Ojukwu is a great man,
But let us remember that he took so many bad decisions during the war:
1. He let them kill Nzogwu the Great! People rumoured that he was afraid Nzeogwu will challenge his authority after the war. Nzeogwu was the man who was determined to wipe Nigeria clean of all the crooked politicians and soldiers as Ghana later did. It was said that he let the soldiers withdraw too soon so that Nzeogwu got trapped at the war front with little troops.
2. He Refused to Quit the war after the first year on seeing that we cant win.
3. He dethroned his generals (because they tried to advise him) and made civilians his war generals! eg. Colonel Achuzia was never a soldier for one day!
4. When the war became so bitter and the Biafran weapons got finished
He would load hundreds of young men into trailers and arm them with clubs and matchettes and dump them at the war front telling them that ‘hausas’ are fools. ‘Kill them all’ . The nigerian war tank will just lower its 50s and open fire on ‘unarmed’ biafran soldiers in the war front!
5. He doesn’t plan battles, he just fights with emotion. Everyone who tried to advise him got deposed and thrown into jail. A biafran high ranking officer once narrated in his book that he drove from Enugu to the war front at abakaliki only to discover that Biafran soldiers who were droped by Ojukwu and were facing the Nigerian superior military might punishment didnt even dig trenches. So he ordered them to start digging trenches right at the battle field! This he said prevented the Nigerian tanks from over running the Biafrans on the very first day of battle!
6. He should have more intelligently accepted a truce a year or two before the end of the war when men like Zik, Akanu Ibiam etc advised him it was impossible to win the war.
7. When men finished, he started ‘arming’ children and using them as his soldiers for battle!
8. Biafran medics never had stretchers from day one, they were called porters because they were often made up of four men who would carry the wounded on their head and run to the rear of the battle field. This was to get worse in the third year of the war as Biafran soldiers left their wounded and fled battle fields!
9. He didnt plan the preparation of the war! He just started fighting with the available resources. He should have got big countries like America and Britain to support Biafra(atleast in exchange of some oil). Gowon for instance agreed with Cameroun not to let Biafrans get weapon supplies from the camerounian border in exchange for the Bakassi peninsula. This alone made the Biafran resistance very miserable.
But above all, he didnt cause the war. He fought for us all. He fought with his resources. He survived. He came back and contested for presidency! Built APGA and gave the Igbos another chance in Politics!
Adieu Ikemba!
