Radio Biafra and IPOB have also accused Chief Awolowo of using starvation as a means of war. Others have written on my Twitter timeline that Chief Awolowo sent poisonous food to Biafra to kill Igbos. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Why would Chief Awolowo poison the food he sent to Biafra to feed civilians? First and foremost, he had no duty to send food. It was a humanitarian gesture because Chief Awolowo had personal principles. The gesture brought him into conflict with General Gowon and Murtala Muhammed.
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You have to understand that Chief Awolowo was a very committed ascetic Christian, as well as an esoteric mystic (I choose not to say more about this), and he could not live with himself as Biafran civilians were dying. The food itself was sent in conjunction with the Red Cross, the World Council of Churches, as well as The Catholic Church through Caritas. Are you telling me the Red Cross and these other bodies would allow Chief Awolowo poison food relief?
That particular propaganda was imitated and spread by a man called Okokon Ndem, a presenter on Radio Biafra. The purpose was to make the civilians, for whom Chief Awolowo intended the food, reject it so that it could be given to Biafran soldiers.
Do you see what the Igbos call okporoko (stockfish)? It was a prominent aspect of the relief materials. That is why and how okporoko became popular in Biafra and Igboland till today. They have Chief Awolowo and the nation of Norway to thank for Okporoko. Before the war, they did not know anything like Okporoko.
Even in Europe, when the Germans surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad for 900 days during the Siege of Leningrad, they did not send in any food. When the Allies surrounded Germany, they also did not send in any food.
During the American Civil War, the Union forces blockaded the Confederate rebels and starved them.
But Chief Awolowo sent food relief to Biafran civilians (which Colonel Ojukwu diverted to Biafran soldiers), and today, rather than gratitude, the children of those he tried to save harbour so much venom against him while spending money with Murtala Muhammed’s image. If only they knew what Murtala did to them.
Below is a paragraph of the resignation letter written by Robert S. Goldstein, An American, to Ojukwu. He was Biafra’s paid publicist during the Biafran War. Please note what he said about starvation in Biafra.
“I cannot in all conscience serve you any longer. Nor can I be a party to suppressing the fact that your starving thousands have the food, medicine and milk available to them. It can and is ready to be delivered through international organizations to you. Only your constant refusal has stopped its delivery.”-Published in various newspapers on August 17, 1968.
Also, see attached news headline.
Every family in former Biafra owes a debt of gratitude to the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Sadly, many parents who should have taught their children this documented history have instead filled them with hatred by regaling them with wartime propaganda.
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