Rights panel meet

A Nigerian human rights panel opened discussions on Wednesday with a promise that a bloodbath such as the Biafra war (1967-1970) will never happen again, AFP reported.

The commission will “propose (to government) ways and means of ensuring that there will be no more military incursions into governance, no more coups, no more pogroms and no more civil wars,” panel chairman Chukwudifu Oputa told the opening session in the southeastern city of Enugu, some 516 km east of Lagos.

The panel, set up in 1999 to look into rights violations dating back to Nigeria’s first military coup, in 1966, began hearings across the country last year. Oputa said the panel would seek to “reconcile those who feel alienated by past political events to heal the wounds inflicted on our people and restore harmony in our country,” AFP reported.

During its three-week sitting in Enugu, the panel will consider a petition on violations before, during and after the Biafra civil war. The petition was filed by an Igbo socio-cultural group ‘Ohaneze Ndigbo’ which wants more than US $63 billion in government compensation, AFP reported.

The 1967-1970 Biafra civil war resulted from mounting ethnic and religious tensions which came to a peak when the military governor of the Eastern Region proclaimed the region the “independent Republic of Biafra”. An estimated one million people, mainly Igbos, died during the conflict.

The Igbos are the main ethnic group in the east and, since the war, in which the Biafra troops were defeated by federal forces, people of Igbo origin have complained of marginalisation and injustice at the hands of successive governments.