Surviving in Biafra

Book excerpt: In 1966, several waves of rioting in northern Nigeria culminated in the brutal massacre of thousands of easterners by their northern Nigerian counterparts. Sensing that their safety could no longer be guaranteed, the easterners fled to the eastern region and established an independent nation called Biafra. Refusing to accept her sovereignty, Nigeria waged a thirty-month war against Biafra, targeting air assaults at civilian locations, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of children, women, and the elderly. Nigeria used land and sea blockade to prevent relief food from reaching hungry masses in Biafra and thousands of children died from a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. At the end of it all in 1970, two million people had perished.