A Call for Eyewitness Testimonies: The Ibusa Wartime Oral History Research Project

 A Call for Eyewitness Testimonies: The Ibusa Wartime Oral History Research Project

As preparations for the systematic collection of oral testimonies from Ibusa men and women who witnessed the Nigerian Civil War and its impact on our community gather momentum, Pen Master will continue to identify and engage additional eyewitnesses whose lived experiences illuminate one of the darkest periods in Ibusa's history.

The forthcoming book, "The Nigerian Civil War: An Ibusa Perspective," seeks to document the community's wartime experiences through the voices of those who lived them. Time has become our most critical operational constraint. With each passing year, the number of surviving eyewitnesses diminishes, taking with them invaluable first-hand accounts that cannot be reconstructed from official records alone. An undocumented testimony is, in many respects, a permanent loss to history. The Ibusa community cannot afford such losses. One elder recently recounted that he and three other Ibusa soldiers served together during the war. Today, he alone survives; the others have all passed away.

From a research methodology standpoint, Pen Master recognizes that the most revealing historical evidence often emerges through uninterrupted personal narratives rather than responses to structured questioning. Accordingly, narrators will first be encouraged to recount events in their own words before follow-up questions are introduced to clarify chronology, military operations, locations, and other critical details. This approach preserves the authenticity of memory while strengthening the historical reliability of each testimony.

Already, significant historical revelations have begun to emerge. One account reveals that the then Senior Diokpa of Ibusa, Obi Mordi, was among the civilian refugees displaced by the conflict. He was initially accommodated in a refugee camp in Ibusa before being transferred to another camp at St. Patrick's College, Asaba. According to eyewitness testimony, the camp supervisor, Rev. Fr. Kunirum Osia, intervened and returned the aged community leader to Ibusa, where he died peacefully shortly afterwards.

Further testimony indicates that Rev. Fr. Osia, assisted by several courageous Ibusa women, undertook the grim but necessary task of burying numerous civilians killed in the Nigerian-Biafran crossfire within the community. Many of the victims received hurried burials in shallow graves under wartime conditions. These events were later documented by the priest in his published work, providing important corroborative evidence for this research.

Pen Master has also recorded the testimony of a survivor who fled the Ibusa war zone with other displaced residents towards Okpanam. While passing through the Umuodafe forest, the area now occupied by the present-day Asaba International Airport, an aerial bomb exploded near their group. Shrapnel struck him in the chest and forehead. The explosion killed the Diokpa leading the group, two of his grandchildren, and an infant who was strapped to her mother's back. Remarkably, the child's mother survived the attack.

Another eyewitness account describes how Nigerian troops occupied a prominent private residence in the Ogboli quarter of Ibusa and converted it into a forward military position. During the course of the campaign, Biafran forces captured and occupied Ibusa before Nigerian federal troops launched operations that ultimately retook the community. Such accounts contribute to reconstructing the military chronology of the conflict as it unfolded within Ibusa.

For every interview conducted, it is important to establish each narrator's wartime status and role whether as a civilian, refugee, soldier, trader, volunteer, medical worker, traditional leader, or participant in any other capacity. These details provide valuable historical context and strengthen the integrity of the research record.

If your parents, grandparents, or other elderly relatives witnessed the Nigerian Civil War in Ibusa, please encourage them to share their experiences with Pen Master (Emeka Esogbue). No individual should depart this world with historical knowledge or lived experience that could enrich humanity's understanding of the past. Carefully researched community histories frequently become primary source material upon which broader national and academic histories are built.

It is my hope that, upon completion, The Nigerian Civil War: An Ibusa Perspective will stand alongside the leading scholarly works on the history of the Nigerian Civil War and the wartime experience of Ibusa. Preserving our collective memory is not the responsibility of one researcher alone; it is a duty shared by the entire community. Every testimony matters. Every witness is a custodian of history.

- Pen Master (Emeka Esogbue)