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The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering by Bill Sharman is a Social Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

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When Nigeria gained independence from Britain in 1960, hopes for the new nation were high, not least because oil had recently been discovered in the Niger delta region. Yet national unity was weak. Nigeria was a British colonial creation, cobbled together in 1914 when Lord Lugard joined the distinct northern and southern protectorates into one colonial state. At independence, power and politics remained divided between the Hausa-Fulani in the mostly Muslim north, and the Yoruba and Igbo in the mostly Christian south. In 1966, several coups gave way to massacres against Igbos living in the north. Igbos across Nigeria fled to the Eastern Region in the south, and in May 1967 leaders there declared independence from Nigeria and founded the Republic of Biafra. Under Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, Biafra claimed a right to national self-determination; Igbos and other minorities from the south's Eastern Region needed a state of their own. Nigeria rejected it, and a civil war began. The Nigerian military government established a blockade around Biafra, and by mid-1968 famine gripped much of the breakaway state. The war ended with Biafra's surrender in January 1970, having claimed the lives of on

Who reads The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering?

Author

Bill Sharman

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Published

2020

Language

EN

Field

Social Sciences