For many families in Eastern Nigeria, the civil war did not first announce itself through explosions or troop movements. It arrived quietly, at market stalls and shop counters, when familiar notes were no longer trusted. Traders hesitated. Shopkeepers refused payment. The Nigerian pound, once reliable, began to fail in daily transactions.
In informal markets, barter emerged hesitantly, then decisively. Salt was exchanged for garri. Soap for dried fish. By early 1968, survival depended not only on finding food or shelter but on navigating a new and uncertain monetary system.
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That system was the Biafran pound.
A war that reached into wallets
When the Nigerian Civil War began in 1967 and the Eastern Region declared itself the Republic of Biafra, the conflict quickly extended beyond the battlefield. The Nigerian Federal Military Government imposed a blockade that severed Biafra from international trade, foreign reserves, and access to Nigerian currency.
The consequences were immediate. Salaries could not be paid in recognised legal tender. Tax collection collapsed. State administration stalled. Without currency, even basic governance became impossible.
The birth of a wartime currency
In response, the Biafran authorities established the Bank of Biafra under Decree No. 3 of 1967. The institution was created not from economic stability but necessity. Control over currency was essential for mobilisation, procurement, and administrative survival.
On 29 January 1968, the first Biafran banknotes entered circulation in denominations of five shillings and one pound, issued with the intention of maintaining parity with the Nigerian pound. For civilians, the new notes were more than paper. They were proof that the state still functioned and that economic life, however strained, could continue.
Symbolism and fragile confidence
The designs on the notes reflected deliberate symbolism. Palm trees, rising suns, farmers, and later oil refineries projected endurance and self-reliance. In homes and markets, people accepted the currency because there was little alternative.
For a short period, the system worked. Goods circulated. Wages were paid. Markets reopened. The appearance of economic normalcy held, even as the war tightened around the region.
Inflation under siege
As the conflict intensified between 1968 and 1970, the weaknesses of the Biafran pound became impossible to conceal. The blockade restricted imports and foreign exchange. Local production collapsed as farms were abandoned, factories shut down, and transport routes became unsafe.
At the same time, wartime demands required increased currency issuance. Money supply rose while goods became scarce. Inflation followed rapidly.
By 1969, prices rose faster than wages could adjust. Purchasing power collapsed. Markets adapted out of desperation rather than policy. Barter replaced cash transactions, and foreign currencies and physical commodities became safer stores of value than Biafran banknotes.
The personal cost of collapse
For civilians, the failure of the currency was deeply personal. Savings accumulated under wartime hardship disappeared. Traders watched capital dissolve into worthless paper. Salaried workers received wages that could no longer feed their families.
The Biafran pound, once a symbol of independence, now revealed the limits of sovereignty under siege.
Industrial and economic breakdown
Financial collapse accelerated industrial collapse. With imports blocked and infrastructure damaged, local industries ceased functioning. Employment disappeared. Poverty spread even among previously stable households.
By the final year of the war, the Biafran pound functioned less as money and more as a temporary token, accepted because no viable alternative existed.
Demonetisation and the £20 policy
When Biafra surrendered in January 1970, the Nigerian Federal Military Government moved swiftly to demonetise the Biafran pound. It ceased to be legal tender immediately.
The government introduced the “twenty pounds policy”, allowing former Biafran account holders to exchange their balances for a flat £20, regardless of the amount previously held. Wartime inflation, earnings, and savings were not considered.
For many families who had buried money or stored it for safekeeping, the realisation was devastating. Entire life savings vanished overnight.
Compounding post-war losses
This financial erasure compounded existing devastation. Homes had been destroyed, farms abandoned, and factories dismantled or looted. Many returnees lacked the capital needed to rebuild their lives.
The situation worsened under the “abandoned property” policy, which prevented many Igbo owners from reclaiming properties in cities such as Port Harcourt. Economic recovery in the region became uneven and severely constrained.
A currency that never truly disappeared
The Biafran pound left a lasting psychological imprint. Money, once assumed stable, had proven fragile. For a generation, financial insecurity shaped attitudes toward saving, investment, and trust in state authority.
Today, Biafran banknotes survive only as collectors’ items, often selling for more than their original face value. In recent years, groups such as the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) have symbolically reissued versions of the currency as political statements rather than economic instruments.
An enduring economic scar
The Biafran pound was never merely money. It was a wartime necessity, a declaration of sovereignty, and a fragile promise made under extreme pressure. Its creation allowed a state to function briefly against overwhelming odds.
Its collapse stripped ordinary people of wealth they could never recover. Long after the guns fell silent, the consequences remained. In the quiet aftermath of the war, the failure of that currency became one of the Nigerian Civil War’s most enduring economic scars.
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Author’s Note
This article traces how the Biafran pound emerged as a tool of wartime survival, collapsed under blockade and inflation, and ultimately contributed to long-term economic hardship in Eastern Nigeria. It highlights how monetary policy during conflict can permanently reshape civilian lives long after fighting ends.
References
- Akpan, N. U. The Struggle for Secession, 1966–1970.
- Stremlau, J. J. The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War.
- Madiebo, A. A. The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War.
