TODAY IN HISTORY SEPTEMBER 18, 1966

TODAY IN HISTORY SEPTEMBER 18, 1966 –
the day streets of the North nigeria turned red with Igbo blood. Over 1 million fled to the East. This is why Biafra was born.

On this day, September 18, 1966, a new wave of horror was unleashed across Northern Nigeria. From September 18th to 29th, 1966, coordinated pogroms against Ndi Igbo erupted throughout the federation. It was not a riot. It was a systematic extermination.

In just those seven days, more than 20,000 of our people were slaughtered. Men, women, children, pregnant mothers, traders, students, soldiers – killed only because they were Igbo. Homes were burnt, shops looted, and bodies littered the streets from Kano to Kaduna, from Jos to Zaria.

This was the second and deadliest exodus. Over one million Igbos and other Easterners abandoned everything they had built over decades and fled back to the East with nothing but the clothes on their backs, on foot, on lorries, on trains filled with corpses. Port Harcourt, Asaba ,Enugu, Onitsha and Aba became refugee camps overnight.

This September massacre came just months after the July 29, 1966 counter-coup that killed Maj. Gen. Aguiyi Ironsi, our Head of State. It proved to our fathers that Nigeria had no place for us. It was this week of blood that convinced Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu and the Eastern Consultative Assembly that we needed our own safety, our own sovereignty. That decision gave birth to Biafra on May 30, 1967.

They thought killing us would silence us. Instead, it awakened a nation. Today we remember not to hate, but to ensure it never happens again. A people who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.

Tell me One reason why we will ever forget Nigeria – September We Remember. We Do Not Forget.