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The Asaba Massacre: Trauma, Memory, and the Nigerian Civil War
In October 1967, early in the Nigerian Civil War, government troops entered Asaba in pursuit of the retreating Biafran army, slaughtering thousands of civilians and leaving the town in ruins. News of the atrocity was suppressed by the Nigerian government, with the complicity of Britain, and its significance in the subsequent progress of that conflict was misunderstood. Drawing on archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic and interviews with survivors of the killing, pillaging and rape, as well as with high-ranking Nigerian military and political leaders, S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli offer an interdisciplinary reconstruction of the history of the Asaba Massacre, redefining it as a pivotal point in the history of the war. Through this, they also explore the long afterlife of trauma, the reconstruction of memory and how it intersects with justice, and the task of reconciliation in a nation where a legacy of ethnic suspicion continues to reverberate.
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Published September 13, 2017
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April 8, 2018
Just like another day in Asaba, the people work up one october to see soldiers on their streets. The 2nd division soldiers under the leadership of Col. muritala mohammed were going from house to house picking out able bodied men and shooting them on the premise that were Biafran sympathizers. In a last effort to stop these killings, the leaders of Asaba organized a rally were the people were showing support for the troops and a united Nigeria. The 2nd division soldiers separated Men from women/children, lined them up and fired at will. An estimated 800 people died in a period of 4 says in October, 1967. This book highlights the plite of the Asaba people, pre-war and post-war and their walk towards healing. The book is well written and referenced with excerpts from interviews with survivors. If you are interested in the events of the civil war in Nigeria, the book fill the blanks in some of the books we have out there about the civil war which has always been from the perspective of generals and soldiers of the FMG. This is a book from the perspective of civilian survivors.
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