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Buhari evokes civil war deaths in unity speech

Nigerian civil war
Biafran soldiers during the Nigerian civil war (Source: NYT)

In a reference to the Nigerian Civil War, President Muhammadu Buhari has affirmed that the unity of Nigeria will be maintained at all costs, including the death of a million citizens.

Speaking on Tuesday to a forum of defunct CPC chairmen Buhari acknowledged that Nigeria was going through hard times but assured that patriotism will prevail. “We have gone through all the troubles, from the first of January 1966 till date, you know what I mean by this. We killed about a million of ourselves in other to keep this country together,” he added.

The Nigerian civil war, which was fought between the Nigerian government and the breakaway Biafran nation from 1967-1970, killed more than one million people mostly from the southeast region.

In June 2021 Buhari’s government blocked Twitter in the country after the social media company had deleted Tweets from the president’s account that threatened secessionist groups in the South East, warning the southeastern people of Nigeria, predominantly Igbo people, of a potential repeat of the 1967 Biafran Civil War due to the ongoing insurgency in the region.

The tweet, posted on June 1st 2021, read: “Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand.”

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