Violence in Nigeria

customed to poor numbers shaping how decisions are made. 7 Except for a few
countries, population and economic data are often unreliable. Moreover, statistics
are frequently subject to political manipulation and bias. Finally, they can be ignored
even by institutions that live off statistics. In a recent report, for instance,
the World Bank and the French Development Agency speculate on a “rise in violence
and conflict in West Africa since 2010”, when the figures they published
actually show a dramatic decline of fatalities from organized violence since
1998-1999. 8
The most populated country in Africa is of course affected by these issues. In
Nigeria, the numbers of inhabitants, internally displaced people, Muslims, Christians,
victims of terrorism and of the security forces are all disputed to produce
electoral rolls, negotiate a share of the so-called national cake, complain about
ethnic marginalization, ‘alert the international community’ … or claim that Allah
or Jesus is the winner! As early as 1966, for instance, Odumegwu Ojukwu inflated
the number of Igbo people killed or displaced by pogroms in the North, so as
to justify the secession of the Eastern Region in 1967. 9 The Catholic fathers, who
supported the rebels, also claimed that the monthly death toll of the Nigerian
blockade against Biafra was exceeding 750,000 people in 1968, a statement that
would have resulted in 9 million fatalities in just a year, almost the total number
of inhabitants living in the area. 10 Even today, the body count of war victims is
still a hotly debated issue in determining whether or not the atrocities and deliberate
starving of civilians were a genocide. 11 Likewise, the Boko Haram uprising
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11
Jerven, M. (2013), Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What
to Do about it, Cape Town, UCT Press, 208 pp. See also Pérouse de Montclos, M.-A., E. Minor & S.
Sinha, eds, (2015), Violence, Statistics, and the Politics of Accounting for the Dead, Dordrecht,
Springer, p. 160.
Marc, A., N. Verjee & S. Mogaka (2015), The Challenge of Stability and Security in West Africa,
Washington DC, World Bank, pp.1 & 10.
Gould, M. (2011), The Struggle for Modern Nigeria: The Biafran War, 1966-1970, London, IB Tauris,
p. 47, 142 & 203; Niven, R. (1970), The War of Nigerian Unity, 1967-1970, Totowa (N.J.), Rowman
and Littlefield, p. 93.
Mok, M. (1969), Biafra Journal: A Personal Report on a People in Agony, New York, Time-Life
Books, p. 95.
Going beyond militant points of views, Lasse Heerten and Dirk Moses argue that, in fact, an accusation
of genocide would be difficult to sustain on behalf of an invented group like Biafra, which included
non-Igbo minorities such as the Ogoni, who themselves claimed to be victims of a genocide
perpetrated by the Igbo. Moreover, Igbo people living in Nigeria outside Biafra were not exterminated
during the war; in the same vein, survivors within the Biafran enclave were not killed after the end of
the war. The accusation of an intention to destroy Biafra or Igbo people by starvation through blockade
is also difficult to sustain, because the Biafran authorities rejected offers to enable the delivery of
supplies that did not suit their military objectives. Ironically, fearing that genocide was taking place or
would occur if Biafra lost, Western support of Biafran resistance and thereby prolongation of the war
dramatically increased the civilian losses that the secession and foreign aid were intended to prevent.
Finally, most genocides intend to expel and eradicate a group; yet the government of Nigeria aimed to
preserve a federation by including the Igbo against their will. See Heerten, L. & Moses, D. (2014),
The Nigeria-Biafra War: Postcolonial Conflict and the Question of Genocide, Journal of Genocide
Research 16(2-3): 169-203.