Emergency money and counter-money, 1967–1970.
A research project on the Bank of Biafra, the Central Bank of Nigeria, and what happens to a currency when the issuing authority's territorial control is contested.
The question
The Nigerian Civil War lasted from 1967 to 1970. For a brief period it produced a second issuer of currency on Nigerian soil. The Republic of Biafra declared independence in May 1967. It then issued its own pound notes and coins, first in 1968 and again in 1969.
The Central Bank of Nigeria pushed back. In January 1968 it demonetised the existing Nigerian pound. It then issued new notes. The Biafran administration could not redeem them.
That sequence — a secessionist currency, a federal counter-currency, and a split between what circulated and what was legal tender — raises a question the literature does not handle cleanly. What does monetary sovereignty mean when the territorial reach of the issuing authority is itself in dispute?
Sources
The project draws on four bodies of material. The first is the surviving numismatic record: the Biafran issues, the pre-war Nigerian pound, and the post-1968 Nigerian replacement. Mint dates, signature blocks and security features set the timeline.
The second is institutional correspondence. Bank of England archives. Central Bank of Nigeria publications and internal memoranda, where they have been released. And the Mission historique de la Banque de France collection, where European reserve banks recorded their reading of the conflict.
The third is contemporary press. Nigerian, British and French papers reported on the demonetisation, the Biafran issues, and the smuggling of pre-1968 notes across the lines.
The fourth is memoirs and oral history from officials on both sides. The literature is partial here. Much of what was decided was decided informally, and the people who knew most have either passed or never wrote it down. The gaps themselves are informative.
What does monetary sovereignty mean when the territorial reach of the issuing authority is itself in dispute?
Approach
The paper argues that the Biafran issuance and the federal counter-issuance should be read together, not separately. Together they form a useful comparative case for other twentieth-century episodes of contested currency. Regional issuance in the Spanish Civil War, partition-era India, occupied-zone Germany from 1945 to 1948, and post-Soviet currencies in the Caucasus all share structural features with the Biafran case: a recognised pre-existing currency, a contested second issuer, and a state with formal authority but incomplete territorial control.
Reading the Nigerian case in that frame makes something visible. The West African Currency Board literature tends to stop at independence in 1960. The decade from 1960 to 1970 — when Nigerian central banking was still being built, under conditions of civil war — has not been treated.
Status & venues
The paper is in preparation. Submissions are planned during 2026 to economic history and African studies journals. The framing sits alongside my earlier work on monetary sovereignty in Ghana and Nigeria in the late 1950s, and on the introduction of the West African sterling in Southern Nigeria in 1916.
For early-draft conversations, archival pointers or comparative case suggestions, the contact page is the right route. Academic correspondents are especially welcome.