Word: biafrans
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...lights came on again in Lagos last week, ending a 30-month blackout imposed to protect the Nigerian capital from Biafran bombers that never appeared. Unaccustomed to the brightness, bats swooped screeching out of trees to seek darkness elsewhere, and pedestrians stepped neatly over rain ditches they had fallen into during the war. Only half the lights went on again, however; there was not enough power available to light the rest. Plainly, peacetime conditions would not be restored with the mere flick of a switch...
...against which Biafra's General Odumegwu Ojukwu had warned before he hastily departed from his collapsing nation three weeks ago. Nigerian leaders, for the most part, made genuine efforts to see that Biafra's Ibo tribesmen were cared for. Nigerian money was rushed in to replace worthless Biafran currency, Ibo civil servants were rehired and their 30-month defection listed as "leave of absence without pay." Gowon, wearing a flowing blue African robe instead of a general's uniform, led a thanksgiving service at Lagos' Anglican cathedral. He selected and read the lesson of the service...
...violence by the Nigerian Federal forces." Henrik Beer, secretary general of the League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva, doubted that there had ever been wholesale starvation in Biafra. But hunger remained a very real threat. Gowon adamantly refused to let relief groups use Uli airstrip, a symbol of Biafran resistance. One result of his decision was that many of the 3,500,000 people in Biafra were going hun gry. According to some estimates by churchmen and physicians, as many as 1,000,000 Biafrans were on the verge of starvation. Ignoring pleas to stay put, perhaps...
Judging by initial reports from the collapsed Biafran pocket, the sword of genocide was a lesser threat than the strangling knot of slow starvation. Some Biafrans, according to relief workers, had not eaten for eight days before the capitulation. Afterward, they fled into the bush, where there was nothing to chew on but butterflies. Even so, Gowon allowed no aid without approval from Lagos. "Nigeria will do this itself," he said firmly...
...immediate effect of the failure of the Biafran secession was that when representatives of ten French-speaking countries of West and Central Africa met last week in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroun, they promptly patched up their differences. They had fallen out after Gabon's President Albert-Bernard Bongo and the Ivory Coast's Felix Houphouet-Boigny recognized Biafra. The specter of the beaten Biafrans is likely to serve as a warning to secessionist leaders elsewhere in Africa. It may also embolden national governments to crack down more swiftly and effectively on breakaway elements...