On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Biafran war, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the late 1960s, declassified British files show that Harold Wilson’s government secretly armed and backed Nigeria’s aggression against the secessionist region.


The then Labour government secretly provided large quantities of arms to the Nigerian federal government which, by early 1970, had crushed an attempt by the country’s eastern region of Biafra to gain independence, which it had declared in May 1967.
During the three years of war, up to three million people died, as Nigeria enforced a blockade on Biafra, causing widespread starvation amid considerable international opposition to the conflict.
British policy was mainly shaped by its oil interests, declassified government documents from the time show. “Our direct interests are trade and investment, including an important stake by Shell/BP in the eastern region,” the Foreign Office noted a few days before the outbreak of the war in 1967.
Investments by Shell/BP—then a joint company in Nigeria which was partly owned by the British government—amounted to around £200-million at the time. The company was the largest producer of oil in Nigeria, most of which was in Biafra.
Shell “have much to lose if the FMG [federal military government] do not achieve the expected victory,” George Thomas, Labour’s commonwealth minister, noted in August 1967. He added: “The sole immediate British interest in Nigeria is that the Nigerian economy should be brought back to a condition in which our substantial trade and investment in the country can be further developed, and particularly so we can regain access to important oil installations.”
UK supplies of arms — which eventually enabled the Nigerian government to win the war — included millions of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of machine guns and grenades, thousands of mortar and artillery bombs, aircraft and armoured personnel carriers.
These supplies were massively stepped up while Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was telling parliament that Britain was supplying arms to Nigeria at the same level as before. He made the false claim that there was “no special provision” for the war.
The decisions to supply arms and ammunition were taken at a time when it was clear they were being used against civilians. Wilson’s agreement to supply patrol boats in 1967 was done in the knowledge that this would help the government maintain the sea blockade against Biafra.


https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-britains-labour-government-facilitated-the-massacre-of-biafrans-in-nigeria-to-protect-its-oil-interests/