NIGERIA’S UNFINISHED WAR

Fifty-six years on, the country still lives with unresolved pain, writes

PATRICK O. OKIGBO

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The conversation had no agenda. It rarely did. An older and younger cousin catching up quickly, without ceremony, before life intervened again. Then it drifted, unprompted, to Biafra.

How old were you when the war began?

Nine going on ten.

What do you remember?

He hesitated and tried to change the subject. When pressed, he paused, then offered a single word: kwashiorkor.

Just before the war, his mother had bought him a set of musical instruments—banjo, ukulele, xylophone, tambourine, flute and accompanying music scores. He still had them when the family fled back to their village. There, he and his mates learned to play songs from the music scores. Some adults decided the children could use their music to entertain younger ones in refugee camps—children with distended bellies, victims of starvation turned into a weapon of war. What he remembers most are fleeting moments: the instant when a child his age allowed a fleeting smile to cross a dull, exhausted face.

At that point in the story, he —now a grandfather—broke down. He had not returned to those memories in nearly half a century. He had buried them, he explained, because that was the only way to function. The nightmares stopped decades ago. The memory did not.

His experience is not exceptional. Millions of Nigerians who lived through the civil war—on both the Biafran and federal sides—carry similar, largely unspoken scars. They rebuilt their lives, raised families, worked, laughed, and mourned football defeats. To outward appearances, the country moved on. Inwardly, many did not. The war ended in 1970. Its trauma remains.

That unresolved trauma continues to shape Nigeria’s politics and social relations. The distrust—sometimes shading into open hostility—that characterises relations among the country’s ethnic and religious groups predates the civil war. But it hardened during those 30 months, when hunger was weaponised, identities were absolutised, and survival depended on who one was and where one came from. The conflict turned suspicion into habit.

Nigeria never properly healed. General Yakubu Gowon’s declaration of “No Victor, No Vanquished” was rhetorically magnanimous but institutionally hollow. There was no truth-telling, no national reckoning, and no systematic attempt to address collective trauma or rebuild trust across communities. Silence was mistaken for reconciliation. Forgetting was treated as nation-building.

Other countries emerging from internal conflict have learned—often painfully—that this approach fails. Rwanda’s gacaca courts, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and Colombia’s victim-centred peace process differ in design, but share a common insight: societies do not move on by pretending the past did not happen. They do so by confronting it deliberately, imperfectly, and in public.

Nigeria still has time to do the same. A serious national healing agenda would begin with acknowledgement: an official, credible account of both the remote and proximate causes of the war, alongside an inclusive process to document civilian suffering on all sides—free of triumphalism or denial. Such an effort would not reopen old venom; it would drain it of its lingering power to poison.

Education matters too. Nigeria’s civil war is scarcely mentioned and seldom taught. Many young Nigerians know it only through hearsay, often filtered through grievance or myth. This leaves resentment untethered from context and easily mobilised. A clear, honest national curriculum—supplemented by public archives, oral histories and museums—could convert private pain into shared history. The Centre for Memories* in Enugu is attempting to do this work. It should not be alone.

Mental health deserves equal attention. Trauma does not fade neatly with time; it is transmitted across generations. Children inherit not only stories, but silences, anxieties and mistrust. Investing in accessible mental-health services, particularly in regions most affected by the war, would be both humane and economically prudent. Societies burdened by unresolved trauma pay for it in violence, weak institutions and stalled development.

Across African traditions runs a simple wisdom: a wound that is kept hidden is the one that festers. Silence preserves trauma; speech weakens it. I am part of an initiative developing a platform for Nigerians to document their experiences of those brutal 30 months. The country needs many more such efforts—books, films, theatre—spaces that bring buried memories into the open and allow them to be named.

Above all, leadership matters. Healing requires political courage: the willingness to reopen difficult conversations not to assign blame, but to restore dignity, confidence and civic trust. Nigeria’s political class has too often preferred the convenience of forgetting to the difficulty of repair. The cost of that choice is visible in the country’s recurring crises of cohesion.

On January 15th 2026, Nigeria will mark 56 years since the war ended. The date will pass whether or not it is acknowledged. But the accumulated hurt of those decades will continue to deepen until someone, somewhere, calls time—not on memory, but on denial.

The needed intervention is neither easy nor a quick fix. For instance, the American Civil War ended in 1865, 161 years ago, yet the legacies of the conflict—especially in social, political, and racial terms—still linger in the United States today. As is often the case, the physical war has ended but the war of memory lingers. The country acknowledged the task required to rebuild and is putting in the work. Nigeria needs to start the process.

Nations, like people, cannot outrun their past indefinitely. Nigeria’s civil war may have ended half a century ago. Its resolution remains unfinished business. This anniversary should be used not to reopen wounds, but to clean them—and finally allow them to heal.

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 Okigbo III is the Founding Partner at Nextier, a multi-competency advisory firm and serves as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Centre for Memories