I always wondered how it was possible logistically in 1970 to identity Igbo-owned accounts and confiscate them. https://twitter.com/timisoleye/status/1276680454536658949

Achebe PBUH said in There Was a Country that the then FMG adopted “ a banking
policy which nullified any bank account which had been operated during the war”. & “A flat sum of 20 pounds was approved for each Igbo depositor of the 9ja currency, regardless of the amount of deposit”

Chimamanda wrote that “At the end of the war, every Igbo person who had a bank account in Nigeria was given twenty pounds, no matter how much they had in their accounts before the war”.

Achebe has drawn the 2nd quote above from the Ohaneze Ndigbo submission to the Okuta panel. Pius Okigbo’s biographers wrote something similar

I’ve read my share of books about the war. It always struck me that this twenty pounds issue was unclear and confused. Many disparate claims are made. In some telling the issue was a confiscation. In some telling it was an adverse exchange rate from Biafran to Nigerian pounds

In some telling the 20 pounds issue was a failure to accept old Nigerian notes (more on this down thread). In some telling it was the nullification of accounts held by Igbos.

I haven’t found a historian who did the matter justice by presenting declarations, laws, orders, etc

I started digging into it. I even went to the National archives in Ibadan.

In sharing what I was able to determine:

In the months leading to the declaration of Biafra in May 1967, Most Igbos left other parts of Nigeria to return to Igboland. Many returnees emptied their accounts before leaving their bases, but many others did not

Igbos in Igboland had access to their bank accounts in Biafra.

In Dec 1967, the FMG changed the currency notes in use in Nigeria and declared the old notes were no longer legal tender.

Biafra up till that point had relied on the Nigerian pound.

There was a mad dash by the Biafra authorities to change Nigerian notes into foreign currency. Some private individuals sent their money abroad to be changed.

In response Biafra issued its own currency the Biafran pound. The Nigerian currency, old or new, was outlawed in Biafra. Similar to what happened in the US civil war there was hyperinflation of the secessionist currency

When Benin was taken by the Biafran army, the Nigerian side claimed that the CBN vaults were looted. The vaults might also have been looted by the Nigerian side who retook Benin. As parts of Biafra fell to the Nigerian advance, many banks were also looted

By some accounts, there was a trafficking in Nigerian currency. This was used in the smuggling of items across boundaries. Nigerian notes were definitely in circulation in Biafra, both the old notes and the new ones

When the war ended, people who had Biafran notes wanted them exchanged for Nigerian notes. Rumours were rife that an exchange rate would be established.

But Nigeria wasn’t willing to exchange Nigerian pounds for Biafran pounds which at that point were worthless

Nevertheless, by some accounts, Nigeria asked people who had been in erstwhile Biafra to deposit all currency in banks and district offices or the treasury.

20 Nigerian pounds was given to every depositor of notes.

Nigeria passed the Banking Obligations Eastern States Decree 1970
https://gazettes.africa/archive/ng/1970/ng-government-gazette-supplement-dated-1970-12-31-no-70.pdf

The decree says that anyone who had an account in the then Eastern Region while it was Biafra:

1) if you opened your account before Biafra, & operated it during the war, you got your money

2) if you were in Biafra and you opened & operated your account during the war, the bank wasn’t obliged to pay you the balance (which would be in Biafran Pounds)

3) if you opened your account before the war and didn’t operate it during the war, you got your money

The non-recognition and exchange of Biafran pounds was a crushing loss of value to many ex-Biafrans (overwhelmingly Igbo) who lost all they had left. This was mainly true of the poorest people

It’s believed that 115-140m Biafran Pounds were in circulation at the end of the war in 1970. About 10-15 Biafran pounds per person.

The number of people who received 20 pounds in 1970 is unclear although Achebe had the unsourced claim that the FMG made a profit of £4m

There were people who had been in Biafra that couldn’t prove their claims to their accounts to what in wartime was Biafra or Nigeria. They lost their money. There were banks who had lost records and couldn’t verify claims. Remember that this was 1970 & records weren’t digital

Many rich Igbo people got their money. Example: the Ojukwu family. Many of the Biafran elite who had moved their families abroad during the war didn’t lose so much money.

I couldn’t resist the class angle

It’s likely that there were people in what in wartime was Biafra, in areas that had been taken before 1970 who had both Biafran pounds & Nigerian pounds and had access to their accounts in 1970.

Things to think about:
In the few cases in history where the country seceding issued a currency, what happened to private holdings of such at the end of those wars?

If you had 10m Biafran pounds & you weren’t exchanging with the Nigerian govt, how much would it have fetched you

If the Biafran pound was worthless as FMG claimed, would the 20 pounds or any other conversion not have been a transfer of value from the Nigerian treasury to individuals?

What is clear is that the destruction of the value of the Biafran pound immiserated our Igbo brethren.

All of these were the consequences of war. People, war is bad. Let’s never do it again