Former President says factors that triggered 1967 conflict remain, calls for urgent action to prevent repeat
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has issued a stark warning that Nigeria risks another civil war if unresolved issues from the past continue to fester, declaring that the country has already fought “one civil war too many.”
Speaking Wednesday at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta, the former military leader and civilian president said many of the factors that sparked the three-year conflict in 1967 are still present today.
“Some of the things that led to the Civil War are still with us. How long will this remain so?” Obasanjo asked, receiving documentation on the Asaba Massacre compiled by Chief Chuck Nduka-Eze.
The former president, who served as a soldier during the civil war, quoted his colleague Gen Yakubu Gowon as saying Nigeria “would not survive a second civil war as a country.”
“To say that we will have a second civil war, God forbid,” Obasanjo declared. “I will do everything possible to ensure that there is never again a civil war in this country.”
Obasanjo acknowledged he could not provide detailed accounts of the Asaba Massacre, noting that operations in that area were under the command of the late Gen Murtala Mohammed. However, he recounted personally intervening to stop a soldier from assaulting a civilian in Asaba, emphasizing that leadership accountability during wartime is crucial.
He noted that Gen Gowon had publicly acknowledged and apologised for wartime excesses, stressing that atrocities like the Asaba Massacre were neither ordered nor condoned at the highest level.
Nduka-Eze, presenting the documentation, said the evidence establishes “a clear and consistent account” of federal troops entering the civilian population center in the Mid-West Region. Eyewitness testimonies describe civilians being assembled in public places, forced to proclaim allegiance to Nigeria, and then separated with unarmed men killed regardless of their compliance.
“Individuals who openly affirmed their identity and loyalty as Nigerians were nonetheless killed in the most undignified manner by the same Nigerian state to which they had pledged allegiance,” Nduka-Eze said.
He identified deep-seated ethnic suspicion, unresolved grievances from Nigeria’s first military coup, and failure to enforce accountability as factors leading to both the Asaba Massacre and the civil war.
Obasanjo said the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library exists to “preserve the past, capture the present, and inspire the future,” urging Nigerians to adopt a collective “never again” resolve against civil war.
