Resurgent Biafra threatens to rise again

 

The country may be imperfect, but breaking it up would be far worse

Identity politics are on the march across the world, in Europe, Asia, and America. Now joining the clamour from Scots nationalists, Catalan and Kurdish separatists among others, is a voice, all too familiar 50 years ago but largely forgotten since, outside of a small, densely populated corner of west Africa.

In the 1960s, Igbo separatists, under the banner of a half yellow sun, tried to break away from Nigeria, Africa’s most populous and at times chaotic state. Hundreds of thousands died in their ensuing attempt to create the state of Biafra, many from starvation. For a generation, images of the swollen bellies of children suffering from Kwashiorkor came to define the betrayed hopes of the continent in the aftermath of independence from colonial rule.

 

Those alarm bells are ringing again in the region as extremists in eastern Nigeria contemplate provoking another armed struggle while more moderate Igbo nationalists call for a new settlement within the federation. Muhammadu Buhari, the president, who fought as a young officer in the civil war, has said he cannot let fringe groups with no interest in peace hijack efforts at dialogue. Last month his deputy, Yemi Osinbajo, accused those calling for Biafra of doing so for purely selfish reasons, as leverage to win concessions from the state. They are right to sound the alarm.

 

Identity politics, otherwise known as tribalism, has a grim record in Africa. Where it has led to secession, such as in South Sudan, the results have mostly been disastrous – except for a minority of the well-connected with access to patronage within the new state.

 

When the civil war ended in Nigeria in 1970, General Jack Gowon, then military head of state, declared that there were no victors, no vanquished. In reality during the oil boom that followed, there were victors: a tiny elite across regional and religious lines, that delivered little but took a lot. And there were losers, too, also from across the country, who watched a party unfolding to which they were not invited.

 

When Mr Buhari was elected in 2015, it was on a wave of populism against the corruption and cult of mediocrity championed by that elite. Change has been slow. Mr Buhari has been unwell, vested interests have thrown up roadblocks. Some power brokers now smell an opportunity. The political godfathers in the east, who won big under the previous government of Goodluck Jonathan, backed the wrong horse in 2015 and have been frozen out.

 

Mr Buhari went over their heads to appoint qualified Igbos to a more meritocratic and less political administration. The resurgence of ethno-nationalism and agitation for Biafra offers the godfathers, the people who have held Nigeria back for so long, a way back in as brokers. The stakes are high and their capacity to control what they are stirring entirely untested.

 

Nigeria is already beset by violent Islamist extremism in the north, Shia and communal unrest in the centre, and unresolved community tensions in the oil-rich Niger delta. A civil war could quickly become a religious war that draws in extremists from all over.

 

Managing this situation is far from easy. Part of what makes it so explosive today is the scale of public disaffection, the frustration of the young and underemployed and the way that is amplified by social media. A heavy-handed response could easily backfire. The answers now are the same as they were in 1970: for the state to deliver on the basics, invest in infrastructure and guarantee a level playing field in politics. No doubt Nigeria is an imperfect state. But trying to break it up is not the answer.