Images play as important a roIe as guns in the Nigerian civil war. The Biafran secessionists, among Africa’s most sophisticated peoples, have known from the beginning that their chances for success depended as much on evoking world sympathy as on holding back the federal army. Now, after twenty months of war, it is clear that the Biafrans have been far more adept at propaganda than soldiering. If they survive in some sovereign form, they will owe it to their skill with images.

Part of the Biafran success in public relations stems from the federal Nigerian Government’s failure at it. At the beginning, the Nigerians made absolutely no intelligent effort to get their point of view across. In fact, the government’s publicists often hurt the Nigerian case as much as they helped it. When the eastern region seceded and called itself Biafra in May, 1967, these civil servants remained there.

Besides lacking experience, the new Nigerian information officers also had the disadvantage of working for a military government. The soldiers who ran Nigeria, unlike the politicians before the coups of 1966, were unaccustomed to journalistic glare and annoyed by it. In early 1967, I asked A. K. Disu, the federal Director of Information, for an interview with Maj. Gen. Yakubu Gowon, the federal military ruler. Disu responded with raucous laughter. I then asked for interviews with other top officials of the government. “Just go back to your hotel room and read the local papers,” Disu said.

The federal government also began to censor outgoing press cables, a practice that embittered foreign correspondents. Cables sometimes disappeared. Key paragraphs were sometimes slashed, all without newsmen being told what was happening to their stories. On the night the civil war began, the censor cut from my story all sentences that contained the expression “civil war.” The Nigerians had decided that their invasion of Biafra was the start of a “police action,” not a civil war. The censorship accomplished little except to force the foreign correspondents to waste time figuring out ingenious ways of by-passing the censor. The bad feeling grew so intense and obvious that the government finally announced an end of censorship - though it kept right on censoring.

In recent months, important civilian officials of the government, like Commissioner of Information Anthony Enahoro, have tried to make the government more cooperative. But the inefficiency of the lesser bureaucrats still seems to get in the way. In a half-dozen trips to Nigeria, I have not yet been granted an interview with General Gowon.

The Nigerians have a strong moral case for unity. If Nigeria broke up, the numerous minority tribes would become oppressed in three tribal states run by the large tribes; in a unified Nigeria, the small tribes can unite at the center and have at least as much power as the large tribes. But the situation is complex, and the Nigerians have done a poor job explaining it.

The Biafrans, on the other hand, have a stark and emotional case to explain, and they have made the most of it. The Ibos believe there is no security for them in Nigeria. The massacres in 1966 and the continual bombing of civilians by Nigerian planes have convinced their leaders that Nigeria is bent on humbling and shattering and perhaps wiping out the Ibo people. The Ibos believe that life under the other tribes of Nigeria would be oppressive and that the continued resistance of the Ibos in the face of mass killing and starvation is proof that they are a determined, united people who deserve sovereignty. This is a powerful and persuasive argument, but no more so than the argument of the Africans of southern Sudan who have been trying for years to win their independence from the ruling Arabs of northern Sudan. Yet hardly anyone outside the Sudan cares about the southern Sudanese. Unlike the Biafrans, the southern Sudanese do not know how to sell their argument.

One of the key Ibo salesmen has been their leader, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Oxford-educated and the son of one of the wealthiest men in Nigeria. The 35-year-old Ojukwu is a witty, sophisticated and romantic leader. Unlike the military leaders of the rest of Nigeria, he is a colorful politician with a flair for drama. Sometimes, however, he hurts himself by talking too much. At the Addis Ababa peace conference last August, he made a striking impact in his opening speech before Emperor Haile Selassie by repeating the same words that the Emperor had used in protesting to the League of Nations about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. He then dissipated the impact by droning on for more than two hours.

A number of foreign correspondents find him egotistical and unrealistic. And some get annoyed by his air of faint contempt when he feels their questions are too foolish for him to answer. But, in general, he is a frank, logical, persuasive man with a good sense of humor and a good sense of news. Most correspondents find him accessible, informative and very quotable.

Ojukwu is well served by the civil servants around him, and these young men, both in the Ministry of Information and in the other ministries, are an important reason why Biafra has been able to get Its story out to the rest of the world. The young Biafran officials that foreign newsmen meet are helpful, friendly, well educated and efficient. With a professional competence worthy of Madison Avenue, they set up interviews with Ojukwu and other leaders on a few hours’ notice, arrange transportation throughout what’s left of Biafra, rush news copy out through Biafra’s Telex line to Geneva, cater to the whims of the visitors, and allow newsmen enough free rein to make them feel they are being assisted, not collared and smothered.

Sometimes they falter. Isolated from the outside world, a few imagine falsely that the press of the world is against them. Foolish, insulting remarks are sometimes made. In addition, there has been a good deal of reluctance lately to allow visitors close to the fighting. Now that the Biafrans have new stocks of arms, they seem more fearful of letting military secrets slip away. But, despite these problems, the Biafran officials far excel the Nigerian officials in public relations.

Partly this comes from experience. The Nigerian novelists who once staffed the federal Nigerian Ministry of Information are now working in Biafra. But mostly it comes from the efficiency and Western ways that have long been characteristic of educated Ibo people. The Ibos have been one of the few tribes in Africa to accept modernization wholeheartedly and they have made a convincing go of it. They have adopted the best of Western ways quickly and thoroughly.

As soon as its troubles began, the Biafran Government saw the need for an outside public relations firm to deal with foreign editors and correspondents. At first, they hired Robert S. Goldstein Enterprises of Los Angeles for a reported $400,000 but later switched to the firm of H. William Bernhardt in Geneva. His fee has not been publicized. Bernhardt puts out the Markpress News Feature Service which almost daily issues a news bulletin from Biafra. Most of it is exaggerated puffing about imagined Biafran military victories, but it does offer some factual information - the latest speech of Ojukwu, for example, or the latest total of Catholic relief supplies.

But, more important, Bernhardt arranges the trips of foreign newsmen into Biafra and then makes sure that their Telexed copy is forwarded from his Geneva office to their newspapers. Since Biafra is so isolated and has limited representation abroad, newsmen would have a chaotic time reaching the area if they did not have an outside contact man. Bernhardt himself is a quiet, pleasant, dapper American who never tries to pressure newsmen. Newsmen enjoy his company, and he often can be found with them in restaurants and bars.

Despite his important role, it would be wrong to look on Bernhardt as the all-powerful image maker behind Biafran secession. The Biafrans hardly treat him as such. At the Kampala, Niamey and Addis Ababa peace conferences, they practically ignored him. When Biafran information officials are around, they take charge.

Biafra has had another, stronger proponent overseas in the Roman Catholic Church. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church and Catholic organizations have sympathy for Biafra and a special interest in it. There are perhaps 3 or 4 million Catholics in Biafra, three times as many as in the rest of Nigeria. A visitor to Biafra soon finds the foreign priests there heavily committed to the Biafran cause. Though born in Ireland, most of the priests say “we” when they talk of Biafrans. Some relive the Irish Rebellion. “Listen,” one told me, “I led a rebellion in my country in 1916. We lost that militarily, but we won our independence in 1922.”

The Biafrans have pointed to their heavy Catholic and, in fact, Protestant numbers as proof that the Moslems of northern Nigeria are engaged in a religious war against them. That is a great exaggeration and oversimplification. But, as one priest told me, “I don’t believe this is a religious war, but I do believe the work of the Church here will come to an end if the Biafrans lose this war.”

Fearful of losing one of their strongholds in Africa and intensely sympathetic to the Ibo people they know so well, Catholic officials have done a great deal to whip up emotion for Biafra throughout the world and get help to the besieged land. Priests have left Biafra to publicize the Biafran cause in Europe and the United States. Several have manned various points on the air route of supply from Lisbon and Sao Tome. The church was one of the first to cry out for a relief operation and one of the first to organize one in the face of Nigerian resistance. At the beginning, Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Relief Organization, by paying for the illegal flights that carried food and medicine to Biafra, may inadvertently have paid some of the freight charges for arms as well.

Since last September, according to Bishop Joseph Whelan of Biafra, Caritas Internationalis and the WorId Council of Churches have airlifted 10,000 tons of supplies into Biafra. That heavy relief operation is a direct result of the early pressure for help by the Catholic Church.

Catholic sympathy for Biafra has angered the Nigerians and provoked them into sensational accusations. Recently the Lagos newspapers accused Caritas Internationalis of recruiting 200 mercenaries and financing their trip to Biafra. Father Raymond Kennedy, a former priest in Biafra who now spends a good deal of time publicizing the Biafran cause in the United States, was named director of the operation. The accusation seemed as farfetched as it was shrill.

Some resentment, or at least suspicion, has aIso cropped up in the United States lately as the Biafran cause has received increasing publicity. For one thing, supporters of Biafra sometimes seem strange bedfellows. They include extreme right wingers as well as liberals, and some cynics assume Catholicism must be the unifying force. At the end of last year, C. Stanley Lowell, the editor of Church and State, said: “The concerted public relations campaign being waged by Roman Catholic organizations on behalf of the Biafran secessionists is amazing. Working every propaganda trick known to man, they are seeking to arouse political support for Biafra on humanitarian grounds. Yet it should be evident that responsibility for starving and suffering in the eastern provinces of Nigeria is not that of Nigeria but of the Biafran leader, the Roman Catholic Colonel Ojukwu.” Church and State is the publication of Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Lowell’s comments reflect a certain blindness caused by the organization’s main preoccupation. The fact that the State Department supports Nigeria, and the Catholic Church supports Biafra, should not force believers in Church-State separation to line up with the State Department and Nigeria. In this case, the Catholics are right.

Biafra’s greatest public relations problem has come with the mass starvation that has afflicted it in the past six months. The International Red Cross estimates that 14,000 people die of malnutrition or starvation every day. Like Stanley Lowell, the State Department has accused Ojukwu of sacrificing these thousands of children, mothers and old folk for a hopeless cause. Critics suspect that the Biafrans are parading their starving to evoke sympathy. As the London Sunday Times said last October, “The expensive public relations campaign has now become an unashamed exploitation of human suffering.”

The criticism of Ojukwu stems from his refusal to (1) give up; (2) allow Red Cross supplies to reach Biafra by land; and (3) allow Red Cross flights to Biafra during daylight. The first criticism can be dismissed quickly. It makes sense to the State Department that Ojukwu surrender to save his starving because the State Department believes that Biafra has been, for all practical purposes, defeated. But it makes no sense to Ojukwu since he believes that time is on Biafra’s side.

The other two criticisms are harder to assess. Ojukwu makes a persuasive case that a relief land route would allow the Nigerian army access to roads that it now claims to control but in fact controls only intermittently. He makes another persuasive case that daylight flights might enable Nigerians to slip planes into a Biafran airfield during a relief operation. There is no such problem with night relief flights because Nigeria’s Egyptian jet pilots refuse to fly at night.

To my mind, these arguments are fairly good ones; embattled Biafra is obviously in no mood to allow any military advantage to the Nigerians in the name of relief. At the same time, I sense another argument in the minds of Colonel Ojukwu and his associates. It is possible that they are gambling that the horror of mass starvation and death will generate enough world pressure to force Nigeria into a cease-fire agreement. With a cease-fire, the Biafrans believe they could salvage some of their secession and sovereignty at a peace conference. In short, the starving may be Biafran hostages for a cease-fire.

I do not believe this is just callous disregard for the lives of thousands; but given the Biafran feeling that surrender may mean death and the Biafran fear that Nigerian relief overtures are a trap, Ojukwu and the men around him are not above trying to milk as much sympathy as they can out of their people’s plight. Moreover, the Biafrans believe the Nigerians, not the Biafrans, are the cause of all the starvation, and see no reason why the Biafrans have to make concessions for relief. If the Nigerians turn down the Biafran proposals on relief operations, then more pictures of starving babies will appear in the newspapers of Britain and America.

Callous though it may seem, the Biafran maneuver is, in fact, a good gamble. There is growing pressure in the United States, including the Congress, for America to move in and mount an enormous relief operation of its own to save the starving. If President Nixon did allow such an operation, the decision might have political overtones. The logistics of a relief project that large might in itself force both sides into a cease-fire. Or, if it did not, it might force the U.S. Government finally to take the side of those trying to pressure the British and the Nigerians into stopping the fighting.

That might give the Biafrans what they are holding out for - to sit at a conference table without the pressure of the Nigerian forces on them. If so, it would be a triumph of Biafran will, spirit and public relations.

Mr. Meisler, Africa correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was formerly deputy director of the Office of Evaluation and Research in the Peace Corps.