International media coverage in the 1960s and early 1970s represented the Biafran War, in which the state of Biafra attempted to secede from the Nigerian Federation, as a grand humanitarian disaster, characterised by sustained conflict, starvation and genocide. Using interviews and newly-released archival material, Michael Gould questions this depiction, examining the role of foreign parties in the conflict and the impact of propaganda upon its international reception both during and after the war. Envisaged initially by both sides as a short conflict, the war confounded all expectations, stretching on for four years. It was a 'brother's war', one which divided families, and was characterised overwhelmingly by both sides' reluctance to enter into hostilities. This book seeks to answer some of the most fundamental questions surrounding the conflict, including how this avoidable conflict came about, why the war became so drawn-out and how the leadership of the opposing Generals Ojukwu, who led the Biafran revolt and Gowon, who was President of the Nigerian Federation, defined the conflict. In the process, Gould offers a radical reappraisal of the many entrenched conceptions which currently surround the conflict. This book will be essential reading for all students of African history and politics, and post-colonial studies.

The Biafran War was truly a 'brother's war', which saw family and friends on opposing sides. When the breakaway province of Biafra tried to secede from Nigeria in 1967, the result was a civil war of terrifying intensity. The minority Igbo people stood little chance of victory in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the Nigerian army in the north. Envisaged initially as a short conflict, the war confounded all expectations, stretching on for almost three years - the Igbo had far inferior resources and fewer weapons, yet they were determined to defend their right to independence. This book answers many of the most important questions surrounding the conflict - including how such an avoidable conflict came about, why the war became so drawn-out and how the leadership of the opposing Generals - Ojukwu, who led the Biafran revolt, and Gowon, who was President of the Nigerian Federation - defined the conflict. In doing so, Michael Gould offers a fascinating and comprehensive portrait of one of the defining conflicts of modern Africa.

From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart—a long-awaited memoir of coming of age in a fragile new nation, and its destruction in a tragic civil war For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.

Nigeria, despite being the African country of greatest strategic importance to the U.S., remains poorly understood. John Campbell explains why Nigeria is so important to understand in a world of jihadi extremism, corruption, oil conflict, and communal violence. The revised edition provides updates through the recent presidential election.

In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.

One of the great tragedies of Africa is not only the fact that a million people mostly civilians and a large proportion of them children died in one of Africas first post-independence wars, but that until it happened the world thought Nigeria was immune from the wasting disease of tribalism. It certainly was not because the Biafran War is still the most expansive tribal conflagration that the continent has experienced barring perhaps the ongoing Great Lakes conflict involving the forces of East and West, only this time, with the British siding with the Soviets.Worse, some of the religious differences that emerged before and after that dreadful carnage are still with us today. During the course of hostilities that lasted almost four years, a lot of other shortcomings surfaced in Africas most populous nation, including the kind of corruption that, until then, had always been linked to countries rich in oil. Disunity, incompetence and instability from which Nigeria never really recovered also emerged. Two bloody army coups followed after the rebels capitulated, together with an appalling series of massacres, mostly of southern Christians by Muslim northerners. Half a century later the slaughter continues.

This novel about Nigeria prophesied the 1983 coup.