Lessons from the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War (1967-1970)
By David Mayen Ayarbior, Juba, South Sudan
July 8, 2016 (SSB) — This case study in “House of War 2013” in support of a saying by the philosopher George Santyana that “those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. The Nigerian civil war, known as the Nigerian-Biafran War (July 1967-January 1970), was a secessionist attempt that pitted Nigeria’s Southeastern regional coalition of ethnic groups against the Nigerian authoritarian state.
Just like in many other instances of ethnic civil wars that led to successful secession of regions into sovereign statehood [e.g. Eritrea and South Sudan], a self-proclaimed republic, “The Republic of Biafra,” was an example where a civil war that was motivated by self-rule could not attain its ultimate goal. Failure to succeed was not attributable to lack of manpower since the people of Biafra (led by the ethnic Igbo) did believe in their cause and many joined ‘the armed revolution’ against an aggressive Nigerian military composed of other ethnic groups, especially from the Northern region. The reason why the Igbo were defeated was because the Nigerian army, supported by oil revenue and multinational corporations, used superior armament and brutal force rather than negotiated settlement.
Nigeria was a “nation-state” born out of imperial craftsmen, just like the rest of African states. The Igbos, who were nicknamed ‘the Jews of Africa’, were more educated in the Western economic tradition of capitalism. As they gained more education, some moved northwards where their capitalist mentality and success was resented by the Hausa Fulani, who were more of a self-identifying homogenous traditional Islamic community. Migrant Igbos were resented because they occupied all kinds of jobs that paid- such as railway men, teachers, technocrats, as well as having the lion’s share in the number of commissioned officers in the Nigerian army.
Like all ethnic civil wars in Africa, that resentment of Igbo ‘immigrants’ in the North required a trigger or pretext for wanton killings to start. The long awaited trigger came as a result of a failed military coup d’état led by Igbo officers on January 15, 1966, in which northern leaders including the premier and governor of the Northern Province were killed, yet the coup plotters were not prosecuted by their fellow Igbo officers.
Northern officers led by Lt. Col. Murtallah Muhammad (Muslim) and Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon (Christian) launched a successful counter coup (July 1966). Because of that event which occurred only six years into formal sovereignty, northern ethnic Hausa started retaliation attacks against Igbos in the North. In a house-to-house campaign of ethnic cleansing somewhat similar to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, tens of thousands of Igbos were killed in the North and hundreds of thousands fled back ‘home’ to the Southeastern region.
Because of failure by the state to protect its own citizens from being massacred, in addition to the principal failure to equitably redistribute national revenue, the Igbo felt aggrieved against the state. To the Igbo, the Nigerian state was a Hausa-Fulani dominated and aggressive entity to which they did not wish to belong. And since the country was divided into three greater regions, the governor of Eastern Nigeria at the time, who was a well-spoken Oxford educated Colonel, known as chief Odumegwe Ojuku, started convincing his ethnic group to speak of their plight and region as not just a distinct part of Nigeria, but as an oppressed, robbed, and economically marginalized region which aspired to become a sovereign nation-state. Ojuku appealed to his aggrieved constituency about the Northerners’ intention to continue their genocide into a largely Christian Igbo land and “dip the Quran in the sea.”
As a popular military governor, Ojuku’s eloquent discourse about secession and formation of the Republic of Biafra, a potentially viable republic by all objective standards, resonated with most Igbos who decided to join him in big masses. His talk about “the ordinate ambition of the Hausa-Fulani oligarchy to continue to dominate the whole of what was formally the federation of Nigeria and [their] unrealistic desire to acquire the wealth and resources of Biafra, while rejecting their people,” was understood as more than mere political rhetoric.
The targeted mass killing of Igbos in the North, including women and children, changed the way Nigerians, indeed many Africans identified with the colonial concept of nation-state and its viability. They doubted that the modern state with its current boundaries as a sociopolitical organization could be capable of resolving the bitter interethnic conflicts being fought within its artificial boundaries.
After that unfortunate event which, thenceforth, repeated itself in different manners and forms in many African states, Ojuku and his regional parliament proclaimed the independence of Biafra. Recalling earlier massacres of Igbos which occurred in the North in 1945 and 1953 (where thousands of Igbos were killed and displaced), chief Col. Ojuku proclaimed the Independence of Biafra from the Federal Republic of Nigeria on May 30 1967. In one interview after his independence proclamation, he stated that: Our people are being massacred all over Nigeria. And to be able to give them protection, in the circumstance available and within the means available to me [as governor of the Southeastern region], what was done was: ‘once you crossed this line [drawing a line in the air]’ you are home and safe. And Biafra, to a large extent, was in fact that line.
After half-hearted efforts or, rather, ultimatums on ‘negotiating’ a settlement to Biafra’s grievances, the Nigerian government decided to attack Biafra’s poorly equipped army. However, Nigeria’s military campaign was initially halted by stiff resistance from Biafran forces who not only defended well, but decided to launch a successful offensive of their own. Biafran troops decided to advance to Lagos, Nigeria’s capital. They also annexed territory across the Niger River to the west. It took five years of a war of attrition in which more than 2 million lives were lost (McCollum and Hugh 2004) before the government of Nigeria regained momentum and started pushing retreating Biafran forces eastwards. The last few months of the war saw a scorched earth military campaign in which the Nigerian military used all kinds of heavy artillery, tanks, air force, and large columns of infantrymen against ill-equipped Biafran forces.
After five long years of fighting Igbo insurgents, the Nigerian military marched into the capital of Biafra, Enugu, which was virtually evacuated by Igbos who took shelter in small corridors of rebel controlled territory held by chief Ojuku’s men, whom they trusted more than the invading Nigerian government’s military. Biafrans became refugees and IDPs in their own self-proclaimed country, fleeing from one corner to another, while horrible pictures of dying malnourished children trickled into the international media houses which had been reluctant to show sympathy towards ‘African rebels.’ Because of images from international media houses showing almost all Igbo men and women in support of what the Nigerian government labeled as “bandits” and rebels, the hitherto simplistic perception of ethnic civil wars in Africa was now reconsidered when these Igbo civilians decided to flee with the so called bandits and rebels rather than receive and celebrate the victory of the Nigerian military.
Nigeria’s main problem is widely attributed to governmental failure to manage ethnic diversity. Without finding that elusive social contract, and given current cases of massive violence, especially growing tension and violence between Nigeria’s geographically associated ethnic groups, North (Muslim) and South (Christian), not restructuring the state system could lead to the country’s breaking into at least two states.
Mayen Ayarbior has a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Political Science from Kampala International University (Uganda), Masters in International Security from JKSIS-University of Denver (USA), and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London. He is the author of “House of War (Civil War and State Failure in Africa) 2013” and currently the Press Secretary/ Spokesperson in the Office of South Sudan’s Vice President, H.E. James Wani Igga. You can reach him via his email address: mayen.ayarbior@gmail.com.
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