TODAY IN THE HISTORY SEPTEMBER 29, 1966 THE DAY THAT FORCED US TO BECOME BIAFRA.
Today is September 29th. If you are Igbo, you must know this date. 59 years ago today, our people were slaughtered like animals across Northern Nigeria. This was the day the anti-Igbo pogrom reached its peak, and it is the single reason Biafra was born.
It did not start on September 29. It started in May 1966, after the January 15 coup was tagged an “Igbo coup”. After General Aguiyi Ironsi, our brother, was murdered in the July 29 counter-coup, Northern mobs started killing Igbos in the North. But September 29, 1966 was different. It was organized and coordinated.
What happened on that night? At exactly 7pm, while a constitutional conference was still going on in Lagos, massacres began simultaneously in Kano, Kaduna, Jos, Zaria, Bauchi, and 12 other Northern cities. According to the Daily Telegraph of London, soldiers stood by with guns while thugs moved with typed lists of Igbo houses and shops.
They did not just kill men. They killed women, children, and pregnant mothers. They blocked railway stations and killed those trying to escape. They invaded marketplaces. Our people abandoned their shops, their houses, their life savings and ran. More than 1 million Igbos fled back to the East on foot and on lorries. Trains arrived in Enugu filled with corpses.
How many died? No one knows the exact number. Conservative history books say 8,000 to 10,000 died in those few days. Igbo elders say over 30,000. But that was only the beginning. From 1966 to 1970, over 3.5 million Igbos and Easterners died because Nigeria failed to protect its own citizens.
This failure to protect us is why Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and the Eastern Consultative Assembly declared the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967. Without September 29, 1966, there would have been no Biafra. That is why Ohanaeze Ndigbo marks September 29 as Igbo Day – a day of mourning and remembrance.
We do not remember today because we want to hate anyone. We remember because a people who forget their history will be killed again. We remember to say NEVER AGAIN. We honor our grandfathers, grandmothers, and innocent children who were killed just because they were Igbo.
Today, light a candle 🕯️. Say a prayer. We remember.
WE DO NOT FORGET. BIAFRA LIVES.😭💔
