Nigeria struggling with Biafra war issues over poor documentation of history – Sam Amadi

The Director of the Abuja School of Social and Political Thoughts, Sam Amadi, on Tuesday, claimed that Nigerians are still struggling with the aftermath of the Biafra civil war.

Amadi noted that people are writing all manner of narratives from the was because Nigeria have failed to document history adequately.

He stressed that there should be an official autography for national issues such as wars.

The Nigerian Civil War started on July 6 1967 and ended on January 15 1970. The Nigeria-Biafra war was an armed conflict fought between Nigeria and the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state that had declared its independence from Nigeria in 1967.

During the war, General Yakubu Gowon served as the head of state of Nigeria, while Biafra was led by Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka “Emeka” Odumegwu Ojukwu.

The conflict emerged from political, ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions that preceded the United Kingdom’s formal decolonisation of Nigeria from 1960 to 1963.

Immediate causes of the war in 1966 included a military coup, a counter-coup, and anti-Igbo pogroms in the Northern Region.

However, Amadi, in an interview with Arise Television said, “In this country, we have a problem with history, investigating facts, and in Nigeria we taboo everything.

“At the end of the day, we don’t have history to work with. This is a national malign and that’s why we are still struggling with the issue of civil war, people are writing all kinds of things, we don’t have official autography about the issues that led to it.

“A few days ago we heard from Prof Falomo who is a well respected Prof of history talking about the crisis of the civil war started in Ibadan with misinformation but nobody wants to talk about these things and that is why during political campaigns, we don’t see candidates talk about this kind of issues.

“We have a national pass time of denial, of not try to confront our history, we just want to allow things to slide; so today we are going to hear many versions but nobody is going to say we should investigate.”