Republic Of Biafra Once Upon A Time In Nigeria

Not quite four months after the Western Region's election of October 10, 1965, did the localized mayhem in that Region find its way furiously into the center of the nation on January 15, 1966! It was like a whirl-wind of nothing but anarchy and lawlessness. The serious aftermath of the marred and rigged election was that it acted as the last straw that broke the Carmel's back, providing immediate reason for the army to overthrow the government of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Anarchy ensued; a counter coup led to the death of Major-General Ironsi. Callous barbarous massacre of thousands of easterners in the North followed. With their lives in jeopardy, easterners fled for safety to eastern region; refugee crisis followed. To guarantee their safety, easterners seceded from Nigeria and on May 30th 1967, formed an independent and sovereign nation of the Republic of Biafra. Determined to bring Easterners back, on July 6, 1967 Nigeria invaded Biafra; waged a gruesome thirty-month-civil war against Biafra. Nigeria blockaded Biafra on land, sea and air, to prevent food from entering Biafra. A malnutrition disease, Kwashiorkor that caused the deaths of thousands of Biafrans, followed. Nigeria bombed Biafran civilians, killing thousands. On January 12, 1970 the war ended leaving more than three million people dead in a war that was totally avoidable!

An accessible study demonstrating how the conditions of the Nigerian Civil War paved the way for the country's long experience of crime.

"This is a study of the Nigerian Civil War during the Biafra Crisis of 1967-1970"--

In 1966, several waves of rioting in northern Nigeria culminated in the brutal massacre of thousands of easterners by their northern Nigerian counterparts. Sensing that their safety could no longer be guaranteed, the easterners fled to the eastern region and established an independent nation called Biafra. Refusing to accept her sovereignty, Nigeria waged a thirty-month war against Biafra, targeting air assaults at civilian locations, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of children, women, and the elderly. Nigeria used land and sea blockade to prevent relief food from reaching hungry masses in Biafra and thousands of children died from a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. At the end of it all in 1970, two million people had perished.

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts of the Nigerian civil war *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "[A] cardinal principle of British colonial policy [is] that the interests of a large native population shall not be subject to the will... of a small minority of educated and Europeanized natives." - Lord Frederick Lugard Nigeria was the creation of a British businessman by the name of Sir George Taubman Goldie. The gifted son of a substantial Manx military officer and politician, Goldie was educated at the prestigious Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, after which he served briefly in the army before embarking on a journey of adventure to West Africa. The year was 1877, and the West African coast was sub-divided into the spheres of influence of various European trading concerns, and while some exploration of the interior had taken place, the European rush to claim the region had yet to begin in earnest. Nigeria was an unpopular destination for European settlement, thanks to its punishing climate and proliferation of tropical disease, so it saw very little direct European influence. Europeans were posted to Nigeria or sought employment purely to satisfy the needs of administration, and, of course, the various Christian missionary organizations were led largely by whites. Christian missions, incidentally, succeeded spectacularly in the spreading of Christianity across the animist south, but they made absolutely no inroads in the Muslim north. Nigeria was among the first African colonies to be groomed for independence, and upon its success as a free nation, Britain staked a great deal. The process was lengthy, bearing in mind both the intricate ethnic tapestry of the region and the relatively complex systems of government, involving a number of different permutations in the 15 years between the end of World War II and 1960, when independence was finally granted. During this period, the realization began to dawn that the original 1914 amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates of Nigeria might have been a strategic blunder, inasmuch as an attempt had been made to forge a single territory out of two radically different and mutually antagonistic blocs. It was, of course, too late by then to try and alter the political map of Nigeria, but perhaps the creation of two territories, rather than one, would have ultimately served the region better. On October 1, 1960, the new nation of Nigeria took its place on the world stage, and it was welcomed into the United Nations and the British Commonwealth. Riding a wave of official optimism, with its deep ethnic fissures for the time being hidden, Nigeria was hailed as a signature success in British decolonization. It would soon prove to be anything but a success. Biafra: The History and Legacy of the Secessionist Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War chronicles the story of Nigeria, its civil war, and the controversial secession of Biafra. Along with pictures and a bibliography, you will learn about Biafra like never before.

With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s. With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place. Epic, ambitious and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we have had before.

A fearless act of journalism in 1960s Nigeria and the true story behind the international bestselling novel The Dogs of War. The Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s was one of the first occasions when Western consciences were awakened and deeply affronted by the level of suffering and the scale of atrocity being played out in the African continent. This was thanks not just to advances in communication technology but to the courage and journalistic skills of foreign correspondents like Frederick Forsyth, who had already earned an enviable reputation for tenacity and accuracy working for Reuters and the BBC. In The Biafra Story, Forsyth reveals the depth of the British Government’s active involvement in the conflict—information which many in power would have preferred to remain secret. General Gowon’s genocide of the Biafran people was facilitated by a ready supply of British arms and advice. Still tragically relevant in its depiction of global affairs, this powerful book also launched Frederick Forsyth to literary stardom by providing him with the background material for The Dogs of War. The dramatic events and shocking political exposures, all delivered with Forsyth’s bold and perceptive style, makes The Biafra Story a compelling lesson in courage.