The years from 1966 to 1979 were a period of military government that included the Nigerian Civil War.
- Scope
- National
- From
- 1966
- Until
- 1979
The years from 1966 to 1979 were a period of military government that included the Nigerian Civil War. After the coup of January 1966, Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi formed a Federal Military Government, suspended the constitution and banned political parties. According to the Library of Congress country study, his decree moving towards a unitary state alarmed many northerners, and in July 1966 northern officers staged a counter-coup in which Ironsi and other Igbo officers were killed. Lieutenant Colonel Yakubu Gowon became head of state and restored federalism. Killings of Igbo in the north followed, and many fled to the Eastern Region.
Talks at Aburi, Ghana, in January 1967 failed to settle the crisis. As the crisis deepened, Gowon proclaimed a state of emergency and announced the division of the country into twelve states, and on 30 May the Eastern Region's military governor, Lieutenant Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, proclaimed the Republic of Biafra. War began on 6 July 1967 (Wikipedia). Federal forces gradually surrounded Biafra; Owerri fell on 6 January 1970, Ojukwu left the country, and Biafra's remaining leaders surrendered in January 1970 (Wikipedia gives 15 January as the end of the war).
Estimates of the dead differ. The country study gives between 1 million and 3 million deaths in the former Eastern Region from fighting, disease and starvation during the thirty-month war; Wikipedia gives about 100,000 military deaths and between 500,000 and 2 million civilian deaths from starvation, largely caused by the blockade of Biafra.
After the war, oil replaced cocoa, groundnuts and palm produce as the main export; Nigeria joined OPEC in 1971, and the rise in oil prices in 1974 brought a sudden flood of revenue. In 1975 Nigeria helped found the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). On 29 July 1975, while Gowon was at an OAU summit in Kampala, he was deposed in a bloodless coup, and the armed forces chose Brigadier Murtala Muhammad to succeed him. Murtala set a timetable to return to civilian rule and in 1976 created nineteen states. Murtala was assassinated during an unsuccessful coup in February 1976; his deputy, Lieutenant General Olusegun Obasanjo, carried the programme through. A new constitution, modelled on that of the United States, was adopted, elections were held in 1979, and power was handed to an elected civilian government on 1 October 1979.
- Nigeria: A Country Study — Politics in the Crisis Years — Federal Research Division, Library of Congress · link
- Nigeria: A Country Study — Civil War — Federal Research Division, Library of Congress · link
- Nigeria: A Country Study — The Gowon Regime — Federal Research Division, Library of Congress · link
- Nigeria: A Country Study — Preparations for the Return to Civilian Rule — Federal Research Division, Library of Congress · link
- Nigeria: A Country Study — The Obasanjo Regime — Federal Research Division, Library of Congress · link
- Nigerian Civil War — Wikipedia · link
How evidence is graded
- Verified: Supported by an official source, or by two or more independent sources that agree.
- Well documented: Supported by credible sources, but not yet independently confirmed.
- Reported: Found in a credible source; further corroboration is welcome.
- Needs corroboration: The evidence is thin or incomplete; more sources are being sought.
- Disputed: Credible sources or community accounts disagree; the differing accounts are noted.
- Uncertain: There is not yet enough information to classify this responsibly.
Sources are marked official, academic, reference, community or general web. Sources that copy each other count as one. Oral traditions are recorded as traditions, not as proven fact.
Archive ID: PERIOD-MILITARY-RULE-AND-THE-CIVIL-WAR-1966-1979 · Last updated 3 October 2026.
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