Uwem Akpan delivered a powerful reading and conversation that revisited the harrowing, and often forgotten, experiences of Niger Delta minorities during the Nigerian Civil War at RovingHeights Bookstore in Lagos. The discussion centred on Akpan’s latest novel, New York, My Village, which, despite its contemporary setting, is deeply rooted in the echoes of a war that scarred Nigeria and left certain communities marginalized and voiceless.
Engaged in conversation by journalist Ijeoma Ucheibe, Akpan, who is originally from Akwa Ibom, delved into the complexities and traumatic aftermath of the war as experienced by minorities in the Niger Delta. He described how these communities were caught in a deadly crossfire between Federal and Biafran forces, suffering unspeakable atrocities and displacement. For Akpan, writing this story was not just a creative decision but a moral responsibility that required over a decade of research and soul-searching.
Akpan’s own life testifies to the war’s enduring impact. Born in 1971, a year after the conflict ended, he grew up in its shadow. He shared how his family’s constant remarks about “so much food” during meals puzzled him as a child until he realised they were comparing their abundance to the mass starvation that claimed countless lives during the war.
One of his earliest personal encounters with the war’s legacy occurred at the age of six. Behind his primary school, he recalled, in a neighbouring village was a mass grave holding the remains of about 150 Biafran soldiers. “We used to wrestle there,” he said, describing how their wrestling matches would sometimes uncover bones. The site left an indelible mark on his memory, and “You’re Biafran” became a derogatory term used by children during play, a painful reflection of the war’s trauma.
Akpan noted that, unlike the Igbo, minority ethnic groups in the Niger Delta rarely discuss the war. He attributed this silence to the immense trauma and the feeling of helplessness that came with being pawns in a larger conflict. “Minorities don’t talk about the war the way Igbo people do,” he said, suggesting that for many, it is a tragic episode they simply want to forget.
Akpan’s desire to amplify these unheard voices was ignited during his time as a seminarian with the Society of Jesus in Benin City. There, he discovered that the American priests had only heard the war’s story from the Igbo perspective. To them, the existence of a minority viewpoint was a foreign concept.
“To them, minorities didn’t even exist, so how could we have a viewpoint?” he said.
This realisation spurred his commitment to telling the war’s forgotten stories, especially from the vantage point of communities rarely mentioned in historical accounts.
He acknowledged that the visibility of the Igbo people in Nigerian and global discourse allowed their story to be told more widely.
“The Igbo were lucky,” he explained. “They were already a big ethnic group before the war. Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, written before the war, gave global prominence to the Igbo identity.”
In stark contrast, many Niger Delta minorities struggled not just to survive the war but also to have their suffering acknowledged.
“It’s a mountain just to exist as a minority,” Akpan said, framing his writing as a way to climb that mountain.
The urgency of this quest for representation became even more apparent in 1991 when Akpan was working at a leper colony in Benin. An elderly woman there suddenly accused him of being a Biafran soldier who had raped her. Though he clarified his identity, the accusation opened a floodgate of buried stories.
“That’s when I really started asking questions,” he said.
As he probed further, he learned of widespread atrocities: Biafran forces had occupied Benin City for six weeks, allegedly raping women and killing civilians. In retaliation, the local youth formed a militia of 600 people to defend the city. However, the group was infiltrated and slaughtered by the very forces they were attempting to resist.
Akpan also described how, during their retreat from Murtala Mohammed’s advancing federal troops, the Biafran army used minority communities as human shields.
“Hundreds of minorities were killed, and many drowned,” he shared, his voice heavy with the weight of these hidden histories.
He recalled speaking with veteran author Odia Ofeimun, who as a young man at the time, also witnessed the devastating impact on minority communities along the route.
Akpan’s novel is a rare collection of work by Nigerian writers seeking to reclaim the war’s lost voices. Such books challenge the government’s long-standing silence on the war, which remains largely absent from school curricula and national dialogue.
For Akpan, fiction is not merely storytelling; it is an act of remembrance, resistance, and restoration. “Until we acknowledge all sides of the war,” he concluded, “we can’t truly heal.”
