Nigeria: From Hell Sector To the Conference Table

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The Paris talks were not the only slow, stubborn peace negotiations going on in the world last week.

After eleven months of bitter fighting, the two sides in Nigeria's bloody civil war finally sat down together last week and began truce talks in Uganda's capital of Kampala. "Whether the war is just or unjust is no longer the question," Uganda President Milton Obote told his guests from the federal government and secessionist Biafra. "The principal and overriding demand is to bring it to an end. I pray for the success of your talks." Almost immediately, however, the negotiations bogged down. Nigeria's Chief Anthony Eronsele Enahoro demanded talks before a ceasefire; Biafran Delegation Leader Sir Louis Nwachuku Mbanefo demanded a ceasefire, then talks. "We have set no preconditions," Sir Louis told reporters. "But we are at war."

Even as the peace talks began, federal troops were pushing deeper inside Biafra, thrusting into parts of Port Harcourt, the last major city in Biafran hands and Nigeria's second largest seaport after Lagos. A modern oil boomtown before the war, Port Harcourt supplied Biafra's fuel needs, acted as a vital link for its Lisbon-based airlift of arms and matériel, and—by the mere fact of its possession—served as a morale booster for Biafra and its 8,500,000 Ibo tribesmen, led by Lieut. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu.

For months, Nigeria's federal government had been trying to take Port Harcourt, and getting nowhere. When it sent boats in from the southwest, they got lost in the mosquito-infested mangrove swamps. To seal off the southeast, the Biafrans pumped a continuous stream of crude oil into the Bonny channel and set it permanently ablaze. To guard against aerial attacks, they mounted heavy artillery atop the city's tallest buildings, and drove barbed stakes into open fields as protection against paratroopers. They even put nozzles on oil pipelines, converting them into instant flamethrowers. As a result, the Nigerian forces were forced to take a painstakingly slow route overland from the eastern seaport of Calabar, lugging tons of military supplies and hundreds of cases of "Star"-brand lager beer.

Anti-Panic Squad. Early last week, they finally arrived within shelling distance of their target. Setting up headquarters with his 105-mm.-howitzer battery in a suburban Anglican churchyard, Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, head of Nigeria's 3rd Marine Commando Division ("The Scorpions"), took full charge of the attack, code-naming his immediate area "Hell Sector," the Port Harcourt airport "Iron Sector" and the main area of town "Hate Sector." As federal howitzer, mortar and artillery shells began pounding the fringes of the city at three-minute intervals, young Ibo tribesmen dressed in clean white shirts and ties slapped "Anti-Panic Squad" signs on their cars and drove through the streets shouting for calm. Unpersuaded, civilians scooped up their children and whatever possessions they could carry and—on foot, by bicycle or riding in ancient automobiles or mammy wagons—swarmed into the main road leading to the northern town of Owerri, 45 miles away. Within a few hours after the shelling began, traffic was backed up 15 miles.