Word: nigerians
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...lights came on again in Lagos last week, ending a 30-month blackout imposed to protect the Nigerian capital from Biafran bombers that never appeared. Unaccustomed to the brightness, bats swooped screeching out of trees to seek darkness elsewhere, and pedestrians stepped neatly over rain ditches they had fallen into during the war. Only half the lights went on again, however; there was not enough power available to light the rest. Plainly, peacetime conditions would not be restored with the mere flick of a switch...
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...
Last year, with fresh troops and new supplies, Ojukwu briefly went over to the offensive. By August, seven-eighths of Biafra's former territory had been recovered, including Owerri, where 1,900 Nigerian troops were killed. But the optimism created by such military feats was soon dimmed by the specter of renewed starvation. In parts of Biafra's enclave two-thirds of the population suffered from malnutrition. As many as 1,000 children died in a single day; they were buried at night by lamplight in mass graves...
...airstrip by that time, half the runway lights and some of the runway itself had been knocked out by Nigerian guns. The control tower began to wave off flights; they dropped from 17 a day to three, and soon were discontinued. The last pilots to get in with dried fish and other food had to unload their own planes because workers had fled. Often food moved from Uli was brought back because distribution centers had been overrun. The last telex message from Biafra to Markpress, a Geneva public relations firm that has handled the Biafra account with skill, said tersely...
...Scout nickname does a disservice to the man. Gowon was at once tough enough and shrewd enough to win an ugly civil war without splintering what was left of the fragile Nigerian coalition. At a time when hardliners within his government were urging a more ruthless prosecution of the war, Gowon told them: "We have no enemy, the Ibos are not our enemy." Looking to war's end and the problem of reintegrating the Ibos, he ordered his government to collect rent on Ibo-owned property outside the breakaway area and keep the money in trust for its owners...