'No' to independent Biafra

The governors of five provinces in southeastern Nigeria have dissociated themselves from a call for an independent state of Biafra.

The call came from the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra MASSOB.

But the governors of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states said in a statement that they rejected it in its entirety and it should be disregarded. MASSOB is campaigning to resuscitate 'Biafra', the name for the region of eastern Nigeria which in 1967 declared secession under its then military governor Lieutenant-Colonel Emeka Ojukwu.

The declaration plunged Nigeria into a three-year civil war.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service