1967 — Biafra Declares Its Independence

On May 30, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu broadcast from Enugu that the Eastern Region was seceding as the Republic of Biafra. Fourteen million people now stood under a rising-sun flag, in a new state proclaimed by radio to a region braced for war and to a federation determined to hold together by force.

Gowon's twelve-state decree three days earlier had broken the East's grip on the oil fields, and the 1966 pogroms had burned away any faith in federal Nigeria. Federal troops mobilized, a blockade closed in, and Biafra held out for thirty months before the war that killed two million people ended in 1970.