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On June 9, 2025, the world lost not just a master of suspense fiction, but a journalist of rare moral clarity and historical courage. Frederick McCarthy Forsyth, who passed away at the age of 86, was many things to many people—a celebrated novelist, a Royal Air Force veteran, and an MI6 informant. But to the people of Biafra and the wider Igbo nation, Forsyth was something far more personal: a witness in their time of abandonment, a voice when theirs was silenced, and a friend who stood for truth when truth was most dangerous.
During the so-called Nigerian Civil War—more truthfully, a meticulously engineered genocide against the Biafran people (1967–1970)—when global powers cloaked indifference in diplomacy and Britain, guardian of post-colonial interests, bartered conscience for geopolitical leverage, Frederick Forsyth refused the anesthetic of official narratives. Then a young BBC correspondent, he did what few dared: he bore witness, shattered state-sanctioned illusions, and chose moral clarity over institutional obedience, anchoring his legacy not just in reportage, but in righteous defiance of empire-fed propaganda. But what he saw in Enugu, within days of arrival, shattered the official narrative he had been fed. He quickly realized that the British government, through the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) and its notoriously condescending High Commissioner David Hunt, was manufacturing consent for a proxy war led by the Nigerian military against the secessionist state of Biafra.
The federal government in Lagos—military, authoritarian, and Northern-dominated—was engaged in what Forsyth rightfully called a brutal campaign of suppression. After the 1966 pogroms that saw tens of thousands of Igbos massacred in the North, and following a failed political reconciliation, Biafra declared independence in May 1967. On July 7, war was declared by Nigeria. Britain, far from being a neutral observer, took sides.
The British government supplied arms, intelligence, and diplomatic protection to the Nigerian regime, despite full knowledge of its violations of international law and humanitarian standards. These included the deliberate starvation of civilians, indiscriminate bombings of marketplaces and hospitals, and the enforcement of blockades that caused the deaths of nearly two million people, many of them children.
Read also: Biafra Remembrance Day: Honoring Truth, Mourning Genocide
Forsyth, stunned by the dissonance between what he saw and what London insisted was true, defied his employer. When the BBC refused to cover the truth—claiming it was “not policy” to report on Biafra—he resigned. He later wrote, “I smelt news management. I don’t like news management.” His moral instinct as a journalist superseded any institutional loyalty. He flew back to Biafra on his own, not as a rebel sympathizer, but as a reporter determined to speak the truth without filters. He famously told General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu that if he had walked away from British propaganda, he would not trade it for Biafran propaganda either. Ojukwu agreed.
It was from this place of ethical neutrality and deep empathy that Forsyth birthed The Biafra Story (1969), one of the first books to break the silence and expose the atrocities Britain had helped conceal. In its pages, he documented how Biafra, isolated and under siege, fought not just for territory, but for survival, dignity, and the right to be heard.
Through Forsyth’s work, the British public saw for the first time the haunting images of starving Biafran children. The impact was seismic—parliamentary debates, protest marches, and the birth of Joint Church Aid, the audacious relief effort known as “Jesus Christ Airlines,” which flew clandestine food and medical supplies into Biafra under the cover of night, dodging Nigerian MiG fighters armed by Britain.
It is no exaggeration to say that hundreds of thousands of lives were saved because Frederick Forsyth refused to be silent. He exposed not only Nigerian atrocities but British complicity—a government that, while preaching morality abroad, enabled genocide in West Africa to preserve post-colonial influence.
In later years, Forsyth revealed that he had acted as an informant for MI6, though unpaid. This revelation, far from discrediting him, emphasizes the tension he straddled—between empire and conscience, between statecraft and storytelling. Forsyth chose the latter.
His life’s work was not only about thrilling readers but defending truth in an age of distortion. While others focused on literary accolades, Forsyth risked exile from elite circles to stand beside a forgotten people. To Ndigbo, he was not just an author; he was an advocate.
Today, as the world reflects on the passing of this literary giant, let it also remember the courage it took to walk away from the establishment, to renounce propaganda, and to shine a light on a genocide when even the “civilized” world turned away.
Frederick Forsyth was not Igbo by blood—but he was Igbo by conscience.
May he rest in power.
May his words never fade.
