Biafra Zionist Movement Biafra Zionist Movement Biafra Zionist Movement (BZM) is a group agitating for the restoration of Biafra and its independence from Nigeria. It is led by Benjamin Onwuka, who is currently being detained by the Federal Government of Nigeria. The philosophy of the movement is for the actualization of the sovereign state of Biafra along the precolonial lines. Biafra was a loose collection of different ethnic groups before the coming of the Europeans to colonize Africa. Biafra and the Bight of Biafra was notorious for the Transatlantic slave trade with two Slave ports in Calabar and Bonny and providing over 2
Bight of Biafra Guinea (Bioko Island and Rio Muni), and Gabon (northern coast). The Bight of Biafra accounted for 13% (1.6 million) of the total number of slaves exported from the Western African coast. The Bight of Benin to the west accounted for 17% while Central Africa to the south accounted for 48%. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Bonny had emerged as the major slave trading port on the Bight of Biafra outpacing the earlier dominant slave ports at Elem Kalabari (also known then as New Calabar) and Old Calabar. These 3 ports together accounted for over 90% of the slave