How Britain’s Labour government facilitated the massacre of Biafrans in Nigeria – to protect its oil interests By Mark Curtis• 29 April 2020
On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Biafran war, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the late 1960s, declassified British files show that Harold Wilson’s government secretly armed and backed Nigeria’s aggression against the secessionist region. The then Labour government secretly provided large quantities of arms to the Nigerian federal government which, by early 1970, had crushed an attempt by the country’s eastern region of Biafra to gain independence, which it had declared in May 1967. EARN MONEY IN YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT During the three years of war, up to three million people died, as Nigeria enforced a blockade on Biafra, causing widespread starvation amid considerable international opposition to the conflict. British policy was mainly shaped by its oil interests, declassified government documents from the time show. “Our direct interests are trade and investment, including an important stake by Shell/BP in the eastern region,” the Forei...