This first comprehensive study of the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967-1970) through the lens of gender explores the valiant and gallant ways women carried out old and new responsibilities in wartime and immediate postwar Nigeria. The book presents women as embodiments of vulnerability and agency, who demonstrated remarkable resilience and initiative, waging war on all fronts in the face of precarious conditions and scarcities, and maximizing opportunities occasioned by the hostilities. Women's experiences are highlighted through critical analyses of oral interviews, memoirs, life histories, fashion and material culture, international legal conventions, music, as well as governmental and non-governmental sources. The book fills the gap in the war scholarship that has minimized women's complex experiences fifty years after the hostilities ended. It highlights the cost of the conflict on Nigerian women, their participation in the hostilities, and their contributions to the survival of families, communities and the country. The chapters present counter-narratives to fictional and nonfictional accounts of the war, especially those written by men, which often peripheralize or stereotypically represent women as passive spectators or helpless victims of the conflict; and also highlight and exaggerate women's moral laxity and sensationalize their marital infidelities.

The book investigates the development of Igbo satire from its ritual origins as a censure tool to its present function as an aesthetic/entertainment tool. The paradigm is Ihiala, an Igbo town in Anambra State of Nigeria. In tracing this development, the author has analysed the early form of satire in Ihiala and the factors that helped to change the context in which satire was practised. The ultimate cause of this development was the colonial contact- a factor that provided the impetus for the reappraisal of practically every aspect of the social system. Evidently, entertainment was not the sole objective of satire in early Igbo practice; satires were ritual practices that served a multitude of functions for the people and were never meant merely to entertain an audience. But events in Igbo history have helped to change the purpose of the ritual practices from their traditional utilitarian functions to entertainment. The investigation reveals that although the concept of a corrective social function for satire is apparent in the songs, amusement is equally appreciated and, indeed, may be the fundamental impulse of satirical expression. Satirical commentators and performers do not overtly attempt to reform the culprit; instead, their interest is centered on self expression and in the entertainment and amusement of the audience.