Word: biafras
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...children of Biafra, like children in all wars, are the victims of a struggle beyond their control. Their parents, rightly or wrongly, believe that the Ibos must follow their own destiny and carve out their own mini-nation. The federal Nigerians believe in the vision of a united, pluralist Nigerian nation. The cruel dilemma has been eloquently summed up by Yoruba Playwright Wole Soyinka. "Every Ibo man, woman and child believes today that he is fighting a last-ditch battle for his home and his dignity," he says. "What that means in practical terms to the nation is that...
Today, Ojukwu's Biafra is a land of physical ruin. Crowded into hardwood forests and mangrove swamps that cannot possibly support them, Biafrans are starving to death, by a conservative estimate, at the rate of 1,000 a day. Most of the 4,500,000 refugees from all corners of Nigeria who returned to the Ibo heartland live in makeshift camps, totally dependent on scanty government and missionary rations. The price of staple foods has risen fantastically (cost of a dozen eggs: $4), and salaried work is almost nonexistent. Biafra's chance of survival shrinks with each...
...Ibos off from their oil and their coastline. Meanwhile, Ojukwu expelled Northerners from his region and built up his army. In the early hours of May 30, 1967, at a champagne reception in the regional capital of Enugu, he announced the creation of a new republic. Its name: Biafra, after the Bight of Biafra, off the Atlantic coastline to the south...
...after a bomb was dropped near his home. Slouched at his desk, pacing the grounds impatiently in darkness, chain-smoking State Express filter cigarettes, he is a lonely figure in his besieged land. Ojukwu often is pictured in Nigerian propaganda as a power-mad Hitler. In fact, he runs Biafra as a wartime democracy, frequently seeking the advice of his consultative assembly of Ibo elders. Biafra also has a functioning judiciary, a ministerial executive government
...hold only three important cities?Aba, Owerri and Umuahia?and federal forces are pushing toward all three. Increasingly, the Biafrans have based their defense on quick guerrilla-type strikes, which are the specialty of a small group of hard-bitten European mercenaries who have thrown in their lot with Biafra. Last week, in one of their most successful raids yet, Biafran commandos managed to sneak behind federal lines near Owerri and bushwhack Nigerian columns, killing 116 Nigerians. But federal field commanders have launched a "final push" to overwhelm Ojukwu's forces...