Blog #13 03/15/09

For the text about war, I chose to blog about the Nigerian Civil War between 1967-1970 because the book Things Fall Apart is in Nigeria. The conflict was cause mainly because the south part of Nigeria tried to become independent of Nigeria and become the Republic of Biafra. By around the 1900's Britain formed an area out of West Africa that had many diverse groups and called it Nigeria. Of course, they did not think of how these groups were to become one! The three main groups were the Igbo, the Hausa-Fulani, and the Yoruba. The Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani had similar political systems and were more of Mulim/Islamic descent. Their main goal was to keep Islamic conservative values, which in turn, caused them to think of economic and social change as a bad thing. I believe that this shows how people have to change and not be stubborn otherwise they will suffer. On the other hand, the Igbo were more democratic with mostly everyone participating in decisions of the clan. When the Christian missionaries arrived, they focused on the Igbo people because they were the ones who wanted to advance more in society. Due to oil reserves being found in the Niger River delta in the southeastern part of Nigera, this caused the northeners to fear of being cut off from revenue. The south feared that the north would tear their oil strips from them. The southeastern Igbo dominated part resulted in the secession of it to be the Republic of Biafra. Unfortunately, it was not really recognized as a Republic. I think that if all had went well, there would not have been as big of a civil war. That would have saved many lives. The Nigerian government then tried to retake the "Republic of Biafra" which caused the start of the war in 1967. They got some cities but the Biafrrans took the Mid-Western region. Eventually, the Nigerian govt retook the midwest but when they tried to cross the Nigerian river, they lost three times. I think that the government should have just recognized the rights of the Republic to have their own county, but of course that didn't happen.  Later, the Nigerian Government blockaded the Republic. The blockade caused widespread hunger, starvation, and a hopeless world filled with terror and violence. Widespread media gave help to the Biafrans. In due time, the Nigerian government took over the last city and the war was over. The aftermath caused a bad image of nigeria, death, and money. Furthermore, I feel bad because the Igbo's were not allowed many spots in the new governments which has lead to their decline contrary to what people said at the time. I am going to see if a civil war is going to come into play in the book we are currently reading. That would make things very interesting. But, even though the Nigerian Government should not have been so harsh, I don't think that it was right for the southeastern part just to decide to become independent when they had the best natural resources. So, it was essentially a two way deal with both sides being equally responsible. Reading this article has made me open up my mind to other parts of the world that you never really think to care of, but now I am interested in what types of conflict is going on in other parts of africa and the like. 

MLA:

Atofarati, Abubakar. "The Nigerian Civil War, Causes, Strategies, And Lessons Learnt." 1992. 14 Mar 2009 .