Biafra World Health Organization of the United Nations, which led to the early and cost-effective interruption of smallpox transmission in West Africa and elsewhere. On 29 May 2000, the Lagos "Guardian" newspaper reported that the now ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo commuted to retirement of the dismissal of all military persons, soldiers and officers, who fought for the breakaway Republic of Biafra during Nigeria's 1967–1970 civil war. In a national broadcast, he said the decision was based on the belief that "justice must at all times be tempered with mercy". In July 2006 the Center for World Indigenous Studies reported that government sanctioned
Bight of Biafra trade emanating from the Bight of Biafra. Between 1525 and 1859, Britain dominated the slave trade from the Bight of Biafra accounting for over two-thirds of slaves exported to the New World. However, in 1807, Great Britain made illegal the international trade in slaves, and the Royal Navy was deployed to forcibly prevent slavers from the United States, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, West Africa and Arabia from plying their trade. Earlier, in 1777, Portugal transferred control of Fernando Poo and Annobon to Spanish suzerainty thus introducing Spain into the early colonial history of the Bight of Biafra. On 30 June