Word: biafrans
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...postponement of elections was motivated by Gowon's genuine fear that if he relinquished power, the nation would be racked by a renewal of the tribal hostilities that claimed more than a million lives during the fratricidal Biafran war of 1967-70. His fears were based partly on the bitter controversy generated by publication of suspect 1973 census figures. Those ranked the Moslem Hausa and Fulani tribesmen of northern Nigeria as more numerous -and therefore more politically powerful under the proposed electoral system-than the predominantly Christian Ibos of the south and the Yorubas of the west...
...Brazil, he was considered so valuable that the government once forbade him to play for a foreign team. In Africa, he was so imposing a legend that a cease-fire was called during the Biafran war so that both sides could watch him perform. But in the U.S., where the game of soccer has been played more for kicks than major-league cash, he is something of an anomaly. So Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known almost everywhere as Pelé, made his debut last week for the New York Cosmos, seeking by his message to establish American credibility...
Long the best-educated and most industrious of Nigeria's tribes, the Ibos have used their resources to rebuild their war-torn region instead of carrying on a vendetta. When the war ended, the defeated Biafran leader, Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu,* bitterly boasted that the Ibos would rebel again. He turned out to be wrong. Ibos these days rarely speak of Biafra or of secession. "We tried and lost," says an Ibo businessman in Ibadan. "That finishes it. From now on, we are all Nigerians...
...strongest character in the narrative is the Jefferson Davis of this civil war, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the sophisticated and somewhat theatrical Ibo colonel who led the Biafran revolt. But the real hero is Yakubu Gowon, who eventually succeeded in holding the country together...
...military governor of the Eastern Region, the Oxford-educated Ojukwu was too proud and too ambitious to recognize Gowon as head of state. Instead, following the massacres, he began to arm the East-and proceeded to use the Ibos' fear of genocide to stir up the phenomenal Biafran war effort. Gowon warned him sadly, "If circumstances compel me to preserve the integrity of Nigeria by force, I will do my duty." Ojukwu, by contrast, appears to Author De St. Jorre as less a patriot than "a man who has got into power and intends to stay there...