EDU, a cultural organization deemed free from political bias, failed to purge itself of intrigues and instead of fostering social peace, harmony and tranquility by way of negotiating for calm and understanding, thus, ended up with losing Ebenator, who later turned out to be a strong platform for the quest for autonomy. Following this ugly political intrigue, Ebenator people ceased to attend EDU. EDU failed to manage effectively the internal conflict which centered mainly on struggle for leadership in Ekwe. Ebenator began to feel marginalized.
The Ebenator Ekwe saga endured a long cooling period, but later Ebenator achieved autonomy and addressed today as ‘EBENATOR EKWE AUTONMOUS COMMUNITY27
Eastern parts of Nigeria. Apart from the tragedy of “unprepared combatant soldiers” of Biafra, the women and children remained the worst hit. Considering the war experience of Igbo women in the Eastern parts of the country.28
If not for the women of Biafra and their courage, the Biafra race and nation would have been completely annihilated during the Biafran War of Survival of 1967-1970. We know of no other group of women in history who suffered more than the women of Biafra, as they saw their spouses leave for war, many never to return; watched their children suffer and slowly die of starvation right in front of their eyes, and witnessed their families pine away to nothing. What agony!
No one but they can tell whence their strength and courage derive, such tenacity as would sustain them through this harrowing ordeal and allow them to rebuild and nurture to maturity and to humanity once again, present-day Biafra, from death and nothingness.
In this state of collapse of infrastructural base, hunger, disease, indiscriminate massacre leading to genocidal proportions, physical and economic assaults, and humiliations in Biafran territories, the Women largely bore the incidence in their different communities. The plight of Women in the civil war time and in the immediate post civil war days was very traumatic and one deserving pity. Igbo Women shouldered most of the excruciating pains of the civil war. They encountered horrific, terrible and dehumanizing ordeals in the hands of ‘enemy soldiers’, saboteurs and hunger related diseases.
There was ‘no regard mentality’ for the rights of women in Igbo communities by the would-be enemy soldiers, their non-combatant status in warfare notwithstanding. They were seen as mere objects of exploitation and personal gratifications. The enemy soldiers utilized the war situation to defile Igboland. Hence, Chinua Achebe observes that the civil war gave Nigeria a perfect and
legitimate excuse to cast the Igbo in the role of treasonable felony, a wrecker of a nation with women bearing the greater incidence.
Considering these harrowing experiences of Igbo women during the Nigerian – Biafran civil war and its aftermath, the researcher deems it fit to carry out a study on the experience of Women in
‘EKWE’ in the civil war period and the impacts of the war on them.
Ekwe Women played many roles in the Civil War. They did not sit idly by waiting for the men in their lives to come home from the battlefield. While others took a more upfront approach and secretly enlisted in the army or served as spies and smugglers.
Ekwe Women were not asked to take up arms or to go to war fronts. The war never got to the stage that women were expected to fight. There were girls who would sneak out and accompany their soldier friends to battle.
There were girls from areas under the control of the Nigerian government who visited Biafra.
Some Women felt they were fighting their personal battles. They were not forced to belong but volunteered to be militia members.
Ekwe women took it as their obligation and duty to trekked very far to Nigeria based military camps which Lolo Kate Mbagwu of Elugwu Ekwe called (Ahia attack) which means (trading behind enemy lines).This indigenous trade was a catalyst for survival during the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War.
A story of lost hopes, pains, betrayals, sufferings, resilience and bravery. The battle for survival that is usually borne silently by Igbo women in wartime; some made friends with Nigeria soldiers to get free foods and some posed to work for them to get enough foods. When they have gathered enough foods, Ekwe women will bring them to home and give to their families and if
having enough they sell at night and in the bush to people of Ekwe and neigbhouring community like Umuaka, Amurie and Umundugba, Isu Njaba.
This helped themto take care of their homes and the community at large since many men ran to the stream (Iyi Eziokwu) which was thick bush surrounded with tall trees and deep hill to escape conscription.
Women Spies:
Although the exact number is unknown, it is speculated that hundreds of women served as spies for the Nigeria/Biafra armies in the Civil War. Women spies usually gathered valuable military information by flirting with male soldiers at parties, dinners or other social events. These women also smuggled supplies, ammunition and medicine across enemy lines by hiding them underneath their large hoop skirts. Some women also took part in spying. Spying, though, was not a hectic job. Female spies merely disguised themselves as common people in order to move freely in and out of Biafra.
Women Nurses:
Many women supported the war effort as nurses and aides. Nursing was a gruesome job that provided an up close look at the horrific casualties of the war.
Civil War nurses cleaned and bandaged wounds, fed soldiers, dispensed medication and assisted surgeons during operations and medical procedures like amputations.
Women also gave a helping hand to the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations that operated in Biafra.
Women War Relief Workers:
Many women participated in war relief efforts, such as sewing circles where they made clothing for soldiers or they held charity drives where they gathered food, medical supplies and bedding for local military encampments and hospitals. After the Civil War ended in 1970, many of the women went back to their traditional roles in society and became wives and mothers.
Some of these women later shared their wartime stories with others by publishing their war diaries and memoirs, while others kept their stories to themselves as they tried to readjust to life as a woman in post-Civil War.
Women Mother:
Whatever their duties were, these new jobs redefined their traditional roles as housewives and mothers and made them an important part of the war effort. Women took care of their children and their husbands in the battle.
Women Traders:
Women traded; there was still as hortage of food and other provisions. Another thing women did was to sell locally brewed liquor. Even with the war, women in Ukwuani were able to do a lot of things unlike men.
On extensive field-work, interviews, Lolo Kate Mbagwu recounts the story of the war from the women’s point of view; ironically, she demonstrates, it as a period of both “insecurity” and
“opportunity” for them.
Like almost everyone else, Igbo women lived daily in a state of panic and fear, “Almost every night somebody would raise an alarm that Nigerian soldiers had come. They would all run away.... The same alarm was sometimes raised during school sessions. They lived daily in panic.
They were uncertain of staying alive the next moment.
At the same time, women developed many strategies for survival, including commercial and sexual liaisons with the enemy. Prostitution thus became a profitable occupation for both married and unmarried women, offering many of them access to goods and services not commonly available.
Sadly, in their “desire to live through the crisis,” some also unwittingly subjected their daughters to soldiers’ sexual abuses as these girls hawked products
There was no confrontational attack in Ekwe, the civil war did not reach Ekwe and its neighboring community before it came to an end. The war stopped at Owerri, Oguta, Mgbidi and Orlu.29