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The secession in the country's former Eastern Region, home to most of Nigeria's 8 million Igbo (or Ibo) people, followed mass killings of Igbo migrants living in northern Nigeria (May, September 1966) after a short-lived bloody coup attempt by Igbo army officers the previous January. The East's military governor, Lt.-Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, himself an Igbo, declared the region independent with its capital at Enugu and began seizing Federal resources, for instance inbound postal vehicles. Nigeria retaliated with an initial economic blockade, and engaged in war starting on July 6, 1967 (see Biafran War). Nigerian troops advanced into the country, forcing the repeated transfer of the Biafran capital from Enugu to Aba, Umuahia and Owerri successively.
By 1970, Biafra had been ravaged by war and was in great need of food supplies. Ojukwu fled the country amid economic and military collapse, and the republic was incorporated in Nigeria once again. Around a million people are thought to have died in the conflict, mostly through hunger and illness. This conflict inspired Jello Biafra in his choice of name.
Nigeria later renamed the Bight of Biafra as the Bight of Bonny.