"But there's nobody to touch these people. Give me 10,000 Biafrans for six months, and we'll build an army that would be invincible on this continent. I've seen men die in this war who would have won the Victoria Cross in another context".

MetaPhysical:


Shyyyyyytte!!!
Modafvkr had over 3million of them at disposal. What did he do with them? He led them to their grave while he saved his own @$$ from bullet fire.

AntiBalaka:

Why so pained?

Kingosytex:


He isn't pained, he said the truth.

AntiBalaka:


With less than a thousand regular army personnel before the start of the war, the Biafran Army was composed mainly of civilians.

Williams spoke about training (6 mths) and need for more men to win the war. He was impressed by the gallantry and bravery of the Biafran war time recruits.

MetaPhysical:


Shyyyyyytte!!!
Modafvkr had over 3million of them at disposal. What did he do with them? He led them to their grave while he saved his own @$$ from bullet fire.

BafanaBafana:
They were actually brave. It is so when you have a course you really believe in to fight for.
Ojukwu however, wasn't a brave soldier. Do you know that during the counter coup of 1966, Ojukwu was in Enugu making calls to Lagos, Murtala Moh'd threatened to march on Enugu and deal with him and Ojukwu ran and hid in Umuahia that night. The police commisioner and others had to beg him to come back after which he lived at the police HQ for some days. The guy was such a coward.

BafanaBafana:
They were actually brave. It is so when you have a course you really believe in to fight for.
Ojukwu however, wasn't a brave soldier. Do you know that during the counter coup of 1966, [b]Ojukwu was in Enugu making calls to Lagos, Murtala Moh'd threatened to march on Enugu and deal with him and Ojukwu ran and hid in Umuahia that night. [/b]The police commisioner and others had to beg him to come back after which he lived at the police HQ for some days. The guy was such a coward.

Bede2u:
a coward who looked nigeria eye ball to eye ball and led a revolution which could have claimed his life?

Listen and listen well...ojukwu might be rash, immature and uncalculating...but he isnt a coward.

I can agree that the biafran war could have been won by a better commander..A commander who could rally the SS and make sure the federal forces didnt control nigerdelta..a commander who could get the backing of ussr and a commander who understood that the war doesnt necessarily need to be worn in a yr or too but that even if it took 10 yrs to win, its still a victory.
Ojukwu obviously wasnt that commander

MetaPhysical:


Shyyyyyytte!!!
Modafvkr had over 3million of them at disposal. What did he do with them? He led them to their grave while he saved his own @$$ from bullet fire.

BaaleOko:

Militarily your useless soldiers got dusted by poorly armed Biafran teenagers, yes you won the war, but it was pyrrhic considering the terrible losses you took in men and materials at the front, and the dishonorable slaughter of innocent civilians through terror bombings and starvation. Soldier to soldier when real guts and glory was tested, the Federal side came up short... despite been vastly superior in weaponry, numbers, and support compared to the Biafrans.

KingOdart:




With all the foreign nations that supported you


Nigerian Army Still destroyed you militarily

Stop lying

KingOdart:




With all the foreign nations that supported you


Nigerian Army Still destroyed you militarily

Stop lying

Bede2u:
no nation supported us with arms...they just recognised us and some tried to lift aid materials to us....the arms we used were captured from naija soldiers

AntiBalaka:


With less than a thousand regular army personnel before the start of the war, the Biafran Army was composed mainly of civilians.

Williams spoke about training (6 mths) and need for more men to win the war. He was impressed by the gallantry and bravery of the Biafran war time recruits.

Printerscanner:
At the end of the day, over three million Biafrans were used for pepper soup and suya by Yoruba/Hausa/Fulani soldiers while several millions of their girls, ladies and women were used as sex slaves. And you still call them gallant soldiers?

oyatz:
When you want to go to the next war, you need to plan very well. Don't rush to war basing your survival on the expected Goodwill of your opponents (what if they don't cooperate?)

Make adequate preparations for food storage.
Train your army well
Develop or acquire superior Technology that is far above your opponents.






Get trustworthy and dependable Allies.

BaaleOko:

So Wikipedia which any idiot can edit is now your source of information on the Civil War? Even with all the countless books on the war written by credible participants and authors, which are also available in the internet database and other public domains ... surely you can't be that stupid to cite Wikipedia as your go-to source. Firstly there's a difference between diplomatic support and military support, and even your useless wiki source is fraught with inaccuracies, misinformation, and evident tampering of facts by some dunce with a false sense of knowledge on the facts of the civil war. Let me briefly school you cause I spent the best part of my life reading and researching on the Biafran war, so I'm educated and versed enough to reel out my facts which you can verify for yourself (hopefully you will actually put your time and brain to extensive use, rather than recourse to the most ridiculous, intellectually demeaning and laziest source as your mainstay of fact). On your Wiki source... It's pertinent to know that more than half of those countries listed there that supposedly supported Biafra DID NOT actually support the new Republic, pick up some books, articles, journals (I can recommend some for you), if you are intellectually lazy to actually use Google and type out the countries that recognized and supported Biafra during the war... the results will actually show up on many credible sources and database. But back to my point, Diplomatically few counties like Ireland, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Haiti, Tanzania and few other Scandinavian countries like Norway supported Biafra... But NEVER MILITARILY aided the Biafrans (I'm sure you are smart enough to know the difference between diplomatic support and Military support), so in hope that you do...i will press on with my points. Those aforementioned countries I mentioned, that diplomatically supported Biafrans provided help in various capacities like Ireland sending planeloads of relief materials through organizations like CARITAS, IICC, and the Red cross via Sao tome, and then to Biafra to feed the starving population (God bless the people of Ireland who stood up for injustice to the end). Ireland also did send lots of their Reverend fathers, sisters, missionaries, doctors, and relief workers to help Biafrans in various humanitarian capacities. The other countries I mentioned did play some vital role in sustaining the Biafran struggle by been conduits in bringing international awareness via the press, media, and other outlets available that helped globalize the suffering of the Biafran population (especially in the peak of mass starvation setting in) especially when a disease caused by protein deficiency affecting Biafran children called Kwashiokor began to hit TV and newspapers all over the world for the first time...eliciting an international outrage never seen up till that point.

Now THE ONLY COUNTRY THAT MILITARILY supported Biafra was France, and even this was rather belated and half-hearted, it was actually until the late quarter of 1968 that France started to provide weapons to Biafran soldiers... no other country is on record for supporting Biafra militarily except France... Of course there were few foreign mercenaries from South Africa(like the famous Taffy Williams), Germany (like Rolf Steiner), and few others from Belgium, Sweden and Rhodesia... But this were just mercenaries that were paid for short term periods to fight for Biafra before leaving to their respective countries. For all purpose and intent, Biafrans were mostly on their own, fighting mostly with old rusty bolt action rifles or weapons they captured from enemy soldiers killed in combat, against far better equipped Nigerian soldiers who rolled out British and Russian equipped modern weapons like Ferrets, Saracen armored cars, artillery guns and shells, fighter jets and bombers, hundreds of mercenaries from Egypt, Chad, Cameroon, and pretty much the rest of Nigeria including non-Igbos in Biafra especially from the minority areas that helped to sabotage the war effort by showing Nigerian troops secret routes to attack Biafran soldiers etc... the backbone of Biafran resistance was mostly gotten from what Igbos ingeniously invented by themselves like the Ogbunigwe and locally made claymores etc. For clarity sake, the Igbos faced an enemy force 10x bigger, definitely paling in comparison to its smaller and spent size.

And yes the classified files revealed the statistics on the casualties suffered by the Nigerian army was higher than the Biafran side... in Abagana alone, nearly 30,000 Nigerian troops were wiped out in what was to become the biggest ambush of the war... other battles like the disastrous River Niger crossing attempts by Murtala Muhammad's 2 infantry division that saw about 9,000 soldiers massacred by the Biafrans(even Nigerian officers who witnessed and survived it, went on to write about it in their civil war memoirs)... I could go on and on. The only massive kill ratio the Nigerian government had to their name was mostly meted out on women, children, and old people(Civilians to be precise ) ...no thanks to starvation, terror bombings from mostly Egyptian piloted planes, "shoot-to-kill anything that moves orders" as famously declared by the likes of Adekunle etc.

In hindsight, I doubt any ethnic group would have survived or lasted as long as the Igbos did if you consider the handicap on their end, I'm pretty the Yorubas would have surrendered in just few months of fighting had they been in the shoes of the Igbos (after all the Western region remained occupied by predominantly Northern troops before, during, and even after the war)... and the yorubas were to scared to send them packing... Igbos did, and had to pay the price by fighting nearly the whole of Nigeria backed by international superpowers... I don't want war or advocate for it, but a people who have seen war in all its horrors like the Igbos have with all its aftermaths like the wicked political and economic policies initiated by the Nigerian government to further subjugate the Igbos... You've got to respect them inspite of your bias/hatred for been able to weather the storm ad emerge even stronger in nearly any indices of socio-economic achievements in that country.

AntiBalaka:
Hugh "Taffy" Williams was a professional soldier of fortune who served in the Congo with Mike Hoare and 5 Commando Congo as well as a Major in Biafra. Born in Wales, he grew up and received his military training in South Africa.
Noted for his bravery under fire he served two tours of duty with the Biafran Army, rising to the rank of Major and was the last white mercenary to leave the country as secession ended.[1]

Williams found his Biafran troops to be completely different from those whom he commanded in Katanga. "I've seen a lot of Africans at war" he was quoted as saying. "But there's nobody to touch these people. Give me 10,000 Biafrans for six months, and we'll build an army that would be invincible on this continent. I've seen men die in this war who would have won the Victoria Cross in another context".[2]

Williams was assigned one hundred Biafran fighters in early 1968, and managed to keep two battalions of Chadian mercenaries serving with the Nigerian Federal Army at bay for twelve weeks with only antiquated weapons. After Williams redeployed his forces in early April, the Chadians forded the Cross River at two locations, and captured Afikpo, a main town on the western side.[3]

Completing his first contract and following a brief stay in the UK, Williams returned to Biafra on 7 July 1968. He was assigned to the 4th Commando Brigade led by Lt. Col Rolf Steiner. Steiner had command of 3000 men, and was assigned to the area around the Enugu - Onitsha road. Williams, who liked to joke that he was "half-mad", would personally lead his troops into battle, sometimes standing in a hail of Federal gunfire, just to prove to his troops that he was indeed "bullet-proof". His resolve under fire would often unnerve the more superstitious of Nigerian soldiers and serve to rally his own.[4]

On 24 August 1968 Williams was drawn into a critical battle of the conflict. At this point, he had 1000 soldiers under his command which carried out counteroffensives against two battalion-sized enemy units attempting to cross the Imo River Bridge with Soviet military advisers. When Williams returned to Aba for additional ammunition to continue the fight, he was told that there was simply none to be had. The Nigerian Air Force had become quite successful in blocking supplies into the beleaguered state. Some of Williams' men had only two rounds left for their rifles and many were forced to withdraw.[5]

Jamesbally:

Kikikikikikiki, Biafran Soldiers and bravery can never be mentioned in one sentence. Those guys and their leaders are all COWARDS

KingOdart:




With all the foreign nations that supported you


Nigerian Army Still destroyed you militarily

Stop lying

BafanaBafana:
They were actually brave. It is so when you have a course you really believe in to fight for.
Ojukwu however, wasn't a brave soldier. Do you know that during the counter coup of 1966, Ojukwu was in Enugu making calls to Lagos, Murtala Moh'd threatened to march on Enugu and deal with him and Ojukwu ran and hid in Umuahia that night. The police commisioner and others had to beg him to come back after which he lived at the police HQ for some days. The guy was such a coward.

AntiBalaka:


Why so pained?

AntiBalaka:


Why so pained?

Printerscanner:
At the end of the day, over three million Biafrans were used for pepper soup and suya by Yoruba/Hausa/Fulani soldiers while several millions of their girls, ladies and women were used as sex slaves. And you still call them gallant soldiers?