56 years later: Why the Igbo still don’t belong

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More than 50 years after the guns fell silent in 1970, Nigeria is still fighting the Civil War. Not with bullets, but with memory, mistrust, and exclusion.

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Governor Caleb Mutfwang’s apology to the Igbo in Jos and former Head of State Yakubu Gowon’s new memoir have dragged the nation back to a conversation we keep postponing: have we healed, or have we just learned to live with the wound?

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Mutfwang said Plateau people were “deceived into going to war” and asked for forgiveness. Gowon, in “My Life of Duty and Allegiance”, returned to defend Aburi and his war decisions.

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Apologies. Memoirs. Regret. But 56 years on, the Igbo question remains unanswered. Because until a people feel they truly belong, no amount of “let’s forget the past” can build a nation.

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The Civil War did not start on May 30, 1967, when Ojukwu declared Biafra. It started with a collapse of trust. And that collapse began in 1966.

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On January 15, 1966, young officers, mostly Igbo, struck. Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Premier Ahmadu Bello, and Premier Samuel Akintola were killed. The coup failed. But the optics stuck. In the North, it looked like an Igbo plot to seize power.

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Then came May 24, 1966. Head of State General Johnson Ironsi signed Decree 34. Federalism was scrapped for a unitary system. To his government, it was about stability. To many Northerners, it confirmed their worst fear: centralised Igbo control.

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Six weeks later, the country exploded again. On July 29, 1966, Northern officers struck back. Ironsi and Governor Adekunle Fajuyi were killed. Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon emerged as Head of State. Between mid-1966 and 1967, anti-Igbo pogroms swept Northern cities. Thousands of Igbo and other Easterners were slaughtered. Hundreds of thousands fled home. Historians put the death toll between 8,000 and 30,000.

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The message was clear: the state could not protect its citizens. So, on May 30, 1967, Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra. What followed was 30 months of war. A federal blockade starved Biafra of food and medicine. Civilians paid the heaviest price. On January 15, 1970, Biafra surrendered. Gowon said there was “No Victor, No Vanquished”.

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On that same day, Gowon promised Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation. The Three Rs. He also promised there would be “no second-class citizens”.

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It sounded noble. The implementation told a different story.

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The most infamous was the £20 policy. No matter how much money an Igbo man had in the bank before the war, he could only withdraw £20 to start over. Traders, professionals, business owners. Decades of savings wiped out in one policy. This was in a region built on commerce and enterprise.

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Then came “abandoned property”. In parts of the former Eastern Region, especially in today’s Rivers State, homes and businesses belonging to displaced Easterners were seized and handed to new occupants.

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Reconstruction happened. But it was uneven. Roads, schools, hospitals in many war-affected communities never fully recovered. And the psychological scars were never budgeted for.

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Politically, the message was even louder. Since 1999, no Igbo man has been elected President of Nigeria. In a federation of over 200 million, that fact alone fuels the question of belonging. It also fuels movements like IPOB.

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But this is not just an Igbo problem. It is a Nigerian problem.

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Because Nigeria has lost by keeping one of its most productive communities at arm’s length.

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Look at the evidence. Onitsha Main Market: one of West Africa’s biggest. Nnewi: Nigeria’s industrial hub. Aba: Leather, shoes, manufacturing hub. Igbo entrepreneurs built these. They created jobs. They moved goods. They built global networks that put Nigeria on the map in trade, education, and innovation.

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A country cannot grow by limiting the people who build it.

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Other nations learned this the hard way. South Africa admitted apartheid didn’t just break people; it broke the economy. Germany faced its past after WWII and built institutions people could trust. Rwanda, after genocide, chose a shared identity over endless blame.

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Peace scholar Johan Galtung drew the line between “negative peace” — no war — and “positive peace” — justice, trust, equality. Nigeria got negative peace in 1970. We are still chasing positive peace.

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Wole Soyinka warned us: you cannot build a future on silence and denial. Olusegun Obasanjo has said it repeatedly: Nigeria’s unity must mean something, not just exist on paper and by force.

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So here we are in 2026.

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Governor Mutfwang apologises for 1967 in Jos. Gowon publishes a memoir defending Aburi in 1966. Two months apart. Two different scripts.

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If the Three Rs were real, why are we still arguing about Aburi? If we have truly moved on, why does one region still ask if it truly belongs?

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Nigeria does not need more memoirs. It does not need performative apologies. It does not need to reopen wounds for politics, nor demand silence from those who still feel the pain.

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What Nigeria needs is simple and hard: Truth about our history. Citizenship that is equal on paper and in practice. Governance based on competence and fairness, not ethnicity and zoning arithmetic.

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56 years later, the war is over. The question is not.

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Until the Igbo feel they have a fair place in this union, Nigeria will keep fighting a war that ended in 1970.

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And no nation can prosper while fighting itself.

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