Biafra, la déchirure - sur les traces de la guerre civile nigériane de 1967-1970

Abstract

The Biafran war has been called ‘the forgotten war’. Yet it is the place where the Médecins sans frontières NGO was born and where foreign journalists first acquired the intercultural skills they were to use while reporting on subsequent African conflicts. The Biafran conflict also sealed the bilateral relations between France and Nigeria where, just after the war, an overwhelming demand for French language learning resulted in a mass recruitment of French teachers. This three-year civil war, which tore through South Eastern Nigeria, provided a collective experience which inspired poets, novelists and playwrights – Achebe, Soyinka, Okigbo, Saro-Wiwa, Okpewho, Adichie and others. It triggered a religious revival that swept through the region; it mobilised both politicians and humanitarian organisations, changed this great African country and projected it on the world media. This book considers the human cost of this conflict as revealed in orality, the media including the Internet and a growing literature, and the trauma it left behind