Word: ibos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rampage of Death. For Lieut. Colonel Ojukwu and his Ibos, the beginning of the end came, oddly enough, partly as the result of a considerable initial victory. Last August, in a lightning attack, Ojukwu's forces swept westward out of Biafra and captured Nigeria's oil-rich Midwestern state. But the drive left Ojukwu's 7,000 troops stretched dangerously thin over 39,000 sq. mi. Rather than strike back, Gowon quietly built his troop strength to 42,000 men and kept adding heavy arms, ammunition and jet planes, which Ojukwu could ill afford. Then, two weeks...
...frantic call to arms, broadcast by Radio Biafra, thundered across Nigeria's secessionist Eastern Region last week like the throb of primitive war drums. It was directed at Biafra's Ibo tribesmen, who set up an independent country to escape persecution, but few were in a mood to heed its challenge. Four months after Rebel Leader Odumegwu Ojukwu declared Biafra's independence, federal troops under Major General Yakubu Gowon slashed deep into Ibo territory, rained shells down on the Biafran capital of Enugu and sent frightened Biafran soldiers and civilians fleeing by the hundreds. The fall...
Bypassing shops chalked with "soul brother," Benin's non-Ibo residents went on a rampage, looting and wrecking businesses owned or managed by Ibos. Many Ibo civilians were handed over to northern soldiers, who competed with each other for the fun of shooting them. Hundreds of Ibo bodies, many stripped and shot full of holes, were scooped into dump trucks and carted off to common graves or to the nearby Benin River. Others were left to rot in the blistering...
...real sense, Nigeria's tribal antagonisms are the product of modernization's pressures. The Ibo's skills--and their ambition and industriousness--embittered the backward Hausas, particularly after Ibos captured most of the skilled jobs in the Northern Region. Hausa envy, inflamed by Ibo arrogance, goes a long way toward explaining the tribal explosion...
There is another side to the picture. When they rocketed to economic dominance, the Ibos upset traditional tribal relationships and displaced many local tribal elites. Moslem caliphs and emirs, who dominated the economy of the North for ages, found their power threatened by Ibo entrepeneurs. Cornered, the Hausas struck a blow for tradition on the streets of their desert-bound cities...