Word: biafras
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Building Up Jerusalem. That was all too evident in the area of what had been Biafra, where 12 million people had sought to establish a state independent of Nigeria and its 45 million other inhabitants. Nigerian Leader Yakubu Gowon had pledged his victorious government to a program of reconciliation rather than recrimination toward the secessionists. Because of ineptitude and the war's unexpectedly sudden end, which caught relief agencies unprepared, Gowon's peace program flicked on only at half strength. Feeding programs broke down, medical supplies went undelivered and there were countless incidents of rape and looting...
...evidence could be seen of the deliberate genocide 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...
Foreign observers, after cursory checks of Gowon's Jerusalem, returned to Lagos with airily optimistic progress reports. United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, after two days in Lagos and none in Biafra, said unqualifiedly that "there is no hint, even the remotest evidence of 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...
...they would also be extremely weak-which may be one reason why South Africa, concerned about Nigeria's potential strength, supported Biafra. Secession, moreover, would lead to the further balkanization of Black Africa, where many of the countries such as Gabon (pop. 480,000) and Swaziland (pop. 395,000) are already far too small to function as working national economies. Furthermore, attempts at revising Black Africa's map would undoubtedly plunge the continent into the same sort of bloody border wars that plagued South America in the 19th century. In its founding meeting in 1963, the 41-nation...
...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...