Word: hausa
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...their earnings and established powerful tribal associations. When Nigeria became independent in 1960, the Ibos controlled most of the black-owned businesses. When the British left, they stepped into top posts in universities, business houses and the civil service. But the Ibos have usually been resented, especially by the Hausa Moslems of the comparatively poorer North. In last year's riots, thousands of Ibos died and more than 50,000 fled into their own Eastern state...
...years, the central government managed to keep the lid on these divisive forces. Then, last October, the bubble burst. In the North, rioting Hausas slaughtered 3000 Ibos and injured 10,000 more. The Eastern Region accepted the more than one million refugees who fled the North in the wake of the rioting and then closed its doors, cutting off communications with its Nigerian neighbors. Ojukwu declared that unless the federal government compensated the displaced Ibos for death of relatives, property damage, and injury, the East would secede from the Nigerian federation. During November, he refused to attend a constitutional conference...
...massacre began at the airport near the 5th Battalion's home city of Kano. A Lagos-bound jet had just arrived from London, and as the Kano passengers were escorted into the customs shed, a wild-eyed soldier stormed in, brandishing a rifle and demanding "Ina Nyammari?"-Hausa for "Where are the damned Ibos?" There were Ibos among the customs officials, and they dropped their chalk and fled, only to be shot down in the main terminal by other soldiers. Screaming the blood curses of a Moslem holy war, the Hausa troops turned the airport into a shambles, bayoneting...
...soldiers did not have to do all the killing. They were soon joined by thousands of Hausa civilians, who rampaged through the city armed with stones, cutlasses, machetes, and homemade weapons of metal and broken glass. Crying "Heathen!" and "Allah!", the mobs and troops invaded the sabon gari (strangers' quarter), ransacking, looting and burning Ibo homes and stores and murdering their owners...
Despite his youth, "Jack" Gowon was not a bad choice. A spartan, British-trained officer who neither smokes nor drinks (his hobby is bird watching), Gowon, although a Northerner, is not a member of the region's dominant Hausa and Fulani tribes. Nor is he a Moslem; his father, a member of the smaller Birom tribe, is a Methodist missionary. But his task is not easy...