NcDoc Initiative Collaboration
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Digital Documentation, Research and Advocacy
Nigerian Civil War Documentation Initiative (NCDoc) is a non-religious, non-political and a non-profit foundation, that seeks to systematically document in a comprehensive manner, major civil conflicts in Nigeria especially the Nigerian civil war. The initiative will facilitate the possibility of studying the war and other conflicts that would be documented. It hopes to contribute towards bridging existing debilitating documentation gaps to preserve critical legacies and important points of Nigerian history. Its valuable lessons will not only be relevant in finding solutions to persistent civil conflicts in various parts of Nigeria, but also contribute valuable insights on how to stem the tide of civil conflicts within the wider sub-Saharan region.
Mission:
The mission of the Nigerian Civil War Documentation Initiative (NCDoc) is devoted to the proper documentation of armed conflicts especially the Nigerian Civil War. It is our mission to ensure that such valuable records are adequately secured, preserved and made accessible to benefit current and future generations in research, reference, teaching and learning.
Goals:
The Nigerian Civil War Documentation Initiative intend to achieve the following goals: 1. To promote the preservation of important Nigerian national development history and legacies by creating a comprehensive accessible digital documentation of major armed conflicts especially the Nigerian Civil War by finding and digitizing all relevant documents and publications, including all accessible archived documents, relevant laws, edits, decrees, bills, policy briefs, government gazette, white papers, war speeches, memoirs, letters, journal articles, monographs, newspaper and magazine records and reports, novels, stories, eye witness accounts, artefacts, war memorabilia, photographs, film clips, video, audio materials, both within and outside Nigeria.
2. To enable a sustainable user friendly, information rich virtual environment where the public can readily have easy access to documented collections and materials.
3. To encourage the use of collections and materials in diverse critical research and publications especially in such areas as conflict prevention & resolution studies, peace studies, Institutional development studies, geo-political development studies, etc. within the wider sub-Sahara region.
4. To pursue peace advocacy within the sub-region. This effort would also be directed towards promoting the awareness to adequately honour the memory of all the victims of armed conflicts in Nigeria through building of appropriate war memorials at both the national, state and local levels, developing a Civil War Memorial Centre in Nigeria, institution of national annual peace lecture series etc.
Justification
In many ways, the Nigerian-Biafra War (1967-70) was and remains the most significant event in the history of Nigeria. The war has more than anything else shaped the current Nigerian state. Despite its significance and the invaluable lessons that could be drawn from in-depth understanding of the core issues and contexts that enabled the conflict; no systematic attempt has been made to comprehensively document the war 44 years after it ended. The war was remarkable for many reasons including its enormous tragic scale where about 2 to 3 million people were estimated to have lost their lives. There was the unique international geopolitical economy and interests that shaped its prosecution and outcome. There was also the unique international publicity it engendered, being the first war in human history that was beamed directly into the sitting rooms of many across the Western world due to the advent of television technology. And sadly there are currently persistent post war conflicts in various parts of Nigeria, that are fuelled by similar geo- ethnic, political, religious and access to national resource tensions that led to the war. Despite all these, no concerted effort has been made to comprehensively document what really happened, how it happened and the converging internal and external factors that enabled it, with the view to learning need lessons and also preserving that aspect of Nigerian history for posterity.
While such conflicts are unfortunate in themselves, it will be immeasurably more tragic to loss their memory and more importantly their invaluable lessons. It has been a rather long 44 years since the end of the Nigerian civil war.
The surviving principal actors and those that were directly involved in the various aspects of that conflict are fast disappearing from existence. In fact, in the not too distant future, it will be impossible to find anybody still alive that could give first-hand accurate information about the war. This underscores the grave urgency to undertake a serious documentation initiative on the war before it is too late. Hence, the need for institutions that would be dedicated towards ensuring that such histories and legacies are not lost to humanity. It will be tragic to leave this very important part of Nigerian history to speculations and conveniently contrived conflicting historical accounts that serve no great purpose or benefit. There is the need to as much as possible assemble the current fragmented bits and pieces of these vital histories and events into a common consolidated repository that would provide great access for concerted objective research and learning. It is this need that provides the impetus for the Nigerian Civil War Documentation Initiative (NCDoc).