[695 Mil to a head in the general…]

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695 Mil to a head in the general elections of 1964-5.

Countrywide protests and rioting followed a blatantly rigged election in the Western Region.

These conditions provided grounds for an attempted coup by a group of (mainly lbo) dissident majors in January 1966 which succeeded magnificently in destroying the government (through assassinating the Prime Minister, two Regional Premiers and the majority of senior army officers).

Martial order

The army commanders, however, regained control, and the remnants of the Cabinet handed over to General Ironsi the task of imposing martial order on the country.

This initial experiment in military politics proved unstable and did not solve the struggle between the rulers of the North and the Ibo bourgeoisie.

The Northerners were convinced that Ironsi's moves to centralise the country's administration were to ensure the dominance of the Ibos through the consolidation of his own control.

Inter-tribal antagonism was fostered, and anti-ibo riots broke out in the North.

Then, in July 1966, Northern army officers staged the coup which eventually brought General Gowon to power, led the Ibo regional military army leader, after further massacres of lbos took place in the North, to declare the secessionist republic of Biafra.

Imperialism took a great interest in the resulting civil war-with France thirsting for Biafran oil, Britain looking to preserve its traditional monopoly of imperialist exploitation in the area, and South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal exulting in the prospect of a splitting-up of Africa's potentially most powerful nation; meanwhile millions of Biafrans and Nigerians died.

With the bloody defeat of the secessionists in 1970,

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The organisers of the entirely peaceful International Tribunal on Britain's Presence in Ireland, held in London on 7-8 July, could