REVEALED: How Buhari missed death ‘by inches’ during the Biafra war.

President Muhammadu Buhari missed death by a few inches during the civil war, his authorised biographer has revealed.

In the book, Muhammadu Buhari: The Challenges of Leadership in Nigeria, John Paden, a former professor of public administration at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, recounted how the young officer, who commanded a brigade during the war that lasted from 1967-1970, narrowly escaped death.

Paden wrote: “Buhari was among the first of the junior officers to be sent into battle. He served until the end of the war. Buhari fought at Awka, and later commanded a brigade at Makurdi. He also had to defend areas between Enugu and Abakaliki. He learned to distinguish the types of weapons being fired at his men by the sounds of the gunfire.

“On one occasion, while marching with his men toward Ogoja, Buhari ran into a group of rebels, and the federal soldiers suffered serious casualties. On another occasion, a rebel sniper killed someone standing next to Buhari.”

Paden said many in Buhari’s battalion died from typhoid as a result of lack of clean drinking water, describing in detail the difficult terrain the troops had to overcome during the war.

“The rainforest of the southeast was very different from the dry savannah of the north, and often Buhari would lead his men with machetes as they cut their way through thick vegetation. Buhari emphasized the importance of seemingly unimportant  matters, such as the need for his men to keep their socks dry lest they be crippled by fungus. The health of his men was of critical importance, as was his own,” he wrote.

“During the war, Buhari did not observe fasting during the month of Ramadan, nor did many of his Muslim soldiers. To have done so would have resulted in physical weakness and a death sentence on the battlefield . He believed that Islam is not only tolerant and peaceful, but also capable of accommodating a variety of human circumstances.”

Throughout the war, Paden wrote, “Buhari made it clear to his men that they were not fighting the Igbos. Indeed, some of the men in his battalion and even some of his superior officers were Igbos.”

Buhari insisted that they were fighting “the rebels” and believed that the war could have gone either way but Nigeria was lucky, according to Paden.

Gabonese President Ali Bongo Allegedly Found To Be Igbo, Adopted From Nigeria During Biafra War

Indications have emerged that the President of Gabon, Ali Bongo Ondimba is a Nigerian of the ethnic Igbo stock. It is said that he was adopted during the Biafran war by his father, Omar Bongo who handed over to him as President.

 

This development may soon be confirmed as a court in western France on Thursday allowed a family member of Omar Bongo to view the birth certificate of Ali Bongo following accusations that he lied about his country of origin.

 

The Gabonese constitution demands that one must be born Gabonese to serve as the head of state, but French investigative journalist, Pierre Pean alleged in a recent book that the President was actually a Nigerian and was adopted during the Biafran war in the late 1960s.

 
The court in Nantes allowed 25-year-old Onaida Maisha Bongo Ondimba, a daughter of former president Omar Bongo, to view the documents in full, which her lawyer, Eric Moutet hailed the decision as “enormous”, though “diplomatically complex”.

 

Ali Bongo is the only one of ex-president Omar Bongo’s 54 declared heirs not to have produced the identification documents. He claims he was born in Brazzaville in 1959, former capital of French Equatorial Africa.

 

The Nantes civil registration centre is responsible for all birth certificates of people born in French Equatorial Africa up to 1960, when the former colonial countries in the region gained independence to become Gabon, Congo, Chad and the Central African Republic.

 

Credit : Daily Post