The Caged Bird Sang No More

The Caged Bird Sang No More PDF Author: Philip Efiong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910777015
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This is Philip Efiong's account of the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War (1967-70). He was a key player during the event and second-in-command to the Biafran leader, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The story begins with the coup d'états of January and July 1966, and recounts ensuing ethnic and regional conflicts. After the first coup, Efiong is posted to State House as Principal Staff Officer and then to Kaduna as Acting Commander of the First Brigade. But the second coup is executed shortly after and he is forced to escape from Kaduna following a failed attempt on his life. He makes his way back to the East where he also relocates his family after officers have been directed by the new military government to return to their regions of origin. Efiong is in Enugu when talks break down between the new military head of state, then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon and the Governor of the Eastern Region, Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu. The result is a declaration of secession by the Eastern Region (Biafra), which leads to the outbreak of war in July 1967. In Biafra, after holding a number of positions, Efiong ends up as Chief of General Staff and second-in-command to the Biafran leader. With each incursion and onslaught by the enemy, the author moves his family to a new town or village until they arrive in Owerri, their last place of refuge before Biafra's collapse. Ojukwu then flees and hands over power to Efiong who performs the final task of leading a delegation to Lagos to negotiate peace and deliver Biafra's surrender. The war formally comes to an end on 15 January 1970, after which former Biafran officers, including Efiong, receive punishments ranging from dismissal to imprisonment.

The Caged Bird Sang No More

The Caged Bird Sang No More PDF Author: Philip Efiong
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910777015
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is Philip Efiong's account of the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War (1967-70). He was a key player during the event and second-in-command to the Biafran leader, General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. The story begins with the coup d'états of January and July 1966, and recounts ensuing ethnic and regional conflicts. After the first coup, Efiong is posted to State House as Principal Staff Officer and then to Kaduna as Acting Commander of the First Brigade. But the second coup is executed shortly after and he is forced to escape from Kaduna following a failed attempt on his life. He makes his way back to the East where he also relocates his family after officers have been directed by the new military government to return to their regions of origin. Efiong is in Enugu when talks break down between the new military head of state, then Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon and the Governor of the Eastern Region, Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu. The result is a declaration of secession by the Eastern Region (Biafra), which leads to the outbreak of war in July 1967. In Biafra, after holding a number of positions, Efiong ends up as Chief of General Staff and second-in-command to the Biafran leader. With each incursion and onslaught by the enemy, the author moves his family to a new town or village until they arrive in Owerri, their last place of refuge before Biafra's collapse. Ojukwu then flees and hands over power to Efiong who performs the final task of leading a delegation to Lagos to negotiate peace and deliver Biafra's surrender. The war formally comes to an end on 15 January 1970, after which former Biafran officers, including Efiong, receive punishments ranging from dismissal to imprisonment.

Biafra's War 1967-1970

Biafra's War 1967-1970 PDF Author: Al J. Venter
Publisher: Helion and Company
ISBN: 1912174316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Almost half a century has passed since the Nigerian Civil War ended. But memories die hard, because a million or more people perished in that internecine struggle, the majority women and children, who were starved to death. Biafra’s war was modern Africa’s first extended conflict. It lasted almost three years and was based largely on ethnic, by inference, tribal grounds. It involved, on the one side, a largely Christian or animist southeastern quadrant of Nigeria which called itself Biafra, pitted militarily against the country’s more populous and preponderant Islamic north. These divisions – almost always brutal – persist. Not a week goes by without reports coming in of Christian communities or individuals persecuted by Islamic zealots. It was also a conflict that saw significant Cold War involvement: the Soviets (and Britain) siding and supplying Federal Nigeria with weapons, aircraft and expertise and several Western states – Portugal, South Africa and France especially – providing clandestine help to the rebel state. For that reason alone, this book is an important contribution towards understanding Nigeria’s ethnic divisions, which are no better today than they were then. Biafra was the first of a series of religious wars that threaten to engulf much of Africa. Similar conflicts have recently taken place in the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic, Senegal (Cassamance), both Congo Republics and elsewhere. As the war progressed, Biafra also attracted mercenary involvement, many of whom arriving from the Congo which had already seen much turmoil. Western pilots were hired by Lagos and they flew the first Soviet MiG-17 jet fighters to have played an active role in a ‘Western’ war. Al Venter spent time covering this struggle. He left the rebel enclave in December 1969, only weeks before it ended and claims the distinction of being the only foreign correspondent to have been rocketed by both sides: first by Biafra’s tiny Swedish-built Minicon fighter planes while he was on a ship lying at anchor in Warri harbour and thereafter, by MiG jets flown by mercenaries. Among his colleagues inside the beleaguered territory were the celebrated Italian photographer Romano Cagnoni as well as Frederick Forsyth who originally reported for the BBC and then resigned because of the partisan, pro-Nigerian stance taken by Whitehall. He briefly shared quarters with French photographer Giles Caron who was later killed in Cambodia. Prior to that Venter had been working for John Holt in Lagos. It is interesting that his office at the time was at Ikeja International Airport (Murtala Muhammed today) where the second Nigerian army mutiny was plotted and from where it was launched. From this perspective he had a proverbial ‘ringside seat’ of the tribal divisions that followed as hostilities escalated. Venter took numerous photos while on this West African assignment, both in Nigeria while he was based there and later in Biafra itself. Others come from various sources, including some from the same mercenary pilots who originally targeted him from the air.

A History of the Republic of Biafra

A History of the Republic of Biafra PDF Author: Samuel Fury Childs Daly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108895956
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
The Republic of Biafra lasted for less than three years, but the war over its secession would contort Nigeria for decades to come. Samuel Fury Childs Daly examines the history of the Nigerian Civil War and its aftermath from an uncommon vantage point – the courtroom. Wartime Biafra was glutted with firearms, wracked by famine, and administered by a government that buckled under the weight of the conflict. In these dangerous conditions, many people survived by engaging in fraud, extortion, and armed violence. When the fighting ended in 1970, these survival tactics endured, even though Biafra itself disappeared from the map. Based on research using an original archive of legal records and oral histories, Daly catalogues how people navigated conditions of extreme hardship on the war front, and shows how the conditions of the Nigerian Civil War paved the way for the country's long experience of crime that was to follow.

Biafra Genocide

Biafra Genocide PDF Author: Al J. Venter
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1526729148
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
One of the great tragedies of Africa is not only the fact that a million people mostly civilians and a large proportion of them children died in one of Africas first post-independence wars, but that until it happened the world thought Nigeria was immune from the wasting disease of tribalism. It certainly was not because the Biafran War is still the most expansive tribal conflagration that the continent has experienced barring perhaps the ongoing Great Lakes conflict involving the forces of East and West, only this time, with the British siding with the Soviets.Worse, some of the religious differences that emerged before and after that dreadful carnage are still with us today. During the course of hostilities that lasted almost four years, a lot of other shortcomings surfaced in Africas most populous nation, including the kind of corruption that, until then, had always been linked to countries rich in oil. Disunity, incompetence and instability from which Nigeria never really recovered also emerged. Two bloody army coups followed after the rebels capitulated, together with an appalling series of massacres, mostly of southern Christians by Muslim northerners. Half a century later the slaughter continues.

The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta

The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta PDF Author: Tanure Ojaide
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000379051
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book examines the depiction of the Delta region of Nigeria through literature and other cultural art forms. The Niger Delta has been thrust into the global limelight due to resource extraction and conflict, but it is also a region with a rich culture, environment, and heritage. The creative imagination of the area’s artists has been fuelled by the area’s pressing concerns of indigenous peoples, minority discourse, environmental degradation, climate change, multinational corporations' greed, dictatorship, and people’s struggle for control of their resources. Taking a holistic approach to the Niger Delta experience, this book showcases artistic responses from literature, visual arts, and performances (such as masquerades, dances, and festivals). Chapters cover authors, artists, and performers such as Ben Okri, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Isidore Okpewho, J.P. Clark, and Bruce Onobrakpeya, as well as topics like the famous Benin bronze figures and Urhobo Udje dance. Affirming the wealth and diversity of the region which continues to inspire creative artistic productions, The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta will be of interest to researchers of African literature, arts, and other cultural productions.

Governance in Nigeria post-1999: Revisiting the democratic ‘new dawn’ of the Fourth Republic

Governance in Nigeria post-1999: Revisiting the democratic ‘new dawn’ of the Fourth Republic PDF Author: Edited by Romola Adeola & Ademola Oluborode Jegede
Publisher: Pretoria University Law Press
ISBN: 192053881X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
At the start of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic on 29 May 1999, there was great optimism as to the emergence of a new democratic future representing a significant break from the political undulations of the past. Two decades and four presidential epochs later, there is a prevalent question as to how well Nigeria has fared in governance and human rights post-1999. This book revisits the democratic ‘new dawn’ of the Fourth Republic discussing pertinent matters integral to Nigeria’s democratic future post-2019.

Nigeria's Five Majors

Nigeria's Five Majors PDF Author: Ben Gbulie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nigeria
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description


The Fall of Biafra

The Fall of Biafra PDF Author: Ben Gbulie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nigeria
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description


The Severed Head

The Severed Head PDF Author: Julia Kristeva
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231157207
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Renowned philosopher and cultural theorist Kristeva (Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection) offers an extended consideration of artistic figurations of the severed head, the organizing theme to an exhibition she coordinated at the Louvre in 1998. Though she follows a single historical trajectory, moving from Paleolithic skull cults to antique Greek sculpture to the Surrealist drawings, Kristeva eschews the disciplinary constraints of art history, instead employing psychoanalysis to explore the intertwined problems of representation and mortality posed by the severed head. For Kristeva, the capacity to figure the life of the mind first requires a confrontation with this horrific object that stands at the boundary between life and death, registering not only the loss of corporeal form but also subjective interiority. Though this book does not engage with recent images of decapitation, it is not without contemporary political-cultural import; for Kristeva, these cruel artistic figurations offer us the capacity to contemplate the sacred within a technology-driven contemporary visual culture. Verdict While a challenging text, this beautifully written and richly layered meditation on mortality and representation will undoubtedly appeal to those readers interested in semiotic and psychoanalytically informed readings of art.-Jonathan Patkowski, CUNY Graduate Ctr.(c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The Transformation of the World

The Transformation of the World PDF Author: Jürgen Osterhammel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691169802
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1192

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Book Description
A panoramic global history of the nineteenth century A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more. This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French. Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial developments.