In a move to check the influence of Ojukwu’s government in the East, Gowon announced on the 5th of May 1967 the division of the three Nigerian regions into 12 states: North-Western State, North-Eastern state, Kano State, North-Central State, Benue-Plateau State, Kwara State, Western State, Lagos State, Mid-Western State, and, from Ojukwu’s Eastern Region, a Rivers State, a South-Eastern State, and an East-Central State.
The non-Igbo South-Eastern and Rivers states which had the oil reserves and access to the sea, were carved out to isolate the Igbo areas as East-Central state.
One controversial aspect of this move was Gowon’s annexing of Port Harcourt, a large city in the Niger Delta, in the South of Nigeria (the Ikwerres and Ijaws), sitting on some of Nigeria’s largest reserves, into the new Rivers State, emasculating the migrant Igbo population of traders there.
The flight of many of them back to their villages in the “Igbo heartland” in Eastern Nigeria where they felt safer was alleged to be a contradiction for Gowon’s “no victor, no vanquished” policy, when at the end of the war, the properties they left behind were claimed by the Rivers State indigenes.
Culled From Enuani Cultural Forum
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