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Ireland and the Nigeria-Biafra War: Local Connections to a Distant Conflict

2012; Philosophy Documentation Center; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nhr.2012.0004

1534-5815

Fiona Bateman,

Global Peace and Security Dynamics

Ireland and the Nigeria-Biafra War: Local Connections to a Distant Conflict Fiona Bateman At the end of the Nigeria-Biafra war in 1970, the novelist Kate O’Brien summed up a general sense of devastation among the Irish people regarding the failure of the Biafran state. She wrote, We are all, everywhere, overclouded now by Nigeria, by dead Biafra . . . we are for once together in real and baffled distress—for a country we have never set foot in, and a people we do not know. . . . We can be said to be in a condition of humiliated woe, and helpless anger.1 The many texts and documents associated with Irish engagement with the war and famine in Biafra raise a number of questions regarding Irish identity and affinities, but the most striking aspect of this enormous volume of public discourse concerning Biafra is the apparent unimportance of geographical distance. Although the official story of Irish state engagement with the war—the diplomatic efforts to protect Irish citizens in Nigeria and to establish the truth in the face of propaganda—may be discovered in the National Archives, the story of the public’s experience of the war is largely to be found in the news media. The coverage of the events in the regional newspapers was particularly important in the process of the “localization” of the story. In Ireland today, the word “Biafra” still has resonance, even among a generation for whom the geographical and historical reference has little meaning. A very thin person is often referred to as looking “like a Biafran,” although few of those who use the term are aware of its origin. In the popular vocabulary, the word suggests hardship or destruction, even for those too young to have witnessed the events. In 2006, a member of the Vocational Education Committee campaigning in support of a new sports hall in Castlebar, exhorted, “We are not living in Biafra. This is the Celtic Tiger economy.”2 Twenty years earlier, a scene of flooding in North Tipperary prompted a local councillor to remark that he thought he was “witnessing scenes from Biafra,” a statement that suggests [End Page 48] that the speaker had little memory of the conflict to which he was referring.3 These examples hint at the lasting impact that the events had on Irish society, but also demonstrate how Biafra has been forgotten, or at least misplaced, in Irish memory and historical record. The Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state formed in 1967 in West Africa, when the eastern region of Nigeria, led by Colonel Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, proclaimed its independence from Nigeria, whose head of state was General Yakubu (“Jack”) Gowon. The Irish government maintained diplomatic relations with Nigeria throughout the war, and refused to grant official recognition to the state of Biafra. Because of the strong missionary connections and extensive Irish fundraising initiatives of the time, a mention of Biafra often evokes the popular “memory” that Ireland supported Biafra in the conflict. The causes of the war and the events that motivated the Biafran declaration of independence are less well understood or remembered than is the subsequent famine and the terrible images of starvation which came to be associated with the name “Biafra.” The intense Irish relationship with the short-lived Republic of Biafra (it ceased to exist in January 1970) had its origins in a number of factors and the story, though largely forgotten today, provides an example of the instrumentality of the local in the encounter with the “global.” The most important of the factors that contributed to an Irish sense of closeness to Biafra, and which helps to explain how local structures provided access to the events as well as a framework that enabled the transformation of the distant conflict into a local concern, was Ireland’s missionary history in Africa. The Irish missionary relationship with Eastern Nigeria had begun in 1902 when Joseph Shanahan, a priest of the Holy Ghost Order, first arrived in Nigeria to work with the “most abandoned souls.” In appearance he was an impressive figure, tall and athletic, and accounts of his work in Africa frequently compare him to St. Patrick, who had converted the...