Nigerian Officials Banned ‘Half Of A Yellow Sun’ Movie Because Of Biafran War

The most awaited movie of this year in Nigeria, “Half of a Yellow Sun,” has been banned by the country’s film censorship board because the movie partially takes place during the Biafran War.

According to the director, Biyi Bandele, the movie scheduled to open in Nigeria last Friday was essentially banned as the country’s film censorship board has refused to issue the movie a certificate. Earlier, Half of a Yellow Sun’s premier has been postponed in Nigeria.

Though, the movie which  unites some of Nigeria’s major cultural figures of civil war (also known as the Biafran War) is already showing in Britain and is scheduled to open in the United States next month. It also had its premiere last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. And Nigerian actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who starred in the Academy Award-winning film “12 Years a Slave” is one of the stars in the movie.

The censorship board could not be reached for comment about the film, but Mr. Bandele said officials seemed to be “jittery about its content.” He continued: “That it deals with the Biafran War (from 1967 to 1970). That it might incite people to violence.” Even today a remnant of the old Igbo independence movement persists in the country’s south, which is largely Christian. And in the north, where Muslims are in the majority, many people attribute the Nigerian Army’s frequent large-scale killings of civilians, in its campaign against the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram, to southerners’ lingering fury over their treatment during the long-ago war.