Nigerian Civil War

===Media and public opinion===
Media and public relations played a central role in the war, due to their influence on morale at home and the dynamics of international involvement. Both sides relied heavily on external support.<ref name="HeertenMoses2014page174"/><ref name="HeertenMoses2014page175"/> Biafra hired the New York public relations firm of Ruder and Finn to lobby American public opinion.{{sfn|Stremlau|2015|p=68}} However, it was not until Biafra hired the Geneva public relations Markpress in January 1968 that significant international sympathy was won.{{sfn|Stremlau|2015|p=116}} Markpress was headed by an American public relations executive, William Bernhardt, who was paid 12,000 Swiss francs per month for his services, and who expected a share of Biafra's oil revenues after the war.<ref>Omaka, Arua Oko ''The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis, 1967–1970:'' (2016) p. 68.</ref> Markpress's portrayal of the war as a struggle for freedom by the [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] Igbos against the Muslim-dominated north won the support of Catholic opinion all over the world, especially in the United States.<ref>Omaka, Arua Oko ''The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis, 1967–1970:'' (2016) pp. 69–70.</ref> Besides portraying the war as a Christian-Muslim conflict, Markpress accused the Federal government of waging genocide against the Igbos, a campaign that was extremely effective as pictures of starving Igbos won the sympathy of the world.<ref>Omaka, Arua Oko ''The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis, 1967–1970:'' (2016) p. 70.</ref>
[[File:Ongeveer_10.000_kinderen_van_scholen_uit_het_gehele_land_demonstreerden_in_Den_H%2C_Bestanddeelnr_922-9928.jpg|thumb|Student protesters in [[The Hague]], 20 November 1969.]]
Media campaigns focused on the plight of the Biafrans intensified internationally in the summer of 1968.<ref name="OSullivan2014page302"/><ref name="Griffin2015page124"/> By the Biafran leadership and then around the world, the pogroms and famine were classified as [[genocide]] and compared to [[The Holocaust]]; [[Igbo Jews|hypothetical Judaic origins of the Igbos]] were used to bolster comparisons with Jews in Germany. In the international press, Igbo refugee camps were compared to Nazi extermination camps.<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), pp. 178–179. "Further elevating the genocide reproaches, the eastern (later the Biafran) leadership frequently made comparisons to the Holocaust to draw attention to their cause. This analogy originated in ethnological genealogies that cast the Igbos as the 'Jews of Africa', even as one of Israel's 'lost tribes'. The Biafran leadership drew on this representation that many eastern Nigerians had adopted as their self-perception. This analogy, combined with the genocide charge, was used by the leadership to secure the support of the population, and to build loyalty to Biafra by emphasising the threat from a common enemy. The 'Jews of Africa' envisioned their state like an 'African Israel', a new nation born of genocidal violence. / Soon, the growing cast of Biafra's supporters around the globe adopted this rhetoric, further elaborating it in the process. After the publication of images of starving Biafran children in the western media, analogies and comparisons with the Holocaust abounded internationally."</ref>

Humanitarian appeals differed somewhat from place to place. In the United Kingdom, humanitarian aid used familiar discourses of imperial responsibility; in Ireland, advertisements appealed to shared Catholicism and experiences of civil war.<ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), pp. 304–305. "In Britain humanitarianism became a vessel through which society could construct a new sense of national purpose; it amounted, in essence, to a benign re-imagining of imperial compassion for a postcolonial world. When the Biafran crisis erupted, it offered an opportunity to renew this emphasis on the country's responsibilities{{nbsp}}... On the surface, the Irish response to Biafra was built on something very different to the British: a shared religion (Catholicism), a common colonial experience and a narrative of humanitarian disaster. At the launch of the JBFA in June 1968, one speaker reminded the assembled that Ireland and Nigeria were united in their knowledge of 'the horror of famine and civil war'."</ref> Both of these appeals channelled older cultural values into support for the new model of international NGOs.<ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), p. 305. "Yet the dominance of the decolonisation paradigm suggests that the experiences of the British and Irish NGOs were much closer than they might at first appear. From different starting points, and with differing goals, NGOs in both states assumed the mantel of organised reactions and re-imaginings of their countries' roles for the postcolonial era. Where the British public used humanitarianism to negotiate the shift from formal empire to responsible power, the changing role of Irish Catholic missionaries reflected the need to re-articulate the Irish 'spiritual empire' for this new world."</ref> In Ireland, public opinion identified intensely with Biafra as most of the Catholic priests working in Biafra were Irish who naturally sympathised with the Biafrans, who they saw as fellow Catholics struggling for independence.<ref name="Hogan">{{cite news |last1=Hogan |first1=John |title=How Ireland got involved in a Nigerian civil war |url=https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/how-ireland-got-involved-in-a-nigerian-civil-war-1.3089229 |access-date=7 April 2020 |newspaper=The Irish Times|date=20 May 2017}}</ref> The Irish journalist John Hogan who covered the war noted: "The threat of famine, combined with an independence struggle, had an almost irresistible political and emotional impact on Irish public opinion, which became hugely supportive of the regular airlifts, via the off-shore Portuguese island of São Tomé, of food and medical supplies to the beleaguered infant republic".<ref name="Hogan"/> The use of famine as a conscious tactic by the Federal government who wanted to starve Biafra into submission provoked parallels with the [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Famine of Ireland]] of the 1840s while many Irish people saw a parallel with Igbo struggle for independence with their own independence struggle.<ref name="Hogan"/> The pro-Biafra British journalist [[Frederick Forsyth]] started covering the war in the summer of 1967 for the BBC, became angry at the pro-Nigeria stance of the British government and resigned in protest in September 1967.<ref name="Heerten, Lasse 2017 p.98">Heerten, Lasse, ''The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering'' (2017) p. 98</ref> Returning as a freelance journalist in 1968, Forysth worked closely with the Irish Holy Ghost Fathers to collect information about the famine, and whose dispatches from Biafra had an immense impact on British public opinion.<ref name="Heerten, Lasse 2017 p.98"/> 

In Israel, the Holocaust comparison was promoted, as was the theme of threat from hostile Muslim neighbours.<ref>Levey, "Israel, Nigeria and the Biafra civil war" (2014), p. 270. "Michal Givoni points out that after June 1967, Israelis viewed the Biafrans as a people threatened in a manner similar to Israel during the crisis period that preceded the war.60 She also notes that Israel's daily newspapers reported frequently and prominently on what they termed the 'genocide' taking place in Nigeria. The general public in Israel, in the wake of that intense press coverage, expressed revulsion at the world's feckless response and the helplessness of the Biafran victims, which, for Israelis, recalled their own catastrophe."</ref>

The Biafran war presented Westerners with the notion of starving African children. The Biafran famine was one of the first African disasters to receive widespread media coverage, enabled by the proliferation of television sets.<ref>Heerten & Moses, "The Nigeria–Biafra War" (2014), p. 176.</ref> The televised disaster and the rising NGOs mutually enhanced each other; NGOs maintained their own communications networks and played a significant role in shaping news coverage.<ref>O'Sullivan, "Humanitarian Encounters" (2014), pp. 303–304. "As NGOs moved to centre stage in translating humanitarian concern into humanitarian action, they took on an equally important role in mediating between the lives of donors and life 'on the ground' in the Third World. Their advertisements, images and stories dominated the public narrative. In some cases, they did so in quite a direct fashion—Africa Concern, for example, established its own telex service to send up-to-date reports to the major Irish media outlets straight from west Africa, and in so doing had a considerable influence on the news agenda."</ref>

Biafran elites studied Western [[propaganda]] techniques and released carefully constructed public communications in an intentional fashion. Biafran propagandists had the dual task of appealing to international public opinion, and maintaining morale and nationalist spirit domestically. [[Political cartoon]]s were a preferred medium for publicising simple interpretations of the war. Biafra also used [[push poll]]ing to insinuate messages about Nigeria's inherent bloodthirstiness.<ref>Roy Doron, "Marketing genocide: Biafran propaganda strategies during the Nigerian civil war, 1967–70", ''Journal of Genocide Research'' 16.2–3, August 2014. "In order to organise a coherent policy, and to create a strategy to circumvent the obstacles of creating effective propaganda during wartime, the Biafrans created a series of plans, of which only one, 'Guide lines [sic] for effective propaganda' (also called Plan #4), remains. The plan's first part details the general purpose, aims, techniques, and strategies of the campaign. The second part explains how the Biafran 'propaganda man' was to deal with the unique challenges of operating in a war so close to home and a home front that was increasingly under siege, blockaded and teeming with refugees. / The authors of the guidelines studied propaganda techniques very carefully, and incorporated the lessons of Allied and Axis propaganda during World War II with strategies used in the advertising world. Thus, when the Biafrans discussed hate appeals as an effective propaganda tactic, they invoked Josef Goebbels' words, 'we are enemies of the Jews, because we are fighting for the freedom of the German' alongside catchy advertising slogans such as 'Fresh up with Seven-up!'"</ref> Novelist [[Chinua Achebe]] became a committed propagandist for Biafra, and one of its leading international advocates.<ref name="Jeyifo2013">{{cite journal | last1 = Jeyifo | first1 = Biodun | title = First, There Was A Country; Then There Wasn't: Reflections on Achebe's New Book | journal = Journal of Asian and African Studies | volume = 48 | issue = 6| pages = 683–697 | year = 2013 | doi = 10.1177/0021909613506483 | s2cid = 147590538 }}</ref>

On 29 May 1969, Bruce Mayrock, a student at Columbia University, set himself ablaze at the premises of the [[United Nations Headquarters]] in New York, to protest what he viewed as a [[genocide]] against the people of Biafra.<ref name="El Paso Herald Post-1969">{{cite news|title=Student Dies Following Self Burning|url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/69591865/|access-date=19 June 2014|agency=El Paso Herald-Post|date=30 May 1969}}</ref><ref name="Achebe-2012">{{cite book|last1=Achebe|first1=Chinua|title=There was a country : a personal history of Biafra|date=2012|publisher=Allen Lane|location=London|isbn=978-1-84614-576-6|chapter=Blood, Blood Everywhere}}</ref><ref name="Columbia Spectator 1969">{{cite news|title=GS Student, 20, Immolates Himself in Front of U.N.|url=http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19690603-01.2.8&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------|access-date=2 June 2014|date=3 June 1969}}</ref><ref name="Ebiem-2014">{{cite news|last1=Ebiem|first1=Osita|title=30 May Biafra Independence & Bruce Mayrock Story|url=http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2014/05/30-may-biafra-independence-bruce.html|access-date=2 June 2014|date=26 May 1914}}</ref> He died of his injuries the following day.<ref name="Achebe-2012"/> On 25 November 1969, musician [[John Lennon]] returned the MBE he had awarded by Queen Elizabeth II in 1964 in protest against British support for Nigeria.<ref name="Lennon-MBE">{{cite news |title=Valued exposure: MBE |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8378080.stm |access-date=6 April 2020 |publisher=BBC |date=25 November 2019}}</ref> In his letter to the Queen returning the MBE, Lennon wrote: "Your Majesty, I am returning this in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against Cold Turkey slipping down the charts. With love. John Lennon.".<ref name="Lennon-MBE"/>