Whilst a clear scholarly footprint can be found with regards to the atrocities carried out against the Igbo people by the Nigerian government, very little is written about the role of the Biafran government with respect to whether they carried out human rights violations during the war. The dominant position within the historiography of the Biafra war is that the Igbos were the primary victims of the civil war and they bore the brunt of suffering and death. Arua Oko Omaka however, offers a rarely talked about perspective. He argues that the Efik, Ibibio and other minority groups in the south- south region suffered the most during the war. His argument stems from what he explains as the unique position the ethnic minorities in Biafra found themselves. The south-south minority groups were geographically positioned close to Biafra, yet they shared no cultural and ethnic ties to them. The large amounts of oil in the region however, meant that after the secession of Biafra, Colonel Ojukwu, governor of the eastern region of Nigeria, included the south-south region in the Biafra state. This was countered by the division of the region into of 12 states by Nigerian military leader Yakubu Gowon in order to create division amongst the minority. It is at this juncture that Omaka’s argument becomes pertinent. He argues that the minority groups in the south-south region were systematically exploited and violated by both the Nigerian and Biafran governments due to the split in their support during the civil war coupled with the vast amounts of oil in the region. In his journal, he states:
"The minorities displayed loyalties and disloyalties to the two warring parties. Upholding Nigeria’s principle of twelve-state structure meant sabotage to Biafra, while supporting Biafra’s secession implied rebellion to the Nigerian government. The minorities in the oil-rich region seemed to have been worse off in the war. The warring parties wanted to control the region and its oil resources.”
Whilst not demeaning the atrocities carried out against the Ndigbo ethnic group during the war, it is important to review uncommon scholarly opinions like the one offered by Omaka. The blanketing of the minority groups’ suffering under the Igbo tribe during the war is a narrative that is seldom explored by scholars of the Nigeria-Biafra war. This essay, therefore, seeks to contribute to scholarly discussions regarding the minorities during the civil war.
I) Genocide
An emerging scholarly argument with regards to the Biafran war which started to grow in the late 90’s is the genocide question. The last decade had seen an increased amount of attention on the war, its legacy and the humanitarian operation by literary scholars.
Ohanaeze Ndigbo is an Igbo sub cultural group created after the end of the civil war. They argue in their petition to the international human rights violation committee that the Nigerian military and government systematically committed acts of genocide against the Igbo people in the months leading to and during the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. The group published a 90-page petition in 1999 in which they detailed supposed acts of genocide carried out by the Nigerian military and civilians of Nigerian government and demanded reparations from the federal government. The petition also contains witness statements and signed affidavits which they compiled to support their argument. The petitions central argument is that the killing of Igbo people from the start of the Igbo pogrom of 1966 and during the civil war were genocidal in both its “intention and execution.” The petition argues in detail that during a four-year period, Igbo people were continuously tortured, maimed, killed and brutally assaulted on account of them being Igbo. They further contended that though the Nigerian government and military are to blame, the Nigerian civilians also should be held accountable.
The petition, however, collated its evidence regarding the claims made from eyewitnesses about thirty years after the war. These statements true or not cannot be accurate or trusted as fact due solely to the passage of time. Furthermore, research conducted revealed a one-sided post war recollection of the pogroms. Works written on the pogroms are mainly by Igbo-centric scholars who through written statements and interviews provide supposed evidence for the case of genocide. The petition is not one of its kind, as there have been several post-war calls for reparations and justice by mostly Igbo people for what they believe was genocidal treatment during the war.
For example, Chima J Korieh, an expert in African studies of Igbo descent, freely used the term ‘genocide’ in his scholarly article to refer to the events of 1966. He postulates that the 1966 pogroms was the culmination of a planned genocidal effort by high ranking Nigerian officials, the military and civilians of Northern Nigeria.
Whilst it is impossible to ignore the wanton waste of life and the humanitarian crisis which occurred during the Biafran war, it is foolhardy to suggest that the Igbos were persecuted on nearly the same scale or breadth as victims of other infamous genocidal events such as the holocaust.
There has been a substantial amount of scholarly work arguing that the claims made by the Biafra people concerning the war and its supposedly genocidal nature are at best incorrect in the usage of the term or at worst ruled undoubtedly untrue. Some scholars point to Biafra propaganda arguing that the Biafran government exaggerated death tolls and fabricated stories to gain international support.
One such scholars is Robert Melson, a professor Emeritus of political science who spent two years in Nigeria working on his doctorate just before the onset of the civil war. A survivor of the holocaust, Melson argues that the Nigeria-Biafra war does not constitute genocide. Melson, argues that genocide comprises “the destruction in its entirety a specific group and its identity.” His argument certainly holds weight as it is identifiable that unlike the holocaust or Rwandan genocides, where there was an attempt to systematically eradicate the identity of a group of people, the Biafran case was to ‘coerce and alter’ a group’s identity and social status rather than to eliminate it, despite the large scale massacres. Yet, Melson’s argument raises some pertinent questions. If the killing of over a million Biafrans as a direct result of the Nigerian military government’s blockade does not constitute genocide, how does one then distinguish between necessary war time policies which affect civilians as was the case in the Biafra- Nigeria war and acts of genocide? He argues that despite the economic blockade, genocide as a term does not apply to the civil war as the Nigerian military government did not seek to exterminate all Igbo people. His argument is highly significant with regards to the motivational aspect of the civil war. The sufferings experienced by eastern Nigerians during the civil war cannot be proven to be motivated by genocide. It is irrefutable that human rights violations took place but when considering the context, a civil war cannot be won or lost without casualties. This piece argues that there is a thin line between innocent casualties of war and genocide during war especially in the case of a civil war driven by territorial claims. The fact that it was a particular tribe who sought to secede from the sovereign government of Nigeria gives the illusion of genocide because the concentration of people killed where from that tribe. The thin line was not crossed by the Nigerian government, but as such they remain guilty for human rights violations.
Historian Paul Bartrop, seconds this argument, in his genocide anthology, he postulates that unless it can be fully proven that the Nigerian government’s aim was the destruction of the Igbo as a people and not the prevention of the creation of the Biafra state, genocide cannot be said to have occurred.
Joseph McKenna argues otherwise. He believes that there was genuine genocide perpetrated by the Nigerian government or at least a feeling of such among the Igbo people during the war. He wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1966 that the Igbo people perceived themselves as the intended victims of genocide. He reasoned there was a growing feeling of uncertainty amongst the Igbo people – people feared their safety being away from the eastern region as a result of the January coup in 1966 coupled with the September killings of Igbos in the north of the same year. This further perpetuated the inevitability of secession.
It is impossible to rule out the possibility that Igbo people during the war might have experienced a genuine feeling of genocide against them. Despite the constraints legal and scholarly definitions of the term place on the Biafra case, the prolonged warfare, mass starvation and incessant bombing in eastern Nigeria tell a different story.
In retrospect, it is important, however, to point out the difference between casualties of warfare and genocide. The United Nations under the genocide Convention, define genocide as “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings. This definition does not include war in its parameters and as such points out a clear difference between genocide and military conflict.
Martin Shaw points out that the convention while valid in its decision to differentiate between genocide and war, most cases of genocide have occurred during war. He argues that there is a difference between degenerate warfare and genocide. He further postulates that even though they both target civilians, they do so for different reasons. Degenerate warfare attacks its opposition’s civilian areas as a strategy to win a military conflict. Thus, the state, not its population is the enemy. In the case of genocide however, a group is specifically targeted usually for the singular purpose that they belong to a given social group. The Igbo people unlike the Jews and other victims of genocide had agency. The Jews were persecuted because of their race while the Igbo people were killed because they had political aims which was the creation of a state. This line of argument however has its caveats especially when the minority tribes who were part of Biafra not on their own volition, but by nature of their location.
In lieu of the above scholarly arguments this paper seeks to argue also that while devastating in its scale and loss to the Igbo people, the civil war stopped short of genocide due to the parameters and definitions explored above. Furthermore, there remains the fact that the Nigerian government allowed for the reintegration of the Igbo people after the war. The Nigerian government should be held accountable for human rights violations, but genocide is not one of them. The parameters above, highlighted by Martin Shaw, Robert Melson and Paul Bartop, would certainly concur with a definition of genocide provided by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was involved in the drafting of the Genocide convention. His definition states that a genocide is a ‘coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundation essential to survival of a group.” One can argue that the economic blockade does fit with the latter of this definition. The blockades did breach human right violation in so far as it resulted in widespread starvation, which is essential to the group’s survival. Nevertheless, the intent behind the actions plays a crucial role it the definition. This definition highlights the structural and organized nature of a purposeful eradication of a group – yet this was arguably not the objective of the Nigerian government or military by any means.
CHAPTER ONE:
BACKGROUND TO THE CIVIL WAR
The first chapter provides a background to the Biafran civil war and focuses on the political events of 1966. I will be analysing the majority tribe in eastern Nigeria (Igbo) and their relationship with the rest of Nigeria. Furthermore, I will be conducting an in-depth analysis as to what constitutes human rights violations and what role the Nigerian government played in the 1966 pogroms. In this chapter I will use various primary sources such as the 1946 Geneva conventions which was the international humanitarian law at the time. This will be done to establish if the Nigerian government was guilty of human rights violations. This chapter’s focus is therefore to set out clearly defined parameters with regards to human rights and to explore the relationship between the Igbos and the rest of Nigeria.
1.i THE 1966 COUPS
On January 15th 1966, a coup was launched by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu to replace the Nigerian civilian government with military rule. The coup led to the death of 15 prominent Nigerian, among them Tafawa Balewa the then prime minister of Nigeria and Ahmadu Bello, the premier of northern Nigeria at the time. Most of the politicians killed were either from the northern and western regions of the country. Amid the coup, Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo form eastern Nigeria and the most senior officer in the army after the assassination of the Nigerian leaders, assumed the role of leader of the country. His short-lived tenure and the subsequent counter coup exposed deep rooted ethnic tensions which culminated in the Nigerian civil war.
The crux of the Nigeria-Biafra war lies within the ethnic tensions that existed with the independence of Nigerian in 1960. While this work does not seek to root out the causes of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war, a brief exploration of the ethnic tensions that existed between the Igbo and the Hausa’s in the North is needed to understand the 1966 coups which set in motion the happenings of the civil war. Upon Nigeria attaining independence in 1960, there were three major tribes in the country, the Hausa/Fulani tribe in the North, the Yoruba in the west and the Igbos in the east. The Igbo people have been described by scholars of the group as incredibly hardworking and business savvy. Per one source,
“In contrast to the Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba peoples, the Ibos of the East have since colonial contact been more mobile, more receptive to change, and more nationally oriented than Nigeria's other ethnic groups.”
This receptiveness meant that by the mid 1960s, the Igbo tribe had migrated to other regions, particularly the northern areas, to pursue business opportunities and as a result the largely rural Hausa’s faced stiff competition from the Igbos for jobs.
Paul Anber argues that the Igbos were much more economically developed than their Hausa and Yoruba counterparts. He implies that the Igbo’s, through their aggressive businesses and rapid modernisation, incited hatred among the Yoruba and particularly the Hausa. Anber stated that despite their minority status, the Igbos have progressed through society, surpassing many educationally and climbing societal status. Nevertheless, as common with those whose rise from humble origins, Anber posits that the Igbos had become ‘arrogant and self-righteous in their new status’ and, unsurprisingly, this incited resentment from those that Igbo deemed inferior – mainly northern ethnic groups.
The relationship between the Igbos and Hausa was therefore already strained on the eve of the 1966 coups. Whilst there are differing arguments as to whether the coup of 1966 was motivated along ethnic lines, it remains significant in relation to the question of the Nigerian governments culpability in the breaching of human rights in the eastern region. It it is the conviction of many that the Nigerian government failed to implement effective strategies to protect its Igbo citizens from northern nigerians – perhaps even complicit in the events. These possibilities are explored in the following section.
1.ii The 1966 pogroms and the role of the Nigerian government
As explored above, the 1966 January coup led by major general Chukwuma Nzeogu which resulted in the deaths of prominent Hausa and Nigerian leaders – save for the Igbo patriarch Nnamdi Azikiwe – heightened ethnic tensions in the country. In July of the same year, there was a subsequent counter coup whereby Ironsi was ousted and killed. In his place Yakubu Gowon, who is a central figure in this study due to his leading role in the Nigeria-Biafra civil war. Furthermore, between May and September of 1966, over a million Igbo people living in northern Nigeria as well as Igbo military officers were systematically ethnically cleansed. The killing of Igbos in the Northern region was met by a call by the premier of the eastern region, Major General Ojukwu, to declare secession from Nigeria – citing genocide and ineptitude from the Nigerian government. The killings were thus the spark that ignited the fire in what was an already tenuous relationship between the Igbos and the North. The significance of the 1966 pogroms regarding the central argument is that is that the Nigerian government failed to stop the killing of the Igbos in 1966. Many scholars have argued this further, by suggesting that the Nigerian government was complicit in the attacks and actively turned a blind eye, sometimes even carrying out killings of its own through the military apparatus.The Ohaneze Ndigbo organisation argue that northern Nigerian leaders suggested ethnic cleansing as a means of solving what they termed ‘the Igbo problem.’ They argue further that the leaders expressed their views openly in the house of assembly for Northern Nigeria. They provide a speech from of the Minister of Lands and Survey, Alhaji Ibrahim Musa in a meeting that took place in 1964:
“Mr. Chairman, Sir, I do not like to take up much of the time of this House in making explanations, but I would like to assure members that having heard their demands about Ibos holding land in Northern Nigeria, my Ministry will do all it can to see that the demands of members are met. How to do this, when to do it, all this should not be disclosed in due course, you will all see what will happen.”
This speech while inflammatory in its nature, does not give any allusions to plans of ethnic cleansing or mass murder. The Ohanaeze group also fail to provide any scholarly or legal backing to their claims. As the intended action of the government was not implicitly stated, any conclusions drawn are formed of emotionally subjective inference. Consequently, it is improbable to accuse the Nigerian government of perpetuating mass murder in 1966 due to a significant lack of valuable evidence to support the argument. Nonetheless, there was gross failure on the part of the government to cease the attacks. The pogroms where a manifestation of pent up tensions and frustrations against the Igbo people and the Nigerian government failed in its duty to protect its civilians. This constitutes a breach of the fundamental human right to life. The definition of human rights and its applicability to the Nigeria-Biafra case therefore, will be analysed in the next chapter to help answer the overarching question regarding the extent Nigeria should be held accountable for human rights violations in eastern Nigeria.
1.iii DEFINING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Primary source
"In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:
(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.
To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”
The above quotation is taken from Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, an appendage of the four Geneva conventions. Its rules stipulate all the laws set out in the four Geneva conventions but apply those laws to non-international combats. They cover civil wars and inter-state conflicts. The parameters set above are a definitional guide to non- combatant rights in civil war and the civilians of eastern Nigeria during the Nigeria-Biafra war fit such a description. It is therefore apt to analyse whether the Nigerian government where in breach of the Geneva convention so as to determine the extent as to which they should be held responsible for the human rights violations between 1966 and 1970.
Article 3 clearly states that ‘non-combatants’ and soldiers who have laid down their arms should not be privy to any form of violence, murder or humiliation. A large number of civilians living in eastern Nigeria during the civil war, as will be explored below, were subject to numerous forms of violence and unperturbed killings. Eghosa Osaghae estimated that by the wars end, there were at least 3 million easterners, mostly civilians, dead and a further 3 million displaced. The Nigerian military were perpetrators of mass murder and the Nigerian government either through sheer ignorance or wilful cooperation, failed to keep the army in check.
However, the article also known as protocol II wasn’t an amendment to the Geneva