Donald Rooum: Famine In Biafra, 1967-70


Many states have made their subjects go hungry so that they could
purchase armaments, but none more blatantly than the short-lived
Republic of Biafra in the late 1960s. Biafra confiscated food and
offered it for sale to international charities, for relief of the famine
which the confiscation had caused.

Before Biafra seceded from Nigeria, in 1967, most people in Britain were
ignorant of Nigerian politics. London anarchists, who had frequented the
Malatesta Club in the 1950s, had the advantage of prior knowledge. A
group called the African Forum hired the club room for one evening a
week, and some members came on other evenings to make use of the social
club facilities.

(One member of the African Forum, a law student called Mohammed Ali,
later appeared on television as Sheikh Babu, Chief Minister of Zanzibar.
He denied being a Communist, adding that while he was a student in
London he had associated with anarchists. But anarchism, he said,
required a degree of political sophistication, and Africa was not ready
for it.)

Nigerian members of the African Forum included Wenike Briggs, a law
student, later Minister of Education in several Nigerian governments,
Sosuku Omubu, a journalist with the News Chronicle, later editor of a
Nigerian newspaper, and Mani Qbahiagbon, editor of The Nigerian at Home
and Abroad, later Public Relations Manager of the Nigerian Timber
Corporation. They were all well informed about Nigerian politics, and
eager to explain it to members of the Malatesta Club.

Nigerian politics is largely 'the politics of ethnicity'. In the 1950s,
the (colonial) Macpherson constitution provided regional governments in
Northern Nigeria, Western Nigeria, and Eastern Nigeria, plus a federal
government. Looking forward to independence the most numerous tribe, the
Hausa, favoured a strong federal government through which the Hausa
would control all Nigeria. The Igbo* and the Yoruba favoured strong
regional governments, which would give the Igbo control of Eastern
Nigeria, and the Yoruba control of Western Nigeria. The many small
tribes tended to side with the Hausa in wanting a strong central
government, which would give the small tribes more say.

Nigeria became independent in 1960. In 1966 there was a military coup,
perpetrated by seven military officers, six of whom were Igbo. The
federal President and the Prime Ministers of the Northern and Western
regions, and their deputies, were all executed, while the two Prime
Ministers of the Eastern region, both Igbos, escaped. The federal Chief
of Staff, General Aguinyi Ironsi, himself an Igbo, declared martial law
and imprisoned the coup leaders, quietly releasing them later.

Igbos are mostly Roman Catholics, and the Ironsi regime repealed a law
left over from British colonial rule, prohibiting Christian missionary
activity in the Muslim North. This led to attacks on Igbos in the North,
and retaliation against Hausas in the East. A Northern radio station
broadcast a false report, that all the Hausas in the Eastern Region had
been massacred, provoking a massive 'pogrom' against the Igbos in the
Northern Region. Thousands were killed, and the survivors, many of whom
had lived in the North for generations, fled as refugees to the Igbo
tribal lands in the East.

A series of coups at the federal level ended in July 1966 with the
victory of General Yakubu Gowon, a baptist Christian member of a
Northern minor tribe, the Nga. He formed a government with members of
other minor tribes. Within a year, on 27th May 1967, the Gowon
government issued a new constitution, replacing the three Regions with
twelve States. One effect of this was that the Igbo lost control of the
Nigerian oil field and Port Harcourt.

Three days later the Prime Minister of Eastern Nigeria, a wealthy Igbo
named Odumegwu Ojukwu, proclaimed the Republic of Biafra, and declared
war on Nigeria.

The ill-equipped Biafran army was remarkably successful at first, but
soon began to lose. It lost the coastal regions, the oil field, and Port
Harcourt, all inhabited by minor tribes.

Ojukwu hired Markpress, a Swiss PR agency, to put the Biafran case to
international opinion. The Vatican sided with its Igbo fellow-believers.
Many in Britain were persuaded that the Gowon government had initiated
the anti-Igbo 'pogrom' in the North, and was intent on eliminating the
Igbo people.

In 1968 and 1969, Markpress circulated photographs of starving Igbo
children to the world's press. Meanwhile, the Biafran government was
writing to international charities and aid agencies, asking them not to
fly food into Biafra, but to bring dollars, and 'purchase food locally'!

On 15th January 1970, the remaining Biafran officers surrendered to
Gowon. Ojukwu, having made the usual speeches about fighting to the
death, had flown out a couple of days earlier, retiring to Cote d'lvoire
with his Swiss bank account.

It was widely expected, among Igbos and in Britain, that the Igbo would
be massacred, but as Elizabeth Isichei puts it:

"As the Igbo had won the admiration of Nigeria and the world by courage
in war, Nigerians won the admiration of the Igbo, and the world, by
magnanimity in victory (Elizabeth Isichei, A History of Nigeria,
Longmans 1983)."

The Nigerian army opened General Ojukwu's warehouses. Much of the stored
food had been spoiled by rats, and it seems likely that the invaders
gave themselves priority. But there was enough left over to feed all the
starving Igbo civilians.


* The gb in Igbo represents a single consonent, b with full cheeks,
which in Nigerian languages is phonemically different from b with the
lips only. The alternative spelling Ibo is often used, but Igbo is
preferred by Igbo authors, and by the African gallery at the British
Museum.


From issue 43 of The Raven (volume 11, number 3).