Aftermath Of Two Bomb Explosions Lagos, Nigeria | September 1966 🇳🇬 🇳🇬 #africa #nigeria #biafra

The Nigerian Police identified a man who died in a house in Lagos as Mr. E.O.D. Agu, a senior lecturer in mining from Enugu, the capital city of the federation's Eastern Region.

The inquiry revealed that Agu had blown himself up while fiddling with a bomb that he had planted in a house as delegates were gathering in the city for constitutional talks about Nigeria's future governance.

A bomb had earlier caused slight damage to the luxury Federal Palace Hotel in Victoria Island. Police said that it was planted by the same person and that the bombs used in the two explosions were similar to the ones used to blow up a bridge at the town of Ore the previous month.

The background to these incidents was the political crisis which was tearing Nigeria apart. Simmering ethnic tensions had been brought to the surface after two army mutinies; the first in January and the second in July, as well as by the decision of a later assassinated military ruler to declare Nigeria to be a unitary state in May.

The first mutiny, which was led in the main by middle-ranking officers of ethnic Igbo origin, resulted in the assassinations of many army officers and politicians from the North and West of the country. A Northern-led coup in July targeted soldiers from the preponderantly Igbo Eastern Region who were murdered en masse.

Apart from military and political casualties, communal violence directed at Igbos occurred in May and would recur at the end of September and the beginning of October.

The attempt to foment terror in Lagos by Agu, an Igboman, almost certainly had a revenge motive. It was also a violent manifestation of the desire by many Igbos to separate themselves from Nigeria, an event that would occur the following year in May with the declaration of Biafra.
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#africa #nigeria #biafra