Word: biafrans
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...Moliere smile. The rather abbreviated one-act play revolves around the activities of one Brother Jeroboam, a self-proclaimed prophet of the Lord and small-time religious hustler. Soyinka, a Yoruba playwright, novelist and poet who spent three years in a Nigerian prison for alleged subversion during the tragic Biafran civil war, puts broad satirical strokes and rapid-fire dialogue to clever use to parody the frailties of the human race...
Nigeria, black Africa's richest and potentially most powerful state, has been unable to live up to its promise. Only six years ago the country pulled itself out of the devastating Biafran civil war. Murtala himself had come to power only seven months ago, after a successful coup deposed former Head of State General Yakubu...
Following a round-the-clock meeting, the Federal Military Council named a new ruler: former Armed Forces Chief of Staff Lieut. General Olusegun Obasanjo, 38. Trained as an engineer in Britain and India, Obasanjo commanded the division that broke the back of the Biafran insurgency in 1970. Under Murtala, the tough, respected Obasanjo had been the regime's chief spokesman, more involved in managing day-to-day affairs than his somewhat aloof boss...
...inheritor of these problems as Nigeria's new head of state is Brigadier Muritala Rufai Mohammed, 38, formerly Minister of Communications and architect of the 1966 coup that brought Gowon to power. Mohammed, who earned a reputation as the army's most brutally efficient commander during the Biafran war, is expected to govern in a more decisive-and possibly less humane-manner than Gowon. He has already cleaned house thoroughly, sacking all army commanders and their top aides, all Cabinet members and all the provincial governors of Nigeria's twelve states...
...there are tribal differences. Gowon is a Christian northerner from the relatively small Anga tribe. Nigeria's new leader is a Hausa Moslem with strong tribal loyalties-a factor that led Gowon to regard Mohammed as a threat to his own Lincolnesque policy of "national conciliation" after the Biafran civil war. The least sign of regional or tribal chauvinism on Mohammed's part might well lead to countercoup or renewed civil war. Foreign diplomats in Nigeria also fear that Mohammed's Moslem background might lead to a less moderate policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict. Under Gowon...