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Introduction

In Nigeria, as in much of the formerly colonised world, political tussles be they violent or otherwise are most often characterised as ethnic identity-oriented struggles. The people of the formerly colonised world are not seen as persons or individuals, or even groups whose motivations are propelled by varied interests but as frozen ethnic subjects whose activities are underlined by ethnic needs. In many cases, ethnicity becomes a pretext for the pursuit and consolidation of political power. And this characterisation seems logical and practical, given that affiliations and rivalry in the broader national sense usually toe ethnic identity lines. What is however ignored is the knowledge-making which goes into consolidating difference among political communities as well as exaggerating those differences. For example, concrete identity-building in colonial Nigeria was preceded by theorisations around identity instituted by the structure of European occupation and colonialism. Colonial rule then exacerbated these differences through its mode of governance.

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Pro-Biafranism is a struggle that germinated from the events of the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967-1970 and continuing as long as the Fourth Republic has been in existence (1999 till date). This paper aims to locate pro-Biafranism in Nigeria within the epistemic discourse of the post-colonial Nigerian state, and specifically, the post-Biafran state. It attempts to decolonise discourse around pro-Biafran separatism by moving it from an automatic ethno-materialist lens to an epistemological one. It raises questions about state ideology through educational reforms from colonial times through independence, and about how a thirty-month war necessitated a policy emergency geared at orienting education in Nigeria towards national loyalty. Feminist historiography is invoked to further explore the limits of identities and characterisations created through knowledge-making and theorisation. Feminism is an ideology that sprung from the push-back of women against patriarchal societal norms which inhibit the best potentials of every member of society. Feminist historiography emerges as a critique of mainstream women’s history, as it takes into consideration the structures and frameworks of historical communities which enabled them produce histories without women or with women at the margins. In the case of pro-Biafranism, what sort of knowledge systems have influenced the shape and form of resistance?

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Background

The Nigeria-Biafra war has been extensively written about over the years. It occurred as an offshoot of the political crisis that faced Nigeria within its first decade of independence, beginning from the marred census and elections of 1962 through 1964/5 and then the coup staged by junior military officers in January 1966 in an attempt to decapitate the corrupt political leadership and make possible the prospects of a new Nigeria. After this coup failed, and the first military dictatorship established in Nigeria, a counter coup a few months later pitted the federal military government (run by a Northern cabal) against the Eastern Region government due to the massacre of Easterners in the North, as well as rank issues within the military. From this prolonged, year-long confrontation came the declaration of the sovereign Republic of Biafra by the Eastern Regional Commander on May 30, 1967, following several failed attempts at a resolution and compromise. On the 6th of July 1967, Nigeria fired the first shot into Biafran territory, marking the beginning of a thirty-month civil war which eventually ended with the defeat and surrender of Biafra on the 15th of January 1970. Nigeria would remain a military dictatorship for most of the next thirty-two years.

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Knowledge Systems and the Framing of Political Identity in Colonial Nigeria

The framing of political identity in colonial Nigeria could broadly be summed to three: ethnicity, class and gender. While ethnicity constituted the broader framework (divide and rule), class framed the nature of political engagement in regions. Embedded in them both was the gender dynamic that separated from and subordinated the women to the men in every social configuration. Ethnicity, class and gender were the primary factors considered in the establishment of schools and in the broader colonial administration.

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Anthony Kirk-Greene highlighted the caution with which colonial authorities maintained a policy of “separateness without separation” in Nigeria, keeping the regions as one country but applying different laws to them. The focus of education was different in North and South, as the intent of the colonisers was not to make a nation but to maximise the productivity of each region. Whereas people in the urban areas were trained to fill the urban workforce, rural dwellers were trained to farm and perform handiworks. And while men learned important theoretical subjects in preparation for the civil workforce, women learned domestic and home management techniques. This need-based education system was preceded by surveys and investigations carried out by colonial officers, bringing their expertise to book in advising the colonial administration. Thus, from theorisation to policy, the bifurcation of societies was concretised into rigid and indisputable realities.

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Colonialism saw ethnicity as the principal underlining factor for political identity. Mahmood Mamdani argued that in many places, these ethnicities were not only manufactured but also arbitrarily assigned. The Hamitic theory  – which advanced the inferiority of the Black race to its white counterpart based on the Biblical curse of Ham by his father, Noah – paved the way for the designation of superiority among these groups and for a hopeless subjugation in places where savagery was interpreted to be the only explanation. Thus, policies were made from incorrect knowledge systems and in turn concretised into reality.

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In the same vein, feminist historiographers have demonstrated that the consolidation of women’s subjugation in Nigeria and the rest of the colonised world toed the same lines. First, the realities of women as political actors were ignored by Europeans, then it was denied in policies that excluded them from active participation in political and economic life, leaving them relevant only in domestic affairs. Subsequently, the histories of African societies began to be re-written and female characters given male attributes or left out of history. Oyeronke Oyewumi decries that whenever women’s presence is undeniably seen in political history, they became standardised as the exceptions. Ifi Amadiume and Gloria Chuku note of colonial Igbo societies, that interruptions instituted by colonialism enabled the loss of histories where women were active agents and that in everyday colonial policy favouring men, women had to live the reality of being passive political actors. Consequently, these forced experiences became the logical realities and stuff that history is made of. Thus, it appeared that there was never a time when women were active political subjects in African societies. This has shaped women’s participation in politics as one of reclaiming and recognition rather its precolonial counterpart of active agents.

 

State Ideology and the Shaping of Political Identity in Post-Biafra Nigeria

Hegemonic power erases that which it does not understand. This was Trouillot’s conviction in Silencing the Past, when he examined the San Domingo slave revolution, as well as critiqued C.L.R. James’ Black Jacobins which sought to amplify that historical incident. For Trouillot, France failed to document its defeat by African slaves because it was a phenomenon which did not make sense at the time. There was thus no vocabulary to conceptualise it. And within San Domingo, prominent names associated with the slave resistance were omitted from the records, in a bid to deface that which dared to defy power. Hence, if it did not exist, it was never a threat to power. Trouillot goes only as far as highlighting the omissive capabilities of power but not its (pro)active one. If power can silence or omit, it can also amplify and inculcate. The two go hand in hand to create a balance in achieving the ambitions of hegemonic power.

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Louis Althusser in Ideological State Apparatus advances the Marxian argument that the state dominates its subjects ideologically. While Marx and Engels argued for the domination of economic ideology of the bourgeois through the state – “the committee for the affairs of the bourgeoisie” – Althusser sees ideological subjectivity as located in the religious and the educational, but especially the educational. The goal of this educational ideological state apparatus is to incrementally inculcate state values in the subjects to the point that they do not question it and act without compulsion. Althusser calls this the “always already subject.” And for Foucault, this subjectivity does not only move from top to down but also horizontally, where different agents of the state have been commissioned to convey state hegemony knowingly or unknowingly. Thus, in the place of what is not to be learned or imbibed, what is to be imbibed is provided by the state through specific as well as various means.

Post-Biafra Nigeria saw the implementation of policies initiated during the Nigeria-Biafra war. Like in the parent colonial structure, the state was once again plotting a remoulding of its subjects into the needs of the state. At one time it was a divide and rule and at another, it was to unify and rule. The Nigerian state adopted a positionality of silence towards the lingering war realities of its post-Biafran self. As Sam Daly aptly noted, state and war documents emanating from the defunct Biafran Republic which were submitted to the Nigerian government at the end of the war were publicly burnt. Over the following months and years, slogans flattening the experiences of the war became the order of the day even as they ironically existed alongside policies termed to be aimed at reconstruction. On the one hand, the federal military government declared “no victor, no vanquished!” and “One Nigeria!” while on the other, it instituted the 3Rs (Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction) which were meant to address post-wartime realities. The emphasis lay more on the propaganda of oneness than on reconstruction.

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Bray and Cooper point out that the Nigerian state made a surprising move in the aftermath of the civil war: rather than focus on oil and material resources which caused the war, it instead turned its attention to education. Through education, it aimed to regain control of information production and dissemination, as well as effectively control citizens’ opinion of the state in the former Biafran enclave. And though some scholars have argued for the timeliness of state actions with regards to education after the war, it remains questionable why the former Biafran enclave constituted the major recipients of such educational reforms. These knowledge reforms made in the aftermath of the civil war have shaped not just pro-Biafran political resistance but also the identities of Nigerian citizens with regards to their sense of nationhood and belonging since the war. This has been as a result of the state indirectly outsourcing the responsibility of telling the war history to subjective groups in the country, based on how they participated in the war.

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Post-Biafra Knowledge Reforms in Nigeria

The Nigerian state embarked on three key knowledge projects in the aftermath of the Nigeria-Biafra war. These projects were around educational structure and content, geared at discouraging future secession and promoting national unity. What they all had in common was the muting or relegation of the civil war history in school curriculum. The 1969 National Curriculum Conference, the Public Education Edict (PEE) of 1970, and the 1971 introduction of Social Studies as a compulsory subject in school curriculum all shared this same characteristic. Though not directly mentioned, their respective aims were to give the state more control and steer the narrative to non-divisive topics.

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The 1969 National Curriculum Conference followed calls by some Nigerians between 1968 and 1969 advocating for an overhaul of the education system from a colonially-oriented one to a focus on national loyalty. By September 1969, the conference was convened by the federal military government, through its education agencies and ministry, drawing experts in the field locally as well as observers from international bodies. This conference deliberated on some key matters: moving away from colonial curriculum to a more indigenous one; gearing education towards responsible citizenship and away from an anticipated climax of white collar jobs; and entrusting all schools at the basic level to the state and out of the hands of non-state proprietors. Notably, the conference was taking place simultaneously with the Biafran war and can thus be understood as a pre-emptive move from the Nigerian state in anticipation of its victory in the war. And even though a curriculum overhaul had been a pressing need in post-independence Nigeria, the war had put it into clearer perspective for state actors.

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By 1970, as soon as the federal side received the unconditional surrender of Biafra and regained control of the East Central State, the Public Education Edict of 1970 was immediately and totally enforced in the state. The argument of the federal government-appointed state governor was in favour of harmonising teaching and learning experiences in a fragmented post-war community and also, that it presented the opportunity for the state to take on a parental role, making up for the differences in economic and financial capabilities of the members of the community. Scholars highlighted that before the war, education in these areas was placed on both economic and religious premium, leaving out people who did not match both inclusionary/exclusionary parameters. While the missionaries attached to different denominations saw it as a battle for converts, private individuals embarked on proprietorship for its earning potential. Both of these aims were hardly suited for the integration of a war-torn society and would make for more fragmentation. These scholars however expressed reservations on the terms of state take-over, with regards to trained man-power and compensation for losses for previous proprietors. The PEE saw differential and gradual application in other states of the federation as against the total enforcement in the ECS.

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If the 1969 conference was the blueprint and the PEE was its structural outlay; content wise, Social Studies was the integrative tool of the new Nigeria envisioned by the civil war entrepreneurs on the Nigerian side. Social Studies was to integrate civics, history and geography into a comprehensive syllabus and it was to be taught at the formative stages of education as a compulsory subject. At a meeting in Mombasa in 1968, it was agreed that Nigeria, embroiled in a civil war, needed the entrenchment of the goals that social studies was created to provide, and thus, was to be followed up as a matter of urgency. With funding from the Ford Foundation for the training of teachers and the production of teaching and learning materials, the subject began to hold sway in school curriculum, causing the diminution of History, a bulkier and more problematic subject. Globally, Social Studies traces a deeper history to the United States, where it was introduced after WW2 in 1945. Ostensibly, it was intended for nation-building and integration: a subject of the future. In Nigeria, it taught cultural history, national values and responsible citizenship. It also taught the territory of the Nigerian state as given since it was colonially created. As Daly argued, African states hardly ever looked to the past unless it would suit their future aspirations – what he called “usable pasts.”

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Influence of State Knowledge Systems on Pro-Biafran Agitations in Nigeria

As soon as Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, ushering in what is now known as the Fourth Republic, agitations from a section of the old Eastern Region, now known as the South-Eastern region, arose to contest the continued stay of the Biafran people in Nigeria. The pioneer organisation was MASSOB (Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra) in 1999, followed by BZN (Biafra Zionist Movement) in 2010 and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement in 2011/12 with its media arm – Radio Biafra – based in London and the Eastern Security Network (ESN) as its military arm. These groups are traditional in the sense that they found prominence in mainstream and social media, and have also been subjects of academic research.

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There have been other groups which have sprung up yet advocating for a separate state called Biafra, though they are not as widespread as the first three. Chief among these is the Biafran Republic Government in Exile (BRGIE) which came to public notice late 2022 ahead of the general elections in 2023. The group is headed by Simon Ekpa (based in Finland), its self-appointed Prime Minister, with his twitter (X) handle and the BRGIE website as his spheres of influence. Ekpa began a project drawing the map of the Biafran state which included renaming the various communities according what he perceived as their traditionally rightful nomenclature. Another group called the Igbo-Biafra Nationalists (IBN) has equally emerged without a clear history or origin. Its main subject of engagement as reported in the news is a call for a monolinguistic Biafran struggle, where the region designated as Biafra adopts the Igbo language completely in order to have one voice and a more successful struggle.

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For the three main groups mentioned above, as well as the newly emerging ones, the central logic is a revival of the community spirit which gave birth to the Republic of Biafra and the restoration of the country itself through engagement with the Nigerian state and re-telling of the Biafran history. While MASSOB and BZN focused more on an engagement with the Nigerian state and protests which brought them in direct contention with the police and military, IPOB consolidated its reach through its radio and website. Radio Biafra became a medium for disseminating what its now arraigned leader (since June 2021) Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, calls the true history of Nigeria and Biafra. IPOB featured prominently so long in the political scene because it engaged the youths with narratives, subsequently raising them as instruments with which to combat the state. BRGIE has continued with this mode of mobilisation through social media engagement, and with the continued imprisonment of Nnamdi Kanu, Ekpa and his BRGIE have dominated the political space in pro-Biafran discourse. It should be noted that some times, these various groups share membership of individuals who keep moving due to grievances and other reasons in the previous groups.

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While the efforts to recover Biafran narratives and history (in and of themselves) have a positive focus, there are also hate narratives against the Igbo in different quarters of the federation during every election season. These narratives are derived from the civil war events and used to foment violence targeted at individuals and communities tagged as Igbo. The narratives draw on incoherent fragments of the civil war history to portray the Igbo as greedy, untrustworthy and sabotagers of the nation. Based on this logic, they are not to be trusted with power, especially the Presidency. These two narratives – one about Igbo victimhood and another about its villainism – exist side by side in the Nigerian federation.

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Conclusion

Pro-Biafran political resistance has been shaped by state knowledge systems in Nigeria since after the civil war. This has greatly impacted the nature and composition of the groups as well as their modes of mobilisation. While ethnic characterisations can serve as plausible explanations for their activities, they really serve no productive end as objective blame game practised by scholars hardly solves the problem. However, by seeing the vacuum which they fill in the production of Nigeria’s political history, along with their counterparts who equally weaponize fragments of these histories to meet specific political agenda; understanding them as more than an ethnic faction but ideological groups in combat with the Nigerian state ideology, will assist in addressing the knowledge systems which have denied the existence of these histories for so long. If feminism can be understood as an ideology and not merely a movement intended to grant women a superior place in society; if it could be conceptualised theoretically as a critical approach to binary socio-political engagement; then pro-Biafranism can be understood as an ideology critical of statist knowledge structures in Nigeria and form a basis for tackling its challenges. Consequently, we can experience a shift from narrow colonial lenses which entrench ethnicity as the one-size-fits-all approach to understanding political problems in Nigeria, and transition into decolonial ones that address the place of knowledge-making in Nigeria’s complex political landscape.

 

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