As it turned out the Constitutional Conference came to nought, for it was interrupted and stultified by another outbreak of killings of Easterners in the North, the worst ever, and of such an intensity that it destroyed once and for all any illusion that the hatred of the North towards the East could be dismissed as a passing phase in a new nation, and laid the grounds for the Eastern feeling that their only hope of ultimate survival as a people was to get out of Nigeria.
In later explanatory literature published by the Nigerian Military Government (not surprisingly Federal literature is strongly pro-Northern), several reasons are given for these massacres, and the size and character of them is strongly played down. An examination of these excuses reveals them to have been adduced or invented after the massacres, and a comparison of the pertinent dates and an examination of contemporary evidence from European eyewitnesses proves their falsehood. The main excuse was that there were killings of some Northerners in the East, and that this triggered the massacre of the Easterners in the North. In fact, although there was some violence shown against Northerners living in the East, it was first manifested a full seven days after the killings of Easterners in the North.
As in May the massacres were plotted and organized by much the same elements that had been discredited in January: expoliticians, civil servants, local government officials and party hacks and thugs. Again they were seen driving in hired buses from town to town in the North, exhorting the populace to violence and leading them in their attacks on the Sabon Garis where the Easterners lived. There was one significant difference; in the late summer the police and the army not only joined in but in many cases actively led the killing gangs, spearheading the looting of the victims’ properties and the raping of their womenfolk.
These outbreaks started between 18 and 24 September, that is within a few days of the opening of the Constitutional Conference in Lagos, in the Northern cities of Makurdi, Minna, Gboko, Gombe, Jos, Sokoto and Kaduna. The Fourth Battalion at Kaduna left its barracks and went on the rampage with the civilians. Colonel Katsina issued a warning to the soldiers to desist, with not the slightest effect.
On 29 September 1966 Colonel Gowon made a radio broadcast apparently intended to bring the violence to an end. In it he said: ‘It appears that it is going beyond reason, and is now at a point of recklessness and irresponsibility’, giving the impression to his listeners that up to a certain point the killing of Easterners might be regarded as a reasonable practice. In any event his intervention was fruitless. Far from abating, the pogrom on that day exploded from a blaze into a holocaust.
Lest descriptions of what happened should be regarded by the reader as a figment of imagination, a theory that has subsequently come close to being postulated in some British and Nigerian Government circles, three European eyewitnesses had better tell the tale of what they saw.
The correspondent of Time magazine, 7 October:

The massacre began at the airport near the Fifth Battalion’s home city of Kano. A Lagos-bound jet had just arrived from London, and as the Kano passengers were escorted into the customs shed a wild-eyed soldier stormed in, brandishing a rifle and demanding ‘Ina Nyamiri’ – the Hausa for ‘Where are the damned Ibos?’. There were Ibos among the customs officers, and they dropped their chalk and fled, only to be shot down in the main terminal by other soldiers. Screaming the blood curses of a Moslem Holy War, the Hausa troops turned the airport into a shambles, bayonetting Ibo workers in the bar, gunning them down in the corridors, and hauling Ibo passengers off the plane to be lined up and shot.
From the airport the troops fanned out through downtown Kano, hunting down Ibos in bars, hotels, and on the streets. One contingent drove their Landrovers to the railroad station where more than 100 Ibos were waiting for a train, and cut them down with automatic weapon fire.
The soldiers did not have to do all the killing. They were soon joined by thousands of Hausa civilians, who rampaged through the city armed with stones, cutlasses, matchets, and home-made weapons of metal and broken glass. Crying ‘Heathen’ and ‘Allah’ the mobs and troops invaded the Sabon Gari (strangers’ quarter) ransacking, looting and burning Ibo homes and stores and murdering their owners.
All night long and into the morning the massacre went on. Then, tired but fulfilled, the Hausas drifted back to their homes and barracks to get some breakfast and sleep. Municipal garbage trucks were sent out to collect the dead and dump them into mass graves outside the city. The death toll will never be known, but it was at least a thousand.
Somehow several thousand Ibos survived the orgy, and all had the same thought: to get out of the North.

Mr Walter Partington of the Daily Express, London, 6 October:

But from what I have been told on my journey by chartered plane to towns to which the North civil airline would fly, and hitching a lift through this desolate land, the horror of the massacre at times seems to equal that of the Congo. I do not know if there are any Ibos left in the Northern Region … for if they are not dead they must be hiding in the bush of this land which is as big as Britain and France.
I saw vultures and dogs tearing at Ibo corpses, and women and children wielding matchets and clubs and guns.
I talked in Kaduna with the Airline Charter Pilot who flew hundreds of Ibos to safety last week. He said, ‘The death toll must be far in excess of 3,000’… . One young English woman said, ‘The Hausas were carting wounded Ibos off to hospital to kill them there.’
I talked to three families who fled from the bush town of Nguru, 176 miles north of here [the dispatch was datelined Lagos]. They escaped in three Landrovers from the town where about fifty Ibos were murdered by mobs drunk on beer in some European shops. Another Englishman who fled the town told of two Catholic priests running for it, the mob after them. ‘I don’t know if they escaped; I didn’t wait to see.’ … A lot of the massacred Ibos are buried in mass graves outside the Moslem walls.
In Jos charter pilots who have been airlifting Ibos to Eastern safety talked of at least 800 dead.
In Zaria, forty-five miles from Kaduna, I talked with a saffron-robed Hausa who told me: ‘We killed about 250 here. Perhaps Allah willed it.’
One European saw a woman and her daughter slaughtered in his front garden after he had been forced to turn them away.

Mr Colin Legum of the Observer, London, 16 October 1966:

While the Hausas in each town and village in the North know what happened in their own localities, only the Ibos know the whole terrible story from the 600,000 or so refugees who have fled to the safety of the Eastern Region – hacked, slashed, mangled, stripped naked and robbed of all their possessions; the orphans, the widows, the traumatized. A woman, mute and dazed, arrived back in her village after travelling for five days with only a bowl in her lap. She held her child’s head, which was severed before her eyes.
Men, women and children arrived with arms and legs broken, hands hacked off, mouths split open. Pregnant women were cut open and the unborn children killed. The total casualties are unknown. The number of injured who have arrived in the East runs into thousands. After a fortnight the scene in the Eastern Region continues to be reminiscent of the ingathering of exiles into Israel after the end of the last war. The parallel is not fanciful.

To continue with descriptions of the type and scale of the atrocities perpetrated during those weeks of late summer 1966 would be to invite criticism that one was glorying in the bestiality of the affair. The eyewitness descriptions later put together from the victims’ accounts run to several thousand pages, and in parts the nature of the atrocities perpetrated baffles human understanding. The same applies to the descriptions offered by the European doctors who were among those tending the wounded at Enugu airport and railway station as the refugees arrived back in the East.
But no less awe-inspiring has been the subsequent attempt by the Nigerian and British Governments to brush all this under the carpet, as if by lack of mention the memory of it would the more easily pass away. For the Nigerian Government the subject is taboo; in Whitehall circles it is the best conversation-stopper since Burgess and Maclean.
Many sophisticated newspaper correspondents also appear tacitly to have agreed not to mention the killings of 1966 in regard to the breakaway of Eastern Nigeria from the Federation, and to the present war. This is unrealistic. One can no more explain the present-day attitude of Biafrans to Nigerians without reference to these events than one can account for contemporary Jewish attitudes towards the Germans without reference to the Jews’ experience in the Nazis’ hands between 1933 and 1945.

Excerpt from The Biafra Story by Frederick Forsyth
Chapter 6

Blame england

Let The Cry Begins Don't Just Feel Like Abeg, You Must Cry Please

SheikhMuniru:
Let The Cry Begins Don't Just Feel Like Abeg, You Must Cry Please

Why do you say that?

don't you see his name?

melodyogonna:
Why do you say that?

don't u see his name.

The tears of our fallen hero's shall not be in vain

And people wonder why a evil entity such as Nigeria is yet to find its feet almost 60 years after independence! People wonder why this monster Lugard created in 1914 requires so much human blood on a weekly basis in order to sustain itself!

All this atrocities visited on a people, yet they get angry when we talk about it or honour the memories of millions of our kinsfolk killed in cold blood! No attempt at acknowledging the evil committed against easterners never mind expecting an apology and compensation! They would rather it’s all swept under the carpet as they point a gun at our head and demand we join them in shouting ‘one Nigeria’!

What’s going on in Nigeria today shows you can never run away from your past! It will surely catch up with you eventually and force you to face the demons you created like a man!

They massacred over 50,000 Igbos didn't believe in "one Nigeria"

We don't call it Genocide. We call it Civil War.

The Ibos call the Yorubas "Afonjas" because of Civil War.

The Ibos are reputed for Brain & Brawn, let us use this to find solution to healing our problems and move forward in this 21st Century in Peace, Love and Progress.

Refuse to be begged to shine the Light of God in you. The Ibos are richly blessed with Power, Might and Hope ICJ.

Long live Nigeria.

Igbo Kwenu.

I actually cried the first time I read that piece of history. Shortly after that I witnessed something similar in Jos and ever since after that, I was transformed. I've never been the same again. Nigeria has a date with history. That's the reality.

[sub][/sub]

RichBoy247:


We are waiting with you Biafrans to catch up with us. That your chest beating will lead to your total and final destruction. Run faster and catch up with Nigeria, we are expecting you. Your grandfathers preached war and they were destroyed. Your fathers preached war till they died. You too are preaching war, bring it on and let us settle this once and for all

I think you are simply proud , mischievous, foolish and ignorant.

RichBoy247:
Your people have been crying for 52 years now, if you pick up arms against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, what you will witness will be beyond your wildest imagination, that is is you are even lucky to be alive to witness it. You cannot decalre war against the Federal Republic and expect a hug.

Lol. We're waiting for fulanis to help us reduce you people before we strike. Give and take 5yrs from now many of you would have been slaughtered. It makes the job easier for us. Lol

melodyogonna:
Why do you say that?

This Is A Real Super Story

Over 3 million people lost their lives. Think about that for a minute. There are almost five thousand Harvard undergraduates. If each one died two hundred times, that would be almost a million deaths. Almost, but not quite. Yes, that's catastrophic and something like apocalypse.

Dry your tears, my brother. The Bible says

For God cannot be mocked. For whatsover a man soweth, that he shall reap.

He that killeth by the swordmust also die by the sword.

That is the universal law of karma. Being born again will not save you from that. You must reap what you sow.

One word: oil

Yujin:

Lol. We're waiting for fulanis to help us reduce you people before we strike. Give and take 5yrs from now many of you would have been slaughtered. It makes the job easier for us. Lol

So you need Fulanis' need? I thought you are the Jews that can take on the whole world and reduce the world to ashes. I thought you can overrun Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri/Igala/Tiv/Junkun/Gwari/Ijebu/Ekiti/Egba/Awori/Egun and every tribe in Nigeria?

We are waiting for you, the 1967 episode will be a child's play to what will befall you.

Make a proper investigation about the useless white man than pen this rubbish down might not be born during the civil war or step his foot on Africa soil talk on coming to Nigeria to make thorough research about Nigeria civil war. OP continue crying.

SheikhMuniru:

This Is A Real Super Story

This is what happened in the 1966 pogrom. how is it a super story?

RichBoy247:
Your people have been crying for 52 years now, if you pick up arms against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, what you will witness will be beyond your wildest imagination, that is is you are even lucky to be alive to witness it. You cannot decalre war against the Federal Republic and expect a hug.

This is talking about the 1966 pogrom.
You're talking like an animal without any atom of conscience. are you trying to justify the killing of thousands innocent civilians in cold blood?

BuhariAdvocate:
Make a proper investigation about the useless white man than pen this rubbish down might not be born during the civil war or step his foot on Africa soil talk on coming to Nigeria to make thorough research about Nigeria civil war. OP continue crying.

Only two chapters of the original manuscript was not written inside Biafra during the war. stop talking what you don't know.

RichBoy247:


So you need Fulanis' need? I thought you are the Jews that can take on the whole world and reduce the world to ashes. I thought you can overrun Hausa/Fulani/Kanuri/Igala/Tiv/Junkun/Gwari/Ijebu/Ekiti/Egba/Awori/Egun and every tribe in Nigeria?

We are waiting for you, the 1967 episode will be a child's play to what will befall you.

Lol. I know you're always thirsty for Igbo blood but it's yours that will be drunk. Are Fulanis not killing Nigerians now? Are they not doing ethnic cleansing? Do you have an answer to their threat? You're just like a sitting duck waiting for your turn to be taken to the abattoir. I don't see you raising any resistance to them but you have the effontery to threaten Igbos. You deserve what befalls you.
Oh yes, we are Jews and can do lots of things but contrary to your expectation in naivety, we will not start a war but will rise up and defend ourselves like we did before. Foolish people don't deserve to be occupying scarce resources like lands that's why fulanis are presently mopping those lands.

Allahu Akbar zamfara is now tasting death by terrorist.

Masha Allah kaduna is now cursed with Islamic terrorists hacking down thise who killed igbos.

Katsina is not left behind, what about borno, yobe ,adamawa?

Allah is eating the genitals of his cursed devotees for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Meanwhile igbos have built the most thriving, privately funded civilization south of the Sahara, we are also winning elections to rule all over the world.

Useless Britain is not left behind... It is being torn to pieces by Allah and his marauding terrorists

Gowon is weeping, t y Danjuma is raving, berom, tiv, all those who hurt us are receiving payback from the demon spirit Allah who deceived them

And yet it's not over until the terrorists land is covered with the Sahara desert, and an army of almajiri and chadian and nigerien terrorists to complete the work for allah

Sardauna ...serves you right

melodyogonna:
This is what happened in the 1966 pogrom. how is it a super story?

No Be Story You Posted So?

i feel so too

bastardmod:
Allahu Akbar zamfara is now tasting death by terrorist.

Masha Allah kaduna is now cursed with Islamic terrorists hacking down thise who killed igbos.

Katsina is not left behind, what about borno, yobe ,adamawa?

Allah is eating the genitals of his cursed devotees for breakfast, lunch and dinner

Meanwhile igbos have built the most thriving, privately funded civilization south of the Sahara, we are also winning elections to rule all over the world.

Useless Britain is not left behind... It is being torn to pieces by Allah and his marauding terrorists

Gowon is weeping, t y Danjuma is raving, berom, tiv, all those who hurt us are receiving payback from the demon spirit Allah who deceived them

And yet it's not over until the terrorists land is covered with the Sahara desert, and an army of almajiri and chadian and nigerien terrorists to complete the work for allah

Sardauna ...serves you right

You have a point!

Think you are a match for poorboy and deviladvocate

SheikhMuniru:
Let The Cry Begins Don't Just Feel Like Abeg, You Must Cry Please

Now you celebrate their pain. But when they celebrate BH killing, you'll start crying

RichBoy247:
Your people have been crying for 52 years now, if you pick up arms against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, what you will witness will be beyond your wildest imagination, that is is you are even lucky to be alive to witness it. You cannot decalre war against the Federal Republic and expect a hug.

You need to read to cure yourself of ignorance. Did they also declare war when they were massacred in 1953 and 1945?

franklyfrank:
Now you celebrate their pain. But when they celebrate BH killing, you'll start crying

Wetin Consign Me With BH Killing, If BH Likes Turns Nigeria To Anything I No Care