Ahiara Declaration

The Ahiara Declaration: The Principles of the Biafran Revolution, commonly known as the Ahiara Declaration, was a document written by the National Guidance Committee of Biafra and delivered as a speech by Biafran Head of State of Biafra Emeka Ojukwu in the Biafra town of Ahiara on June 1, 1969.

After a series of pogroms in which people from the former Eastern Region of Nigeria living in other parts of that country were massacred between 1966 and 1967, the region seceded in 1967 and proclaimed an independent Republic of Biafra. A bitter war ensued as Nigeria fought to foil the secession of the oil-rich region. After three years of war and the loss of more than two million lives, the nascent republic lost its struggle for independence and was reabsorbed into Nigeria in January 1970. The leader of the republic, Oxford educated General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, went into exile, but later returned to Nigeria in 1983 under special pardon. In 1969 Biafra adopted one of the most progressive national constitutions in Africa at the time. The Constitution or "Principles" drew heavily from traditional communal modes of governance but was also informed by progressive political developments in other parts of the world in the 1960s, and the ideology of "Non-alignment" adopted by several post-colonial states during the Cold War. It also provided a platform for the country to criticise the West for its role in the plight of the rest of the world and to set out the ideals of the young nation.

Modeled on Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere's 1967 Arusha Declaration, it was one of multiple documents drafted by Biafra's National Guidance Committee, a body including renowned author Chinua Achebe. The declaration criticized corruption in both Nigeria and Biafra, as well as imperialism on the part of outside countries, and encouraged patriotism among the Biafrans.

According to Alexis Heraclides in her book The Self-Determination of Minorities in International Politics, the declaration signaled a shift to a more politically radical phase in Biafra's short history. General Ojukwu lambasted Britain, and in particular the "Anglo-Saxon branch of [the white] race", for having repeatedly "sinned against the world" in the form of numerous genocides, including that of the Biafran people:

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