By Abuchi Obiora
Many a time, man would want to shove off the realities of his dark past into the dustbin of history, not wanting to revisit tragedies that may have bruised his life and conscience. But this cowardly act, much as it may be an escapist route to euphoria and self-delusion can only deny man the opportunity of sober reflection from which wisdom and a certain resolve to say ‘NEVER AGAIN’ must come.
The fact that some Nigerians especially those outside the Igbo ethnic nationality may want to wish away the events of the Nigerian Civil War and pretend that they did not happen does not diminish the realities of that carnage where approximately the lives of 2m non-combatant Igbos, mostly women and children were lost, nor does that collective amnesia have any effect on the deep socio-political scare that was left by a war from which the Nigerian political class has refused to learn anything.
This week, the Kaleidoscope Archives pays tribute to one of the heroes of the Nigerian Civil War who, perhaps, constituted a one-man humanitarian squad that saved the tattered lives of many Biafran children, women and families from the claws of death. Many present Nigerian grandparents of the Igbo ethnic nationality including myself, may not have been alive to continue the rat-race of life and of course bear the present generation of Igbos, but for the commitments of an Irish Roman Catholic Holy Ghost Father to save human lives in Biafra land.
To commemorate the transition of this Holy Ghost Father, condolence registers were opened in different locations around the world in honour of a man whose unmistakable footsteps on the sands of time must continue to be admired in human history for as long as human beings continue to be sensitized and guided with God’s first commandment for the survival of God’s human creations on earth. This first commandment by God is for man to be his brother’s keeper.
Here in Nigeria, on Tuesday, 25th July 2023, His Excellency, Ambassador Okey Emuchay the Secretary General of Ohaneze Ndigbo went to St Mary’s Secondary School, Azumini, Rivers State, to sign one of these condolence registers opened around the world in honour of this transited angel, a man with the heart of gold, on behalf of Nigerians of good conscience and most especially on behalf of the Igbos in Nigeria whose grandparents were kept alive during the Nigerian Civil War by the angelic acts of this Irish Missionary worker, Reverend Father Dermot Doran, the pioneer Principal and Parish Priest both of the St. Mary’s Missionary School and the St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, all in Azumini, in 1963.
Born Michael Dermot Doran on September, 22 1934 in Athboy, a town 35 miles northwest of Dublin, Ireland, to Thomas and Mary Anne Doran, Reverend Father Dermot Doran entered the Spiritan Novitiate in 1952 and graduated with a Degree in Philosophy from University College, Dublin in 1955. He spent three years as a Prefect at St. Mary’s College in Port of Spain, Trinidad, before returning to Ireland to complete his Religious Studies. He was ordained a Holy Ghost Father in 1961.
In the spirit of the groundswell of opinion around the world that the death of an emerging Irish Saint of the Roman Catholic Church must be in the front burner of public domain, Clay Risen, an Obituaries Reporter for The Times of New York and the author of a recently published book titled “America Rye: A Guide to the Nations Original Spirit” gave the world an insight into the humanitarian activities of the angel who was clothed in the garb of a human being, who spent all of his young life in Biafran land doing good as he invested his life in the service of Biafran children and women who he saved from the throes of death.
In an ‘Obituary’ titled “Dermon Doran, Priest Who Rallied Aid for Biafran Airlift Dies at 88” which was published in The New York Times on July 19th, 2023, written in honour of the man who transited on May 19th 2023, Clay Risen observed the daring efforts of Father Dermon Doran, efforts at extreme risk to his life – to save the lives of Biafran Children and women.
The major purpose of today’s discourse is to pay a resounding tribute to a man I respectfully, unambiguously and most appropriately refer to as a Saint, almost a human angel, who in my assessment, exceeded all empirical limits and set standards of qualities that have ever been considered by any religious authority for the canonization and immortalization of the transited soldiers of their religious doctrines to the exclusive and divine order of Sainthood. Father Dermon Doran singlehandedly truncated the sinister resolve of a conspiracy to wipe out an ethnic nationality, the Igbos, off the face of the earth, in what, though called a Civil War, is better known today around the world to be the first genocidal war of attrition against a people in the African continent.
While discussing Father Dermont Doran, I intend also to use this same platform to recant some of my childhood experiences of the Nigerian Civil War as a Biafran child who lived in Biafra land while the carnage went on. My next intention in the discuss is to draw out certain lessons as they apply to Nigeria of the present day and possibly observe whether Nigeria as a country learnt any lessons from that Civil War.
Father Dermont Doran died on May 19th, 2023. He was aged 88. What is it that makes me think that Father Doran qualifies to be called the man with the heart of gold? I shall talk about that but let me quickly say something about the extreme adverse conditions of the environment where he operated and the attendant risks in his selfless services in Biafra land. As children in Biafra land, we were consistently bruised by the sight of intermittent air raids by the Nigerian ‘Bombers’ and ‘Fighters’ in the airspace. We could demarcate the two types of war planes one from the other. The ‘Fighters’ obviously on reconnaissance missions will first fly pretentiously peacefully on surveillance before the aggressive ‘Bombers’ (as we called them), will fly very low to devastate the place with bombs. We already know that once the ‘Fighters’ are sighted, we should move into the bunkers already dug in every home. There were false layers in the bunkers where the devastating effect of the bombs will not exceed to do havoc in the deeper layer where we must all lie down flat on the ground.
Before situations in Biafra land got too bad, we were attending Primary Schools inside ‘mgboko’ (valley) near our school, St. Thomas Primary School (of St. Thomas Anglican Church) in my town. This was to hide away from the air raids. Most times, the target of those air raids will be the schools, the markets, and the Churches – infact, wherever there were clusters of people, including traditional, family gatherings. The Biafran Ministry of Information under the able watch of the erudite and versatile Uche Chukwumerije did its work well. Though spiced with war propaganda that was meant to shore up the spirit and morale of Biafrans, the Ministry did much work to keep brotherly spirit throughout the war period.
In the saddle as English Language newscasters were Okoko Ndem, Paddy Ekeh, and Julius Ekeh while the Igbo news medium of Voice of Biafra was most successfully anchored by Onwuzuluigbo Umezurike. The Voice of Biafra advised that aluminum zincs used in roofing the house be covered with palm fronds. To effectively make everywhere look like forest, we were advised to plant trees within the compounds. My elder sister, Esther in company of her bosom friend in Anglican Girls Secondary School, Oba, Evelyn Egbonu planted gmelina and whistling pines in our house. The whistling pine trees were later cut because they gave false information of an approaching ‘Fighter’ on windy days.
The sights of Biafran children dying of Kwashiokor (about 10,000 daily as recorded by the Red Cross, CARITAS and World Council of Churches, the three organizations through whom Father Dermont Doran wrought miracles in Biafra land as a result of the economic blockade advised against Biafra by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the wartime Finance Commissioner to the Nigeria Government), still draws tears from my eyes whenever I remember them. A childhood friend of mine, now a Professor (I need not mention his name though he will understand when he reads this work) suffered Kwashiokor with his siblings. They escaped death as a result of Father Dermonts humanism but lost their father to malnutrition during that period. Our experiences of the Civil War are wide and varied. He who feels it knows it.
Most Nigerians do not know what Igbos went through during the Civil War. There are deep scars of the war everywhere in Biafra land, not only as a result of the continued marginalization of the Igbos by consecutive governments of Nigeria at the centre, but also as a result of the fact that there is yet to be a remorse for their actions by those who perpetrated the human rights crime of dehumanizing the Igbos.
My siblings and I were lucky children and teenagers than most Biafran children because our father was still doing his ‘attack’ business of selling fishing materials to the Nupe and Ijaw people who delicately found their ways to our village to source their goods. By ‘attack’ we meant the ability to disguise oneself from one enemy’s location to the other to do business. Many times, they were caught and killed by the soldiers of either camp who suspected sabotage. My father was also a member of the Community Relief Committee so the Semovita, corn milk, corn beef, salted fish (Okporoko) were all warehoused in one of the rooms in father’s one-storey building.
The Inspector General of Police of the Republic of Biafra was living in our town. The Head of the Biafran Civil Service was also living in our village, precisely in Uncle Charles Ezenwa’s house in “Ikpa Owerre” within our village. Mr. Iyizoba, a senior Biafran Civil service personnel working with the Head of Biafran Civil Service was living downstairs in our house. Our father forbade us to go to the Public Feeding Centre situated at St. Matthews Church football field where Brother Cosmos and other volunteer Reverend Fathers in-waiting took charge of the children. Sometimes though, we would sneak out to join our friends in the Public Feeding Centers where we will sing, among other songs, “Umu Nnunu Nke Igwe Na-ekele Onyenwe anyi……….”
There was a lot of Military presence in our town because of the need to protect the Biafran government officials. Unlike most Biafrans, we knew the day the Civil War ended because some of those government officials in our town joined our most beloved son, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, to proceed to exile. They left through the airstrip at Uga, a neighboring town en route to the airport at Uli town near Ihiala town where they joined Ojukwu to Ivory Coast. Some of our village teenagers including Sam and Goddy Ezekwo (they are still in the U.S today) joined in the trip to Gabon where many Biafran teenagers were received as refugees by the then President Omar Bongo.
Conscription of young Biafran Youths was rife during the Civil War. My cousin Naboth Obiora and his friends would hide in “Ohia Uma” to evade conscription. But his bosom friend and classmate in Achi Grammar School, Patrick Onyeizugbo willingly joined the Biafran Military service. Patrick was my childhood mentor. He bought novels for me and taught me how to read books at a very early age. He died in the war. My maternal Uncle, Dr. Christopher Chinyere Ezeanyim (alias absolute gentleman) with his bosom friend, now Professor Boniface Chukwuka Ezeanyaoha Egboka, a former Vice Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University ((UNI ZIK) Awka did not wait to be conscripted. They willingly joined the Biafran Military Service. They were Senior Officers and would visit our house with military Land Rover jeeps and their body guards. Our mother cried heavily one day when they drove in with Uncle Christopher having been daze with shell shock, what we called “artillery shock” (“Atingbo” as we children jokingly referred to the victims of shell shock). He was semi-mad. He had lost his senses.
With hindsight and experience, I understand now that Dr. C.C. Ezeanyim, who went through my Alma Matar, Denis Memorial Grammar School Onitsha and came out with Distinction (Aggregate Six), who also graduated First Class at the University College Hospital, Ibadan and later was a successful Doctor and the Chief Medical Officer of the first integrated hospital service in Amawbia, Awka, Anambra State, died eventually from a disease of the nervous system which had its primary and remote origin from the shelling shock which he sustained during his service days in the Armed Forces of the defunct Republic of Biafra.
Not only were personnel conscripted, anything deemed necessary to assist in winning the war was either donated or conscripted. One spectacular thing about the Civil War was that everybody was contributing something to ensure the success of the campaign for the secession of Biafra. I first heard and understood the English word ‘conscription’ during the Civil War. My father’s Volkswagen Beetle car with the registration number, LE 8270, was conscripted in our house one day when my father was away from home. There had been several attempts before that but my father would show them multiple evidence of why he needed the car. During the war, my father was rich and buoyant enough to fuel and use the car till they took it away. He always entrusted me with the duty of counting and stacking millions of his Biafran currency notes in salt bags. Plenty of it!
I have deliberately gone to this length to articulate my thoughts of the Civil War to throw light on the extreme conditions under which Father Dermont Doran risked his life to save millions of lives in Biafra land. After ordination in 1961, Father Dermont Doran was dispatched for his first assignment as an Irish Missionary Priest to Eastern Nigeria by the Roman Catholic Mission. He was there till the Nigerian Civil War broke out in 1967. He was one of the one thousand Priests and nuns, mostly from Ireland, who had been working in the area when the Nigerian Civil War broke out.
In the eulogy for Father Dermont Doran by Clay Risen earlier mentioned, Mr. Risen wrote that the Biafran Relief Airlift initiated by Father Dermont Doran “brought 60,000 tons of aid to the region, at the time the largest mobilization of aid by civilians in history”. Mr. Risen further wrote that “Between 500,000 and 2,000,000 non-combatants died because of the blockade…….but an estimated one million more survived because of the airlift”. By this effort, Father Dermont Doran, an Educator who found himself within the theatre of a gruesome fratricidal war “became the linchpin of one of the largest civilian humanitarian efforts in history”. Clay Risen further reported that “At the worst part of the crisis, in late 1969, some 10,000 people a day were dying”, quoting the estimate of the International Red Cross.
Defending his decision to save the lives of Biafran children and women against the backdrop of the non-support of a reluctant British government, Father Doran had told the United Press International in 1969 that ”we might not be agreed on theology – but we are agreed on bread”. He proved with his actions the need to assert the brotherhood of man in the spirit of ecumenism before the consideration of theological, religious, racial, language or ethnic differences. Explaining out the divine ‘accident’ of his duties to mankind done in Biafra land in an interview which he granted for a 2018 documentary directed by Brendan Culleton and Irina Maldea (released with the title “Biafra: Forgotten Mission”), Father Dermont Doran had insisted that, “I was sent there and they became my people”.
Father Dermont Doran was a man who in his sojourn on the earth and by his conducts in Nigeria met all the requirements needed to be declared a Holy Saint of Christendom in the Roman Catholic Church. In a possible premonition of this final honour to the man with the heart of gold, another Christian Saint, Mother Theresa, who evidently recognized the deep spirituality and humane inclination of Father Dermont Doran invited him to deliver Mass to the Reverend Sisters under her watch in Calcutta (now Kolkata) when Father Doran was sent to Bangladesh and India in the early seventies after Father Doran had completed his assignment in Nigeria.
What lessons have Nigeria learnt in the wartime activities of Father Dermont Doran in Nigeria? Unfolding events in the politics of Nigeria after the Civil War ended in 1970 show that the war was not prosecuted against Biafra but against Nigerian masses by the political class in the guise of “keeping Nigeria one”. From all indications, the wartime slogan of ”To Keep Nigeria One is a Task That Must Be Done” was simply done in other to ensure the continued oppression of Nigerian masses by the political class. I had long observed this deceit in one of my works thirty years ago (1993) during the June 12 imbroglio in an edition of the Guardian On Sunday under the Editorship of Mr. Kingsley Osadelor in the Reflections Opinion Column of the newspaper.
The unfortunate thing about the Biafran genocide of 1967-1970 when compared with the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis is that while the Tutsis in Rwanda have been rehabilitated and drawn into the mainstream of Rwandan politics as that country moves on strong and away from its ugly past, the recalcitrance of the forces behind the Biafran genocide (who still directly or indirectly control the reins of power in Nigeria) have continued to influence government policies to ensure the continued subversion of the efforts of the victims of the Biafran genocide, towards total integration in the mainstream politics of Nigeria.
Nigerians should find out why there is peace, stability and development in Rwanda after the massacre and the Civil War in Rwanda and compare it with the absence of peace, stability and development in Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria. These three later countries share the same factor of uncommon greed amongst the political class and the ruling elites. Before Nigerians take up the assignment of comparison, let me quickly observe that any social or political upheaval in any country which does not at the end of such an upheaval, address, and possibly curtail the ambition of the political class by all means possible, will end up being a mirage, and most probably, repeat itself. The Nigerian Civil War, in the same manner that the Somalian and Sudanese Civil Wars did not cut the tails of their political class, failed to checkmate the excesses of the Nigerian political class. It is very unfortunate that the Nigerian situation is degenerating by the day, needing a final solution to the menace of the political class.
Just a few weeks ago, the Nigerian Senate, in mockery of Nigerian masses staged a mock debate in the Senate Chambers and passed an unprecedented, yet very humiliating and cajoling Bill which they passed with the revered Senate Gavel, called “Let The Masses Breath Bill”. I hope that the Bill has been documented in the Nigerian statute where it must stand as the height of the abuse of Nigerian masses. I doubt if the new political class presently in control of Rwanda under the able leadership of President Paul Kagame, will be as daft as the present and expiring crop of Nigerian political class.
In summarizing this discourse, I dare say that the British-inspired victory over Biafra in the Civil War is the nemesis of the present day Nigeria. Many Nigerian ethnic nationalities vis-a-vis the greater composition of the Nigerian masses who were hoodwinked by Rtd. General Yakubu Gowon and the people who sent him on the errand to prosecute the war believe that Biafra was their problem are wiser now. Everybody would have been liberated if things didn’t go the way they went during the Nigerian Civil War.
Now, everybody, excepting the political class in Nigeria understands that the Igbos/Biafra secession attempt of 1967-1970 was not ill-conceived even if it was misconstrued by the Nigerian masses whose expectations would have been served by the success of the campaign. The realities of the present day Nigeria confirms this position that I have held and written about for thirty years because everybody grumbles now.
Nigerians must decide now on how to take over the ship of the nation from the present ruinous political class and steer it to safe water before the political class runs it aground the second time and repeat such a condition that threw up Father Dermont Doran without whose humane inclination more lives would have been wasted in the genocide and carnage called the Nigerian Civil War.
ABUCHI OBIORA
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