🥤Who really survived Biafra?

June 05, 2026 | Read online

👋 Good morning. June brings us Men's Mental Health Awareness Month, Pride Month, and a fresh start—plenty to celebrate, if you can look past the banditry and the darkness this country keeps serving up. What are you looking forward to this month? Let me know, you just might get something in return. As always, be sure to scroll to the end; there’s something here for everyone.

In this edition: a culture reporter on AI in film, a Lagosian's take on the BBC's controversial Biafra documentary, the best books to read this June, and more.

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Shalom Tewobola,
Editor.

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🗞️ THIS WEEK IN POP CULTURE

🎵 MUSIC

Llona toured his Homeless album across 25 Nigerian cities last year, and now the sophomore project, On The Road, is on the way. If the man can tour like that, we can only imagine the stories he'll stitch into this one, counting down already.

🏛️ POLITICS

The PDP has announced Goodluck Jonathan as a 2027 presidential candidate. We're not sure what the play is here, but it smells like a distraction. Resist, lock in!

🌍 DOCUMENTARY

Three days ago, the BBC dropped Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War, directed by Meji Alabi. The reviews were split down the middle, with critics flagging it as inaccurate and dishonest. Call us biased, but maybe our history shouldn't be told by the people who funded the war.

📽️ FILM

Kunle Afolayan is on a mission to digitize his father's catalogue, and the latest gift is Kadara (1980), a Yoruba-language classic now streaming free on the KAP channel on YouTube. It follows the drop of Adeyemi Afolayan's Iya Ni Wura. Go on, press play on the origins of Nollywood.

↝ TRENDING

Dozens of children abducted in the May attacks across Oyo and Borno remain missing, and a video recently went viral on X showing a bandit clutching what looked like ransom money. Families are holding their breath for a miracle, or for anyone willing to step in. Anyone?

Many are already using Pulse’s editorials and socials to grow their businesses and tell their stories to more than 5 million people. Just saying. Oh, and did I mention it only takes you one click?

MAIN SQUEEZE

Who really survived Biafra?

On June 1, the BBC released Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War, a 75-minute Africa Eye documentary directed by Grammy-winning filmmaker Meji Alabi. He built it around Godwin Alabi-Isama, his grandfather, a former army commando who fought on the federal side against the Igbo secessionists.

The reviews split down the middle, with critics flagging it as inaccurate and dishonest. The question that keeps surfacing is harder than whether the film is good: who gets to tell this story, and what gets left out when a war this contested, one in which Britain armed the federal side, is narrated by a British broadcaster?

We put that to Nduka Ebube, a young man with Biafran heritage who lives in Lagos and recently published a Medium article titled, “We Don’t Talk About Biafra Enough.” He walks us through what the documentary gets wrong, what it gets right, and what it would actually take for ordinary Nigerians to reckon with a loss that has been all but erased from the nation's memory.

What did you think about the just-released BBC documentary on Biafra?

I did not like that it made it seem like Biafra attacked Nigeria first. It seems dubious to omit that by the time Biafra began the offensive on Nigeria, Nsukka had already fallen to the federal forces. The offensive was a whole month after the federal forces began their attack on Biafra.

Does a documentary like this count as the conversation you have been calling for, or does it crowd out the kind of telling you actually want?

I think it does. We have an ex-federal soldier talking to the camera about eating a dead Biafran soldier while wearing a smile on his face. I think people need to see that.

The documentary also does a good job of exposing the famine that was caused by the blockade, the corruption that worsened it, and the soldiers who watched children die.

What do you make of the film being anchored to a federal-side commando's family story?

I was expecting the BBC documentary to tell the federal side of the story, it's very consistent of them.

Do you think the BBC, a British institution, has any business being the one to tell this story? Why?

It's a story; they’re a storytelling company. I just want people to know that there are many more stories about Biafra out there that they can consume to learn about Biafra.

Chimamanda’s Half of a Yellow Sun, for example, is a good starting point. If you want something more direct, there are many well-researched documentaries and video essays on YouTube about the war.

What would it actually take for ordinary Nigerians, not the diaspora or already-curious, to know the scale of what happened: the pogroms, the starvation, the hundreds of thousands to millions dead?

Education: school curricula, cultural touch points like film, TV, books, monuments, holidays, and so on.

3 million die, and there is not even one monument anywhere in the country that acknowledges that loss. It's like they were wiped from the memory of the nation.

Sixty years on, do you think a definitive, widely accepted account of the war is even possible in Nigeria?

Yes, it is. We just need to keep telling it.

🔪 THE PEEL

AI walks into a hostile bar

Over the last week, there’s been news about Generative AI’s continuous incursion into the film industry.

First off, legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese became an advisor to the AI company, Black Forest Labs. In a video the company released, Scorsese is shown using AI to instantly create storyboards, which are drawings or illustrations that help visualize scenes in pre-production.

Scorsese then goes on to claim difficulties in communicating his vision to the team around him, calling it “creatively freeing” and saying that the technology is “allowing us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft”.

Peeling it back

Already, there’s been uproar across the industry, with many believing that this will continue to undermine the value of human labour, with storyboard artists, whose work possibly trained these models without their permission, being exploited and forced out of their livelihoods.

It also would demean the work of storyboard artists, something that is an artform, critical to the filmmaking process, and again, an insult to all the artists that Martin Scorsese ever worked with in his illustrious career.

Filmmaker Boots Riley weighed in, in a way that many (not me) thought was pretty caustic.

Others (not me definitely) felt like Scorsese was only being open to technological innovation and ushering in a new future.

Another Layer

Turning to Africa, there was also good news for filmmaker Damien Hauser, with his sci-fi mockumentary, Memories of Princess Mumbi, being acquired for multi-country distribution, including the United States.

Memories of Princess Mumbi is about a young filmmaker, Kuve, who comes to make a documentary film in Umata, a fictional African country, which has now banned modern technology in the aftermath of a great war. He meets a young actress, Mumbi, and they fall in love, but she is betrothed to a prince from a neighboring kingdom. The film then follows their lives and the love triangle that ensues.

The film’s premise aside, there have also been polarising reactions to the film, which features a future decimated by war and dependent on AI for filmmaking. The central issue here is that the film’s visual effects and landscapes are AI-generated, with Sora (now defunct, thank Christ) thanked profusely in the end credits.

Many may think that the use of AI here is inventive and that it shows true promise, but once again, I find that artists are being exploited, and the landscapes generated represent a heavily Western idea of African architectural organisation, with high rises in enclosed spaces as the dominant structural form in the aftermath of a war—a chance to start again.

The core

It is a broad-based assertion I make here, but I found it worrisome that a future imagined in the aftermath of a ban on modern technology still fits within those broad strokes: Umata as the huttified-High Rise by J.G Ballard–a building of horrors.

Let me not start on the prince’s Egyptian paradise. I don’t want to stray into riding the waves of vitriol, but these sorts of incursions will only build as time goes by; it is the will of the Capital.

Do I think Generative-AI should be applied in filmmaking in this manner? I think not; we have many issues to sort out–in its current form, it does way more harm than good. There are environmental effects, copyright infringement, racial and misogynistic bias in the learning models, and even the bland aesthetic; it’s not worth it.

What do you think?

Words by Ifeoluwa Olutayo.

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📚 PAGE AND PULP

5 Books to read in June

Last weekend, as part of our effort to plug into Nigeria's book communities, we attended a book club event and met its founder, Elizabeth Otutu–known online as Bettie.tainment. She started Books and Brews on May 6, 2024, in response to a gap she saw in the Nigerian literary space.

"For a long time, people have repeated this lazy myth that 'Nigerians don't read' to excuse why we didn't have good spaces," she told us. "I knew that wasn't true.”

She opined that Nigerians do read, and the real issue was that nobody was creating spaces that actually fit our energy and our Nigerianness. “That's why I started Books and Brews. The 'Brews' part isn't about coffee or drinks; it's about bringing energy, enjoyment, and real fun into the book world. Today we're 800 members strong with over 10 physical hangouts done, showing that the hunger was always there."

She shared a few books she'd recommend for June, and what she loved about each. If any of them catch your eye, check them out, and give us a shout.

The Mechanics of Yenagoa - Michael Afenfia

This is chaotic in all the ways you can think. One moment, the main character is hopeful and calm; the next, he's created fresh problems with his own two hands. The humour runs light and dark in equal measure.

A Forever Kind of Love - Adesuwa O’man Nwokedi

It's romance, but I loved the dynamics. I also liked that the author touched on important health and mental-health topics, suicide, Alzheimer's, and others.

Born a Crime - Trevor Noah

A funny memoir, but also sad and eye-opening. I liked that I came away having learned about the apartheid era.

The Joys of Motherhood - Buchi Emecheta

This book made me rethink life. It radicalised me as a person.

Tomorrow Died Yesterday - Chimeka Garricks

I liked how real it felt, even though it's fiction, you forget that once you start reading. It captures the impact of oil exploitation in the Niger Delta, the kidnappings, the militants, and the trauma that lingers even when you're far from the scene.