The Nigerian Civil War was fought from 1967 to 1970 between Nigeria’s federal government and the secessionist state of Biafra. Ethnic conflict, economic inequality, and educational disparities were among the factors that contributed to the start of the war, which killed an estimated 500,000 to 3,000,000 people. Nigeria became an independent country on October 1, 1960. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was its first federal prime minister—he had held that position since 1957—and Nnamdi Azikiwe became its president of the Senate, which was a largely ceremonial role. Following a UN-supervised referendum in 1961, the northern part of the Trust Territory of the Cameroons joined Nigeria’s Northern region, while in October the Southern Cameroons united with Cameroun to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. On October 1, 1963, Nigeria became a republic, with Azikiwe as its president, although, as prime minister, Balewa remained more politically powerful.
In Nigeria and its surrounding region, long-standing regional stresses—ethnic competitiveness, educational inequality, and economic imbalance being the most prominent—again came to the fore in a controversial census during 1962–63. In an attempt to stave off ethnic conflict, Nigeria’s Mid-West region was created in 1963 by dividing the Western region. Despite this division, the country still was segmented into three large geographic regions, each of which was essentially controlled by an ethnic group: the west by the Yoruba people, the east by the Igbo people, and the north by the Hausa–Fulani people. Conflicts were endemic, as regional leaders protected their privileges; the South complained of Northern domination, and the North feared that the Southern elite was bent on capturing power. In the west, the government had fallen apart in 1962, and a boycott of the federal election of December 1964 brought Nigeria to the brink of breakdown.
The point of no return was reached in January 1966, when, after the collapse of order in the west following the fraudulent election of October 1965, a group of army officers attempted to overthrow the federal government, and Balewa and two of the regional premiers were murdered. A military administration was set up under Maj. Gen. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, but his plan to abolish the regions and impose a unitary government met with anti-Igbo riots in the north. The military intervention worsened the political situation, as the army itself split along ethnic lines, its officers clashed over power, and the instigators and leaders of the January coup were accused of favouring Igbo domination. In July 1966 northern officers staged a countercoup, Aguiyi-Ironsi was assassinated, and Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon came to power. The crisis was compounded by intercommunal clashes in the north and threats of secession in the south.
Outbreak of war – Odumegwu Ojukwu
Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Odumegwu Ojukwu led the secessionist state of Biafra from its declaration of independence in 1967 through its surrender in 1970, which ended the Nigerian Civil War. Gowon’s attempt to hold a conference to settle the constitutional future of Nigeria was abandoned after a series of ethnic massacres in October 1966. A last-ditch effort to save the country was made in January 1967, when the Eastern delegation, led by Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Odumegwu Ojukwu agreed to meet the others on neutral ground at Aburi, Ghana. The situation deteriorated, however, after differences developed over the interpretation of the accord. In May the Eastern region’s consultative assembly authorized Ojukwu to establish a sovereign republic, while, at the same time, the federal military government promulgated a decree dividing the four regions into 12 states, including 6 in the north and 3 in the east, in an attempt to break the power of the regions.
On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu declared the secession of the three states of the Eastern region under the name of the Republic of Biafra, which Nigeria’s federal government interpreted as an act of rebellion. Fighting broke out in early July. Within weeks the conflict had escalated into a full-scale civil war. In August 1967 Biafran troops crossed the Niger, seized Benin City, and were well on their way to Lagos before they were checked at Ore, a small town in the Western state (now Ondo state). Shortly thereafter, federal troops entered Enugu, the provisional capital of Biafra, and penetrated the Igbo heartland. The next two years were marked by stiff resistance in the shrinking Biafran enclave and by heavy casualties among civilians as well as in both armies, all set within what threatened to be a military stalemate.
Peacemaking attempts by the Organization of African Unity (now the African Union), the pope, and others were ineffective, and Biafra began gaining recognition from African states (Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia). France provided weapons to Biafra, while the U.K. and the Soviet Union sent arms to the federal government. Biafra also received aid from international organizations for its population, which was suffering from starvation. The final Biafran collapse began on December 24, 1969, when federal troops launched a significant offensive. Biafra was short on ammunition, its people were desperate for food, and its leaders controlled only one-sixth of the territory that had formed the Biafran Republic in 1967. Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire on January 11, 1970, and a Biafran deputation formally surrendered in Lagos four days later. The Republic of Biafra had come to an end. Estimates of the number of people who died during the Nigerian Civil War vary significantly, from 500,000 to 3,000,000. Causes included battlefield deaths, ethnic cleansing, and starvation.
Aftermath – Yakubu Gowon – Nigerian Head of State Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon, May 27, 1968.
Gowon was able, through his own personal magnetism, to reconcile the two sides so that the former Biafran states were integrated into Nigeria once again and were not blamed for the Nigerian Civil War. The oil boom that followed the war allowed the federal government to finance development programs and consolidate its power. In 1974 Gowon postponed until 1976 the target date for a return to civilian rule, but he was overthrown in July 1975 and fled to Great Britain. Nigeria’s new head of state, Brig. Gen. Murtala Ramat Mohammed initiated many changes during his brief time in office: he began the process of moving the federal capital to Abuja, addressed the issue of government inefficiency, and initiated the process for a return to civilian control. He was assassinated in February 1976 during an unsuccessful coup attempt, and his top aide, Lieut. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo became head of the government. He did not run for the presidency in 1979, and Nigeria shifted to civilian rule, thus closing the era of military control during and around the Nigerian Civil War.
Biafra Secessionist State, Nigeria
Biafra, a secessionist Western African state that unilaterally declared its independence from Nigeria in May 1967. It constituted the former Eastern Region of Nigeria and was inhabited principally by Igbo (Ibo) people. Biafra ceased to exist as an independent state in January 1970. In the mid-1960s economic and political instability and ethnic friction characterized Nigerian public life. In the mostly Hausa north, resentment against the more prosperous, educated Igbo minority erupted into violence. In September 1966, some 10,000 to 30,000 Igbo people were massacred in the Northern Region, and perhaps 1,000,000 fled as refugees to the Igbo-dominated East. Non-Igbos were then expelled from the Eastern Region.
Attempts by representatives of all regions to come to an agreement were unsuccessful. On May 30, 1967, the head of the Eastern Region, Lieutenant Colonel (later General) Odumegwu Ojukwu, with the authorization of a consultative assembly, declared the region a sovereign and independent republic under the name of Biafra. General Yakubu Gowon, the leader of the federal government, refused to recognize Biafra’s secession. Fighting began in July. Biafran troops were at first successful, but, as the Nigerian Civil War proceeded, the numerically superior federal forces began to press Biafra’s boundaries inward from the south, west, and north. Biafra shrank to one-tenth of its original area in the course of the war. By 1968 it had lost its seaports and become landlocked; supplies could be brought in only by air. Starvation and disease followed; estimates of mortality during the war generally range from 500,000 to 3,000,000.
The Organization of African Unity, the papacy, and others tried to reconcile the combatants. Most countries continued to recognize Gowon’s regime as the government of all Nigeria, and the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union supplied it with arms. On the other hand, international sympathy for the plight of starving Biafran children brought airlifts of food and medicine from many countries. Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Tanzania, and Zambia recognized Biafra as an independent state, and France sent Biafra weapons. Biafran forces were finally routed in a series of engagements in late December 1969 and early January 1970. Ojukwu fled to Côte d’Ivoire, and the remaining Biafran officers surrendered to the federal government on January 15, 1970. Biafra, on the point of total collapse, thereupon ceased to exist.
Odumegwu Ojukwu, Nigerian military leader and politician, Also known as Ikemba Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu.
Odumegwu Ojukwu (born November 4, 1933, in Zungeru, Nigeria—died November 26, 2011, in London, England) was a Nigerian military leader and politician, who was head of the secessionist state of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War. Ojukwu was the son of a successful Igbo businessman. After graduating from the University of Oxford in 1955, he returned to Nigeria to serve as an administrative officer. After two years, however, he joined the army and was rapidly promoted thereafter. In January 1966 a group of largely Igbo junior army officers overthrew Nigeria’s civilian government but then were forced to hand power to the highest-ranking military officer, Maj. Gen. T.U. Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi (also an Igbo); appointed Lieut.
Col. Ojukwu as the military governor of the mostly Igbo Eastern region. However, Hausa and Yoruba army officers from the Northern and Western regions feared a government dominated by the Igbo, and in July 1966 Northern officers staged a successful countercoup in which Lieut. Col. (later Gen.) Yakubu Gowon was installed as the new head of state. Under Gowon’s rule, Ojukwu retained his command of the Eastern region. Meanwhile, the rising tide of feelings against the Igbo in the Northern region led to large-scale massacres of Igbos by Northerners in May–September 1966.
The Eastern region felt increasingly alienated from the federal military government under Gowon. Ojukwu’s main proposal to end the ethnic strife was a significant devolution of power to the regions. The federal government initially agreed to this solution at a conference in January 1967 but then rejected it soon afterwards. Ojukwu responded in March–April 1967 by separating the Eastern regional government’s administration and revenues from those of the federal government. Mounting secessionist pressures from his fellow Igbo finally compelled Ojukwu on May 30, 1967, to declare the Eastern region an independent sovereign state as the Republic of Biafra. Federal troops soon afterwards invaded Biafra, and civil war broke out in July 1967. Ojukwu led Biafra’s unsuccessful struggle to survive as an independent state throughout the civil war, and, on the eve of Biafra’s surrender in 1970, he fled to Côte d’Ivoire, where he was granted asylum.
Ojukwu remained in exile until 1982 when he was pardoned and returned to Nigeria. He joined the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in January 1983 and subsequently attempted to reenter politics; his bid for the senate representing the state of Anambra was unsuccessful. He was detained for 10 months following a coup that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power at the end of 1983. In 1993 he once again joined a political party, this time the Social Democratic Party, but he was disqualified from running for president. A member of constitutional conferences in 1993 and again from 1994 to 1995, he, along with other former Nigerian leaders, was consulted in 1998 by Abdusalam Abubakar, the military head of state, as Nigeria once again began the process of converting from military to civilian rule. In 2003 Ojukwu, representing a new political party that he helped form, the All Progressive Grand Alliance, unsuccessfully ran for president. He ran again in 2007 but was defeated by the ruling party’s candidate, Umaru Yar’Adua, in an election that was strongly criticized by international observers as being marred by voting irregularities. Ojukwu had several honours and titles bestowed upon him during his life, including the honorary chieftaincy title Ikemba of Nnewi.
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