Seminar: The Nigeria-Biafra war, popular culture and agitation for sovereignty of a Biafran nation

The date 6 July 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the war considered as one of the worst in recent human history, the Nigeria-Biafra war. LeidenASA visiting fellow 'Rantimi Jays Julius-Adeoye's research focuses on the representation of this war in popular culture – with an emphasis on film, fictional and non-fictional literature. It interrogates the role that fictional and non-fictional narration play in the collective and individual memory of Nigerians in general and the Igbos in particular. It also looks at the link between the depiction of the war in popular culture and the renewed agitation for the nationhood of Biafra, as since the 2000s, there has been renewed campaigning by young people of Igbo ethnicity for the creation of the Republic of Biafra. His research particularly concentrates on two organisations that are involved in this struggle: the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).                  

Julius-Adeoye argues that popular culture constitutes important material for the study and understanding of historical events and periods of time, while it also enhances our understanding of the ways in which these past events may have an influence in the present.