The Nigerian Civil War (6 July 1967–15 January 1970), often called the Biafran War, remains one of the most devastating conflicts in postcolonial Africa. It claimed more than a million lives, displaced millions more, and left enduring scars on Nigeria’s political, social and cultural fabric. While military campaigns and diplomatic manoeuvres dominate official histories, the private letters exchanged between soldiers and their families provide a fragile but invaluable counterpoint.
These letters, sometimes smuggled, sometimes censored, sometimes never delivered, carried emotions that official communiqués could never capture. They offered testimony and consolation, blending humour, fear, longing and religious faith. Scholars and humanitarian organisations recognise these documents as cultural artefacts that humanise a conflict otherwise remembered for blockades, starvation and mass death.
Although not every letter attributed to Biafran soldiers can be independently verified, historical evidence confirms that correspondence did circulate under extremely difficult conditions. Families treasured even the most fragmentary notes as symbols of survival and remembrance.
Writing Under Siege.
The Biafran War was defined by sieges, blockades and mass displacement. Postal services collapsed as transport networks were destroyed and as deliberate military strategies restricted movement. Yet letters did continue to circulate, though precariously.
Some correspondence reached families through churches, traders and informal couriers. On rare occasions, relief organisations allowed brief exchanges of information. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), while not formally operating a postal service, did facilitate humanitarian corridors where messages occasionally passed. However, this was not systematic; letters were far more likely to travel informally than through official humanitarian routes.
The international humanitarian airlift, largely organised by church groups and non-governmental organisations, supplied food and medicine through night flights into Uli airstrip, Biafra’s critical lifeline. While these flights primarily carried aid, oral testimony suggests that scraps of correspondence sometimes travelled the same way. Still, delays were severe: letters might arrive weeks or months after being written, if they survived at all.
Domestic Anchors in Times of War.
Letters were not only a channel of information but also a means of maintaining the ordinary amid extraordinary upheaval. Soldiers and displaced civilians wrote about farming, food shortages, school fees and children’s progress. Requests for cooking oil, messages about harvests, or reminders of family responsibilities reveal how ordinary concerns persisted in a war zone.
Chinua Achebe, in his memoir There Was a Country, recalled how daily life, storytelling, cooking, tending fields, coexisted with mass mobilisation. Surviving correspondence echoes these memories, demonstrating how men and women attempted to sustain family ties while surrounded by violence.
Routes and Risks.
Delivering a letter during the blockade was perilous. Relief flights to Uli airstrip, traders crossing conflict lines, and church workers moving between communities all became informal conduits. In some cases, messages were hidden in clothing or folded into tiny scraps.
The physical remnants that survive today often show their journey: water damage, torn envelopes, or incomplete fragments. Families preserved whatever they could. In many households, a single scrap of paper or an envelope without its letter became a memorial object, linking relatives to soldiers whose fates remained uncertain.
Testimony of Fear and Faith.
One of the most complicated aspects of Biafra’s letter tradition is the distinction between authentic correspondence and later reconstructions. Many widely circulated “last letters” of Biafran soldiers are literary creations, intended to reflect the spirit of the time rather than to record a specific soldier’s words.
Authentic letters that survive in archives or private family holdings often display a characteristic tone: reassurance mingled with fear, humour alongside religious devotion. A soldier might ask a sister to mind a younger sibling, write about attending prayers before combat, or encourage relatives not to despair. Where precise wordings cannot be traced to an archival source, it is safer to regard these as representative rather than verbatim quotations.
The Silence of Absence.
Equally telling are the letters that never arrived. Families often waited in vain for news of missing loved ones. In many Igbo communities, silence itself became a form of mourning. Oral traditions recall rituals in which the absence of a letter was acknowledged as a sign of possible death. In some households, the failure of correspondence became an enduring reminder of loss, shaping memory as profoundly as surviving notes did.
Because casualty lists were incomplete and official notifications rare, the presence, or absence, of letters played a crucial role in how families constructed their own histories of survival and grief.
Preservation After the War.
When the war ended in January 1970, researchers, humanitarian organisations, and families began collecting and preserving what remained. Archival institutions in Nigeria, the United States and Europe now hold newspapers, oral testimonies and surviving personal letters from the conflict. Some Nigerian families continue to guard letters as treasured heirlooms, passing them between generations as part of their family history.
These collections complicate official histories. They capture exhaustion, tenderness and resilience, dimensions largely absent from military or diplomatic accounts. They remind us that wars are not only fought in battles but also lived in kitchens, markets, schools and memories.
Author’s Note.
The question of how to treat private correspondence remains contested. Scholars argue that these letters should be handled with sensitivity, respecting the privacy of families while recognising their historical value. Others warn against the political use of intensely personal writings.
What remains indisputable is that the letters, whether complete, fragmentary or absent, provide a human perspective on the war that complements official records. They continue to shape remembrance and can contribute to reconciliation, by emphasising the shared suffering and endurance of ordinary people.
References:
Marie-Luce Desgrandchamps, “‘Organising the unpredictable’: the Nigeria–Biafra war and its impact on the ICRC,” International Review of the Red Cross.
ICRC contemporaneous reports and humanitarian press material on relief flights and negotiations.
Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra (Penguin Press, 2012).
Archival holdings and oral histories in the New York Public Library and Nigerian university collections.
