Speaking of the darkest Part of Nigeria History, every student of history should always remember to document the civil war that broke out in 1967.
The country Nigeria we all celebrate today had once been a country on the edge of total collapse, sucked of buoyant of tribulations of killing, gruesome murder and suffering.
Just like other civil wars we’ve seen or witnessed in other parts of the world, the bedrock of these wars are always inspired as a result of tribal or Ethnic jingoism.
Truth be told, I was never born nor my parents were born when the war broke out, I can’t even tell if my grandparents were alive at that period. So I can’t stop imagining how dastardly and hazardous the situation might be, but thanks to oral sources and record keeping
The Nigerian civil war which is also known as the Biafran war which started between the period of 6th July 1967 to 15th of January 1970. It was a fight for political independence in 1967 by the Biafran government.
It was a war between the Nigerian government and the Government of the Biafran. General Yakubu Gowon was the one who took the lead for the Nigerian government while Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu was the leader for the Biafran government.
The need for the Biafra war aroused the Igbo ethnic group when they saw how the Nigerian government was being governed by the Hausa/Fulani by ignoring their own interest.
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR
The civil war didn’t just happen out of the blue,it is something that had been accumulating for decades just like women’s pregnancy, it grows little by little until it is reap for delivery.
The causes of the Biafran war can be categorized into two aspects which are the remote causes and the immediate causes.
According to Plotnicov, Leonard (1971). The causes of the conflict could be said to have been resulted from then political, economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions which preceded Britain’s formal decolonization of Nigeria formal decolonization of Nigeria from 1960 to 1963.
The remote causes are:
- The Amalgamation of Nigeria
The amalgamation of Nigeria which is meant to be the joining of the Southern and northern protectorate colony of Nigeria in 1914 by Federick Lord Lugard.
One of the main reasons for the amalgamation by the British was for the colonial administration since they were geographically close to each other.
They ignored the fact that the religion and cultures of those two colonies that were amalgamated were different from each other.
Therefore, the amalgamation of Nigeria serves as one of the remote causes of the Biafran war
- The 1965 Western Region Election Rigging
One of the remote causes of the Biafran was the election of the western region in 1965 which was said to be believed to have been rigged.
After coming to a decisive point of the election result which affects the breakdown of law and order of the country.
This particularly led to an usurpation by the military in 1966. This is believed to have led to the Nigeria civil war of 1967.
- The Fear of Tribal Dominance
Another remote cause of the Civil War was the fear of tribal or Ethnicity dominance. First of all, it was this fear that caused the first ever military takeover in Nigeria on 15th January, 1966.
It is believed that the coup d’etat was initially triggered by the Igbo tribe on the notion that no Igbo army officer was killed. Six months after this first coup d’etat, on exactly 29th July, 1966, there was a counter coup believed to have been initiated by the Northern soldiers.
- The Failure to Sanction the 1966 Coup Plotters
The failure of General Ironsi who was part of the July coup to have sanctioned those who executed the January, 1966 coup.
People believed that it was based on tribal sentiments which made five army officers who should have been implicated for their role.
General Ironsi’s failure was then believed to have laid the foundation for the 1967 civil war.
IMMEDIATE CAUSES
One of the immediate causes of the Nigeria civil war was the 1966 coup which claimed the life of General Aguyi Ironsi who was the head of state during that period.
General Aguiyi ironsi was held as a high-ranking personality among the Igbo. The Easterners believed that it was the Northerners who actually planned the coup against General Aguiyi Ironsi as a retaliation for the 1966 coup.
This then saw the rise of the conflict between the Easterners and the Northerners.
The refusal of Ojukwu who was the governor of the easterners to recognize Yakubu Gowon as the new military head of state was also one of the immediate causes of the civil war.
Ojukwu said that Yakubu Gowon was a junior officer in the military rank while he is a senior officer, so he refused to take orders from him.
The failure to adopt the Aburi accord. It was discussed during the Aburi Accord conference that Nigeria will adopt a confederal system of government in which power will be shared among different federating units and there will be a weak center.
The need for succession will be transparent which will also give the Easterners opportunity to rule at their own will. This system then turned out not to be adopted when General Yakubu Gowon decided to create more states. This can also be said to be one of the immediate causes of the Nigeria civil war.
THE PRINCIPAL ACTORS OF THE WAR
Ojukwu
He was the one responsible for the inspecting of the Biafra Soldiers since He was the one who is leading the Biafran.
Following a counter-coup program in the northern part of the country in July 1966 in which many Igbos were killed, there was a peace conference hosted by Joseph Ankrah in Aburi, Ghana.
Poor of execution of the resolutions of the peace conference triggered Ojukwu to declare eastern Nigeria as a sovereign state to be known as Biafra on May 30, 1967, He declared as follows :
“Having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf, and in your name, that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic, now, therefore I, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Military Governor of Eastern Nigeria, by virtue of the authority, and pursuant to the principles recited above, do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall, henceforth, be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of The Republic of Biafra.”
Yakubu Gowon
After the August 1966 coup, Yakubu Gowon at the age of 31, became Nigeria’s youngest military chief of staff. With the secession by the Igbos which was on the way, he had moved swiftly to weaken the support base of the region by decreeing the creation of 12 new states to replace the four regions.
At the end of the war, Gowon had, in acceptance of Biafra’s cease-fire, declared that there would be ‘no victor and no vanquished’.
In the light of this, the following years were declared to be a period of “rehabilitation, reconstruction, and reconciliation.” The oil-price boom, which began as a result of the high price of crude oil in the world market in 1973, increased the federal government’s ability to undertake the task of rebuilding the nation.
Wole Soyinka
Due to the issue of the Nigeria war with the Biafra, Wole Soyinka travelled to the ‘enemy camp’ with the purpose of making an appeal for peace. He then secretly met with Ojukwu in Enugu.
When the Gowon regime got to know about this, he then ordered him to be imprisoned for 22 months. Though he was not given pen and paper, he still wrote a poem criticizing the Nigerian Government.
Soyinka would later tell the BBC of how events unfolded back then:
“We arrive in Asaba and the Sea Dogs drop us in the lavish palace of Professor Edozien, and from there across the River Niger, where in 1967 Soyinka had slipped through a loosely observed blockade into Biafra,” he said in an interview.
“In the feverish marketplace of Onitsha, the town on the eastern bank, he remembers his first visit well.
“There came this group of very young vigilantes with wooden guns. They handled those wooden guns as if they were real guns. It was a kind of portent of what was to come, of a people unprepared for war but with absolute faith.
Aoyinka was arrested at wooden gunpoint and taken to Enugu, the capital of the self-proclaimed state of Biafra. Here he waited for the opportunity to speak with Ojukwu.
When it came, Ojukwu was polite but firm.
He remembered the size of the rats in those days and feels that, unlike the rest of Enugu, the hotel seems to have taken a turn for the better.
“We still choose to stay overnight somewhere else, leaving behind the long shadows of the past and the distant memories of oversized rodents,” he said.
EFFECTS OF THE WAR
The effects of the war will forever remain a scar in the life of the Igbos and even Nigeria as a country till today.
According to Nwanne W. Okafor (from Nigeria who wrote in his master thesis at the Tilburg University in the Netherlands) wars have profound effects on the economy as they drain wealth, disrupt markets and depress economic growth of participating parties
Economic Effects:
The war had a great negative effect on the economy of both the Biafra people and also even Nigeria. The economy of the Biafran was greatly affected when food supplies has been cut off from Nigeria. The rate of unemployment was greatly increased in the Biafran Nation. Every money gathered was used for the buying of weapon.
The price of commodities increased due to the war. So many people also lost their lives due to starvation.
The Nigeria economy also was affected due to the oil in Delta which was hijacked and Nigeria no longer has control over it. The Nigerian government was majorly concerned about the provision of weapons during that time and the needs of the citizens were being ignored.
The effects on Religion and Education:
During the war, the University of Nsukka students had to stay at home so as to avoid loss of their lives.
There were also people who left the white man’s religion during this period and went back to their native traditional religion so as to seek for more powerful protection.
A lot of schools and religious buildings were destroyed during this process. As a result of the war which made Muslim and the Christians to turned against each other despite the fact that the war was not majorly based on religion issues.
Insecurity and lack of Development
The rate of insecurity was greatly increased during the war. There were no new developments and so many Igbos lost their lives when trying to escape.
The Nigerian soldiers also lost their lives during the period of the civil war which led to shortage of Nigerian army.
As stated by Siyan Chen (American University and a management analyst) war has devastating consequences for a country, including death, displacement of people, and destruction of public infrastructure as well as physical and social capital
CONCLUSION
One important lesson every Nigerian should learn from this war is ‘unity’.
Like I have always been saying in my previous stories, the only reason why the Europeans were able to colonize Africa was due to our lack of unity, solidarity and lack of spirit of brotherhood.
Until we begin to understand the power of unity among us, we will never be able to outshine the Europeans.
After the end of the civil war, one of the main aims of General Yakubu Gowon’s government was one of providing relief for the suffering masses of the newly affected areas.
The need for shelter, food and medicines for the places that were affected during the war became more important.
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