In any case, we went to the meeting.
On the steps of the palace we met Soglo, now a general, who greeted us and stopped to talk. Soglo is a stocky, jovial, energetic man. He is fifty-six. He served in the French army from 1931 as a career NCO. He was dressed simply, in an army shirt without insignia. He wore a green beret. Soglo did not carry a weapon, and neither did other officers, nor the paratroopers surrounding the palace. During the course of the military takeover that I was about to witness, I did not see a single armed soldier. This distinguished the present coup from that of October 1963, when the army used weapons: namely, the one mortar in the possession of the Dahomeyan army. When Soglo arrested Hubert Maga, the members of the cabinet, unsure about what was happening, barricaded themselves in a small building near the main square. Soglo himself then set up the mortar in front of the building (he was the only one in the army who knew how to operate it) and announced through a megaphone that if the cabinet did not resign by four in the afternoon, he would begin firing on the building. The cabinet decided unanimously to resign, which it communicated to Soglo through the window, and thus ended the political crisis of October 1963.
Now Soglo stood with us on the stairs of the palace, in a good humour, conversing. He told us that he was completely unable to reconcile them—‘them’ meaning the self-proclaimed president and the one elected by the people. Later he added that he would ‘have to do something.’
Just before the party convention opened, word went around that the witch-doctors had come out in support of Ahomadegbe. ‘Well, Apithy’s finished,’ opined the AFP correspondent, Jacques Lamoureux, who then sent a dispatch to Paris saying so. But we waited. The convention ended without an agreement later that afternoon, with the activists splitting into two camps, supporting different presidents. In the evening flyers were handed out, consisting of three sentences: ‘Down with Fascism! Down with Ahomadegbe! Long live the Army!’ That same evening, Ahomadegbe made a dramatic, single-handed attempt to arrest Apithy. He drove to Porto Novo, where Apithy resided. He then went to the gendarmerie barracks and demanded that the commander of the gendarmes, Major Jackson, arrest. Apithy. But the major told Ahomadegbe that he took orders from General Soglo; the two argued, then Ahomadegbe went back to Cotonou. The major must then have reported everything to General Soglo, because, by the time Ahomadegbe had returned, Soglo had decided to act at once.
That same night, at four in the morning, Soglo woke Apithy and ordered him to sign his letter of resignation. Apithy said that he would sign only if he saw with his own eyes that Ahomadegbe had also signed a letter of resignation. Soglo agreed, got into his car and drove to Cotonou. He woke Ahomadegbe and ordered him to sign his resignation. Ahomadegbe signed. Soglo took the paper and drove back to Porto Novo, to Apithy. The whole time, Soglo was alone. He showed Ahomadegbe’s resignation to Apithy. Then Apithy signed his own resignation. By six in the morning, the crisis was over. Soglo named a new premier: Tairu Congacu, a colourless, second-rank figure. Soglo obviously kept the real power in his own hands.
From this revolt in Dahomey I drove straight into the fires of the civil war that had been going on in western Nigeria since October. On the road from the Dahomey-Nigeria border to Lagos: barriers, police, troops, searches, checkpoints. Burned cars in the ditches. Burned huts in the villages. Army patrols in trucks. This war was hopeless and absurd, with no end in sight. Hundreds of people had already died, hundreds of houses had been burned and great sums of money wasted.
In the course of one month I had driven through five countries. In four of them, there were states of emergency. In one, the president had just been overthrown; in a second, the president had saved himself only by chance; in a third, the head of government was afraid to leave his house, which was surrounded by troops. Two parliaments had been dissolved. Two governments had fallen. Scores of political activists had been arrested. Scores of people had been killed in political conflicts.
Over a distance of 520 kilometres, I had been checked twenty-one times and subjected to four body searches. Everywhere there was an atmosphere of tension, everywhere the smell of gunpowder.
THE BURNING ROADBLOCKS
January 1966. In Nigeria a civil war was going on. I was a correspondent covering the war. On a cloudy day I left Lagos. On the outskirts police were stopping all cars. They were searching the trunks, looking for weapons. They ripped open sacks of corn: could there be ammunition in that corn?
Authority ended at the city line.
The road leads through a green countryside of low hills covered with a close, thick bush. This is a laterite road, rust-coloured, with a treacherous uneven surface.
These hills, this road and the villages along it are the country of the Yorubas, who inhabit south-western Nigeria. They constitute a quarter of Nigeria’s population. The heaven of the Yorubas is full of gods and their earth full of kings. The greatest god is called Oduduwa and he lives at a height higher than the stars, higher even than the sun. The kings, on the other hand, live close to the people. In every city and every village there is a king.
In 1962 the Yorubas split into two camps. The overwhelming majority belongs to the UPGA (United Progressive Grand Alliance); an insignificant minority belongs to the NNDP (Nigerian National Democratic Party). Owing to the trickery of the Nigerian central government, the minority party rules the Yorubas’ province. The central government prefers a minority government in the province as a way of controlling the Yorubas and curbing their separatist ambitions: thus has the party of the overwhelming majority, the UPGA, found itself in opposition. In the autumn of 1965 there were elections in the Yorubas’ province. It was obvious that the majority party, UPGA, had won. Nevertheless, the central government, ignoring the results and the sentiments of the Yorubas, declared the victory of the puppet NNDP, which went on to form a government. In protest, the majority party created its own government. For a time there were two governments. In the end, the members of the majority government were imprisoned, and the UPGA declared open war against the minority government.
And so we have misfortune, we have a war. It is an unjust, dirty, hooliganish war in which all methods are allowed — whatever it takes to knock out the opponent and gain control. This war uses a lot of fire: houses are burning, plantations are burning, and charred bodies lie in the streets.
The whole land of the Yorubas is in flames.
I was driving along a road where they say no white man can come back alive. I was driving to see if a white man could, because I had to experience everything for myself. I know that a man shudders in the forest when he passes close to a lion. I got close to a lion so that I would know how it feels. I had to do it myself because I knew no one could describe it to me. And I cannot describe it myself. Nor can I describe a night in the Sahara. The stars over the Sahara are enormous. They sway above the sand like great chandeliers. The light of those stars is green. Night in the Sahara is as green as a Mazowsze meadow.
I might see the Sahara again and I might see the road that carried me through Yoruba country again. I drove up a hill and when I got to the crest I could see the first flaming roadblock down below.
It was too late to turn back.
Burning logs blocked the road. There was a big bonfire in the middle. I slowed down and then stopped; it would have been impossible to have carried on. I could see a dozen or so young people. Some had shotguns, some were holding knives and the rest were armed with machetes. They were dressed alike in blue shirts with white sleeves, the colours of the opposition, of the UPGA. They wore black and white caps with the letters UPGA. They had pictures of Chief Awolowo pinned to their shirts. Chief Awolowo was the leader of the opposition, the idol of the party.