Why my wife burnt the Biafran Cross and certificate Ojukwu gave me – Air Commodore Ochulor

You once said your wife burnt the Biafran Cross and certificate which then Biafran Head of State, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu gave you for your gallantry during the civil war. Can you recall what actually happened? Well, what happened was that, as a matter of fact, you can hear so many people making noise about the […]

You once said your wife burnt the Biafran Cross and certificate which then Biafran Head of State, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu gave you for your gallantry during the civil war. Can you recall what actually happened?

Well, what happened was that, as a matter of fact, you can hear so many people making noise about the civil war and so on. But why some of us have refused to bother is that it looks like there was a consensus among those of us who left Biafra and went back of course to the Nigerian Air Force where we were originally trained, to keep quiet about the civil war because we all believe that it was unfortunate for colleagues to be shooting at one another.

Like it was, the Biafran existence was what I may call a child of circumstance. Nobody ever said or had it in mind initially that the Eastern Region of the country would secede from Nigeria. So everybody saw the circumstances.

I was the Chief Navigator of the Biafran Air Force and I commanded the flying force of the  Biafran Air Force at a certain stage. There were so many missions which I accomplished as a soldier, which made it necessary for General Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu to send a letter and the cross to me. And in fact, we were not many he recognised in the Air Force. Take for instance, the first person he recognised was late John Chukwu, followed by Emeka Obinwa and myself then. But then I wish I kept both the letter with the signature and the cross till today. But immediately the war ended I know my wife set everything on fire.

Why did she set it on fire?

She set it on fire because she said she didn’t know how those who lost the war were going to be treated.

And of course, you know, in the event of a war, it depends upon who comes across you; people like General Onwuatuegwu got killed because they met people who didn’t understand that the war was unfortunate and had been declared ended. He was killed along the border towards Cameroun while he was trying to run away. So nobody was sure of what was going to happen next.

So the Biafran question, like General Alex Madiebo said; Biafra was a challenge to Nigeria and Nigeria was a challenge to Biafra. It was a war of survival. A situation where you had nowhere else to run to and you had to run towards the person pursuing you…do you understand what I mean? I have read one or two books on the civil war from the Biafran side; people were talking about what they did, how many aircraft they flew. But there were so many fighter pilots on the side of the Nigerian Air Force and they refused to write anything and I praise them for their modesty. We believe that the more you write and talk about that civil war, the more you injure people’s feelings because it was not a military exercise; people died and we lost our friends on both sides of the divide.

So to people in Igbo land, General Ojukwu was an enigma. We believed that it was not necessary for him to get killed because he stood as a leader, as the last hope when people were already pushed to the wall. So it was necessary when we found out that we couldn’t fight any more, we asked him to leave. He was even very reluctant; he refused to leave; he said no, there is still hope but we insisted that he must leave. I was there too, the night he left. Then, in fact, after he left I was still able to carry out some assignments.

Right from that first day, 6th July, 1967 when the first shot was fired at Gakem, towards Cross River State, I went into the war; and the details of my activities, I refused to give to the Nigerian Air Force. I still appreciate not giving the details of whatever I did during that war to anybody.

This is because I did tell you one time in the past you interviewed me; I said a Chinese philosopher said that those who engage in civil wars are generally cowards; that the reason for resorting to war is something they would have debated on a roundtable and then come to terms. And because of the fear of the unknown, he said, such cowards resorted to fighting a war. I remember one journalist asked me if the philosopher meant that soldiers are cowards but I told him that that was a philosopher talking and it doesn’t prevent soldiers from fighting.

I read one of the books on how the Biafran Air Force fought during the civil war; where the author wrote about a B26 aircraft that was navigated by somebody and it crashed in Port Harcourt. The author was talking nonsense. It’s a book, and it was published but the man was talking nonsense because he was nowhere near that aircraft. I navigated that aircraft but the problem with that aircraft was that it didn’t have two-way radio. But this man who wrote the book didn’t know about that. I navigated that aircraft and another pilot inside that aircraft was a French man.

So the author had no right publishing in his book what he didn’t know about. I navigated that aircraft; we flew in but because we couldn’t talk to the tower, we had to go to Bonny island to wait for the second aircraft which was a B25; it happened in October 1969; we were waiting there and as we were waiting, we felt that the other aircraft that had a two-way communication might have come back from the mission because the mission was at night; the take-off then was 10pm.

But we came back around 1.30am, so when we came in, we saw the runway light; of course the runway light was meant for the B25 that was coming behind us, so we decided to dive under there; we broke all rules, and dived under that aircraft, and landed. We lost one wing but the aircraft didn’t crash. We parked by the side. After parking by the side, I had a little injury that prevented me from continuing the flight. But this guy went to write about that aircraft, that it crash-landed. No. He didn’t know what he was writing. Instead of going to ask questions, he rushed to go and publish. But that’s why we are saying that people have to be careful. But that B26 was parked there until we lost Port Harcourt. We went to so many missions after that flight problem when it was repaired by the engineers.

In fact, that aircraft; the way it went was that, when we lost Port Harcourt, and couldn’t defend Port Harcourt any more, the Biafran army was directed to blow that aircraft on the ground. That’s what happened to that aircraft; not that it crashed. So when I read the story in that book, I was laughing.

I said how can somebody write what he doesn’t know about? Even the personnel he mentioned were in the aircraft were in fact, not in the aircraft. And that is why people have to be careful about what they publish because these are some of the things that irritate most of us who fought in the war.

At any rate, I am very happy that Ojukwu has been celebrated but one big, regret I have is that he returned from exile and joined politics. I wish he did not join politics. The thing is that when you are in a political party, the tendency is that you may get alienated from among your brothers; is it not true? But I don’t think Ojukwu was alienated because he was a man of high philosophy. He was a real Igbo leader and we were still moving around with him after he had come back from Ivory Coast.

The history of his life will be written and he will always be remembered, but we also have to remember those who died on the scenes of war; those who died of hunger; those who died through bullets; those who died in the aircraft.