Aiken memo, 4 May 1968 (ibid.).

25 Transcript of conversation between Aiken and Fr Laurence Carr, S.M.A., 28 Apr.1968 (N.A.I..DFA, P13/3/B).

26 Rush to department, 5 May 1968 (ibid., DFA, P13/2/4).

27 Ibid.

28 See below, Tables 1 and 2.

29 Gowon to Mgr George Huessler, 5 May 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/A).

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Evening Herald, 6 Sept. 1968.

33 Memorandum of meeting with M. Akpoyowa, Nigerian charge d’affaires, 27 Feb. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/4).

34 Dáil Éireann deb., ccxxxvi, 1102-ł (13 Mar. 1969).

35 Keating memo, 4 Mar. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/14/1).

36 Keating to department, 11 Sept. 1968 (ibid.).

37 Keating to Ó Tuathail, 18 Oct. 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, PI 3/13/2); Irish Press, 10 Oct. 1968.

38 Pressed by the opposition on the issue of Enahoro’s alleged remarks, Aiken misled the house by stating that the question of the Holy Ghost order’s involvement in gun-running had never been raised by Enahoro (Dáil Éireann deb., ccxxxiii, 1107 (23 Oct. 1968)).

39 Collis, Robert, Nigeria in conflict (London 1970)Google Scholar. See also articles by Collis in Irish Times, 29, 30 June 1969.

40 ‘The Late Late Show’,4 Jan. 1969 (N.A.I, DFA, P13/5/3).

41 For a personal account of the operation see Byrne, Tony, Airlift to Biafra (Dublin, 1997).Google Scholar

42 Keating to department, 15 Jan. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/B).

43 Report of Keating’s visit, 4 Dec. 1968 (ibid., DFA, P13/3).

44 Report marked ‘secret’, 15 Dec. 1969 (ibid., DFA, P13/7/3/B).

45 Notes of meeting with Enahoro, 9 Oct. 1968 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/2).

46 Keating to department, 15 Nov. 1968 (ibid., DFA, P13/ 3); Columcille affair (ibid., DFA, P13/7/3).

47 Keating to department, 14 Nov. 1969 (ibid., DFA, P13/7/3).

48 Ibid.

49 Keating to Ó Tuathail, 30 Jan. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/7/1).

50 Sunday Press, 24 Mar. 1968.

51 Notes of meeting with Modu, 24 June 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/3/1).

52 Notes of meeting with Modu, 14 Aug. 1968 (ibid.).

53 Notes of meeting with Modu, 23 Dec. 1968 (ibid.).

54 Ibid., attached note.

55 Notes of meeting with Professor Modebe, 27 Mar. 1969 (ibid.).

56 Ibid.

57 Notes of meeting with Kogbara and Modu, 15 Apr. 1969 (ibid.).

58 Ibid.

59 Notes of meeting with Modu, 7 July 1969 (ibid.).

60 Notes of meeting with Kogbara and Modu, 16 July 1969 (ibid.).

61 Notes of meeting with Modu, 2 Aug. 1969 (ibid.).

62 Notes of meeting with H. Brubeck and V. Randolph of U.S. State Department, 11 Nov. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/2/l).

63 Notes of meeting with Mojekwu, 12 Aug. 1969 (ibid., DFA, P13/3/B).

64 Notes of meeting with Arikpo, 22 July 1969 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/A).

65 Notes of meeting with Ogundipe, 29 Aug. 1969 (ibid.).

66 Notes of Modu’s visit to department, 12 Dec. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/3/B).

67 Okpara’s request to department, 18 Feb. 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/A); Keating to department, 23 Feb. 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/B). At the time of the outbreak of the war Ojukwu’s brother had been a pupil at Rockwell College, County Tipperary.

68 Briefing of minister by Eamon Ó Tuathail, 15 Apr. 1970 (N.A.I., DFA, P15/1/1).

69 O’Sullivan to Sean Ronan, 8 May 1971 (ibid., DFA, P13/7/3/C).

70 Catholic Encyclopedia (15 vols, New York, 1966), x, 466–7Google Scholar.

71 In fact Gowon himself, and two-thirds of his cabinet, were Christian, as was a majority of the federal army.

72 Keating to department, 3 Sept. 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/4).

73 Finn to Keating, 14 Aug. 1968 (ibid., DFA, P13/7/1).

74 Information from Fr Liam Burke, S.M.A., May 1969 (ibid.); Keating to Ambassador Joseph Shields, 7 Feb. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/4).

75 Irish Times, 10 Feb. 1969.

76 Keating to J. G. Molloy, 30 May 1970 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/4).

77 Keating to department, 18 Feb. 1969 (ibid.).

78 See, for example, Adesina, Segun, ‘The Catholic church and our civil war’ in Sunday Post, 18 Aug. 1969Google Scholar.

79 Rush to department, 24 Apr. 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/4).

80 Memorandum, 18 June 1969 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/1).

81 Keating to department, 2 June 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/E); chargé d’affaires to secretary, 19 July 1973 (ibid.).

82 Keating to department, 2 June 1970 (ibid.).

83 Nwantencu to embassy, n.d. (ibid.); Tadhg O’Sullivan to Holy Ghost headquarters, 24 Sept. 1971 (ibid.).

84 Confidential memorandum of interview, 13 Feb. 1970 (ibid.).

85 Keating to department, 25 May 1970 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/4/1); Keating to department, 2 June 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/E).

86 Whelan to Aggey, 2 Mar. 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/E).

87 Keating to department, 15 Jan. 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/4).

88 Keating to department, n.d. (ibid., DFA, P13/13/2).

89 Keating to department, 5 May 1970 (ibid., DFA, P13/8/B).

90 O’Sullivan to department, 4 Jan. 1977 (ibid., DFA, P13/13/E); memorandum, June 1982 (ibid., DFA, P15/1/1).

91 P. A. Lovett to Irish ambassador, 22 June 1967 (ibid., DFA, P13/2/2).

92 De St Jorre, Nigerian civil war, p. 360; Forsyth, Frederick, The Biafra story: the making of an African legend (Harmondsworth, 1977), pp 275–6Google Scholar.

93 ‘Biafra’s plight a common cause for all political factions’, unidentified article from unnamed U.S. publication (N.A.I., DFA, P13/2/1).

94 Fay to department, 21 Mar. 1969 (ibid.); Newsweek, 24 Mar. 1969.

95 See the comment by Dean Rusk, U.S. Secretary of State, 21 July 1967, quoted in de St Jorre, Nigerian civil war, p. 179. Hopes that Republican candidate Richard Nixon would prove sympathetic came to nothing when he was elected president late in 1968. His wife Patricia (a granddaughter of immigrants from County Mayo) collected for Biafra on the steps of St Patrick’s cathedral, New York, earlier that year.

96 Ogunsanwo, Alba, China’s policy in Africa (Cambridge, 1974), pp 234–40Google Scholar.

97 De St Jorre, Nigerian civil war, p. 293.

98 Memorandum of conversation between Count Pasadorf Wehmer and Eamon Kennedy, 25 July 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/2/6).

99 Irish ambassador in Rome to department, 11 Apr. 1969 (ibid.); Irish ambassador in Stockholm to department, 8 Oct. 1969 (ibid.).

100 Memorandum on public opinion in France, n.d. (N.A.I., DFA, P13/2/7).

101 U.N. press release no. 62, 19 Jan. 1970 ( ibid.).

102 Aiken to Fr Kelly, C.S.Sp., 5 Jan. 1968 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/2).

103 Keating had noted the favourable attitude of the Nigerian press to the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia (Keating to department, 30 Aug. 1968 (ibid.)).

104 Memorandum of Brubeck visit, 11 Nov. 1969 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/2/1).

105 Keating to department, 20 Nov. 1969 (ibid.).

106 Staunton, Enda, ‘The northern nationalist political tradition’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1993), p. 321Google Scholar.

107 See, for example, Conor Cruise O’Brien in Irish Press, 10 Apr. 1969. The Department of External Affairs suspected that a visit by O’Brien and Sir Anthony Esmonde to defeated Biafra was funded by the U.S. Biafra Committee, if not by the State Department itself (N.A.I., DFA, P13/3/2).

108 The government line was not blindly pro-Nigeria. Keating, for instance, did not hesitate to condemn the bias of international observers, frequently religiously motivated, whose language and reports played down the realities of rape and looting by federal forces: see Keating to department, 24 Feb. 1970 (N.A.I., DFA, P13/8/B).

109 For evidence of the Fianna Fail government’s attitude towards the Spanish Civil War see Kennedy, Michael, Ireland and the League of Nations: international relations, diplomacy and politics, 1919–1946 (Dublin, 1996), pp 232–4Google Scholar.

110 For an examination of Irish authoritarianism see David Schmidt, E., The irony of Irish democracy (Lexington, 1973), esp. pp 43-55Google Scholar.