Nigerian Civil War

The Nigerian Civil War, also called the Biafran War, was fought from 6 July 1967 to 15 January 1970 between the federal government of Nigeria and the secessionist Republic of Biafra in the country's south-east. It grew out of two military coups and the mass killing of Igbo people in the north in 1966. Nigeria won and the country remained united, but a federal blockade caused a famine in which, by most estimates, between half a million and two million Biafran civilians died.

Nigeria gained independence from the United Kingdom on 1 October 1960 as a federation of regions with deep political, ethnic and religious divisions. On 15 January 1966 a group of mostly junior army officers, most of the known plotters being Igbo, staged a coup in which the federal prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, the northern premier, Ahmadu Bello, and other leaders were killed. The army commander, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, crushed the coup and took power, but many northerners saw the events as an Igbo plot. On 29 July northern soldiers mounted a counter-coup, killing Aguiyi-Ironsi and installing Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon.

From June to October 1966 pogroms in the north killed an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 Igbo, and more than a million fled to the Eastern Region. Its military governor, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, negotiated with Gowon at Aburi in Ghana, but the two sides disputed what had been agreed. On 27 May 1967 Gowon divided Nigeria into twelve states, separating the Igbo heartland from most of the eastern oilfields. Three days later, on 30 May, Ojukwu declared the Eastern Region independent as the Republic of Biafra.

Federal troops invaded on 6 July 1967. In August a Biafran force struck west across the Niger, taking Benin City and advancing as far as Ore, some 210 kilometres east of Lagos, before being pushed back. Federal forces captured the Biafran capital, Enugu, in October 1967, and at Asaba federal soldiers killed about 700 civilians. The capture of Bonny, Calabar and, in May 1968, Port Harcourt cut Biafra off from the sea and from most of its oil. The federal army grew from about 7,000 men to some 200,000. Britain and the Soviet Union armed the federal side, while France covertly helped Biafra, which only five countries recognised, among them Tanzania.

Encircled from 1968, Biafra suffered mass starvation as the federal blockade cut off food imports, and the protein-deficiency disease kwashiorkor killed great numbers of children. In September 1968 the International Committee of the Red Cross estimated 8,000 to 10,000 deaths a day. Images of starving children drew worldwide sympathy, and volunteer organisations ran a blockade-breaking relief airlift. The experience later led to the founding of Médecins Sans Frontières. A Nigerian delegate openly called starvation a legitimate weapon of war. Whether the federal campaign amounted to genocide remains debated: some scholars argue that it did, while others stress that Nigeria sought to reincorporate the Igbo rather than destroy them.

A final federal offensive began on 23 December 1969, and Owerri and Uli fell in January 1970. Ojukwu fled into exile in Ivory Coast, and his deputy, Philip Effiong, surrendered; the surrender was signed on 14 January 1970. Gowon spoke of "the dawn of national reconciliation".

Around 100,000 soldiers are thought to have died, alongside the much larger civilian toll. The war left lasting Igbo grievances over marginalisation, and Igbo nationalism and new Biafran separatist movements, such as the Indigenous People of Biafra, have since emerged. Like the Congo Crisis, it exposed the difficulty of holding together states created within colonial borders.

Our 1960 map shows newly independent Nigeria, and the 1985 map shows the federation, reunited after the war.