Biafra women as combatants in the Nigerian civil war, 1967-1970
Keywords:
biafra women, civil war, infantry, nsukka, commandos, militiaAbstract
The Nigerian Civil War popularly known all over the world as the Biafra War was fought from July 6, 1967 to January 15, 1970. Since the end of the conflict in 1970, both the fictional and non-fictional accounts of the war tend to have peripheral zed the Igbo women’s roles in the violent historic conflict. Countless literatures provoked by the war seem to have confined the contributions the Biafra women made in the war to the maintenance of the home front in the absence of the men. Relying on interviews which I conducted in Nsukka, Enugu State between January 2020 and February 2021, official reports and gazettes, private papers and memoirs, newspapers, articles and different genres of secondary sources of evidence, this study examines the neglected but very critical roles of the Biafra women in the said Biafra Civil War. The study also interrogates how their critical roles as combatants in the war impacted and shaped their post- Civil War lives in the society.
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