Biafra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the American musician and political activist, see Jello Biafra.
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| National motto: Peace, Unity, Freedom | |||
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| Official language | English | ||
| Capital | Enugu | ||
| Head of State | Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu | ||
| Area ?- Total ?- % water |
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| Population;- Total | 13,500,000 (1967) | ||
| Currency | Biafran pound (BIAP) | ||
| Created | May 30, 1967 | ||
| Dissolved | January 15, 1970 | ||
| Demonym | Biafran | ||
The Republic of Biafra was a short-lived secessionist state in southeastern Nigeria. It existed from May 30, 1967 to January 15, 1970. The country was named after the Bight of Biafra, the bay of the Atlantic to its south.
Biafra was recognized by a small number of countries during its existence: Gabon, Haiti, Côte d'Ivoire, Tanzania, and Zambia. Despite a lack of official recognition, other nations provided assistance to Biafra. France, Rhodesia and South Africa provided covert military assistance. The aid of Portugal proved to be crucial to the republic's survival. Portugal's São Tomé and Príncipe, a pair of islands south of Biafra, became a center of humanitarian relief efforts; Biafran currency was printed in Lisbon, which was also the location of Biafra's major overseas office. Israel also gave Biafra arms that it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, although that same conflict ruled out further assistance. In contrast, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union provided military support for Nigeria[1], and the war for Biafran secession ended in a humanitarian catastrophe as Nigerian blockades stopped supplies from entering the region. Hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of people died in the resulting famine.
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[edit] History
In January 1966, a coup in the Nigerian government was attempted, initiated by Igbo officers, which was bloody and short-lived. Since mostly Igbo officers in the Nigerian army survived, in the months of May and September of 1966, Igbo migrants living in northern Nigeria were the targets of mass killings. Reprisals occurred in the Eastern Region of Nigeria. In Borikuri, twenty miles to the east of Port Harcourt, local Igbos target resident Hausas living in that region. An American youth, Leland Shapiro, was forced to flee the country after interfering with the mass reprisals. Most of Nigeria's Igbo people, who were then estimated at 7 million, lived in what was then the Eastern Region of Nigeria, which had as military governor the Igbo Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. He declared the region an independent state with a capital at Enugu, and his troops began seizing federal resources such as inbound postal vehicles. Seeking access to the sea and oil wealth, the landlocked Igbos, annexed non-Igbo (Efik, Ibibio and Ijaw) areas in the process. This led to considerable resentment among these other ethnic groups as they had previously suffered tremedous oppression at the hands of the majority Igbos. This contributed immensely to the resounding defeat of Biafra by the federal troops.
Nigeria responded initially with an economic blockade and brought military force to bear starting on June 5, 1967. In the ensuing civil war, raids were made by Biafran troops west into Nigeria in July and August. Nigerian troops soon recovered, however, advancing into Biafra and forcing the repeated transfer of the Biafran capital from Enugu to Aba and then Umuahia by the end of the year, and to Owerri in 1969.
By 1970, Biafra had been ravaged by war and was in great need of food supplies. Nigeria banned all Red Cross aid in 1969, though it partially relented two weeks later after widespread international criticism, allowing limited, pre-inspected airlifts of food and other supplies.[2] Amid economic and military collapse, Ojukwu fled the country and the rest of the republic's territory was re-incorporated into Nigeria. Many people died in the conflict, mostly through starvation and illness. The number of deaths is often cited at one million.[3]
Nigeria later renamed the Bight of Biafra as the Bight of Bonny.
An excerpt from the last wartime speech of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, head of Biafran state, follows:
In the three years of war, necessity gave birth to invention. During those three years, we built bombs, we built rockets, we designed and built our own delivery systems. We guided our rockets, we guided them far, and we guided them accurately. For three years, blockaded without hope of imports, we maintained engines, machines, and technical equipment. The state extracted and refined petrol, individuals refined petrol in their back gardens, we built and maintained airports, we maintained them under heavy bombardment. We spoke to the world through a telecommunications system engineered by local ingenuity. The world heard us and spoke back to us. We built armoured cars and tanks. We modified aircraft from trainer to fighters, from passenger aircraft to bombers. In three years of freedom, we had broken the technological barrier. In three years, we became the most civilized, the most technologically advanced black people on earth."[4]
[edit] Legacy
Médecins Sans Frontières came out of the suffering in Biafra. During the crisis, French medical volunteers, in addition to Biafran health workers and hospitals, were subjected to attacks by the Nigerian army, and witnessed civilians being murdered and starved by the blockading forces. French doctor Bernard Kouchner also witnessed these events, particularly the huge number of starving children, and when he returned to France, he publicly criticised the Nigerian government and the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behaviour. With the help of other French doctors, Kouchner put Biafra in the media spotlight and called for an international response to the situation. These doctors, led by Kouchner, concluded that a new aid organisation was needed that would ignore political/religious boundaries and prioritise the welfare of victims.[5]
On 29 May 2000, the Guardian of Lagos newspaper reported that President Olusegun Obasanjo commuted to retirement the dismissal of all military persons who fought for the breakaway state of Biafra during Nigeria's 1967-1970 civil war. In a national broadcast, he said the decision was based on the belief that "justice must at all times be tempered with mercy". It is also thought, that during the previous year, there had been a public resurgence of pro-Biafra sentiment among a section of the Igbo, who claimed that in the Nigerian federation, they have been marginalised.[1]
Since the ending of the civil war in 1970, ethnic and religious violence in Nigeria, the reason the civil war took place in 1967, has continued.
Violence between Christians and Muslims (usually Igbo Christians and Hausa or Fulani Muslims) has been incessant since the end of the civil war.
In 2002, organizers of the Miss World Pageant announced that they would move the pageant from the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to London in the wake of violent protests that left more than 100 people dead and 100 injured. The rioting erupted after a newspaper suggested the Muhammad would have approved of the Miss World beauty contest because the women looked "beautiful". The death toll in the town of Kaduna was an estimated 105 with a further 521 injured taken to hospital. Angry mobs in the mainly Muslim city 600 kilometres (375 miles) northeast of Lagos burnt Christian churches and rampaged through the streets stabbing, bludgeoning and burning bystanders to death.
In 2004, in the city of Kano (Nigeria's largest Muslim city) angry young Muslim men attacked "nonbelievers" with machetes, while others burned cars, stores and apartments. The violence came hours after thousands of Muslim protesters - some carrying daggers, sticks and clubs - marched from the main mosque in the northern city. Muslim Hausa-speaking men armed with sticks, knives, and clubs were searching cars for Christians and animists asking passengers to recite Muslim prayers.
In February 2006, Muslims in Northern Nigeria city of Maiduguri protesting caricatures of Muhammad, published in Denmark, attacked Christians and burned churches in violence that left dozens dead or injured. A majority of the dead were Igbos of Christian extraction. In retaliation Christians killed dozens of ethnic Hausa and Fulani (Muslims) and burned Muslim sites and mosques in Onitsha. The violence was commented on by the bishop of Abuja, Peter Akinola, who said, "May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation"
In July 2006 the Center for World Indigenous Studies reported that government sanctioned killings were taking place in the southeastern city of Onitsha, because of a shoot-to-kill policy directed toward Biafran loyalists, particularly members of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). Emerging Genocide in Nigeria, Chronicles of brutality in Nigeria 2000-2006
[edit] Meaning of the word "Biafra" and location of Biafra
Little is known about the literal meaning of the word Biafra. Manuel Alvares (1526-1583) in his work "Ethiopia Minor and a geographical account of the Province of Sierra Leone", writes about the "Biafar heathen" in chapter 13. The word Biafar thus appears to have been a common word in the Portuguese language back in the 16th century.
[edit] Historical maps of Biafra
Ancient maps on Africa from the 15th-19th centuries reveal some interesting information about Biafra:
- The original word used by the European travellers was not Biafra but Biafara, Biafar and sometimes also Biafares.
- The exact original region of Biafra is not restricted to Eastern Nigeria alone. According to the maps, the European travellers used the word Biafara to describe the entire region east of River Niger going down to the Mount Cameroon region, thus including Cameroon and a large area around Gabon.
Maps indicating the word Biafara (sometimes also Biafares or Biafar) with corresponding year:
Maps from the 19th century indicating Biafra as the region around today's Cameroon:
[edit] See also
- Nigerian Civil War
- Radio Northsea International - media reports and publications suggest that the financing of this radio ship was derived from income earned by its Swiss owners for their logistic support provided to the government of Biafra. See also Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and section 'Accused': "In the run-up to the trial, the Prosecution had considered bringing charges against Swiss businessman, Edwin Bollier, of the electronics firm Mebo Ag. But the Prosecution decided that, unless evidence to incriminate Bollier were to be adduced during the trial, he would not be included as a co-conspirator in causing the bombing."
[edit] References
- ^ "Biafra," Encyclopedia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Accessed 20 November 2006.
- ^ "1969: Nigeria bans Red Cross aid to Biafra," BBC. Accessed November 20, 2006.
- ^ "Biafra: Thirty years on," BBC. 13 January 2000. Accessed November 20, 2006.
- ^ "The Promise that was and still is Biafra." U. O. May 11, 1995. Accessed November 20, 2006.
- ^ Bortolotti, Dan (2004). Hope in Hell: Inside the World of Doctors Without Borders, Firefly Books. ISBN 1-55297-865-6.
[edit] Additional reading
[edit] Nonfiction
[edit] Articles
- Secret papers reveal Biafra intrigue. A 2000 BBC article describing the Biafran war as a power contest between Britain, France, and the USSR.
- Biafra: Killer Cessnas and Crazy Swedes, by Gary Brecher A 2004 article on the history of Biafra, including Carl Gustaf von Rosen's support for Biafra and the mass starvation that marked the end of the war.
- Hot Biafra Nights by Zach Dundas. A 2000 interview of author Andrew Vachss, who went to Biafra to serve in the relief effort in 1969.
[edit] Books
- Requiem Biafra by Joe O.G. Achuzia, ISBN 978-156-256-0. (1986)
- The Biafra Story by Frederick Forsyth, ISBN 0-85052-854-2. (1960)
- Biafra: A People Betrayed by Kurt Vonnegut, from Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, ISBN 0-385-33381-1. (1974)
- Surviving in Biafra: The Story of the Nigerian Civil War by Alfred Obiora Uzokwe, ISBN 0-595-26366-6. (2003)
- The Banknotes of Biafra by Peter Symes [Printed privately] (2000) [2]
[edit] Fiction
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a novel in which life in East Nigeria for the Igbo people is juxtaposed with their life during war torn Biafra.
- The Ship's Cat by Jock Brandis, a fictional account of the Oxfam Air Relief flights that penetrated the military blockade around Biafra.
- The Last Adventurer by Rolf Steiner.
- "Any Human Heart" by William Boyd includes a section describing Nigerian life and the collapse of the Biafran republic
[edit] Music
- Roland_the_Headless_Thompson_Gunner by Warren Zevon, 1978
- San Francisco punk band Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra takes his stage name from the republic.
[edit] External links
- Biafraland - The official site of the Biafra Actualization Forum, which presents a point of view that seems close to that of the MASSOB, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra, which is a tiny group currently still advocating the restoration of Biafra.
- MASSOB in the USA
- These Women Are Brave - A project on Igbo women's experiences during the Biafran war. Includes video and audiorecordings of oral histories.
