To avoid the strained atmosphere of my moo
ning about in the reporters’ room, he suggested I be transferred to the Parliamentary Desk down at the House of Commons. The political correspondent, Peter Hardiman Scott, had a vacancy for an assistant. So in October 1967, that is where I went.
It was a small and friendly office that over the five months I was there taught me much about the way the country is actually run. It also wiped away an awful lot of benign illusions about the merits of MPs and peers. I was able to avoid the vipers’ nest going on up at Broadcasting House as rival coteries vied for power and influence. Then, in February 1968, something happened to change my mind.
In the interim, the Nigerian Civil War had not ended nor improved. It had got worse. The Lagos government had instituted a call-up and hugely increased the size of its army. This was being quietly equipped with torrents of British weaponry, shipped out covertly by the Wilson government, which was assuring one and all that it was neutral.
But the Biafrans had not collapsed. On the contrary. Before secession, Ojukwu had moved the entire financial reserves of the Eastern Region beyond the reach of Lagos and was increasing the size and equipment of his own army on the international black market. Biafra had also set up a representation office in London and engaged the services of an agency to handle media communications.
It had also secured the agreement of Spain to use its colony on Fernando Po island as a staging base and the agreement of Portugal to use offshore São Tomé island for the same purpose. It was no longer cut off. In February Biafra organized a mass-media visit. Just about everyone accepted, with the notable exception of the BBC, which was still filing Nigerian propaganda out of Lagos.
I found the decision so weird that I went to visit Arthur Hutchinson to ask why and to volunteer to return with the rest of the invited British media group to see what was going on. Existing reports indicated that military action was slowly increasing, the Federal forces had made a few gains, but that casualties, mainly among civilians, were increasing.
It was another short interview. I was told bluntly that I was going nowhere, and as for another BBC man going, he told me verbatim: “You have to understand, we are not covering this war.”
This struck me as bizarre. Every day, the horrors of Vietnam were copiously reported, but that was an American mess. Nigeria was a very British one, apparently to remain clothed in secrecy.
The all-media group duly flew out, stayed a week, and returned. I sought out a few whom I knew and asked them about their experiences. It was clear the Biafra War did not even seem to be achieving a quick resolution and was indeed getting worse. So I decided to take a week of owing leave and go independently.
I thought it wise not to tell anyone, including the Biafran office in Kensington. I just took some of my savings and flew to Lisbon. From what I had learned, the covert arms flights were leaving from there, and the shipper was a sort of aviation mercenary called Hank Wharton, an American and an amusing rogue, whom I traced to his hotel in the Portuguese capital.
He was very laid-back when I explained that I could not pay him, but said he had a four-prop Constellation leaving in the morning and I could hitch a ride. There were no seats in the clapped-out old airliner, so I perched on a crate of mortars in the back.
It was a long, droning flight, to which I would become much accustomed, the only diversions being trips up to the flight deck to talk with the crew and seek yet another cup of coffee.
Wharton had absolutely no overfly rights, because the members of the Organization of African Unity, all military or civilian dictatorships, sided with Lagos. So we flew out at sea, with the Atlantic through the right-hand portholes and the smudge of the African coast to the left.
There was a refueling stop at Portuguese Guinea, also gripped by an independence war. Coming in to land, low and slow over the jungle, some bright spark from Amilcar Cabral’s nationalist fighters fired up at the Constellation. The bullet came through the floor, missed the crate of mortars by two inches, went between my parted thighs and out through the ceiling. Welcome to Africa.
On the tarmac, the crew examined the holes, pronounced that there was no harm done and we would refuel and fly on. It got a bit drafty in the back after that. In the middle of the night, with no lights showing, we drifted into the old Port Harcourt, eastern Nigeria’s only airfield. I was immediately arrested.
I explained to a highly educated major who had been an accountant until he enlisted what I was doing there and why. He contacted Enugu and was told to put me in a jeep for the capital. Once there, I was taken to state house to see General Ojukwu, who greeted me with huge amusement. When I explained I had come alone to see for myself, he mused that he had played host to a score of British journalists, so one more would make no difference. He assigned to me a jeep with an army driver, a billet in the old Progress Hotel, and said I could go anywhere and see anything I wanted. He would put me on a Wharton plane on Friday for London.
Within three days, it was clear this war was not going to end anytime soon. The popular mood was that Nigeria would realize the futility of continuing the fighting with the close-down of its revenue-producing oilfields, all now inside Biafra, and respond to Ojukwu’s standing proposal of a cease-fire and a second peace conference.
He had offered to share the oil and was quietly negotiating with Shell-BP, the main concessionaire. France under de Gaulle, never slow to exploit a British disadvantage, was making covert gestures of support, and weapons were arriving in a steady stream.
For the record, there were no starving children visible at that time. They would appear later, and the ghastly images of them, splashed across the world’s media, would transform everything.
On the Friday, I left for London, confident that I would fly from Lisbon to the UK on the Sunday, ready to reappear at work on the Monday, the end of my leave. Then things went wrong. The first stage was to São Tomé island, and there Hank Wharton’s plane broke down. I could not contact London to say I would be back late; I just had to kick my heels until we flew on Monday. I was in London on Wednesday morning. A call to a friend inside the BBC indicated all hell was let loose.
When I reached my flat, it had been broken into. It was a pretty hammy job. The lock was only a Yale, which could have been opened with a credit card or artist’s palette knife. The two goons had smashed in a door panel to reach the lock from inside. My neighbors told me there had been two of them, from the BBC, who said they had been “worried” about me, the inference being that I might have committed self-harm under the pressure of career stress.
But my body would have been pretty obvious. These guys had gone through everything. I knew I had left no traces of where I had been. But it was pretty clear that, once again, the party was over.
I packed a suitcase, left a note abandoning the lease with a friendly neighbor destined for the landlord, and decamped to spend two days and nights on the sofa of a friend.
When a reporter is told by his employer to publish something he knows to be a pack of lies, there are only three things he can do. The first is to look to his security, his salary, his pension pot, and do what he is told.
The second is to sit in the corner, blubbing his heart out at the unfairness of it all. The third is to raise a rigid middle finger at the lot of them and walk out. I sat down and wrote a long letter of resignation. It was to Tom Maltby.
I thanked him for his consideration toward me, but informed him that in my view the Nigerian Civil War was going to be a major story with considerable duration and many casualties. In view of the BBC’s policy of non-coverage (except from a Lagos hotel), I was going to cover the story myself as a freelance.
I signed off and posted the letter late on Friday, aware it would not be opened and read until Monday morning. On the Friday-night plane, I was back in Lisbon, confronting a bewildered Hank Wharton and asking for another hitch to the war zone. By Sunday night, I was in Port Harcourt, under arrest again, and on Monday morning, about the time Tom Maltby was opening his mail, I was shown into the office of an even more bewildered Emeka Ojukwu.
The practice of embedding war reporters into military units was unknown back then, so the question of paying my way arose. I said I wanted to stay, but had no funds and no employer behind me.
Ojukwu offered me half a tin-roofed Nissen hut, food from state house kitchens, a Volkswagen Beetle, and a petrol allowance. Plus access to the communications company he had engaged to get news dispatches from Biafra to Geneva and thence to the world. After that, I could go anywhere, see anything, and report anything.