Special report · 1970
Biafra, le premier reportage après la guerre
(Biafra: the first report after the war)
22 January 1970: a week after Biafra's surrender, French television broadcast its first report from the region. I made it with Christian Bousquet.
Biafra was a place I knew. In the summer of 1968 AFP had sent me to Nigeria and I had spent two months at the front, on the federal side, all the way into the headquarters of Colonel Adekunle, the "Black Scorpion". My dispatches had been picked up by Le Monde, by The Times of London, by newspapers in Brazil and Canada. Out of it had come a book written with Jean Wolf, "La Guerre des rapaces", published in 1969.
In January 1970 the secession collapsed. After two and a half years of civil war and a famine that had shaken the world, Biafra was reabsorbed into Nigeria. What was left? What was happening to the survivors? In Europe, many feared the worst.
A camp, a hospital
On 22 January the news broadcast French television's first report from the region retaken by the federal army. Six and a half minutes, made with Christian Bousquet. The crew went to a refugee camp, then to a hospital. A Biafran describes the lack of food. Two Red Cross doctors describe the situation since the arrival of the federal troops.
No grand speeches: facts, faces, witnesses. It was the news agency's lesson, applied to pictures. The archive can be watched today on the INA website.
Key facts
- Broadcast on 22 January 1970. Running time: 6 min 26.
- Made with Christian Bousquet.
- I had covered the war in the summer of 1968 for AFP, before publishing "La Guerre des rapaces" (Albin Michel, 1969).