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Dying for Attention: the Role of the Biafran Identity in the Biafran Campaign for Support During the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70

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Dying for Attention: the Role of the Biafran Identity in the Biafran Campaign for Support During the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70 Dying For Attention: The Role of the Biafran Identity in the Biafran Campaign for Support during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70 Joshua Willms Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Masters degree in History Department of History Faculty of Arts University of Ottawa © Joshua Willms, Ottawa, Canada, 2011 Abstract This study examines the Biafran secession of 1967-1970 and how the secessionist government constructed a Biafran identity in its campaign to gain international support for Biafra‟s permanent separation from Nigeria. The introductory chapter outlines the role of identity in Nigeria‟s twentieth-century political history and discusses the scholarly literature addressing questions of national and ethnic identity and on the Biafran secession. The thesis then provides a historical framework for discussing the evolution of Nigerian political identities and the failures of Nigerian leaders to build a Nigerian nationalism among the region‟s numerous identifiable groups in the colonial and early independence eras. Subsequent chapters analyse the Biafran government‟s attempts to elide the inherent instability of identity and overcome the dynamic process of identity formation in Nigeria by constructing and promoting a fixed Biafran identity based on cultural characteristics and historical experiences that allegedly distinguished and united the diverse peoples of the secessionist region. Contents Introduction 1 Chapter One From Pre-Colonial Nigeria to Secession in May 1967: Failed Nigerian Nation-Building and Ethno-Regionalist Sub-Nigerianisms 35 Chapter Two The Biafran Government’s Campaign for Support, Part I: The Importance of Modernization in Identifying the Biafran and the Enemy “Other” 74 Chapter Three The Biafran Government’s Campaign for Support, Part II: Biafran Nationhood, Northern Nigerian Tribalism, and the “Biafran Revolution” 103 Conclusion 139 Bibliography 158 Introduction Identity is a confounding term, constantly being negotiated in developing inter- relationships in any society, as well as between societies in an increasingly inter-connected world. The continuous significance of identity in both individual and group interactions, therefore, is indisputable. However, one‟s identity never reaches a state of permanence, as an individual or group can reform or mould its identity with multiple and differing meanings, largely because identity is applied in such a wide range of interactive situations and contexts. By the twentieth century, identifying with the state, which was widely recognized as the entity that held the greatest combination of political, economic and social influence, had commonly become recognized as the most empowering form of identification; a Canadian, for instance, could be most reasonably challenged by another state-based identity. Within the boundaries of a colony or sovereign state, however, interactions among the population‟s individuals constantly require differing forms of identification. Depending on the location, circumstances, subjects, and numerous other factors, the identity of an individual or group can be defined by any number of characteristics, such as ethnicity, gender, age, or religion. Consequently, determining a singular and uncontested definition of identity has remained an arduous, if not impossible task in both everyday life and among scholars.1 Indeed, the one general consensus that can be determined in the debate on the meaning of identity has been that there still is no concrete explanation for its varied uses. This study will accept the notion that identity is an unstable and contested term while focusing on the secession of the Eastern region from the state of Nigeria and the subsequent war between the secessionist region, known as Biafra, and Nigeria from May 1967 to 1 Philip Gleason, “Identifying Identity: A Semantic History,” The Journal of American History 69, No. 4 (March 1983): 910-918. 1 January 1970. As a colony and state, Nigeria had been widely regarded as one of Africa‟s most promising territories, as the region contained Africa‟s largest population and a wealth of oil and other natural resources. Unfortunately, Nigeria‟s potential as a sovereign state had been largely unfulfilled into the 1960s due to internal instability that was largely caused by inter-group rivalries and conflicts. In the Nigerian region, the multitude of pre-existing societies, with each containing a distinct set of cultural traits and histories, meant that the establishment of the colony of Nigeria by officials of the British Empire during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries brought an array of previously disparate groups within the boundaries of a single political authority. Furthermore, expression of a Nigerian identity did not even exist as an idea until the establishment of the Nigerian colony. In colonial Nigeria, ethnic diversity had already provided the Nigerian region with a formidable obstacle to colony- and state-wide unity – most scholars have argued the number of distinct groups in Nigeria to be between 200 and 300.2 The potential for unity among Nigeria‟s diverse peoples was further complicated by the division of the colony into three administrative units in the late 1940s – the Northern, Eastern, and Western regions – that each possessed considerable autonomy from the central government. More than any other factor, these regions were established to offer each of Nigeria‟s three largest identifiable groups – the Hausa-Fulani in the North, the Ibo in the East, and the Yoruba in the West – the opportunity to administer their respective regions at their own discretion. However, this decentralized system of governance allowed each region to use its limited autonomy from the centre to reinforce the sub-Nigerian boundaries between the colony‟s identifiable groups, 2 Numbers have varied considerably, but most scholars and other publications argue the number of ethnic groups in the Nigerian region to be at least 200. In Canadian International Development Agency, “Nigeria: Post-Report,” (Hull: Revised November 1978), Nigeria is recognized as containing approximately 250 “tribal groups,” according to the 1963 census taken in Nigeria. Among the most recent estimates, in Toyin Falola and Matthew M. Heaton, A History of Nigeria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), the number of “ethno-linguistic groups” in the region is argued to be over 200. 2 which were now based on both ethnic and regional divisions. As a result, in the Nigerian colony and state until the secession of the Eastern region in May 1967, Nigerians were given ample opportunity to develop varying sub-Nigerian loyalties – in the case of the three major ethnic groups, these loyalties were ethno-regionalist in nature. In any case, sub-Nigerianism ultimately prevailed over the construction of a territory-wide Nigerian identity that could unite the diverse peoples of the region. A running theme throughout this analysis will be how and why several identifiable groups in colonial and independent Nigeria, first, developed competing and conflicting sub- Nigerian loyalties and, second, differed in their desires to construct a unifying Nigerian identity. During British colonial rule and following independence in 1960, Nigeria‟s indigenous leaders struggled amongst each other to negotiate the value of either serving the interests of the entire Nigerian population, which would help to stabilize and strengthen the Nigerian colony and state, or representing certain sub-Nigerian groups at the expense of other sub-Nigerian groups and further entrenching inter-group boundaries in the region. These struggles over the meaning and significance of the Nigerian would peak in the late 1960s with Biafra‟s secession from Nigeria and the subsequent war between Nigeria and the secessionist region. This analysis will examine the struggles for power in the colony and state of Nigeria among the territory‟s leading sub-Nigerian groups, which attributed differing levels of importance to the national Nigerian identity and carried differing visions of the group boundaries within Nigeria. This analysis will then discuss the Biafran government‟s campaign to gain international support, analyzing how Biafra‟s leaders sought to legitimize the secession, first, by discussing how Biafra‟s leaders portrayed Nigeria‟s failed attempts to construct a national Nigerian identity and, second, via an examination of the Biafran 3 government‟s attempts to define a distinct Biafran identity that allegedly united all of the identifiable groups in the secessionist region. Consequently, this study will compare the attempts by Biafra‟s leaders to construct and promote a Biafran identity that was – unlike the Nigerian identity – not disputed or unstable, so as to present the various groups of the Biafran population as united by their collective desire to support the Biafran identity. The Role of the Biafran Identity in the Biafran Government’s Campaign for Support Though the Biafran government‟s campaign to legitimize Biafra‟s secession was active throughout the war, it should be briefly noted that, during the early stages of the secession, Biafra‟s leaders also aimed to secure the secessionist region‟s independence from Nigeria by achieving a military victory over the larger and more advanced Nigerian army. For several weeks following the beginning of hostilities on 6 July 1967, when Nigerian troops initiated a military offensive against the secessionist region to
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