NIGED:POLITICS:WAR:OCT 1969 – It All Began Like A...

NIGED:POLITICS:WAR:OCT 1969 – It All Began Like A Bad Dream – Tragedy of War – Biafran Soldiers of War arriving in Lagos. Nelson Ottah was the editor of Drum until February 1967 when he got the “fever” and joined the exodus of Ibos to the Eastern Region. For over two years he was in the thick of it all, as a functionary in Ojukwu’s propaganda directorate. He was part of it. He saw the early fever, the epidemic nature of it. He saw the waste of life, the starvation, the frustration, the hopelessness of a shattered illusion. Nelson Ottah says this should not and ought not have been. In this article he appeals to Ibos scattered all over the country for a change of heart, and tells them of the futility of the rebellion. In the former Eastern Nigeria, people – young men, old men, young women, old women and children – are still dying daily in hundreds and in thousands, from bullets, from bombs, from hunger, from exposure, from despair. Chukwuemeka Ojukwu, despite the vast cemetery he has made of his country, still urges the Ibos to continue to resist and die. He sees glory in death – a futile and meaningless death – and urges it on his own people, not with a lump in the throat, but ecstasy. (Photograph by Drum Photographer ©BAHA)