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'{{short description|Series of massacres of Igbo people in Nigeria}} {{Infobox civilian attack | title = 1966 Anti-Igbo pogrom | image = | caption = | location = [Southern Region, Nigeria | coordinates = {{coord|10.533|7.485|type:event_globe:earth_region:NG|display=ti}} | target = [[Igbo people|Igbos]] and other easterners | date = 1966 | time = | timezone = | type = [[Pogrom]] | fatalities = 8,000 to 30,000<ref>{{cite web |url=http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/23.htm |title=Civil War |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=1991 |website=countrystudies.us |publisher=Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress |access-date= November 21, 2019|quote=The estimated number of deaths ranged as high as 30,000, although the figure was probably closer to 8,000 to 10,000.}}</ref> | injuries = unspecified number | perps = [[Nigerian Army]], Muslim mobs | susperps = | weapons = }} The '''1966 anti-Igbo pogrom''' was a series of massacres committed against [[Igbo people]] and other people of southern Nigerian origin living in [[Northern Region, Nigeria|northern Nigeria]] starting in May 1966 and reaching a peak after 29 September 1966.<ref name=Last-2005>{{cite journal|last1=Last|first1=Murray|title=Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966–1986 by Douglas A. Anthony Review by: Murray Last|journal=The Royal African Society|date=October 2005|volume=104|issue=417|pages=710–711|jstor=3518821}}</ref> Between 8,000 and 30,000 [[Igbo People|Igbos]] and easterners have been estimated to have been killed. A further 1 million Igbos fled the [[Northern Region, Nigeria|Northern Region]] into the [[Eastern Region, Nigeria|East]]. In response to the killings some northerners were massacred in [[Port Harcourt]] and other eastern cities.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://countrystudies.us/nigeria/23.htm |title=Civil War |author=<!--Not stated--> |date=1991 |website=countrystudies.us |publisher=Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress |access-date= November 21, 2019|quote=The estimated number of deaths ranged as high as 30,000. More than 1 million Igbo returned to the Eastern Region. In retaliation, some northerners were massacred in Port Harcourt and other eastern cities, and a counterexodus of non-Igbo was under way.}}</ref> These events led to the secession of the eastern Nigerian region and the declaration of the [[Republic of Biafra]], which ultimately led to the [[Nigerian Civil War|Nigeria-Biafra war]]. == Background == The events took place in the context of military coups d'etat and in the prelude to the Nigerian Civil War.<ref name="Van Den Bersselaar-2011">{{cite journal|last1=Van Den Bersselaar|first1=Dmitri|title=Douglas A. Anthony Poison and Medicine: ethnicity, power, and violence in a Nigerian city, 1966 to 1986. Oxford: James Currey |journal=Africa|date=3 March 2011|volume=74|issue=4|pages=711–713|doi=10.2307/3556867|jstor=3556867}} {{ISBN|0852559593|0852559542|0325070520|0325070512}})</ref> The immediate precursor to the massacres was the January [[1966 Nigerian coup d'etat]] led mostly by young Igbo officers.<ref name="Post-1968">{{cite journal|last1=Post|first1=K. W. J.|date=January 1968|title=Is There a Case for Biafra?|journal=International Affairs|volume=44|issue=1|pages=26–39|doi=10.2307/2613526|jstor=2613526}}</ref> Most of the politicians and senior army officers killed by them were northerners because Northerners were the majority in Nigeria's government ,<ref name="Post-1968" /> including the Prime Minister [[Abubakar Tafawa Balewa]] and [[Ahmadu Bello]] the [[Sardauna of Sokoto]]. The coup was opposed by other senior army officers. An Igbo officer, [[Aguiyi-Ironsi]] stopped the coup in [[Lagos]] while another Igbo officer, [[Emeka Ojukwu]] stopped the coup in the north. [[Aguiyi-Ironsi]] then assumed power, forcing the civilian government to cede authority.<ref>''Gamji.com'' [http://www.gamji.com/nowa/nowa25.htm "Operation Aure".]</ref> He established a military government led by himself as supreme commander .<ref name="Post-1968" /> In the months following the coup it was widely noted that four of the five army Majors who executed the coup were Igbo and that the General who took over power was also Igbo. Northerners feared that the Igbo had set out to take control of the country. In a response action Northern officers carried out the July [[1966 Nigerian counter-coup]] in which 240 Southern members of the army were systematically killed, three-quarters of them Igbo,<ref name="Nixon-1972">{{cite journal|last1=Nixon|first1=Charles|date=July 1972|title=Self-Determination: The Nigeria/Biafra Case|journal=World Politics|volume=24|issue=4|pages=473–497|doi=10.2307/2010453|jstor=2010453}}</ref> as well as thousands of civilians of southern origin living in the north.<ref name="Vickers-1970">{{cite journal|last1=Vickers|first1=Michael|date=1970|title=Competition and Control in Modern Nigeria: Origins of the War with Biafra|journal=International Journal|volume=25|issue=3|page=630|doi=10.1177/002070207002500310|jstor=40200860|s2cid=147149826}}</ref> In the aftermath [[Yakubu Gowon]], a northerner, assumed command of the military government.<ref name="Nixon-1972" /> In this background increased ethnic rivalries led to further massacres.<ref name="Post-1968" /> The massacres were widely spread in the north and peaked on the 29 May, 29 July and 29 September 1966. By the time the pogrom ended, virtually all Igbos of the North were dead, hiding among sympathetic Northerners or on their way to the Eastern region. The massacres were led by the [[Nigerian Army]] and replicated in various Northern Nigerian cities. Although Colonel Gowon was issuing guarantees of safety to Southern Nigerians living in the North, the intention of a large portion of the Nigerian army at the time was genocidal as was the common racist rhetoric among Tiv, [[Idoma people|Idoma]], [[Hausa people|Hausa]] and other Northern Nigerian tribes. With the exception of few Northern Nigerians (mainly army officers who were not convinced that Igbo were innately evil),<ref name="Keil-1970">{{cite journal|last1=Keil|first1=Charles|date=January 1970|title=The Price of Nigerian Victory|journal=Africa Today|volume=17|issue=1|pages=1–3|jstor=4185054}}</ref> the Southern and Eastern Nigerians were generally regarded at the time in the North of Nigeria as described by Charles Keil: {{Quote| The Igbo and their ilk...vermin and snakes to trod underfoot...dogs to be killed.<ref name=Keil-1970 />|sign=|source=}} Northern Nigerians were however also targeted in the Igbo dominated Eastern Nigeria.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Nnoli|first1=Okwudiba|title=Ethnic Violence in Nigeria: A Historical Perspective |url=http://www.indiana.edu/~workshop/papers/nnoli_021003.pdf|website=www.inidiana.edu|publisher=Indiana.edu|access-date=16 December 2014}}</ref> Thousands of Hausas, Tiv and other Northern Tribes were massacred by Igbo mobs, forcing a mass exodus of Northerners from the Eastern Region.<ref name=Ojo>{{cite book|last1=Ojo|first1=Bamidele A.|title=Problems and Prospects of Sustaining Democracy in Nigeria|date=2001|publisher=Nova Science|isbn=978-1-56072-949-5}}</ref> Non-Igbo Eastern minorities and Midwesterners in the North were also attacked as there were no ways to differentiate them from Igbos by appearance, who were all collectively known by the name "''Yameri''" in the North.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Omaka |first1=Arua |title=The Forgotten Victims: Ethnic Minorities in The Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970 |journal=Journal of Retracing Africa (JORA) |date=17 February 2014 |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=25–40 |url=https://encompass.eku.edu/jora/vol1/iss1/2/ |access-date=6 September 2021 |issn=2168-0531}}</ref> One factor that led to the hostility toward Southern Nigerians in general and Igbo in particular was the attempt by the Aguiyi Ironsi regime to abolish regionalisation in favor of a unitary system of government which was regarded as a plot to establish Igbo domination in the Federation. On 24 May 1966 Ironsi issued a unitary decree, which led to an explosion of attacks against the Igbo in Northern Nigeria on 29 May 1966. The British press was unanimous in its conviction at the time that these 29 May killings were organized and not spontaneous. The Ironsi regime was also perceived to have been favoring Southern Nigerians in the appointment to key positions in government, thus heightening the inter ethnic rivalries.<ref name="Akinyemi-1972">{{cite journal|last1=Akinyemi|first1=A.B.|date=October 1972|title=The British Press and the Nigerian Civil War|journal=African Affairs|volume=71|issue=285|pages=408–426|doi=10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a096282|jstor=720847}}</ref> The failure of the Ironsi regime to punish the army mutineers responsible for the January 1966 coup further exacerbated the situation.<ref name="Nafziger-1972">{{cite journal|last1=Nafziger|first1=Wayne|title=The Economic Impact of the Nigerian Civil War|journal=The Journal of Modern African Studies|date=July 1972|volume=10|issue=2|pages=223–245|jstor=159964|doi=10.1017/s0022278x00022369}}</ref> The May 1966 pogrom was carried out by rampaging mobs with the connivance of local government.<ref name="McKenna-1969">{{cite journal|last1=McKenna|first1=Joseph C.|date=1969|title=Elements of a Nigerian Peace|journal=Foreign Affairs|volume=47|issue=4|pages=668–680|doi=10.2307/20039407|jstor=20039407}}</ref> The unprofessional attitude of some elements of the international press are also known to have added to the existing tension. J.D.F. Jones, the diplomatic correspondent of the [[Financial Times]] had on 17 January 1966 already predicted that the Northerners might "already have begun to take revenge for the death of their leader the Sardauna of Sokoto on the large number of Igbo who live in the North", which at the time they were not doing. This has been criticized as an irresponsible and for a journalist unprofessional, self-fulfilling prophecy which would lead the Northern elite to assume that the Financial Times was in possession of information that they were not aware of, and that the world expected the North to react in this way.<ref name=Akinyemi-1972 /> Later tactics were engineered by Northern elites to provoke violence such as fabricated news stories submitted to radio Cotonou and relayed by the Hausa service of the BBC detailing exaggerated attacks against Northerners in the East, which led to the furious killings of Eastern Nigerians on 29 September 1966.<ref name=Abbott-2003>{{cite journal|last1=Abbott|first1=Charles|last2=Anthony|first2=Douglas A.|title=Poison and Medicine: Ethnicity, Power, and Violence in a Nigerian City, 1966–86|journal=The International Journal of African Historical Studies|date=2003|volume=36|issue=1|pages=133–136|doi=10.2307/3559324|jstor=3559324}}</ref> According to British newspaper reports at the time, about 30,000 Igbo were killed in September 1966,<ref name="Akinyemi-1972" /> while more conservative estimates put the casualties at between ten and thirty thousand for that month. This spree of killings carried on into early October and was carried out by civilians sometimes aided by army troops and swept the entire north. It has been described as the most painful and provocative incident leading to the [[Nigerian Civil War|Nigeria-Biafra War]].<ref name="McKenna-1969" /> == Aftermath == The pogroms led to the mass movement of Igbo and other Eastern Nigerians back to Eastern Nigeria (it is estimated that more than one million Igbos returned to the eastern region). It also was the precursor to [[Ojukwu]]'s declaration of Eastern Nigeria's secession from the federation as the Republic of [[Biafra]], and the resulting [[Nigerian Civil War]] (1967–1970), which Biafra lost. ==See also== * [[Anti-Igbo sentiment]] * [[Igbo culture]] ==Bibliography== * Agbiboa, D. (2013). [http://www.jstor.org/stable/23414701 Ethno-religious Conflicts and the Elusive Quest for National Identity in Nigeria]. ''Journal of Black Studies'', ''44''(1), pp. 3–30. * Anthony, D. (2014). [http://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2014.936701 ‘Ours is a war of survival’: Biafra, Nigeria and arguments about genocide, 1966–70]. ''Journal of Genocide Research'', ''16''(2–3), pp. 205–225 * Aro, G. & Ani, K. (2017). [http://doi.org/10.2307/26886164 A Historical Review of Igbo Nationalism in the Nigerian Political Space]. ''Journal of African Union Studies'', ''6''(2/3), pp. 47–77. * Omenka, N. (2010). [http://www.jstor.org/stable/23017723 Blaming The Gods: Christian Religious Propaganda In The Nigeria—Biafra War]. ''The Journal of African History'', ''51''(3), pp. 367–389. == References == {{reflist}} == External links == * [https://web.archive.org/web/20150330003905/http://www.nigeriamasterweb.com/nmwpg1HarunaIgboMassacre.html No regrets for the Asaba massacre of Igbo -Haruna] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20061222223807/http://biafraland.com/WOB/WOB070602.htm 2002 Statement from "Women of Biafra"] * [http://www.africaresource.com/content/view/318/68/ Genocide is Totally Indefensible] by Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe * [https://web.archive.org/web/20141219161422/http://www.nigeriavillagesquare1.com/Articles/Siollun.html The Northern Counter-Coup Of 1966: The Full Story] by [[Max Siollun]] {{Igbo topics}} {{Biafra topics}} {{DEFAULTSORT:Anti-Igbo pogrom}} [[Category:Mass murder in 1966]] [[Category:Igbo society]] [[Category:Ethnic riots]] [[Category:1966 in Nigeria]] [[Category:Pogroms]] [[Category:1966 riots]] [[Category:1960s massacres in Nigeria]] [[Category:Racism in Africa]] [[Category:1966 crimes in Nigeria]] [[Category:1966 murders in Africa]] [[Category:1960s murders in Nigeria]] [[Category:Genocides]] [[Category:History of Northern Nigeria]]'