Eastern Region declares the Republic of Biafra

On May 30, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, military governor of Nigeria's Eastern Region, announced the region's secession from Nigeria and declared the independent Republic of Biafra. The declaration was made from Enugu, the regional capital, following a meeting of the Eastern Region's Consultative Assembly. Ojukwu cited the federal government's inability to protect Igbo lives and the region's right to self-determination as justification for the breakaway.

The secession followed months of escalating tensions after the July 1966 counter-coup and subsequent anti-Igbo pogroms in northern Nigeria that killed thousands and displaced over a million Igbos back to the Eastern Region. The Aburi Accord of January 1967, where Nigerian leaders met in Ghana to resolve the crisis through confederation, had collapsed when the federal government under Yakubu Gowon rejected its implementation. Gowon's creation of twelve states in May 1967, which divided the Eastern Region and reduced Igbo control over oil resources, became the final trigger for Ojukwu's declaration.