Biafran honour

In RESPONSE to your brief article on the funeral of Chukwuemeka Ojukwu (Biafran leader buried, 3 March), I would like to say that this piece did not recognise that Ojukwu was a very charismatic leader.

At the time of secession, Biafrans had many grievances and probably enough oil wealth to survive as an independent state. The civil war was unnecessarily protracted. The Federal Government of Nigeria and its backers, which included the British government, seriously underestimated the strength of feeling, among the Biafran Ibos in particular, that enabled Biafra to hold out for so long. Those of us who were there at the time told the British government that the civil war would certainly not be over in a mere three weeks. The starving Biafran children and the bloodshed are therefore to some extent on the heads of the British. I believe that Ojukwu was an honourable man: later in life he publicly regretted that he had advocated that Biafra should secede from Nigeria.

Elizabeth Raitt

Pinnaclehill Park

Kelso