Biafra’s War 1967-1970: A Tribal Conflict in Nigeria That Left a Million Dead

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Almost half a century has passed since the Nigerian Civil War ended. But memories die hard, because a million or more people perished in that internecine struggle, the majority women and children, who were starved to death.

Biafra’s war was once modern Africa’s first extended conflict. It lasted almost three years and was once based largely on ethnic, by inference, tribal grounds. It involved, on the one side, a largely Christian or animist southeastern quadrant of Nigeria which known as itself Biafra, pitted militarily against the country’s more populous and preponderant Islamic north.

These divisions – almost at all times brutal – persist. Not a week goes by without reports coming in of Christian communities or individuals persecuted by Islamic zealots. It was once also a conflict that saw significant Cold War involvement: the Soviets (and Britain) siding and supplying Federal Nigeria with weapons, aircraft and expertise and several Western states – Portugal, South Africa and France especially – providing clandestine help to the rebel state.

For that reason alone, this book is crucial contribution towards understanding Nigeria’s ethnic divisions, which are no better today than they were then. Biafra was once the first of a series of religious wars that threaten to engulf much of Africa. Similar conflicts have recently taken place in the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic, Senegal (Cassamance), both Congo Republics and elsewhere.

As the war progressed, Biafra also attracted mercenary involvement, many of whom arriving from the Congo which had already seen much turmoil. Western pilots were hired by Lagos and they flew the first Soviet MiG-17 jet fighters to have played an active role in a ‘Western’ war.

Al Venter spent time covering this struggle. He left the rebel enclave in December 1969, only weeks before it ended and claims the distinction of being the only foreign correspondent to have been rocketed by both sides: first by Biafra’s tiny Swedish-built Minicon fighter planes at the same time as he was once on a ship lying at anchor in Warri harbour and thereafter, by MiG jets flown by mercenaries.

Among his colleagues inside the beleaguered territory were the celebrated Italian photographer Romano Cagnoni in addition to Frederick Forsyth who originally reported for the BBC and then resigned as a result of the partisan, pro-Nigerian stance taken by Whitehall. He briefly shared quarters with French photographer Giles Caron who was once later killed in Cambodia.

Prior to that Venter had been working for John Holt in Lagos. It is interesting that his office at the time was once at Ikeja International Airport (Murtala Muhammed today) where the second one Nigerian army mutiny was once plotted and from where it was once launched. From this perspective he had a proverbial ‘ringside seat’ of the tribal divisions that followed as hostilities escalated.

Venter took a lot of photos at the same time as on this West African assignment, both in Nigeria at the same time as he was once based there and later in Biafra itself. Others come from more than a few sources, including some from the same mercenary pilots who originally targeted him from the air.

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