Word: nigerias
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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D.SPANER Ilesha, Nigeria...
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...
...they would also be extremely weak-which may be one reason why South Africa, concerned about Nigeria's potential strength, supported Biafra. Secession, moreover, would lead to the further balkanization of Black Africa, where many of the countries such as Gabon (pop. 480,000) and Swaziland (pop. 395,000) are already far too small to function as working national economies. Furthermore, attempts at revising Black Africa's map would undoubtedly plunge the continent into the same sort of bloody border wars that plagued South America in the 19th century. In its founding meeting in 1963, the 41-nation...
Still, as long as Africa remains afflicted by tribalism and mired in economic difficulties, secessionist movements cannot be ruled out. And what about Nigeria? One pessimistic and probably exaggerated view is that the only thing holding Nigeria together has been the war against the Ibos. Less exaggerated, unfortunately, is speculation that an end of hostilities could be followed by trouble from another of the country's major tribes, the restive Yorubas of Western Nigeria...
WHEN a U.S. diplomat called on Major General Yakubu ("Jack") Gowon last week, he noticed a well-thumbed volume of Carl Sandburg's biography of Abraham Lincoln on the desk of Nigeria's 35-year-old military leader. Gowon had apparently read it carefully. He quoted Lincoln on the problem of "binding up the nation's wounds" and the need to ensure that "the dead shall not have died in vain." Throughout Nigeria's civil war, Gowon operated on the Lincolnesque proposition that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." In the process, he became quite...