BBC Africa Eye film revisits Nigeria’s civil war through survivor testimony

A grandson’s search into his grandfather’s war record has become a national reckoning, with Meji Alabi using family history to revisit Nigeria’s civil war through the voices of survivors still carrying its trauma.

Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War is a 75-minute BBC Africa Eye documentary that was released on BBC iPlayer and YouTube on Monday, June 1, 2026. The film also became available in Hausa, Pidgin, Igbo, Yoruba and French, extending its reach across communities still shaped by the conflict’s legacy.

At the center of the film is Godwin Alabi-Isama, Meji Alabi’s grandfather, a former army commando who fought on the federal side against ethnic Igbo separatists in the southeast. Alabi also speaks with soldiers and civilians who fought alongside and against him, building a portrait of a war that remains deeply divisive in Nigeria and still sits at the edge of debates over secession in the country’s eastern region.

The documentary leans on previously unseen frontline archive footage and eyewitness testimony from survivors, many of whom are now in their 70s and 80s. That time pressure gives the project its urgency. As memories fade and official narratives have often been partial, politicized or silent, the film positions personal archives and survivor testimony as essential records rather than emotional footnotes.

The war, also known as the Biafran War, lasted from 1967 to 1970 and followed Nigeria’s January 1966 coup and the massacres of Igbo people that sharpened ethnic mistrust and helped push the southeast toward its breakaway declaration of the Republic of Biafra. BBC materials say the conflict is approaching its 60th anniversary, while estimates of the death toll range widely, from 600,000 to 3 million in BBC figures, and roughly 500,000 to 3 million in other reference sources.

Alabi, 37, was born in London to Nigerian parents and spent part of his upbringing in Texas. He has directed artists including Beyoncé, Burna Boy, Davido and Stormzy, and won a Grammy for co-directing Beyoncé’s Brown Skin Girl video. The project grew out of family history shared through his uncle, Leke Alabi-Isama, who co-founded the Lagos-based production company PriorGold Pictures. For BBC World Service and the BBC Africa Eye team, the film is both a historical preservation effort and a reminder that Nigeria has not finished reckoning with the war it nearly forgot.