The financing of the Nigerian Civil War and its implications for the future economy of the nation

THE Nigerian civil war was inevitable. But whilst its inevitability was clear to Ojukwu as far back as September 1966, it did not appear to have dawned on the Federal Military Government until towards the end of April 1967. There were forebodings, however – but only forebodings – which prompted the Federal Military Government, towards the end of 1966, to begin to make contingent military preparations for an armed showdown, which it continued to pray might never happen.

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In the face of the facts so far available, Aburi can now be seen, in retrospect, as a demonstration of the contrary states of the minds of both General Gowon and Mr. Ojukwu. Gowon wanted peace by all means, and went to the furthest limit compatible with Nigerian unity, in his endeavour to win it at Aburi. On the other hand, Ojukwu was all out for secession, and was already preparing secretly but hard for war which he knew was the historical concomitant of any act of secession. But he needed more time for his preparations, and a few more constitutional powers for the furtherance of his designs under the cloak of legality. At Aburi, he played and manoeuvred for both, and got them. Like Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich in 1938, the Commander-in-Chief’and his loyal colleagues were lulled into a sense of false security, so much so that when they returned from Aburi, they believed – and most of us shared their belief—that they had brought home with them ‘peace in our time’.

This illusion did not last; but it lingered long enough to give Ojukwu more time to strengthen and consolidate his military preparations. During the first two weeks of May 1967, we were still conscientiously and frantically looking for a formula that would preclude a violent solution to our problems. Even at the outbreak of war in July 1967, our antecedent state of mind, our ardent and consuming desire for peace did not permit us to see that a civil war had actually come upon us. We persuaded ourselves to believe and proclaim that what we had embarked upon was in the nature of police operations. All of which go to show that we never really wanted war, that we did all in our power to avert it, and that even when it was finally forced upon us by the remorseless logic of the events subtly contrived and cleverly manipulated by Ojukwu, we failed to recognise it at the first encounter.

Consequently, at the outbreak of the civil war on 6th July, 1967, apart from lack of adequate military preparedness on our part, the finances of the federation were neither mobilised nor deployed on proper war footing, let alone for the long, protracted, and expensive military campaign we had to conduct.

In actual fact, the finances of the country were, at that point in time, differently orientated. THE 1962/68 National Development Plan was running its last lap; and the guideposts for the second National Development Plan had been formulated, accepted, and published. So that when the reality of the situation finally dawned upon the Federal Military Government, it became imperative to change course drastically, and gear our resources, which for the five preceding years had been organised and directed for development purposes, to the unproductive, destructive, and unpredictable ends of war.

The Nigerian Civil War saw altogether three Budgets. The first one was introduced on 19th October, 1967, and the other two were for 1968/69 and 1969/70. The same fundamental objectives and the same basic principles governed and underlay the three Budgets; and the differences between them consisted only in tile fiscal and monetary measures which, from year to year, were considered necessary for effectively carrying out the declared objectives and principles.

The two fundamental objectives to which the Federal Military Government committed itself from the very beginning of the civil war are well known. They are: to win the war, and to win the peace that will follow. The financial resources of the country were to be rnobilised and deployed for the accomplishment of both objectives.