After a few minutes, I decided I might as well try to make an opening, and asked the soldiers seated on the bench opposite me where we were going. ‘I’m ill, and I need to see a doctor. Are we anywhere near Udi? There’s a hospital there.’

They stared right through me.

‘If you don’t shut your mouth, old man, you will soon be much more ill,’ said one.

That drew our cosy little chat to an end, and I concentrated on trying to keep my innards on an even keel instead. We bumped along the track for over an hour, past glittering lagoons and mangrove swamps, all the while rending the night air with the commentary from Radio Biafra. My ears pricked up as the announcer mentioned ‘perfidious Albion’ and, sure enough, he began to discuss the Prime Minister’s impending visit. I couldn’t follow it all due to the noise of the engine and a squabble that had started between two of the men near me, but the thrust seemed to be that the visit was a gimmick designed to deflect the world’s media from a sudden and brutal attack by the Nigerians.

Twenty minutes later, we stopped. The radio was switched off, and the man in the passenger seat took out a walkie-talkie and spoke rapidly into it in his language. There was a pause, followed by a reply through a sea of static. After ten long minutes of this, we started up again, but at an even slower pace. Then I caught some movement a couple of hundred yards down the path: a cluster of men in camouflage were stepping out from the long grass. As we approached, I saw that they held bottles of beer and machine guns and that they were manning a checkpoint, which consisted of a bamboo pole across the path. Simple, but effective. We slowed and our driver leaned out of the window and handed over our papers, talking rapidly in the local language. They inspected them sullenly, then waved us through and trudged back into the long grass.

We passed several such checkpoints, each following more or less the same procedure. Finally, we reached a line of hardwood trees, some of which had been felled and used to create a crude gate. Documents were once more handed over and inspected, the gate was opened and we drove down a slightly larger laterite road.