The Nigeria-Biafra War started on July 6, 1967 and ended on January 15, 1970. The former Eastern Region of Nigeria seceded from Nigeria and declared its independence on May 30, 1967, following the massacre of the Igbo people who were living in the northern parts of Nigeria.
One of the greatest enduring myths in Nigeria is the lie that Yakubu Gowon fought the Nigeria-Biafra war to keep Nigeria united, whereas in reality not only did Yakubu Gowon whose Northern region had originally intended to secede (Araba) after the July 1966 counter-coup cause the unnecessary war through his failure of leadership, his aim for fighting the war was never in the least a genuine desire to keep Nigeria united but purely because of Northern economic interests. The economic interests of the hitherto secessionist North became the principal reason for the volte face from secession to “one Nigeria” after the British government advised the Northern leadership of the economic disadvantages of secession.
The federal government of Nigeria responded to the secession with “police action,” that is, a partial military operation designed to crush what it perceived as a rebellion. These actions were the beginning of a war that lasted about thirty months. But what was originally interpreted as a domestic confl ict later took on an international dimension as state and non-state actors like Britain, the USSR, France, the Red Cross, and the World Council of Churches became involved in the confl ict.
The war received one of the highest humanitarian interventions in recent history. The massive number of children and women facing starvation att racted the att ention of groups like the World Council of Churches, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Caritas Internationalis, Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee, and UNICEF.
The relief effort resulted in unusual Jewish-Christian co-operation, 4 Countries like the United States, Germany, France, and the Nordic Countries made enormous contributions towards the relief effort.
5 The international media also highlighted the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn region and successfully brought this part of the world into global focus.
The New York Times, The London Times, La Stampa of Italy, and Le Monde of France were some of the newspapers that eff ectively covered the war. The dominant argument in the historiography of the Nigeria-Biafra War, both within academia and the popular media, is that the Igbo were targeted for extermination by the Muslim north. A year before the war, during the 1966 massacres of Easterners in Northern Nigeria, the alleged indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets and the widespread hunger in secessionist Biafra did a lot to rouse the world’s conscience to the humanitarian crisis facing Biafran peoples.
The international media played a signifi cant role in exposing the humanitarian tragedies, especially in the Igbo-speaking parts of Biafra. And many years after the war, scholarly accounts of the war, mostly by scholars from the Igbo-speaking parts of Baifra, have privileged insights into some of the most hideous acts unleashed on Biafrans during the war.
Yet, not much has been reported about the atrocities perpetrated against the minorities in Biafra, both by the Nigerian military forces and the Biafran militias. This is a gap in Biafra’s history.
Nigeria continues to suffer severe social, economic and psychological dislocations as a result of the needless conflict. The nation has since become a disharmonious, dysfunctional and strife torn chaotic failed state Nigeria.Look at what is happening in the Eastern Part of Nigeria and you will cry for Igbos.
Compiled by Chukwuemeka Collins
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