Maja Umeh, a spokesman for Nigeria's Anambra state,
confirmed Ojukwu's death Saturday. Anambra state, in the heart
of what used to be the breakaway republic, had provided
financial support for Ojukwu during his hospital stay.
Ojukwu's rise coincided with the fall of Nigeria's First
Republic, formed after Nigeria, a nation split between a
predominantly Muslim north and a largely Christian south,
gained its independence from Britain in 1960.
A 1966 coup led primarily by army officers from the Igbo
ethnic group from Nigeria's southeast shot and killed Prime
Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, a northerner, as well as the
premier of northern Nigeria, Ahmadu Bello.
The coup failed, but the country still fell under military
control. Northerners, angry about the death of its leaders,
attacked Igbos living there. As many as 10,000 people died in
resulting riots. Many Igbos fled back to Nigeria's southeast,
their traditional home.
Ojukwu, then 33, served as the military governor for the
southeast. The son of a knighted millionaire, Ojukwu studied
history at Oxford and attended a military officer school in
Britain. In 1967, he declared the region — including part of
the oil-rich Niger Delta — as the Republic of Biafra. The new
republic used the name of the Atlantic Ocean bay to its south,
its flag a rising sun set against a black, green and red
background.
But instead of sparking pan-African pride, the announcement
sparked 31 months of fierce fighting between the breakaway
republic and Nigeria. Under Gen. Yakubu "Jack" Gowon, Nigeria
adopted the slogan "to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be
done" and moved to reclaim a region vital to the country's
coffers.
Despite several pushes by Biafran troops, Nigerian forces
slowly strangled Biafra into submission. Caught in the middle
were Igbo refugees increasingly pushed back as the front lines
fell. The region, long reliant on other regions of Nigeria for
food.
The enduring images, seen on television and in photographs,
show starving Biafran children with distended stomachs and
stick-like arms.
Despite the efforts of humanitarian groups, many died as
hunger became a weapon wielded by both sides.
"Was starvation a legitimate weapon of war?" wrote English
journalist John de St. Jorre. "The hard-liners in Nigeria and
Biafra thought that it was, the former regarding it as a valid
means of reducing the enemy's capacity to resist, as method as
old as war itself, and the latter seeing it as a way of
internationalizing the conflict."
The images fed into Ojukwu's warnings that to see Biafra
fall would see the end of the Igbo people.
"The crime of genocide has not only been threatened but
fulfilled. The only reason any of us are alive today is
because we have our rifles," Ojukwu told journalists in 1968.
"Otherwise the massacre would be complete. It would be
suicidal for us to lay down our arms at this stage."
That final massacre never came. Ojukwu and trusted aides
escaped Biafra by airplane on Jan. 11, 1970. Biafra collapsed
shortly after. Gowon himself broke the cycle of revenge in a
speech in which said there was "no victor, no vanquished." He
also pardoned those who had participated in the rebellion.
Ojukwu spent 13 years in exile, coming home after he was
unconditionally pardoned in 1982. He returned to politics, but
lost a race for a senate seat. He was sent to a
maximum-security prison for a year when Nigeria suffered yet
another of the military coups that punctuated life after
independence.
He later wrote his memoirs and lived the quiet life of an
elder statesman until he unsuccessfully challenged incumbent
Olusegun Obasanjo for the presidency in 2003. Obasanjo served
as a colonel in the Biafran war and gave the final statement
on rebel-controlled radio announcing the conflict's end.
Despite the long and costly civil war, Nigeria remains torn
by internal conflict. Tens of thousands have died in riots
pitting Christians against Muslims in the country. Militant
groups attack foreign oil firms in the oil-rich Niger Delta
while criminal gangs kidnap the middle class. Poverty
continues to grind the country.
The Igbos, meanwhile, continue to suffer political
isolation in the country. While an Igbo man recently became
the country's top military officers, others say they've been
locked out of higher office over lingering mistrust from the
war.
Some in the former breakaway region still hold out hope for
their own voice, even their own country despite the
cataclysmic losses.
As did Ojukwu himself.
"Biafra," Ojukwu told journalists in 2006, "is always an
alternative."
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