In October 1967 Nigerian federal troops slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians in the town of Asaba.  Elizabeth Bird, anthropologist and Professor Emerita at the University of South Florida, argues that the Asaba massacre wasn’t just one of the many atrocities committed during the Nigerian Civil War.  It was a pivotal event that prolonged a conflict that claimed over a million lives. What were the causes of the Asaba Massacre?  How did it prolong the war?  How did it affect the lives of the people of Asaba and how it has been remembered? Liz Bird, co-author with Fraser Ottanelli of The Asaba Massacre: Trauma, Memory, and the Nigerian Civil War, provides answers to these questions.  

Prior to the age of European expansion there was no Nigeria.  From the late fifteenth century, when the Portuguese first arrived in West Africa, the region consisted of various kingdoms with hundreds of different ethnic groups. It was the British who consolidated what became Nigeria into an administrative unit beginning in the late nineteenth century.  When the process was complete, in 1914, Nigeria was composed of two regions with very different histories and populations.  The northern region was predominantly Muslim with historic trading ties to the Muslim world.  The British governed northern Nigeria through a policy of indirect rule, leaving in place traditional rulers while retaining ultimate power.  In the north the British banned missionary work and Western educational institutions.  The southern region was predominantly non-Muslim and was exposed for a longer period of time to European traders, missionaries, and Western education.  The Igbo, who resided in the south, were more receptive to Western culture and became the most educated segment of Nigerian society.  As the British transitioned from empire to self rule, the Igbo were best positioned to dominate openings in the civil service, trade, and white collar professions.  

When independence finally came in 1960, Nigeria was torn by ethnic suspicions and resentments.  Further fueling sentiments of distrust was the Federal parliamentary structure the British put in place before their departure.  The Northern Region represented roughly half the population and dominated the Federal parliament.  The largely Igbo Eastern Region, the mixed ethnic Midwestern Region, and the Western Region encompassed the remainder of the population.  Corruption, violence, and political instability characterized the opening years of Nigerian independence.  In early 1966 a group of primarily Igbo officers (Igbo dominated the officier class) seized power in a coup proclaiming their goal of ending corruption, instability, and racial strife.  But by murdering a number of top Northern officials, including the prime minister, the coup leaders only inflamed ethnic fears of an Igbo desire to seize power.  The coup ended up triggering ethnic riots or pogroms, mostly in the Northern Region, targeting Igbo people.  Major General Aguiyi Ironsi, an Igbo installed in power after the coup, was himself overthrown and murdered a few months later and replaced by Lieutenant-Colonel Yakubu Gowon, from what was hoped to be a less controversial ethnic group. Gowan was unable to stem the violence which claimed as many as 30,000 Igbo lives and led to an exodus of over a million Igbo from the Western and Northern Regions to the largely Eastern Igbo Region. 

In May 1967 the military governor of the Eastern Region, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, decided the Igbo were no longer safe in Nigeria.  Convinced that the Eastern Region had the human and material resources to become a viable nation, Ojukwu proclaimed the Eastern Region to be the independent Republic of Biafra in May 1967.  Unwilling to tolerate the breakup of Nigeria, especially the oil rich region of Biafra, Gowan ordered federal troops into Biafra in July 1967.  After some initial gains which federal forces were unable to consolidate, Biafrans made the bold move of deciding to go on the offensive by attacking West through the Midwestern Region.  Biafran troops made it as far as the outskirts of the Western Region capital of Lagos.  It was at this point that hastily reinforced federal troops pushed Biafran forces all the way back across the Niger River that separates the Eastern and the Midwestern Regions.  To secure their retreat Biafran forces destroyed the recently constructed Niger Bridge, leaving federal troops frustrated across the river in early October 1967 in the Midwestern town of Asaba, officially part of Nigeria. 

Bird and Ottanelli note that while the Asaba Massacre is commemorated and commonly recounted as a singular event that occured on October 7th, the killings actually began as soon as Federal Troops reached Asaba.  On October 6th Federal troops searched and ransacked homes, extorted money, detained and murdered Asaban men and boys accused of being Biafran collaborators—a common but unfounded charge.  In some instances soldiers had lists of senior civil servants from Benin who sought refuge in Asaba.  In other cases the violence was random, striking those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  A group of boys playing soccer, for instance, were forced to dig their own graves, and summarily shot.  Several hundred people were killed throughout the town that day.  

It was in reaction to the bloodletting on October 6th that the elders of Asaba gathered that evening to formulate a strategy to end the violence.  They settled on a plan that had worked in other Midwestern towns.  They would organize an official procession the next day, with participants encouraged to wear akwa ocha, ceremonial white garments signifying peace.  Headed by town dignitaries, they would carry signs proclaiming their loyalty to “One Nigeria.”  The procession would offer a demonstration of respect and loyalty to Nigeria and would dispel suspicions that Asabans, who were predominantly Igbo, were supporters of Eastern Igbo in Biafra.  

While many refused to participate in the procession, hundreds did, encouraged by the pleas of town elders to join.  As many as 4,000 eventually paraded along a route following Nnebisi Road through the center of town.  Flanked by soldiers on both sides, some participants were randomly pulled from the procession and shot.  When they reached the corner of Ogbogonogo and Ogbeke markets, the women and young boys were separated from the men.  The large-scale killings began with groups designated for execution.  The violence quickly escalated to a full scale massacre when troops carrying and using machine guns mounted on vehicles opened fire on the remaining men and boys. The exact number of victims remains unknown, Bird and Ottanneli suggest somewhere between 700 and 800.

The international press failed to cover the Asaba Massacre.  When The Times of London finally published a feature story months later in 1968, it diminished the significance of the violence as an aberration triggered by Asaban attacks on federal troops.  Archival records uncovered by Bird and Ottanelli reveal that British authorities, the main backers and arms suppliers to the Nigerian government, were well aware of the violence.  They were especially alarmed by the insubordinate and unpredictable conduct of Colonel Murtala Muhammad, in command of the Second Division, which occupied Asaba and played the leading role in the massacre. However, British authorities were even more preoccupied by the interests of British companies such as Shell and BP in the oil riches of Eastern Nigeria and the Delta region.  Determined to avoid a public relations problem, British authorities were not supportive of press coverage that might reveal the crimes of the Nigerian military.  Moreover, the British government failed to use its influence to bring a halt to the unrestrained violence of Nigerian troops toward civilian populations.

Bird and Ottanelli argue that the failure of the international press and the British government to condemn the massacre had serious repercussions.  Completely undeterred, Nigerian troops went on to commit additional war crimes that claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.  Most importantly, the government of Biafra circulated the news of the violence as a powerful means of convincing Igbos that the Nigerian government’s true aim was the complete and total annihilation of the Igbo population.  It was the fear of what federal troops would do if they won the war that kept Biafran forces fighting for over two more years in what Liz Bird argues was a hopeless conflict.  Encircled and cut off from outside sources of supply, it was starvation and disease that transformed Biafra into a humanitarian catastrophe with a death toll of 1-2 million.  

We argue that the deaths in Asaba did have meaning, and that there is value in reinscribing uncomfortable histories into a nation’s sanctioned memory, acknowledging the lingering legacy of injustice and contributing to meaningful reconciliation.  S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser Ottanelli, The Asaba Massacre: Trauma, Memory, and the Nigerian Civil War. 

For the people of Asaba the impact of the massacre lasted for generations.  Igbo culture, Bird and Ottanelli explain, is patriarchal and patrilineal.  Men play the leading role in both the community and within their families.  The massacre decimated the ranks of many of the most senior and accomplished men in Asaba.  Brothers who might normally assist the wives and children of a deceased brother were too few in number to respond to the overwhelming need. Entire life fortunes of once successful families were reversed by the massacre.  Sons and daughters who might otherwise have earned professional degrees never attended or had to leave school to help support their families.  Deprived of all traditional support, mothers had to assume traditionally male roles as heads of families.  

Asaba native Robert Uriah moved with his wife Veronica to the town of Kano in northern Nigeria where he became a successful tailor.  Ify, one of Robert’s ten children born in Kano, recalled the family’s comfortable life with servants and driver who took her to school.  Abasa was a summer holiday destination until the pogroms convinced Robert to flee to Asaba with his family.  Robert, together with his sons Paul and Emma, were killed in the massacre while a third son was seriously wounded.  In addition to those killed in her immediate family, 49 year old Veronica lost nine more members of her extended family.  Determined to see her children succeed, Veronica became a trader and was able to put all of her surviving children through school. 

Men represented the largest numbers of Asabans killed during the massacre and much of the memorialization has been devoted to men. The names on the privately funded cenotaph devoted to the massacre are mostly men and mostly prominent members of the community.  As such the cenotaph recalls the very real impact of the massacre on the community.  However, it fails to convey the ways in which women picked up the pieces and helped families survive, and in some cases, as with the Uriah family, even prosper.  It also overlooks the victimization of the many women raped or abandoned with the children of federal troops—children regarded as a stain on the purity of the community and a malediction contributing to the decline of Asaba.  

The official policy of the Nigerian government has been to move on and forget the memory of the civil war.  After the conclusion of the fighting, the name of Biafra was erased from the map and the war was largely left out of the school curriculum.  Even the end of military rule in 1999 and over two decades of civilian government have done little to integrate the civil war into the national memory.  In the case of Asaba’s eastern Igbo cousins across the Niger River, the failure to confront the past only compounds sentiments of bitterness and frustration.  While the Nigerian government promised to promote peace and reconciliation, the policies it pursued stripped the Igbo population of much of their wealth, land, and jobs.  

However, several developments contributed to a memory boom in Nigeria.  First, was the 1994 publication of Emmanuel Okocha’s Blood on the Niger.  Written by a journalist whose father died in the massacre, Blood on the Niger shattered the silence about the massacre.  Second, in 1999, the return to civilian government inspired the creation of the Oputa Panel to look at crimes and abuses of power committed in Nigeria since independence.  Although the Oputa Panel ultimately unraveled in acriminony and never published its findings, it did hold televised hearings that conveyed little known histories to a national audience.  Among these histories was the story of the Abasa Massacre.  Third, was the creation of the internet which gave Nigerians, especially those in the diaspora, a new outlet to discuss previously neglected histories.  

While new online forums have helped shed light on previously silenced histories, they have also distorted the historical record and inflamed passions.  It was precisely because of the misuses and abuses of the past online that Liz Bird decided to share her work on the web.  She posted a video documentary on Vimeo entitled Most Vulnerable Nigerians: The Legacy of the Asaba Massacres.  She wrote the Wikipedia entry on the Asaba Massacre.  The website, The Asaba Memorial Project, includes links to these resources, articles written by Bird and Ottanelli, and additional suggested readings on the Nigerian Civil War.  The site offers an account of the civil war and the massacre complete with maps, photos, and video extracts of first hand accounts.  The site also contains information on the collaboration between University of South Florida faculty and the people of Assaba on commemorative events, including the 50th anniversary of the Asaba Massacre in 2017.  The Asaba Memorial Project is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of what happened in Asaba during the Nigerian Civil War and the efforts to commemorate the massacre.  

The ongoing challenge for the people of Asaba is how to remember and commemorate the massacre in ways that promote peace, justice, and reconciliation.  This is especially difficult within an increasingly acrimonious environment in Nigeria.  From Boko Haram to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the emergence of Biafran separatist movements are among the many centrifugal forces that now tear at the seams of Nigeria.  While the Igbo of Asaba share many of the resentments of their Eastern cousins, they have no desire to support the cause of separatism.  The collaboration with Bird, Ottanelli, and the faculty at the University of South Florida is part of the process of achieving a better understanding and documenting what happened in Asaba as a basis for future legal action.  But in contrast with Biafra, Bird and Ottanelli argue that memorialization efforts in Asaba are geared toward reconciliation. They are based on the conviction that the only way to overcome the divisions of the present and to move toward a more united future is through an honest accounting of the past.  It is incumbent upon academics, as Bird and Ottanelli have demonstrated, to play a part in this process.**

**I would like to thank Liz Bird for sharing and allowing me to use photos of the Asaba Massacre cenotaph and the Uriah family in Kano.  I would also like to thank Liz for allowing me to use images from the Asaba Memorial Project website on the podcast social media sites.   Liz Bird’s essay, “Stories from the Forgotten War,” recently placed at the International Human Rights Arts Festival.