The Spiritual Legacies of the Biafran War

The fact that religious difference has become such an important fault line in Nigerian politics today might lead one to believe that this was always the case. In fact, religious difference was only a minor factor in the story of Biafra. To be sure, religion figured in Biafra’s national ideology, and in how foreign observers made sense of what was going on there. Some on the front lines understood the stakes of the conflict in religious terms too, and Biafran propaganda intended for the outside world argued that the war was a battle between Biafran Christians and Nigerian Muslims—a gross simplification, but one that was effective in mobilizing sentiment nonetheless. But Biafra was not a war about religion. The war’s root causes were political, ideological, and moral—disagreements which may have overlapped with religious difference, but were not determined by it.

Religion was not what sparked Biafra’s secession, but the war shaped the ways in which people believed and worshipped in important ways. During the war, which lasted from 1967 to 1970, Biafrans turned to new devotional practices to grapple with the circumstances in which they found themselves. In the context of hunger, violence, and a constant, ambient fear of annihilation, many people found consolation in charismatic Christian churches. Others turned to faith-healers and ritualists, who offered more potent forms of protection than the scapulars and St. Christopher medals of the Catholic tradition.