20120303
AFP
Nigeria on Friday buried former secessionist leader Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, whose declaration of Biafran independence in the 1960s ignited a civil war that left more than a million people dead.

President Goodluck Jonathan led thousands of mourners who thronged the town of Nnewi to lay to rest the man who sought a separate state of Biafra in eastern Nigeria, a region dominated by Igbos, one of the three main ethnic groups of Nigeria.

Jonathan described Ojukwu, a former army lieutenant colonel who received a presidential pardon in 1982, as "a national leader".

Some 3,000 mourners crammed into a Catholic church in Ojukwu's home state of Anambra, as several thousand others sporting outfits emblazoned with his portrait drummed and danced outside.

A military brass band played as Ojukwu's coffin was moved from the church for burial.

Ojukwu was buried at a private ceremony in a marble tomb in front of his house, according to Alphonsus Nwosu, one of the funeral organisers. Journalists were barred from the burial.

A failed coup bid by Igbo soldiers in 1966 set the events in motion in the country.

Ojukwu's 1967 declaration of independence for Biafra came largely in response to the widespread killing of large numbers of Igbos in the country's north in the 1960s, causing the Igbo population to flee and return to the east.

More than a million people died in Africa's most populous country during the 1967-70 conflict, mainly from disease and starvation.

The images of starved children made Biafra a by-word for famine.

But Ojukwu remains a revered figure, especially in eastern Nigeria.

Anambra Governor Peter Obi said Ojukwu's reasons for waging the war still exist.

"What he fought for is still with us. It is what everybody is trying to fight," Obi said, without elaborating.

Ethnic divisions in Nigeria, which is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and a predominately Christian south, came into sharp focus in the run-up to the civil war. Hausas dominate the north, Yorubas the southwest and Igbos the east.

In recent weeks some Christian southerners based in parts of northern Nigeria became the targets of attacks blamed on the Islamist group Boko Haram.

Worshippers have been bombed outside churches or shot at while at prayer.

Security was tight in Nnewi on Friday. Hundreds of police and soldiers were deployed, along with armoured tanks.

After the Biafrans surrendered in 1970, Ojukwu fled into exile in Ivory Coast, only to return 13 years later after the presidential pardon. He ran unsuccessfully for president several times following his return.

The Oxford-educated hero died on November 26 in a London hospital, and his body was flown home with full military honours on Monday.