By Antoinette Chalaby-Moualla — Fifty years ago, the Igbo people of southeast Nigeria seceded, declaring an independent Republic of Biafra and sparking a brutal civil war that left about a million people dead.
On May 30, 1967, the military head of Nigeria’s eastern region, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, had declared “the independent Republic of Biafra”.
His move came two days after the head of Nigeria’s military government, General Yakubu Gowon, divided the federation into 12 states, including three in the east.
Biafra, at the time had a population of 14 million out of 55 million nationwide. Its mainly Christian population was two-thirds Igbo.
But the Igbos felt discriminated against by the two other main ethnic groupings, the northern Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba in the southwest.
In January 1966, Nigeria suffered its first military coup, led by the Igbo General Johnson Aguiyi Ironsi. A counter-coup launched in the north in July killed Ironsi and many of his senior Igbo officers.
Thousands of Igbo civilians were killed in reprisals, especially in the north, and millions of survivors fled back to the southeast.
The government rejected the secession of the southeast. The military imposed a blockade on eastern Nigeria.
On July 6, the army unleashed an offensive with its first air bombardments. In October federal troops took Biafra’s capital, Enugu, then the port of Calabar.
Britain, the Soviet Union and the Organisation of African Unity sidedd with the federal government.
Only a few African countries and France backed Biafra.
On July 3, 1968 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said eight to 12 million people were affected by the conflict and that 200 people a day are dying of starvation in Biafra.
The Biafra famine caused by the blockade made headlines around the world, with heartrending photographs of children, stomachs bloated by malnutrition, their legs bent with rickets.
A handful of French doctors working for the ICRC, including the future French government minister Bernard Kouchner, brush aside convention and political borders to launch an aid effort.
In early January 1970, the army began its final assault, and on January 15, Biafra ceased to exist. Ojukwu fled on January 11 to Ivory Coast.
But resentment lingers and deepens over the decades, as the Igbo complain of a lack of investment in the southeast, which many view as a punishment for Biafra.
The war invests considerable power in the army, with military coups becoming a feature of Nigerian political life for decades. — AFP
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