By Onoh John
Modern day revisionists keep saying Ojukwu is to blame for the civil war without plausible counter-facts. That’s intellectually lazy. Wars don’t start because one man “woke up and wanted to tear out.” They start when a state fails its basic duty: protecting its citizens.
Between May and October 1966, Igbos and other Easterners were subjected to three separate remorseless genocide events in Northern Nigeria. Estimates from the U.S. State Department, British Foreign Office, and Nigerian Civil War Commission put the dead at 30,000–50,000. Thousands more were displaced and had their property looted. These were not riots. They were organized killings targeting a specific ethnic group across Kano, Kaduna, Jos, and Makurdi.
Ojukwu didn’t start the killing. He inherited 1.5 million refugees fleeing to the East and a federal government that did nothing to stop it. When a government cannot protect a section of its population and instead legitimizes the violence by silence, secession becomes a last resort under international law. One can argue against secession, but you can’t blame the man for refusing to watch his people be slaughtered again.
Some people argue that “It was Ojukwu who refused negotiation… Gowon didn’t declare the war” This is factually false.
Ojukwu attended the Aburi Accord meeting in Ghana on January 4-5, 1967. He went months after the 1966 massacres, while still believing a negotiated federation was possible. The Aburi Accord was signed by Gowon, Ojukwu, and all military governors. It agreed on confederation, regional control of the army, and return of seized assets.
Even neutral observers present observed that the unlike the Eastern delegation to Aburi, the Nigerian delegates came ill prepared for the negotiations. Gowon reneged on the Aburi accord. He promulgated Decree 8 and Decree 14 in March 1967, which unilaterally centralized power and negated the Aburi agreements. He created 12 states on May 27, 1967, splitting the Eastern Region and cutting it off from the sea before any referendum. Ojukwu declared Biafra on May 30, 1967, only after Gowon had already moved to dismantle the federal structure agreed at Aburi.
If Ojukwu was the “war monger,” why did he go to Aburi at all? War mongers don’t travel to neutral ground for peace talks after their people have been massacred. Gowon fired the first shots on July 6, 1967, when Nigerian troops invaded Nsukka. The war was declared and waged by the federal side.
Some revisionists argued that “Igbos were doing very well… why leave?” This is gaslighting. “Doing well” doesn’t matter when you’re being butchered for your ethnicity.
The argument of blaming Igbos seceeding in 1967 without looking at events of 1966 is like telling Jews in 1939 Germany: “You had bankers and lawyers, why complain?” Survival and physical security come before economic success.
After Ironsi’s assassination in July 1966, Ojukwu’s position was that Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, the most senior officer and Chief of Staff, should succeed Ironsi. This is on record in his radio broadcast and in Ogundipe’s own memoirs. Ojukwu’s call was based on military seniority and constitutional order, not personal ambition as many revisionists will allude to. But seniority in the Nigerian Army was by rank and date of promotion, not force number alone. At the time of Ironsi’s death, Ogundipe was a Brigadier. Gowon was a Lt. Colonel. Ojukwu opposed Gowon’s takeover precisely because it violated the chain of command and was driven by a Northern officer clique. Calling that “greed” is projection.
Modern day revisionists would tell you that Ojukwu declared session on his own. It is a fact of history that on May 26, 1967, the Eastern Nigeria Consultative Assembly, comprising traditional rulers, clergy, market leaders, and professionals from all provinces of the East, met in Enugu and unanimously authorized Ojukwu to declare independence if Gowon continued to violate Aburi. The declaration on May 30 was a response to that mandate, not a unilateral act. If it was about “Ojukwu’s greed,” why would Igbo, Ibibio, Efik, Ijaw, Annang, and Ogoja leaders all back it?
Many revisionists from the victorious side are apt in skipping the Asaba Massacre and mass murder because it undermines their moral high ground.
It is a fact that Nigerian federal troops executed hundreds of civilian men and boys in Asaba in October 1967. The Asaba Memorial Project and Human Rights Watch have documented it. Mass killings of civilians occurred in Onitsha, Calabar, and Port Harcourt. If the goal was to “keep Nigeria one,” why target unarmed civilians? That’s war crime, not reunification.
One can’t claim to care about “wisdom” while erasing the 1966 genocide, denying Gowon’s breach of Aburi, and blaming the man who tried negotiation for the war that followed. Ojukwu’s crime wasn’t starting the war. It was refusing to let his people be slaughtered without a fight. If that makes him a “demigod” in Igbo eyes, maybe it’s because he acted when the Nigerian state abdicated its duty.
If one wants to debate the wisdom of secession, it should be done with facts, not with a sanitized version of history that starts in 1967 and pretends 1966 never happened.
Onoh John (2026)
