Nigerian government has yet another challenge on its hands.
Today’s pro-Biafra secessionist movement, led mainly by young people with no direct memory of the civil war, nevertheless shares some of the same concerns that sparked the original calls for independence. Nigeria was forged in 1914, when British colonialists cobbled together two territories, hoping to subsidize the poorer north with the resources of the oil-rich south.
The borders of modern-day Nigeria did not reflect the ethnic boundaries of different rival kingdoms: the Igbos in the southeast, the Hausa-Fulani in the north and the Yoruba in the southwest.
After Nigeria declared itself independent of British colonial rule in 1960, regional and ethnic tensions erupted in a vicious power struggle. A coup against the northern-led government in January 1966—seen by the leaders and many people from the north of the country as a plot led by the Igbos—prompted the northerners to seize back power. Mobs from communities in the north of the country then killed tens of thousands of Igbos; many Igbos living in various parts of Nigeria fled to their eastern homeland.
The following year, military officer Odumegwu Ojukwu annexed the
