On the Igbo genocide 3

While the war did begin with vicious pogroms in the North, it is worth remembering that what took place between 1967 and 1970 was a war, with two armies fighting each other. To suggest that nobody cared is ridiculous. The Red Cross, Jointchurchaid and Nordchurchaid put up the biggest relief effort since the Berlin Airlift, and Biafra was not without political support from countries like France, which smelled oil, and Portugal, which in the face of its own colonial wars feared a strong, united Nigeria.

It is also worth remembering that while the Igbo bore the brunt of the violence before the war, Biafra included many ethnic minorities, some of whom did not join the Biafran side willingly. It should also be remembered that large areas of Igbo-speaking territory in the former Eastern Region, as well as the Midwest, fell to Nigerian forces long before the end of the war, and the fear of genocidal behaviour by the Nigerian army proved completely unfounded. And of course the war ended not with genocide, but with as good a reconstruction effort as any.

The worst part of Mr. Ekwe-Ekwe's article is his comprehensive denunciation 45 years after the fact of virtually all Hausa-speaking people (and Muslims too) as ‘maniacal’ and ‘rabid’. This only serves to enflame the fraught situation that Nigerians face once again at the hands of dangerous fundamentalists.

Mr. Ekwe-Ekwe concludes by recommending a comprehensive arms ban on Africa. This might be a good idea, but it won't do much to modify the ethnic hatred that he seems so intent on fuelling.