Supporters of the Indigenous People of Biafra march in Port Harcourt in January in support of then-president-elect Donald Trump. (Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Eromo Egbejule is a Lagos-based journalist covering West Africa. He is working on a documentary about the civil war. 

In 2006, my freshman year at the University of Nigeria, a random adventure on campus led me to discover what many believe to be the forgotten transmitter of Radio Biafra, the crucial voice of the breakaway territory that was at the center of Nigeria’s brutal civil war 50 years ago. In May 1967, General Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declared the southeast region of the country to be an independent republic. Radio Biafra’s broadcasts served as a medium of trusted news for citizens of the young nation, which featured news reports and war propaganda as Biafra battled Nigeria for its dear life.
The secession of Biafra was Ojukwu’s response to mass killings of Nigeria’s ethnic Igbos in northern Nigeria, dating back to May 1953, when scores were killed in a pogrom that the government refused to investigate. Two coups occurred in 1966, the first one in January claimed the lives of many Northern miltary officers. The second counter-coup left many Igbo military officials dead. On July 7, 50 years ago, the civil war between Nigeria and the breakaway state of Biafra officially began. By 1970 when the war came to an end, over 1 million Igbos had lost their lives. Nigeria’s fragile national unity was lost.