The story below is so similar to my mother's and her family's in the Holocaust in Europe. At the end Laura tries to discourage Biafra from trying for their independence from Nigeria again. It is unimaginable for her that it will happen again. The killings, the starvation, the Death Marches, rape, pillage... more than we can imagine although all of that visits us in our nightmares from our parents' stories. My mother used to say, "If there is a G-d in heaven, WHY?" The reason Biafra must try again is because the genocidal butchers are bottomless in their thirst for blood; they will revisit you whether you agitate or not. Eventually they will come for you. You must go. And if they don't want you to? Then the horror will visit them, and their families.
I don’t remember much about the Nigerian Biafran War but I remember then I was in primary 6, 1967 or 66. Yes, 66 -67 No, then, there was a time – they started teaching us a song, you know, it says it is going to be our new anthem for our new country, Biafra. So we were learning the song. What we are going to do with it we don’t know but then we started noticing people in the north – because then I was staying with my grandmother in Onitsha [in the Southeast] – we started noticing our family members in the North coming home [to the Southeast] you know. We don’t know they came back telling us stories of killing in the North about how they will come to the house. The Hausas will come to the houses, kill them you know especially the men and my father came home with my mother because they were in the North. My family came home. Though my father wasn’t killed. He was on leave [from work]. He came home and they were telling me stories. One afternoon my mother was in the market. We were home and people started running and I was very young then. I didn’t know why they were running. They said the Hausas have crossed the bridge and that they are coming into Onitsha.
We were hearing gun shots and bomb blasts and all that so I gathered my brothers and started running with the neighbors. We didn’t know where we were going. We left the house and we were just trekking and people were falling and people were crying you know because they couldn’t see their loved ones. My mother came home looking for us you know. Eventually she found us. Then my father had gone back to the North because after his leave he had to go back and we didn’t see him again so.
“We were hearing gun shots and bomb blasts”
Yes, after his leave, he decided to go back because then he was working with the white men. He was persuaded not to go back because of the killings [there in the North] but he said no. He just wants to get there, take permission from his work place and come back [to join us in the Southeast in Onitsha] so he left one morning and then we never see him again and that was it. So eventually somebody came to tell us that he was killed. He was killed actually with some people that, they were to board the train, that was September 29, 1966, they were to board the train coming back to the Southeast from Jos, Bukuru precisely. They were waiting for the train at the station that night to come to the Southeast so these Hausas, they came and killed all of them there. That was how we never saw him, my father, again till date.
“That was how we never saw him, my father, again”
Yeah, I was very close to my father you know, but the killing I didn’t really very much feel it. I just knew that I lost him, but I couldn’t see him, you know. He told me he was coming back, because then I had an exam. There was an exam I had, he told me that he was going to buy me a watch, if I passed the exam. So every day I had to sit in front of the house waiting for him to come back to buy the watch because I had passed the exam. I never saw him till just one day somebody came. I wasn’t even at home.
“He told me he was coming back…”
We went playing, I was very young then. I came in and I saw my mother and my grandmother and some other people. They were all crying, I was just confused. What happened? They said somebody said my father died. I honestly I didn’t even understand what death is all about. They were all crying because my father was an only child of my grandmother. It’s just that I missed my father. I never saw my father again so I never, I don’t know how I felt about it because I was very young. I don’t know what death is all about. It’s just that he told me he was coming back and I never saw him again.
It was just when I became an adult you know I understood what death is all about it. As at that time I never know what it was all about. I didn’t. I just felt his absence because I never lived with him. I left him when I was six years to live with my grandmother. I just kept thinking, you know, still believing that he will come back one day. He will come back one day and that is how we continued until I never saw him. So that was it.
I remember the song that they told us would be our anthem. It goes like, “Land of the rising sun we love and cherish” I can’t remember the other stanzas but it went like that “Rising sun we love and cherish”, I can’t remember. I can’t remember it again. It was very long ago but it started like that “Land of the rising sun we love and cherish” that is the first stanza but I can’t remember the rest of the stanzas. I have forgotten and that was it. (CLICK READ MORE below)
