Biafran Secession and the Nigerian Civil War
On 30 May 1967, following the anti-Igbo pogroms in the north and the breakdown of the federal compact, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the independence of the Republic of Biafra in Nigeria's oil-bearing southeast. The federal military government responded with a war to preserve the union. The conflict (1967-70) killed an estimated one to three million people, the great majority Igbo civilians who starved under a deliberate federal blockade. Federal victory in January 1970 was followed by a policy of 'no victor, no vanquished', but Igbo political marginalisation persisted, and the multiplication of states reshaped the geography of the oil-rent state. Structurally this is a civil war driven by a peripheral secessionist movement, the dominant centrifugal pressure on the Nigerian polity in this period.
- Year: 1967 CE
- Category: Political
