Why did the biafran war happen

Shortly after the successful coup, widespread suspicion of Igbo domination was aroused in the north among the Hausa-Fulani Muslims, many of whom opposed independence from Britain.

Similar suspicions of the Igbo junta grew in the Yoruba west, prompting a joint Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani countercoup against the Igbo six months later. Countercoup leader General Yakubu Gowon took punitive measures against the Igbo. Further anger over the murder of prominent Hausa politicians led to the massacre of scattered Igbo populations in northern Hausa-Fulani regions. This persecution triggered the move by Igbo separatists to form their own nation of Biafra the following year.

Less than two months after Biafra declared its independence, diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis fell apart. On July 6, , the federal government in Lagos launched a full-scale invasion into Biafra.

If the coup of January 15, was the immediate cause of the civil war, its historical roots are traceable to British colonial rule. An illustration depicting representatives of the European powers at the Berlin Conference. By , most of southern Nigeria had fallen to the British through conquests and treaty negotiations. But the British had their eyes set to the north, on the Sokoto Caliphate. Founded by Usman dan Fodio in , the Caliphate had become the largest state in West Africa by the turn of the century.

After a protracted war and subsequent resistance, Sokoto came under full British control in and was renamed the Northern Protectorate. Although the British abolished the Caliphate, the existence of its formidable administrative structures encouraged the British to implement a system of indirect rule with which they had experimented in India.

Indirect rule offered a degree of political autonomy to local rulers, in this case the Sultan of Sokoto and the Emirs under his suzerainty. In the Southern Province, on the other hand, the British combined direct and indirect rule, which varied in accordance with political and economic expedience.

On the eve of the First World War in , the British united the two territories, thus marking the beginning of the creation of the Nigerian nation. But unification created a fragmented identity for Nigeria—a presumed Muslim-north versus a Christian-south—the problematic implications of which would reverberate during the civil war. A map of Nigeria in , following the unification of its Northern and Southern Provinces. Unification fused together culturally and ethnically distinct regions, which would continue to influence political alignments after independence.

The Muslim Hausa-Fulani of the Sokoto Caliphate constituted the largest ethnic group in the northern territory. They wielded significant political dominance throughout that region thanks primarily to the indirect-rule system.

The majority of them were Christians, although there was also a sizable Muslim population as well as practitioners of indigenous faiths.

In contrast, the southeast was overwhelmingly Christian, with the Igbos representing the largest ethnic group. A map depicting the ethno-linguistic groups of Nigeria. Unification gave the north a territorial advantage over the south, while the south had the advantage of relative economic development. The south benefited from its export of lucrative cash crops and a large educated elite created by educational institutions that missionaries established. In the Muslim-dominated north, the British had discouraged Christian missionaries from launching missions and education institutions in an effort to avoid religious conflict.

Consequently, at the time of independence, only a portion of northerners had obtained Western education and skills. The causes of the Biafran crisis can therefore be located at the confluence of British colonial manipulation of ethnic differences and the failure of Nigerian nationalists to implement political arrangements that would foster political and economic equality.

Although the Nigerian Civil War occurred at the height of the Cold War —and in contrast to the Congo civil war that had ended just a couple of years earlier —neither its causes nor its operations could be blamed on tensions between East and West. This was primarily a local affair. Nonetheless, for economic reasons, international governments weighed in on the conflict: Great Britain and the Soviet Union openly sided with the Federal Government of Nigeria, while France and Israel supported Biafra.

The rest of the continent privately sympathized with the Federal Government, but publicly claimed neutrality. In reality, the war had nothing to do with religion. General Gowon, the Nigerian Head of State and leader of the Federal armed forces, was Christian, as was a significant population of the rest of the federal union.

Catholic priests recognised the symptoms — kwashiorkor or acute protein deficiency. Back then, the British public had never seen such heartrending images of starved and dying children. When the pictures hit the newsstands the story exploded. There were headlines, questions in the House of Commons, demonstrations, marches.

As the resident guide for foreign news teams I became somewhat overwhelmed. But at last the full secret involvement of the British government started to be exposed and the lies revealed.

Wilson came under attack. The story swept Europe then the US. Donations flooded in. The money could buy food — but how to get it there?

Scandinavian pilots and crew, mostly airline pilots, offered to fly without pay. On a visit to London in spring I learned the efforts the British establishment will take to cover up its tracks. Every reporter, peer or parliamentarian who had visited Biafra and reported on what he had seen was smeared as a stooge of Biafra — even the utterly honourable John Hunt, leader of the Everest expedition.

Throughout the relief planes flew through the night, dodging Nigerian MiG fighters, to deliver their life-giving cargoes of reinforced milk powder to a jungle airstrip. From there trucks took the sacks to the missions, the nuns boiled up the nutriments and kept thousands of children alive.

Karl Jaggi, head of the Red Cross, estimated that up to a million children died, but that at least half a million were saved. As for me, sometimes in the wee small hours I see the stick-like children with the dull eyes and lolling heads, and hear their wails of hunger and the low moans as they died. What is truly shameful is that this was not done by savages but aided and assisted at every stage by Oxbridge-educated British mandarins.

Did they love the corruption-riven, dictator-prone Nigeria? And, worse: with neutrality and diplomacy from London it could all have been avoided. Biafra is little discussed in the UK these days — a conflict overshadowed geopolitically by the Vietnam war, which raged at the same time. Yet the sheer nastiness of the British establishment during those three years remains a source of deep shame that we should never forget.