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Summary
The Nigerian civil war, 1967-1979 was an ethnic and political conflict caused by the attempted secession of the south-eastern provinces of Nigeria as the self-proclaimed republic of Biafra. The war became notorious for the starvation in some of the besieged war bound regions and the consequent claims of genocide made by the largely Igbo people of those regions. The civil war was the culminating of an uneasy peace and stability that had plagued their nation from independence in 1960. This situation had its genesis in the geography, history culture and demography of Nigeria1.
The conflict was the result of serious tensions both ethnic and religious between the different peoples of Nigeria. Like most modern African nations, Nigeria was an artificial construct, put together by agreement between European powers, paying little regard to historical African boundaries or population groups. The Nigeria which received independence from Britain in 1960 had a population of 60 million people of nearly 300 differing ethnic and tribal groups of the ethnic groups that made up Nigeria, the largest were the largely Muslim Hausa in the north, the Yoruba in the half-Christian, half-Muslim south-west, the Igbo in the predominantly Christian south-east, at independence a conservative political alliance had been made between the leading Hausa and Igbo political parties, which ruled Nigeria from 1960-1966. This alliance excluded the western Yoruba people.
