What Would Have Been If Biafra Won The War?

What if Biafra won the war? stands up there as one of the most widely speculated questions, in Nigeria, of all time. With the rise of IPOB and disturbing clashes with its militia arm, ESN, this question is back to the fore. What could have been had the war ended differently?

The Biafran War or the Nigerian Civil War fought between the Federal Military Government of Nigeria led by General Yakubu Gowon and the then Eastern Region of Nigeria headed by General Chukwuemeka Ojukwu from July 1967 to January 1970.

The events that led to the war can be traced back to the January 15 1966 Coup which was, led, de facto, by Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu and tagged an Igbo Coup thereby fueling anti-Igbo sentiments which led to a counter-coup and purging of Igbos from the military, massacres of Igbos in the north, then the war.

What would have been if Ojukwu-led forces of Biafra won the war and Biafra became an independent country?

First, we have to look at what would have been for Biafra to win the war.

Factors that could have led to Biafra winning the war

1. If Gowon was a Muslim. When the war began, it wasn’t just a physical confrontation and was never just that. Propaganda played a major role in the direction of the war. Nigerians painted Ojukwu as a rebel who was only interested in carving a region to dominate and rule, and Biafrans painted Nigerians as vandals from the majority Muslim north killing predominately Christians in the East.

But this didn’t fly because the Nigerian head of State, Yakubu Jack Gowon was a northerner and Christian.

2. If French support was military and political. While the UK, Russia, Egypt, and the Arab League supported Nigeria with weapons and expertise, Biafra didn’t have heavyweight supporters. They had support from Gabon, Cote D’Ivoire, Tanzania, and Haiti, but these were lightweight countries.

France was the only big country to show sympathy for the Biafran cause but they didn’t get involved militarily. They didn’t give Biafra fighter jets, tanks, bombs, rifles, and expertise. The support was only humanitarian with food and medical aid. In fact, if they had given Biafra political support, it could have affected the direction of the war.

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The Biafran war that consumed millions of lives was never discussed in the United Nations because the UK kept blocking it. France could have brought the case to the floor of the UN and the Security Council and heap political pressure on Nigeria.

3. If Ojukwu wasn’t well-educated. One aspect of the war which is rarely discussed which has an impact on the direction of the war is the education level of Ojukwu. Ojukwu was an Oxford graduate; Gowon didn’t go beyond secondary school. Above, we mentioned the heavyweight countries that supported Nigeria.

On paper, Nigeria’s geographical and population superiority would make them the favourite when it came to choosing who to support. But events in the past saw smaller Pakistan break out of India and smaller Bangladesh later broke out of Pakistan.

Big nations would still bet on the smaller region if their interests align. But Ojukwu’s CV was a turn-off. He was well-educated and would be more difficult to manipulate than Gowon who only had courses abroad as of then.

4. Other factors include if Biafra had access to a share of naval ships and equipment before the war, it would have been easier for them to break the total blockade of the country via the sea which Gowon imposed. If Cameroon had been neutral and refused to shut their border on Biafra, food, medicine, and weapons enough to sustain the resistance would have flown in.

The factors are innumerable.

What would have been if Biafra won the war?

1. Biafra and Nigeria would be better developed than Nigeria as one country today

This is not to say that Biafra would hit the ground running. Biafra as a country would take a long time to find its feet economically. The war efforts and the destruction that the country suffered in the war would have taken long to recover from. Because many countries wouldn’t still recognize Biafra on the behest of Nigeria, they would struggle to find buyers for the oil in the Niger Delta region.

It would take at least the late 1970s and the 1980s for world circumstances to help Biafran oil sales to hit the kind of commercial rung capable of making a big difference.

There won’t be so many protests and insurrections as you would see in states in a recession because the government of Ojukwu would sell the story that Biafra was in a period of transition having just beaten back the vandals. Better to suffer as an independent country than be enslaved in Nigeria; good things would come.

Biafra would manage the oil wells within their country very well and Nigeria would manage the little oil they have and earn fortunes from farming.

This is not saying that Biafrans and Nigerians would suddenly become saints and geniuses in managing wealth and building infrastructures. What would help Biafra and Nigeria is the rivalry that would exist between the two countries. No country would want to be left behind and their economies would be run in spite of the other country.

2. Nigeria and Biafra would not be friends

This is a euphemism, this duo would be enemies and tension would persist between the two countries, even leading to physical skirmishes, at the borders, at times. Asaba and other Igbo towns in the Mid-West would be a flashpoint as Nigeria and Biafra would continue to contest them. If in Biafran hands, Nigeria would contest it because it was never part of Eastern Nigeria; if, in Nigerian hands, Biafra would contest it because Asaba and the environs are culturally part of them.

Nigeria and Biafra wouldn’t come to an alright war but they would be in cutthroat readiness and let propaganda do most of the fighting.

3. There would be at least three countries in what used to be Nigeria

If Nigeria had lost the war and Biafra became independent, Nigeria would be so battered and politically weak it would not be able to keep the remaining regions together as an entity. The West would go.

When Biafra declared its independence, former premier of Western Nigeria, Obafemi Awolowo was quoted as saying, “If by commission or omission, the East is allowed to go, the West too would leave.” The West would leave but not necessarily immediately after the war. At some point in the political journey of the remaining Nigeria, the West would agitate and get their independence.

There won’t be a fight. The Nigerian state would be too weary and broke to fight.

Other regions would likely demand to leave the remaining country. What we call the Middle Belt today would have agitated to leave Nigeria and the Niger Delta would seek to leave Biafra. Seccession begets seccession.

4. There would be reduced Igbos in Nigeria

There would still be a lot of Igbos in Lagos and other parts of Nigeria but not in the numbers we have today. Igbos would have harder times during business in Nigeria and would face open hostilities including lootings and arsons. You could say that Igbos sometimes face these in Northern Nigeria, triple this number, and put it in some parts of the west and you would get a better picture of the fate of Igbos as foreigners in Nigeria.

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At least, once, there would be a Biafra Must Go drive akin to the Ghana Must Go drive that saw Nigerians send Ghanaians away in the 1980s.

5. There won’t be widespread insecurity in Igboland as we see today.

Three things that lead to the high insecurity in the Southeast today are Fulani herdsmen, the agitations for Biafra, and police brutality and retaliation. In the Republic of Biafra, open grazing would be unheard of. Also, there would be little motivation for Fulani herdsmen to come to Biafra after the war between the two nations.

There won’t be IPOB and ESN in Biafra. There may be police brutality but it would be minimal as it would be largely akin to local policing and the tendency to punish a civilian who you don’t care about would be minimal. Kinship would be tighter in the Republic of Biafra.

But this is not to say there won’t be areas of tension.

The Niger Delta militancy we saw under Nigeria would exist in Biafra but on a lower scale because Biafra would be more efficient in maintaining a tight border and arms won’t pour into private hands in the ways they do in porous united Nigeria.

Under Nigeria, Niger Deltans wanted resource control. Under Biafra, they would want a country of their own.

Because Niger Delta region would be more developed than it is under Nigeria and less discriminated, and due to the martial nature of the country under Ojukwu, a strong unifying seceding voice would find less room on the playground but the call to secede from Biafra may never cease.

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