Showing posts with label Biafra-Nigerian War of 1967-1970. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Biafra-Nigerian War of 1967-1970. Show all posts

Monday, January 2, 2023

Nigeria And The Politics Of Hunger

By Sunny Awhefeada

My generation’s first experience and its attendant crisis was in the mid-1980s. My generation here refers to Nigerians born after the civil war and attained teenagehood from 1983 onwards. We have read in history books of how starvation was one of the major tools that was deployed to fight the Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970. 

Pictures abound of children, youths and older people who suffered from the affliction of hunger. Not even the efforts of humanitarian agencies that tried to alleviate the hunger in the refugee camps that littered the secessionist enclave of Biafra alleviated the crisis. Hunger engendered diseases which in turn yielded deaths. Many still believe that starvation more than bullets and bombs was what made Biafra to capitulate when it did.