The world's shortest-lived country was the tiny state of Biafra — or so it seemed. Six months ago, the Eastern Region of Nigeria, the home of 8,500-000 Ibo tribesmen, proclaimed itself a sovereign nation and plunged Nigeria into civil war. No country ever recognized Biafra, and the Nigerian federal navy soon choked its economy with a blockade. By October, federal troops sent to quell the rebellion had captured almost a third of Biafra's territory, including the capital of Enugu, and sent the secessionist government fleeing into the region's rain forests. The surprising fact is that Biafra is still operating as a country, and its government, if less visible, is more vocal than ever.
The government, headed by Oxford-educated Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, 34, has moved its headquarters south to the dreary provincial town of Aba. Ojukwu's agents in Lisbon have bought millions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition, which reach the rebels at night via the Portuguese island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea. Biafran students recently organized noisy pro-secessionist demonstrations at the United Nations in New York and in downtown London. Biafra's lone television station continued to end its program day each evening with a rousing chorus of We Shall Overcome.
Invasion Force. Outnumbered 2 to 1 and surrounded on three sides by a federal army that totals about 50,000 men, Biafra nonetheless seems ready to fight for the last inches of its turf. Pushed out of the Midwestern state, which they had seized in a daring raid, Ojukwu's men have hurled back boatloads of troops trying to cross the Niger River after them. One big government ferry got stuck on a sandbar in midpassage; while searchlights lit it up, Biafran guns splintered it, and hundreds of men drowned. Elsewhere, the war has become a kind of ballet, with bands of roving soldiers often straying back and forth across each other's lines for inconclusive skirmishes.
If any battle is to be decisive in the war, it will probably be fought at Port Harcourt. Situated 25 miles up a channel from Bonny Island, which is occupied by swarms of federal troops. Port Harcourt has the only major airport left to Ojukwu, who depends upon air shipments for arms and other vital supplies. Its loss would leave Ojukwu's men tightly sealed in their Ibo heartland. To prevent a federal force from coming up the channel, the Biafrans have sunk a barge, cars, trucks and even a bus in it. But last week the federal army was preparing to navigate a vast network of secondary channels and creeks to reach Port Harcourt.
"Ibo Hunts." The Biafrans are adamantly against surrender because they fear that they will be massacred. The killing of many thousands of Ibo in Northern Nigeria last year led to the civil war, and the Northern-dominated army has given Biafrans little cause to believe that they can escape the same fate. Major General Yakubu Gowon, the head of the federal government, has tried to keep his men in line, but without much success. Ragtag recruits who "mop up" after Gowon's armies have joined local tribesmen brandishing machetes and cutlasses in "Ibo hunts." In the Midwest, they rounded up thousands of Ibo and marched them into the bush for slaughter.