Mej Alabi has directed a number of the best-selling music artists on the planet, together with Beyoncé, Burna Boy, Davido, and Stormzy. However nothing might have ready the Grammy Award-winning director for his new documentary in regards to the Nigerian civil conflict.
Warning: This text incorporates particulars that some readers might discover disturbing.
Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil Struggle, produced by BBC Africa Eye, consists of never-before-seen footage from the entrance traces of the devastating conflict that lasted from 1967 to 1970, when ethnic tensions threatened to tear the younger West African nation aside.
“It was very eye-opening for me. I simply grew up not figuring out something in regards to the conflict or who was preventing who,” mentioned the 37-year-old, who was born in London to Nigerian dad and mom and later moved to Texas, US, to attend college.
The head of his profession got here 5 years in the past, when he gained a Grammy Award for co-directing the music video for Beyoncé’s hit “Brown Pores and skin, Woman.”
It wasn’t till she teamed up along with her uncle, Leke Alabi Isama, a filmmaker and co-founder of Lagos-based manufacturing firm Priorgold Photos, on a historic documentary mission that they each started to appreciate the depth of Nigeria’s traumatic previous.
Most of what they knew they realized from Godwin Alabi Isama, Leke’s father and Meji’s grandfather. Godwin Alabi Isama is a former military particular forces officer who fought alongside federal forces towards Igbo separatists preventing for an unbiased state referred to as Biafra within the southeast of the nation.
“I simply checked out it from a Nigerian (federal army) perspective,” Leke mentioned. “I by no means knew the horror. I by no means knew the struggling and ache on the opposite facet.”
In Africa Eye’s documentary, survivors, now of their 70s and 80s, share their experiences residing and preventing in an period that formed the lives of thousands and thousands of individuals and remains to be related right now.
The battle, also called the Biafran Struggle, started after a sequence of army coups and months of massacres towards the Igbo individuals in northern Nigeria.
Roughly a million Igbo individuals then returned to their conventional homeland within the southeast of the nation, the place three states separated to kind the unbiased Republic of Biafra.
The Nigerian authorities declared conflict. It was one of many bloodiest and most divisive conflicts ever fought on the Nigerian continent.
It’s estimated that between 500,000 and three million individuals died, lots of them youngsters, making it the world’s first televised humanitarian catastrophe.
For the primary time, graphic footage of ravenous youngsters was broadcast into residing rooms. After 30 months of preventing, Biafra surrendered.
Most Nigerians study this chapter of their historical past by way of tales handed down by way of the generations. For greater than a decade, till September 2025, historical past had not been formally built-in into the curriculum of Nigeria’s nationwide colleges.
For Leke, 44, who was born and raised in Abeokuta, Ogun State, southwestern Nigeria, it was “a line or two in a ebook.”
“The extent of the struggling has not but been totally revealed. I feel Nigeria is solely afraid to face its personal fact,” he mentioned.
Leke and his 23 siblings grew up listening to conflict tales from their father, Godwin Alabi-Isama, who served as Brigadier Basic Benjamin Adekunle’s chief of employees for the third Marine Particular Forces throughout the battle.
“I felt like my father was recognized for his contribution to the liberation of this city and village. I considered him as a conflict hero,” he mentioned.
It wasn’t till his early 30s that Leke started researching what occurred throughout the conflict, studying in regards to the mass hunger in Biafra, his father’s controversial position within the battle, and the true extent of the struggling.
Federal troops, together with three Marine particular forces, face allegations of conflict crimes for actions in Biafra, together with the execution of civilians.
“Once I first noticed the pictures of individuals, youngsters ravenous… it was horrifying, and I feel that was a second of fact for me,” Leke mentioned.
“That was the second when the horrors of conflict grew to become actuality for me: Nicely, one thing actually unhealthy had occurred and my father was on the opposite facet of it.
“It was a humbling second after I realized that my fact was not the one fact.”
Leke and Meji mentioned they do not perceive why extra movies in regards to the civil conflict aren’t made by Nigerians, and the way troublesome it’s to discover a true account of what occurred.
This is among the many causes the duo, who often work with worldwide music stars, needed to make this documentary.
“It is a whispered subject,” Mezzi mentioned. His music video productions, whose characteristically intricate choreography and colour have garnered tens of thousands and thousands of views on-line, have performed a key position in drawing world consideration to Nigeria’s music scene.
“It is by no means been attacked head-on earlier than, and, you realize, it is by no means been offered to us by a younger, curious era like this,” he says.
The documentary introduced collectively expertise from throughout the area, with Meji convincing Ghanaian composer Ray Michael Jean Jr., who additionally labored on the soundtrack for Black Panther: Wakanda Eternally, to attain the movie.
It additionally depends on the experience of the BBC’s Igbo language service, Igbo historians, and options first-hand accounts from survivors who’ve by no means beforehand spoken publicly about their trauma.
“This era is slowly dying, and if we do not protect their testimonies now, we danger shedding not solely their reminiscence however the alternative to totally file this historical past in a manner that may contribute to understanding and therapeutic,” Leke mentioned.
Two of the central characters are former feminine troopers who fought on the other facet. There are additionally interviews with support employee and former BBC correspondent Martin Bell, each of whom voice criticism of the worldwide response to the disaster.
Leke and Meji had heard many conflict tales from Godwin Alabi Isama, however they had been in no place to ask powerful questions.
The BBC editorial crew led the interview to verify that the previous commander was pursued over allegations of conflict crimes towards the third Marine Particular Forces.
Through the battle, the Nigerian authorities additionally blocked the stream of meals into Biafra and lower off entry to the area’s seaports, airfields, and overseas provides.
The blockade triggered famine, with tons of of 1000’s of individuals believed to have starved to loss of life.
Describing the second she confirmed her father the black-and-white footage of her emaciated youngsters, Leke mentioned she had by no means heard her father’s voice tremble in “43 years of life.”
“Irrespective of what number of instances I watch it, I get goosebumps after I get to that time,” he mentioned.
Within the interview, the daddy additionally talked about how he had been consuming human flesh with out his data throughout the battle. The cannibalistic second occurred when his troops had been provided meals by villagers in occupied Biafra territory.
In response to the upcoming documentary, the Nigerian authorities mentioned it hoped it might function a reminder of how far the nation has come previously 59 years and “the enduring significance of dialogue, reconciliation and customary objective in constructing a stronger nation for generations to return.”
Leke and Meji would need that – and extra.
“My hope is that this movie will encourage Nigerians to confront the darkish components of our shared historical past with honesty, reflection and empathy,” Leke mentioned.
Meji agrees. “I sincerely hope that this documentary will encourage extra survivors to inform their tales and additional doc our historical past. It’s as much as us to try this.”
Further reporting by Charlie Northcott, Izzy Fleming and Adline Okere
