It is possible to learn much about the Nigerian Civil War from Half of a Yellow Sun, but the information that Adichie provides is scattered over the book in allusions, fragments of writing, and snatches of dialogue. From Adichie's own commentary and reference list in the back of the book, readers will discover several sources, many of which Adichie used in her meticulous account. Here, readers will also learn that the character Okeoma was based on the actual poet Christopher Okigbo, a modern master of verse who fought for the Biafran cause and died in 1967. The eight segments of The World Was Silent When We Died provide everything from a capsule history of Nigeria's colonization (Excerpt 2) to a pointed record of international biases towards the North (Excerpt 6). Nevertheless, consolidating Adichie's historical information - the aim of this overview - can help the story of Biafra's attempted independence to cohere more easily.
In 1960, Nigeria became an independent nation. The country remained divided among ethnic and cultural lines, with a large Muslim/Hausa presence in the North and significant Igbo communities in what is known as the Eastern Region. As explained in Half of a Yellow Sun, two coups disrupted Nigeria's already tense society in the mid 1960s. The first of these, the so-called "Igbo coup," was initiated on January 15, 1966; British-trained army officers overthrew Nigeria's elected government. This episode would set the stage for a second coup, and for violence directed towards Igbo officers and civilians.
With the second coup in June of 1966, Yakuba Gowon became the Nigerian head of state. Subsequent rioting and ethnic violence directed towards Igbos in the North killed roughly 30,000 people and sent refugees - as many as one million - streaming into the Eastern Region. Within roughly the same timeframe, Odumegwu Ojukwu became military governor of the Eastern Region. In May of 1967, Ojukwu announced the formation of the independent nation of Biafra. War broke out in July of the same year.
Half of a Yellow Sun makes no secret of the catastrophic fate of Biafra in the Nigerian Civil War. The Northern troops, which were better supplied, advanced, taking the oil-rich Port Harcourt - the home of Kainene in the novel - and taking over other major Biafran cities. Enugu, the initial capital of Biafra, was captured in October of 1967; Umuahia, the subsequent Biafran capital, was captured in April of 1969. Beyond matters of military strategy, Biafra was afflicted by a humanitarian crisis that, for some observers, is most disturbingly embodied in images of swollen-bellied children suffering from kwashiorkor, a disease traced to malnutrition.
Though the war ended in 1970, the after effects have been significant and continue to shape Nigerian life to some extent. Some of the significant figures in the hostilities remained active in politics; Ojukwu, after fleeing to Cote d'Ivoire in 1970, made a series of unsuccessful attempts to win elected office. The most unsettling legacy is the human cost of the Civil War: over a million lives lost, many of them due to the Nigerian blockade that prevented basic supplies from reaching malnourished Biafrans. To this day, Nigerians remain skeptical of maintaining a strong military for fear of future soldier-led strife. Adichie's own bibliography provides several resources that place the war in perspective, and journalistic outlets such as the BBC - which yielded information on the Nigerian Civil War for this section - continue to examine how Biafra's upsetting past is connected to Nigeria's future.
