The Nigeria-Biafra War: Genocide and the Politics of Memory By C ...

Lagos in March 1969 and conducted interviews with the Nigerian Ministry of Defense, the International Red Cross, and the International Observer Team. The committee wrote a detailed report on the complaint submitted by Biafra and concluded that previous and present actions of northerners against the Igbo clearly constituted both “intent to destroy” and “deliberate destruction” of the Igbo.¹³ In the committee’s view, “The issue as to whether genocide is being committed in Biafra or not raises no problems at all. The Nigerian authorities have admitted that there is genocide going on in Biafra. They however disclaim responsibility for same and accuse Biafrans with the perpetration of these crimes against humanity.”¹⁴

The committee concluded that the hatred and suspicion of northern and western Nigeria against eastern Nigeria (by that time, Biafra) “had so deepened and matured that (incredible in an era which had witnessed the atrocities of Nazi Germany) the Nigerians have conceived and commenced to execute a policy and war of genocide as a final solution to the Biafra problem.”¹⁵ The committee relied on reports of previous violence against Igbo that had resulted from various incitements by government officials who complained bitterly about Igbo dominance of commerce and the public service in the North. After the massacre of Igbo in Kano in 1953, a British administrative inquiry established to gather evidence on the episode confirmed the “gruesome fate of Biafrans in a Nigerian context.”¹⁶ Another massacre in 1966 drove the government of the eastern region to appoint a judicial tribunal to inquire into “the atrocities and other inhuman acts committed against persons of Eastern Nigeria origin during the month of May 1966 and thereafter.”¹⁷ The committee, headed by G. C. N. Onyiuke, compiled 235 eyewitness accounts of the massacres and indignities perpetuated against easterners.¹⁸ The Onyiuke tribunal, also known as the “Atrocities Tribunal,” found that northern Nigerian authorities and their collaborators, including British residents of the region, had “devised a seven point programme aimed at a complete extermination of the then Eastern Nigerians (now Biafra) in Northern Nigeria and other parts of the Federation.”¹⁹ The agenda was outlined as follows: