Frederick Forsyth
Ademola Adegbamigbe
Frederick McCarthy Forsyth, the English journalist, and author will be 82 this year. He was born on 25 August 1938. At such age when a man is moving closer to his grave or Maker, his conscience becomes sharper, his propensity for remorse gets greater. He tends to make all past crooked ways straight. He confesses his sins or does so vicariously- that is, on behalf of his clan or community or country.
That is exactly what Frederick Forsyth has done, blaming his country, Britain, for its bias against the Igbo during the Nigeria-Biafra war that spanned three years, 1967 to 1970. Another Briton who became contrite was Harold Smith, a colonial officer who admitted that Britain deliberately made the North dominate the South here in all ramifications, using well-choreographed policies of demography, appointments, and politics.
Forsyth is a household name in the Commonwealth countries and beyond for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil’s Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra, The Kill List, The Biafra Story, and others. According to William Okugo Okereke: “This is the man who has the true history of the 30 months genocide against Biafrans. He is not an Iboman! His books on Nigeria/Biafra are Emeka and The Making of an African Legend.”
It was when he covered the war in Nigeria as a BBC correspondent that the bias of Britain became clear to him. He revealed this in a recent article in The Guardian of London: “Buried for 50 years: Britain’s shameful role in the Biafran war.”
It was for this reason that the writer walked away from the BBC, narrating, “Six months later, in February 1968, fed up with the slavishness of the BBC to Whitehall, I walked out and flew back to West Africa. Ojukwu roared with laughter and allowed me to stay. My condition was that having rejected British propaganda, I would not publish his either. He agreed.”
In the article, Forsyth reveals the sins of Britain: “I arrived in the Biafra capital of Enugu on the third day of the war. In London, I had been copiously briefed by Gerald Watrous, head of the BBC’s West Africa Service. What I did not know was that he was the obedient servant of the government’s Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), which believed every word of its high commissioner in Lagos, David Hunt. It took two days in Enugu to realize that everything I had been told was utter garbage.
“I had been briefed that the brilliant Nigerian army would suppress the rebellion in two weeks, four at the most. Fortunately, the deputy high commissioner in Enugu, Jim Parker, told me what was really happening. It became clear that the rubbish believed by the CRO and the BBC stemmed from our high commissioner in Lagos. A racist and a snob, Hunt expected Africans to leap to attention when he entered the room – which Gowon did. At their single prewar meeting, Ojukwu did not. Hunt loathed him at once.
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“My brief was to report the all-conquering march of the Nigerian army. It did not happen. Naively, I filed this. When my report was broadcast our high commissioner complained to the CRO in London, who passed it on to the BBC – which accused me of pro-rebel bias and recalled me to London.
“What is truly shameful is that this was not done by savages but aided and assisted at every stage by Oxbridge-educated British mandarins. Why? Did they love the corruption-riven, dictator-prone Nigeria? No. From start to finish, it was to cover up that the UK’s assessment of the Nigerian situation was an enormous judgmental screw-up. And, worse: with neutrality and diplomacy from London it could all have been avoided.”
Like Forsyth, Harold Smith, an accomplice in the lopsidedness of Nigerian politics, confessed (as quoted in the Nigerian voice)