The Nigeria Biafra War

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.

New Perspectives on the Nigeria-Biafra War: No Victor, No Vanquished analyzes the continued impact of the Nigeria-Biafra war on the Igbo, the failure of the reconstruction and reconciliation effort in the post-war period, and the politics of exclusion of the memory of the war in public discourse in Nigeria. Furthermore, New Perspectives on the Nigeria-Biafra War explores the resilience of the Igbo people and the different strategies they have employed to preserve the history and memory of Biafra. The contributors argue that the war had important consequences for the socio-political developments in the post-war period, ushering in two differing ideologies: a paternalistic ideology of “co-option” of the Igbo by the Nigerian state, under the false premise of ‘No Victor, No Vanquished,” and the Igbo commitment to self-preservation on the other.

21 Female Participation in War and the Implication of Nationalism: The Postcolonial Disconnection in Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra -- Select Bibliography -- Index

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

A retired general of the Biafran Army presents a post-mortem account of the events of the Nigerian civil war, 1966-70. He attempts to explain dispassionately why army officers toppled the civil government in the cause of stability, and the considerable civilian support they received; and the ensuing riots and counter-coup, in the name of reunification, which led to a civil war claiming some three million lives. He presents eye-witness accounts, and from an insider-perspective tells the story of how and why the Biafrans fought the war for almost three years under blockade and in isolation from the outside world, aiming to rectify much perceived misinformation about the war published outside Africa.

The events of the Nigerian civil war and world reactions are woven together into a simultaneous and situational sequence based on eyewitness accounts from journalists, relief workers, mercenaries, arms dealers, pilots, and others.

This first comprehensive study of the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970) through the lens of gender explores the valiant and gallant ways women carried out old and new responsibilities in wartime and immediate postwar Nigeria. The book presents women as embodiments of vulnerability and agency, who demonstrated remarkable resilience and initiative, waging war on all fronts in the face of precarious conditions and scarcities, and maximizing opportunities occasioned by the hostilities. Women’s experiences are highlighted through critical analyses of oral interviews, memoirs, life histories, fashion and material culture, international legal conventions, music, as well as governmental and non-governmental sources. The book fills the gap in the war scholarship that has minimized women’s complex experiences fifty years after the hostilities ended. It highlights the cost of the conflict on Nigerian women, their participation in the hostilities, and their contributions to the survival of families, communities and the country. The chapters present counter-narratives to fictional and nonfictional accounts of the war, especially those written by men, which often peripheralize or stereotypically represent women as passive spectators or helpless victims of the conflict; and also highlight and exaggerate women’s moral laxity and sensationalize their marital infidelities.