HOW BRITAIN’S LABOUR GOVERNMENT FACILITATED THE MASSACRE OF BIAFRANS IN NIGERIA – TO PROTECT ITS OIL INTERESTS
On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Biafran war, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the late 1960s, declassified British files show that Harold Wilson’s government secretly armed and backed Nigeria’s aggression against the secessionist region.

MARK CURTIS

29 APRIL 2020


Biafran children at a Red Cross food distribution centre (Photo: Peter Williams / Wikimedia)
The then Labour government secretly provided large quantities of arms to the Nigerian federal government which, by early 1970, had crushed an attempt by the country’s eastern region of Biafra to gain independence, which it had declared in May 1967.

During the three years of war, up to three million people died, as Nigeria enforced a blockade on Biafra, causing widespread starvation amid considerable international opposition to the conflict.

British policy was mainly shaped by its oil interests, declassified government documents from the time show. “Our direct interests are trade and investment, including an important stake by Shell/BP in the eastern region,” the Foreign Office noted a few days before the outbreak of the war in 1967.

Investments by Shell/BP—then a joint company in Nigeria which was partly owned by the British government—amounted to around £200-million at the time. The company was the largest producer of oil in Nigeria, most of which was in Biafra.

Shell “have much to lose if the FMG [federal military government] do not achieve the expected victory,” George Thomas, Labour’s commonwealth minister, noted in August 1967. He added: “The sole immediate British interest in Nigeria is that the Nigerian economy should be brought back to a condition in which our substantial trade and investment in the country can be further developed, and particularly so we can regain access to important oil installations.”

UK supplies of arms — which eventually enabled the Nigerian government to win the war — included millions of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of machine guns and grenades, thousands of mortar and artillery bombs, aircraft and armoured personnel carriers.

These supplies were massively stepped up while Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was telling parliament that Britain was supplying arms to Nigeria at the same level as before. He made the false claim that there was “no special provision” for the war....


Continue here. https://declassifieduk.org/how-britains-labour-government-facilitated-the-massacre-of-biafrans-in-nigeria-to-protect-its-oil-interests/

The war jeopardized their interest, becos it could disrupt supply of raw materials threatening investment worth billions at that time...

The fact that the generation of Biafrans who took over from the ones that fought tht war, Never made a lot of noise about this like the Rwandans did with the Hutu genocide or the Armenians with the genocide pepertuated against Armenians by the Turks, is the main reason Britain is still active in Nigeria today, trying to network with the beastial fulani for another round of genocide in the East..

Folks don't know but the fact is that The Biafran genocide was the first real modern black on black genocide that was recorded in modern history! Before then, the world only had the skirmishes in the Congo that led to the death of Lumumba and the coming of Mobutu to talk about. No major wars between modern African countries. Africans were so into each other that the idea of a one country from cape to Cairo was even being muted. Gowon and his bunch of vandals put an end to that.

It was also the first time the rest of the world started seeing skinny African kids about to be eaten alive by vultures on their TVs. It was nonplussing both for foreigners around the world, and for Africans living in Africa. It was a defining moment too. Because immediately after the Biafran genocide, we started seeing all sorts of brutal , ethnic cleansing wars across Africa from Uganda, Angola, Congo again, Zimbabwe, Kenya etc. Basic copying of the Nigerian template..Strikingly, most of these wars, if not all were wars fought between different ethnic groups WITHIN the same African States and NOT between different African countries.

So it's safe to say that the likes of Gowon, Murtala, Buhari, Babangida and Obasanjo are the forerunners of the genocides and ethnic cleansings in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan etc..

Totally agree with you! The generation that survived the war were occupied with surviving the post-war economic difficulties.

DOTian:
The fact that the generation of Biafrans who took over from the ones that fought tht war, Never made a lot of noise about this like the Rwandans did with the Hutu genocide or the Armenians with the genocide pepertuated against Armenians by the Turks, is the main reason Britain is still active in Nigeria today, trying to network with the beastial fulani for another round of genocide in the East..

Folks don't know but the fact is that The Biafran genocide was the first real modern black on black genocide that was recorded in modern history! Before then, the world only had the skirmishes in the Congo that led to the death of Lumumba and the coming of Mobutu to talk about. No major wars between modern African countries. Africans were so into each other that the idea of a one country from cape to Cairo was even being muted. Gowon and his bunch of vandals put an end to that.

It was also the first time the rest of the world started seeing skinny African kids about to be eaten alive by vultures on their TVs. It was nonplussing both for foreigners around the world, and for Africans living in Africa. It was a defining moment too. Because immediately after the Biafran genocide, we started seeing all sorts of brutal , ethnic cleansing wars across Africa from Uganda, Angola, Congo again, Zimbabwe, Kenya etc. Basic copying of the Nigerian template..Strikingly, most of these wars, if not all were wars fought between different ethnic groups WITHIN the same African States and NOT between different African countries.

So it's safe to say that the likes of Gowon, Murtala, Buhari, Babangida and Obasanjo are the forerunners of the genocides and ethnic cleansings in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan etc..