We are all aware of how the Nigeria soldiers starved more 3 million igbos during the war. How the Igbos always make reference to it to score cheap political points.

But there is another often neglected side to the story, that is, of those Nigerian civilians, including non-Igbo minority communities, who were co-opted into the Biafran project and who suffered at the hands of Biafran troops and paramilitary organisations. The reasons for this neglect is multifaceted, but it is one which is documented and in need of acknowledgement if Nigeria is to come to terms with the terrible human rights abuses of that dark chapter in its history.

A forgotten aspect of the civil war concerns the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Igbo-dominated Biafran side against minority groups within what had been the former Eastern Region of Nigeria, as well as against other Nigerian ethnic groups in the Mid-Western State when it was temporarily occupied by Biafran forces.

A missing aspect of the narrative concerns the ill-treatment meted out to minority groups within secessionist Biafra such as the Efik, Ijaw, Ogoja and Ibibio. It would be remiss not to remind that these groups were targeted along with Igbos in the northern part of the country during the explosions of communal violence in May 1966, as well as between September and October of that year. But they would later suffer persecution and human rights abuses at the hands of the largely Igbo Biafran Army.

Much of this stemmed from real and imagined sympathy on the part of members of these communities for the Federal cause. The minority communities of the old Eastern Region had after all campaigned for the creation of more states; something which the Nigerian Head of State, Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon had done in May 1967.  And while some non-Igbo officers such as Lt. Colonel Phillip Effiong, an Ibibio, served in the Biafran armed forces, others such as Colonel George Kurobo had defected to the Federal side.

An example of abuses against Biafran minorities concerns that of the Ikun people, who were suspected of collaboration. This led to detentions, looting and raping by Biafran troops in Ikunland. Many males were rounded up and ‘disappeared’, while others were shot to death.

The Ikun are minuscule in numbers and the Biafran felt particularly threatened by the larger ethnic groups from Calabar, Ogoja and Rivers provinces where the pre-war agitation for states of their own to be carved out of the Eastern Region had been particularly strong.

Many communities within these areas received the attention of the Biafran security apparatus. They were subjected to constant surveillance and some were imprisoned and subjected to torture. They were also frequently subjected to accusations of being ‘saboteurs’. And when the Federal armies encroached further into Biafran-held territory, the fear of minority fifth-columnists led to the wholesale eviction of communities such as the Kalabaris from their homelands. They were relocated to Igbo towns and cities to live in refugee camps.

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 in New York published details of this atrocity as an informational advertisement in the New York Times as part of the propaganda war with the Biafrans, whose own 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.

Igbos Massacre of Hausas in Asaba

During the Biafran invasion in August of 1967, some soldiers had paused to kill northerners who lived in the Hausa Quarter of Asaba; this in apparent revenge for the aforementioned anti-Igbo attacks in the Northern Region. And in other parts of the temporarily conquered Mid-West, non-Igbos were subjected to torture, imprisonment and death on suspicion of having sympathy for the Federal cause. Rape, extortion and seizure of property were common.

The conduct of Biafran troops, who were styled as a liberation army, was marked by acts of indiscipline particularly in the urban centres of Benin, Sapele and Warri. In Warri, the men of the 18th Battalion went on looting sprees, searching for anything that they could convert into cash.

For instance, one E.K. Iseru, a lawyer of Rivers origin who was based in Warri would testify at a tribunal hearing that he was once stripped naked and detained for three days without food because he was on record as having agitated for the creation of Rivers State. When he protested about his hunger, one of his captors retorted that “there is no food for Hausa friends.”

When the Biafran occupiers began to lose ground, their paranoia increased. Each set back on the battlefield was blamed on saboteurs, and in the desperate circumstances of continual retreat, the policies of the Biafrans turned to draconian, inhumane solutions. The murder of non-Igbos intensified. In Abudu, over 300 bodies were found in the Ossiomo River and on 20 September 1967, many non-Igbos were slaughtered at Boji-Boji Agbor. And at Asaba, Ibusa and Agbor non-Igbos were taken into custody by Biafran soldiers and transported in two lorries to a rubber plantation along the Uromi-Agbor Road where they were put to death.

In the tit-for-tat atmosphere of war, it is perhaps no surprise that an estimated 200 Igbos lost their lives when the Federal takeover of Benin City began on September 21st. Later, mobs in places such as Warri and Sapele would turn on the Igbos. Many Igbos, including the erstwhile administrator, Major Albert Okonkwo who had declared the Mid-West to be the “autonomous independent sovereign republic of Benin”, fled eastwards for their lives.

Nigeria is of course not the only nation to have lingering wounds over a civil war as recent events in both the United States and Spain remind. Much of the discourse remains venomous and resolutely uncomprehending of an understanding of the position of both sides in the war. Many prefer to take a particularistic view with a tendency on the part of Biafran diehards to deny the occurrence of these events and insist on the primacy of Igbo victimhood.

References:
Centre for Research on Globalization / Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/victimhood-nigerian-civil-war/5698252

The Biafran Crisis and the Midwest
S. E. Orobator
African Affairs
Vol. 86, No. 344 (Jul., 1987), pp. 367-383

What is Your Honest Opinion About The Hausa Ibo and Yoruba.
https://www.quora.com/As-a-Nigerian-what-is-your-honest-opinion-about-the-Hausa-Fulani-Igbo-and-Yoruba-people-of-Nigeria

Another evidence of Biafra Soldiers atrocities.

According to a user on Quora

https://www.quora.com/As-a-Nigerian-what-is-your-honest-opinion-about-the-Hausa-Fulani-Igbo-and-Yoruba-people-of-Nigeria

To understand the divergent attitudes of the minorities to the Biafran secession, an examination of oral histories from people who occupied positions of authority during the war as well as from ordinary people is necessary. The Ikun in the present day Cross River State presents a good example of the crimes committed against the minorities.

The Ikun clan is in the Biase Local Government Area of Cross River State. The people share a common boundary with the Ohafia, an Igbo clan, in the present day Abia State. When the war broke out, Biafra stationed some of its troops in the Cross River region, including Ikun. According to a female survivor-victim of the Biafran occupation, the Ikun initially supported Biafra and had friendly relations with the soldiers, who were also accommodating. As time went on,. tensions emerged.

Some Ikun men were suspected of collaborating with Nigerian soldiers. This led to arrests, looting, rapes, and other atrocities in Ikun
land. William Norris of the London Times who visited Biafra, also reported an eye￾witness account in which some men of Ibibio ethnic origin were beaten to death at Umuahia on April 2, 1968.

These Ibibios who included old men and young men were apparently suspected of collaborating with advancing Nigerian troops. They were reportedly frog-marched across an open space while the local people attacked them with sticks and clubs. Oral testimony by the survivor-victim corroborates

Newsweek, in one of its reports titled “The Resurrection of Biafra,” stated that “some of the worst massacres of the war, in fact, occurred when federal troops captured minority regions -where upon the minority tribesmen turned on the Ibos in bloody fury.”

This quote presents the Igbo as the victims in the hands of the minority groups, without reference to any experience the minorities might have had in the Igbo-dominated region before the arrival of the federal troops

The Forgotten Victims: Ethnic Minorities in the
Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970
Arua Oko Omaka
McMaster University, omakaao@mcmaster.ca


Cc. ificatchmodeh Captainrambo2

That's extremely bad

What is the aim of this?

[s]MinorityOpinion:
We are all aware of how the Nigeria soldiers staved more 3 million igbos during the war. How the Igbos all make reference to it to score cheap political points.

But there is another often neglected side to the story, that is, of those Nigerian civilians, including non-Igbo minority communities, who were co-opted into the Biafran project and who suffered at the hands of Biafran troops and paramilitary organisations. The reasons for this neglect is multifaceted, but it is one which is documented and in need of acknowledgement if Nigeria is to come to terms with the terrible human rights abuses of that dark chapter in its history.

A forgotten aspect of the civil war concerns the human rights abuses perpetrated by the Igbo-dominated Biafran side against minority groups within what had been the former Eastern Region of Nigeria, as well as against other Nigerian ethnic groups in the Mid-Western State when it was temporarily occupied by Biafran forces.




Many communities within these areas received the attention of the Biafran security apparatus. They were subjected to constant surveillance and some were imprisoned and subjected to torture. [/b]They were also frequently subjected to accusations of being ‘saboteurs’. And when the Federal armies encroached further into Biafran-held territory, the fear of minority fifth-columnists led to the wholesale eviction of communities such as the Kalabaris from their homelands. They were relocated to Igbo towns and cities to live in refugee camps.

One of the most publicised war crimes committed by the Biafrans occurred when [b]Federal troops landed in Calabar in October 1967. About 167 civilians in detention were lined up and executed by Biafran soldiers. ThenNigerian Consulate in New York published details of this atrocity as an informational advertisement in the New York Times as part of the propaganda war with the Biafrans, whose own 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.



The conduct of Biafran troops, who were styled as a liberation army, was marked by acts of indiscipline particularly in the urban centres of Benin, Sapele and Warri. In Warri, the men of the 18th Battalion went on looting sprees, searching for anything that they could convert into cash.




When the Biafran occupiers began to lose ground, their paranoia increased. Each set back on the battlefield was blamed on saboteurs, and in the desperate circumstances of continual retreat, the policies of the Biafrans turned to draconian, inhumane solutions. The murder of non-Igbos intensified. In Abudu, over 300 bodies were found in the Ossiomo River and on 20 September 1967, many non-Igbos were slaughtered at Boji-Boji Agbor. And at Asaba, Ibusa and Agbor non-Igbos were taken into custody by Biafran soldiers and transported in two lorries to a rubber plantation along the Uromi-Agbor Road where they were put to death.

In the tit-for-tat atmosphere of war, it is perhaps no surprise that an estimated 200 Igbos lost their lives when the Federal takeover of Benin City began on September 21st. Later, mobs in places such as Warri and Sapele would turn on the Igbos. Many Igbos, including the erstwhile administrator, [b]Major Albert Okonkwo [/b]who had declared the Mid-West to be the “autonomous independent sovereign republic of Benin”, fled eastwards for their lives.

Nigeria is of course not the only nation to have lingering wounds over a civil war as recent events in both the United States and Spain remind. Much of the discourse remains venomous and resolutely uncomprehending of an understanding of the position of both sides in the war. Many prefer to take a particularistic view with a tendency on the part of Biafran diehards to deny the occurrence of these events and insist on the primacy of Igbo victimhood.

References:
Centre for Research on Globalization / Centre de recherche sur la mondialisation.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/victimhood-nigerian-civil-war/5698252

The Biafran Crisis and the Midwest
S. E. Orobator
African Affairs
Vol. 86, No. 344 (Jul., 1987), pp. 367-383

What is Your Honest Opinion About The Hausa Ibo and Yoruba.
https://www.quora.com/As-a-Nigerian-what-is-your-honest-opinion-about-the-Hausa-Fulani-Igbo-and-Yoruba-people-of-Nigeria

[/s]

Chai igbos are heartless

Why is this not widely publicised and how did the biafrans have an edge over the federal government in the media then according to your write up

Arsenella007:
What is the aim of this?

"Many prefer to take a particularistic view with a tendency on the part of Biafran diehards to deny the occurrence of these events and insist on the primacy of Igbo victimhood."

crestedaguiyi:
Why is this not widely publicised and how did the biafrans have an edge over the federal government in the media then according to your write up

"Biafrans, whose own 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."

Useless Op with imbecility





Didirin oshi


What's exactly the essence of this?

Anu ọhịa!

How come I never heard this and I grow up in Benin. We only use to hear the way Hausa killed igbos and others.

And everyone believed it.

You know why?

Because the Hausa is still doing the killing of non non Hausa during time of crisis till today.

Now tell me why will I not believe the media in favour of igbos

Mrshape:
How come I never heard this and I grow up in Benin. We only use to here the way Hausa killed igbos and others.

And everyone believed it.

You know why?

Because the Hausa is still doing the killing of non non Hausa during time of crisis till today.

Now tell me why will I not believe the media in favour of igbos

Because Nigerians are not cry babies. Read about the invasion of Asaba, Ore, warri, sapele and Benin. Biafran Soldiers invaded those places.

Osaze007:
Chai igbos are heartless

In a war,both parties are heartless
Stop being bias

Makavelli25:
In a war,both parties are heartless
Stop being bias

So why the hate on awolowo loool

MinorityOpinion:


Because Nigerians are not cry babies. Read about the invasion of Asaba, Ore, warri, sapele and Benin. Biafran Soldiers invaded those places.

these places mentioned re all on lagos road..... biafrans merely passed through, lagos which was the capital was the target...



But I guess you already know this... just gave to spill propaganda.... carry on

Captainrambo2:
these places mentioned re all on lagos road..... biafrans merely passed through, lagos which was the capital was the target...



But I guess you already know this... just gave to spill propaganda.... carry on

According to the eyewitness, Biafran soldiers allegedly took Ikun men to Ohafia for a meeting but never brought them back. The informant also alleged that the soldiers returned to the community and rounded up some men within their reach and shot them. This survivor who lost her four-day old son and her grandmother seemed to have suspected foul play from the Ohafia people who share a common boundary with her community.

The victimization continued
until the Biafran headquarters likely issued an order that people should not be killed again.By this time, the remaining people had escaped the community, leaving behind only the soldiers, the Ohafi a, and some Ikun who were said to be
of mixed blood - half Ohafi a and half Ikun. These remaining groups, according to the survivor-victim shared the fish ponds, forests, and farms belonging to Ikun people.

The Forgotten Victims: Ethnic Minorities in the
Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970
Arua Oko Omaka

MinorityOpinion:


God. The famous one Ore. Biafra didn't invade Ore? Ore is on Lagos Road too?

yes. Ore is after Benin-city... lagos road... so ?

Makavelli25:
In a war,both parties are heartless
Stop being bias

Alright, then stop blaming Awolowo for starving 3 million Igbos. He was expected to support his country and not Biafra. This is like complaining why your opponent didn't let you win

The same igbos did the same thing to the minorities around them because they were not Biafrans.

Captainrambo2:
yes. Ore is after Benin-city... lagos road... so ?

Biafra didn't invaded Ore? Are you for real?

MinorityOpinion:


Biafra didn't invaded Ore? Are you for real?

enroute lagos they met federal forces and engaged them in more....... stop twisting obvious facts pls...


What's in ore? of what strategic importance .....


In your assertion they left Benin-city to occupy ore ? Bro pls

Captainrambo2:
enroute lagos they met federal forces and engaged them in more....... stop twisting obvious facts pls...


What's in ore? of what strategic importance .....


In your assertion they left Benin-city to occupy ore ? Bro pls

"The invasion began on August 9 when 3,000 Biafran soldiers led by General Victor Banjo crossed the River Niger Bridge into Asaba. Upon reaching Agbor, the Biafrans split up. With the 12th Battalion moving west capturing Benin City and Ore, The 18th Battalion swung south, taking Warri, Sapele and Ughelli. While the 13th Battalion headed north for Auchi, Agenebode and Okene. Simultaneously, a plot to capture Mid-Western Governor David Ejoor at his home in Benin failed. Nevertheless, the Biafrans, meeting virtually no resistance, had seized the entire Mid-Western Region in less than 12 hours."

MinorityOpinion:


"The invasion began on August 9 when 3,000 Biafran soldiers led by General Victor Banjo crossed the River Niger Bridge into Asaba. Upon reaching Agbor, the Biafrans split up. With the 12th Battalion moving west capturing Benin City and Ore, The 18th Battalion swung south, taking Warri, Sapele and Ughelli. While the 13th Battalion headed north for Auchi, Agenebode and Okene. Simultaneously, a plot to capture Mid-Western Governor David Ejoor at his home in Benin failed. Nevertheless, the Biafrans, meeting virtually no resistance, had seized the entire Mid-Western Region in less than 12 hours."

this was to halt the advance of federal troops... if the federal troops were marching into asaba, onitcha, what's your grouse with the other belligerent doing the same ?

Osaze007:

So why the hate on awolowo loool

seems ya my namesake I wont argue with you

While they're claiming victims and saints. Evil that Igbo did

Captainrambo2:
this was to halt the advance of federal troops... if the federal troops were marching into asaba, onitcha, what's your grouse with the other belligerent doing the same ?

The thread is about attrocities committed by Biafra soldiers. Stop changing the topic. They committed a lot of attrocities.

Yoruba narratives

Bayerebe

Cc
Herdsmen

MinorityOpinion:


The thread is about attrocities committed by Biafra soldiers. Stop changing the topic. They committed a lot of attrocities.

I'm not changing anything pls... on the contrary im trying to set a skewed record right.

My father told me biafran soldiers stayed in irrua briefly then they moved again, although he himself and other irrua people wer pro Nigerian forces... never once did he mention atrocities... but you that probably wasnt born then is painting the internet with unfounded tales... bro pls just calm down already

Captainrambo2:
I'm not changing anything pls... on the contrary im trying to set a skewed record right.

My father told me biafran soldiers stayed in irrua briefly then they moved again, although he himself and other irrua people wer pro Nigerian forces... never once did he mention atrocities... but you that probably wasnt born then is painting the internet with unfounded tales... bro pls just calm down already

You called a well documented article a tale? I've nothing to tell you.

[s]

LivingSage:
While they're claiming victims and saints. Evil that Igbo did

[/s]

OP is Nigeria a better country now?

The answer is no, so go and die

Afonjas don come again
Lie here lie there