Nchamere Nd'Igbo: The Pogrom, War And Starvation: Evidence Of Anti-Igbo Pogrom

By Michael Robson /Vectaris In May 1967 the Eastern Region of Nigeria seceded from the Federation and proclaimed itself the Republic of Biafra with Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu as its head of state. For the next thirty three months a bloody civil war ensued which, it is estimated, cost the lives of two million people. Whilst much of the conflict took place on the ground both sides mounted air offensives although such events did little to change the course of the war. The Federal Nigerian Air Force was comparatively well equipped with combat aircraft including several MiG-17 fighters, some L-29 jet trainers and six Ilyushin Il-28 jet bombers, all flown by mercenary crews. For Biafra however, the situation was different. Isolated both geographically and politically she was unable to obtain aircraft by conventional means and had to rely on the often shady world of the arms dealer and, as a result, came to operate a somewhat motley collection of aircraft. Her two A...

Nigeria's Coming Civil War Guardian , Sunday, 3 June, 1967 Having broken apart, Nigeria is now preparing for civil war. Major-General Gowon, who was promoted from Colonel yesterday, is apparently ready to follow up his blockade of the breakaway east - now called Biafra - with a full-scale invasion. In this he presumably expects the support of Nigeria's partners in the Commonwealth and her fellow members of the UN and the OAU - at least the tacit support of respecting the blockade and not recognising Biafra. It will be a futile war. It is unlikely to unseat the embattled government of Colonel Ojukwu, and even if it does, it will not achieve the declared aim of restoring a workable federation. For most of the Ibo, who predominate in the east, last year's massacres in the north - and their implied end to the free movement of Nigerians within their country - meant the effective end of the federation. To follow this up by an invasion would merely be to drive a nail in the coffin...

By Okachiukwu Dibia, Daily Independent I pity those people who are surprised about the recent killings in Jos, the Plateau State capital in Nigeria. Certainly, if they know the cause of the killings, they will not be. The killings are as a result of the refusal of Nigeria to allow the different and diverse ethnic nations that make up the country to gather as equals, discuss and determine WHY and HOW they can live together. The nations of Nigeria must do this discussion in order to correct the mistake and imposition of 1914, strengthen the ethnic nationalities in their quest to develop themselves, recognize themselves as equals, voluntarily agree to become Nigeria and prepare their own constitution. This will reduce the aggressive domination by the big three ethnic groups, reduce suspicion and embrace one another. If this is done, we will discover that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with ethnicity. The nations of Nigeria must gather and do this discussion otherwise the killings ma...

By David Rieff, The New Republic In 1940, as the Wehrmacht marched into Paris, Simone Weil wrote in her journal, “[T]his is a great day for the people of Indochina.” The remark is generally greeted with horror, by respectable opinion in Western Europe and North America, anyway, and mocked as an emblematic instance of the European (and by extension, American) self-hatred that the French writer Pascal Bruckner had in mind in his book, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism. At first glance, even allowing for the fact that Weil’s observation did not impede her from trying to volunteer to fight for the Free French against the Nazis, the scorn heaped upon her by writers like Bruckner seems warranted. Weil was indeed filled with self-hatred, and like the medieval Christian mystics fetishized suffering, writing in Gravity and Grace that it “saves existence.” But there is a problem with such dismissals: As a matter of historical fact, Weil was also incontrovertibly right. The coll...

By Kenneth Bandler, Fox News Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas regime ruling Gaza, has admitted to rejecting the humanitarian assistance delivered on the Rachel Corrie and six other ships diverted to the Israeli port of Ashdod for security clearance. “We are not seeking to fill our (bellies), we are looking to break the Israeli siege on Gaza,” he said. Haniyeh’s admission is proof-positive there was little need for the supplies on board the ships that sought to land in Gaza. International media reports of full shelves in Gaza belie the prevailing myth that this small territory between Egypt and Israel is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis akin to Biafra or Darfur. Not that life is comfortable for the estimated 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. But misery in the land called Gaza began shortly after the Arab world, in 1947, rejected the UN Partition Plan, the two-state solution of the time. Egypt seized the territory during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and its 19-year occupati...

By Japhet Alakam/Vanguard/All Africa Memories of the Nigerian civil war was relived recently as one of the major actors of the war, Captain August Okpe chief pilot of Biafra during the civil war years as well as the chief pilot of the Nigerian Airways and an established poet recounts the story of the war captured in his memoir, The Last Flight which was presented to the public forth night ago at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, (NIIA)Victoria Island. The reviewer of the book, Uche Chukwumerije took time to reminisce over that war of attrition, describing it as the worse thing that has happened to the country. He therefore called on Nigerians to learn to apply courage and actuality of vision in doing what is right at all times as a way of moving the country forward. The distinguished senator, and former Minister of Information under General Sani Abacha's military junta muted, "I pray that we do not go to war again." Reminiscing on the lessons of the war, he...

Saturday Vanguard last week in Enugu met Engr. Edmund Kaine, who built bombs and other explosives for the defunct Republic of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War. He later became Chief Executive, Projects Development Institute, PRODA, a parastatal of the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. He spoke with BASHIR ADEFAKA on how Nigeria can emerge a technology power. Excerpts: How did you start out in life? I started out in life like anybody else. But in my time, Nigeria was just coming out of what I call the past age and moving slowly tino the modern age. We didn't have tarred roads. We didn't have electric fans. The radios were boxes with wires. The schools were not many. In Lagos, you had only a few colleges and so many people didn't really have the opportunity. But people were happy. I went to St. Monica's Catholic School, Lafiaji. I attended St. Gregory's College, Ikoyi both in Lagos. The only luck I had was that my father became a lawyer and could send me...