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Self-Determination: The Nigeria/Biafra Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Charles R. Nixon
Charles R. Nixon
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Extract

In the history of postcolonial Africa, no country has suffered a more tragic experience than Nigeria. After almost twenty years of gradual constitutional evolution by relatively orderly processes of conferences and negotiations, the structure of constitutional agreement collapsed; the army was broken into regional groups; citizens of Eastern Region origin fled much of the rest of the country during a series of massacres which produced a migration of hundreds of thousands of persons; the central government lost its effective authority over the Eastern Region; and when orderly processes of negotiation were suspended, the Eastern Region sought its own security and survival by declaring its independence, shortly after which the central government sought to reestablish its authority in the area by military action. The resulting war, which lasted two and one-half years, produced over a million casualties from military action, disease, and starvation.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , July 1972 , pp. 473 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1972

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References

1 Emerson, Rupert, Self-Determination Revisited in the Era of Decolonization, Occasional Paper No. 9, Center for International Affairs, Harvard University (December 1964), 27–29Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 27.

3 Mackintosh, J. P. and others, Nigerian Government and Politics (London 1966)Google Scholar, provides analyses of the Nigerian political scene prior to the coup of January 1966, as well as notes to the extensive literature on Nigerian politics.

4 Panter-Brick, S. K. and others, Nigerian Politics and Military Rule: Prelude to the Civil War (London 1970)Google Scholar, which appeared after this paper was prepared, contains valuable analyses of the events leading to the civil war as well as an appendix of 125 pages containing selected documents and speeches covering the period January 1966-June 1967.

5 Proclamation of the Republic of Biafra (Enugu 1967), 5–6Google Scholar.

6 See Tamuno, Tekena N., “Separatist Agitations in Nigeria since 1914,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, vii (December 1970), 563–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 “Form of Association for Nigeria. Paper by the Northern Nigeria Delegation,” as printed in The Ad Hoc Conference on the Nigerian Constitution, Nigerian Crisis 1966, iv (Eastern Nigeria 1966), 3–4Google Scholar.

8 “Memorandum by the Western Nigeria and Lagos Delegations to the Ad Hoc Committee on Constitutional Arrangements for Nigeria, 1966,” ibid., 26.

9 As reported in Africa Research Bulletin, iv (June 15, 1967), 777Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 776.

11 Proclamation of the Republic of Biafra (fn. 5), 14.

12 Population Census of Nigeria, 1963, Eastern Region, ii (Lagos 1968)Google Scholar.

13 See the “Memorandum on Future Association between Biafra and the rest of the former Federation of Nigeria,” (Enugu 1967)Google Scholar.

14 Diallo, Mourtada, “The Power and Energy Resources and Utilization of Nigeria,” a paper presented to the Conference on National Reconstruction and Development in Nigeria, March 25, 1969, 25Google Scholar.

15 See Johnson, Harold S., Self-determination within the Community of Nations (Leyden 1967)Google Scholar, for an account of the United Nations efforts to implement its declarations regarding self-determination. Also Emerson (fn. 1).

16 Stanley Meisler in the Los Angeles Times, May 4,1969.