Biafra is perhaps best known in relation to the humanitarian crisis associated with Nigeria’s civil war from 1967 until 1970, in which, by most estimates, between 1 and 2 million people in the breakaway republic starved to death. In addition, both historians and Nigerians (including former Biafrans) frequently recount the war’s diplomatic history—that is, which countries supported Biafra and Nigeria, respectively, and for what reasons. Many scholars have also pointed to the decades of military rule that ensued in the war’s aftermath. Without shortchanging these better-known aspects, Daly tells another history that connects Biafra to one of Nigeria’s most vexing contemporary problems—widespread and seemingly intractable crime, especially fraud and armed robbery.
Indeed, A History of the Republic of Biafra advances the bold argument that strategies and practices developed in the secessionist republic to survive the war—both by individuals and by the short-lived Biafran state itself—laid the groundwork, and became models,...