With insecurity situations echoing across the geopolitical regions of Nigeria, with the Eastern Security Network in the centre of the Southeastern dilemma, plus the coming of Ebube Agu, with the herdsmen as daring as ever, we decided to begin a series in which we would tell the story of the Nigerian Civil War sector by sector, incidence by incidence, bit by bit.

What do we intend to accomplish by this series? Firstly, we are primary storytellers and we never pass an opportunity to tell stories. Secondly, history is a very much neglected aspect of our national discourse; so we are telling a story that should be told. Thirdly, we are telling a story that is mostly willfully misinterpreted. And fourthly, we need it is about you - do with this story what you may.

Why was Nsukka important during the war?

If you ever visited Nsukka, you would see that it is not much of a city. In fact, calling it a city is a statement of upliftment; Nsukka is a town on the cusp of urbanity and ruralness. If Nsukka can barely be called a big town in 2021, it should even be less so in 1967 when the war broke out.

So why are we talking about the Nsukka Sector of the war? Because Nsukka was an important town.

1. It hosted the [then] University of Biafra

Began as the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, a name it would revert to at the end of the war, the university was the only university in the whole of Biafra. It was thus the intellectual capital of Biafra. During the pogroms and the tension that followed the massacres, a lot of Igbo academics in Ibadan, Lagos, Ile-Ife, and Zaria, Nsukka was the point of stay for quite a number of them.

Continue reading... https://www.anaedoonline.ng/2021/04/20/nsukka-sector-civil-war/

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