Civil War: Rivers State Nigerians Stage Anti-Biafra Protest in London | July 1968

Описание: Sunday, July 7th 1968.

Footage of Nigerians from the Rivers State of the country demonstrating in London against the Biafran secession and in support of the federal government.

The demonstrators were protesting against what the allege were the brutalities against minority communities by the security forces of the secessionist state.

The group began by performing a series of native dances on a street corner before marching to 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister, where they handed in a letter of protest asking for British help to "crush tyranny" in Biafra.

They claimed that the Biafrans, dominated by the Igbo ethnic group, had set up concentration camps and were using money sent to feed starving people to buys arms.

They also handed in a letter of protest at the residence of Cardinal John Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster.

Source of footage: Reuters News Archive.

Civil War: Rivers State Nigerians Demonstrate in London in Support of One Nigeria | July 1969    • Civil War: Rivers State Nigerians Demonstr...  

Demonstration by minority non-Igbo groups served to bolster the federal position that the act of secession did not have the active consent of many non-Igbos.

While much of the West's reporting focused on the victimisation of Igbos through pogroms directed at civilians (May 1966 and September/October 1966) and army personnel (July 1966) before the outbreak of war and during the war in Asaba (October 1967), a missing narrative was the suffering inflicted on (eastern) minorities such as the Efik, Ijaw, Ogoja and Ibibio.

While they suffered at the hands of Northerners in the pre-war period, their communities endured a great deal of suffering at the hands of the Igbo-dominated Biafran Army. For instance, suspected collaboration with Federal Nigerians by members of the Ikun people who bordered Igboland, led to detentions, looting and raping by Biafran troops in Ikunland. Many males were rounded up 'disappeared', while others were shot to death.

Many of the ethnic groups from Calabar, Ogoja and Rivers provinces were not in favour of secession because they had been agitating for years to have states of their own carved out of the old Eastern Region in the manner that the Mid-West Region was carved out of the Western State. Many minorities from these places received the attention of the Biafran security apparatus. They were subjected to surveillance and some were imprisoned and subjected to torture. They were also subject to frequent accusations of being saboteurs. And when the federal armies encroached further into Biafran-held territory, the fear of minority "fifth-columnists" led to wholesale evictions of people such as the Kalabaris from their homelands from where they were sent to Igbo towns and cities to live in refugee camps. Another example of this anti-minority sentiment was reflected by the activities of the Biafran Organisation of Freedom Fighters (BOFF), a paramilitary organisation created to protect communities, but which used operations to turn on minority communities.

One of the most publicised war crimes committed by the Biafrans occurred when federal troops landed in Calabar in October 1967. About 167 civilians in detention were lined up and executed by Biafran soldiers. The Nigerian Consulate published details of this atrocity as an informational advertisement in the New York Times as part of the propaganda war with the Biafrans, whose propaganda machinery at home, and operating internationally under the auspices of the Geneva-based Markpress public relations firm, always had the edge over the federal side.

For further information, read "The Forgotten Victims: Ethnic Minorities in the Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970" by Arua Oko Omaka which was published in Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Journal of Retracing Africa in 2014.