Word: biafras
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Dates: during 1967-1967
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...world's shortest-lived country was the tiny state of Biafra - or so it seemed. Six months ago, the Eastern Region of Nigeria, the home of 8,500-000 Ibo tribesmen, proclaimed itself a sovereign nation and plunged Nigeria into civil war. No country ever recognized Biafra, and the Nigerian federal navy soon choked its economy with a blockade. By October, federal troops sent to quell the rebellion had captured almost a third of Biafra's territory, including the capital of Enugu, and sent the secessionist government fleeing into the region's rain forests. The surprising fact...
...bought millions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition, which reach the rebels at night via the Portuguese island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea. Biafran students recently organized noisy pro-secessionist demonstrations at the United Nations in New York and in downtown London. Biafra's lone television station continued to end its program day each evening with a rousing chorus of We Shall Overcome...
Invasion Force. Outnumbered 2 to 1 and surrounded on three sides by a federal army that totals about 50,000 men, Biafra nonetheless seems ready to fight for the last inches of its turf. Pushed out of the Midwestern state, which they had seized in a daring raid, Ojukwu's men have hurled back boatloads of troops trying to cross the Niger River after them. One big government ferry got stuck on a sandbar in midpassage; while searchlights lit it up, Biafran guns splintered it, and hundreds of men drowned. Elsewhere, the war has become a kind of ballet...
More than 50,000 people have been killed on both sides in the civil war, which has also brought thousands of refugees, mostly Ibo, from the rest of Nigeria crowding into already overpopulated Biafra. Ojukwu insists that Biafra's sovereignty is not negotiable, has arrested 600 persons he suspects of plotting to bring about a compromise. For his part, Gowon does not seem to be demanding Ojukwu's removal anymore, but does persist in his plan to carve the Eastern Region into three states, only one of which would be reserved for the Ibo. Weeks overdue, an Organization...
...jailed by the Nigerian government in Lagos on Aug. 17, on charges that he had aided leaders of the secessionist province of Biafra in their civil war. He had just been named head of Black Africa's only university drama school at the University of Ibadan, which is the capital of the country's Western region. Soyinka said that he was conferring with the Biafrans to urge a cease-fire...