Grammy-Winning Director Meji Alabi Uncovers His Grandfathers Role in the Biafran War

When Meji Alabi won a Grammy for co-directing Beyonce’s Brown Skin Girl music video in 2021, it seemed like the pinnacle of a career spent bringing Nigeria’s vibrant music scene to global audiences. The 37-year-old director, born in London to Nigerian parents, had built a reputation crafting visually stunning productions for artists like Burna Boy, Davido, and Stormzy.

But nothing in his portfolio could have prepared him for his latest project: a documentary exploring one of Africa’s most devastating conflicts and his own family’s role in it.

Surviving Biafra: Voices from the Nigerian Civil War, produced by BBC Africa Eye, draws on previously unseen front-line footage and first-hand testimonies from survivors now in their 70s and 80s. The film examines the civil war that lasted from 1967 to 1970, when ethnic tensions threatened to tear apart the young West African nation.

A Family’s Hidden History

The documentary’s origins are deeply personal. Alabi teamed up with his uncle, Leke Alabi-Isama, a filmmaker and co-founder of their Lagos-based production company PriorGold Pictures. What they discovered about their own family’s wartime history proved both revelatory and unsettling.

Their grandfather, Godwin Alabi-Isama, served as chief of staff to Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle of the 3 Marine Commando during the conflict. The federal army unit has faced allegations of war crimes for its conduct in Biafra, including executing civilians.

I only just saw it from a Nigerian federal army perspective, Leke recalled. I never knew of the horrors. I never knew of the suffering and the pain of the other side.

For Leke, now 44, the moment of reckoning came in his early 30s when he first saw footage of the mass starvation that devastated Biafra. The first time I saw those clips of people, children starved, it was horrific, he said. That was the moment for me where the horrors of the war then became facts. Something really terrible happened and my dad was on the other side of it.

A Conflict That Still Haunts Nigeria

The Biafran war began after a series of military coups and months of massacres against Igbo people living in northern Nigeria. Around a million Igbos returned to their traditional home region in the south-east, where three states broke away to form the independent Republic of Biafra. The Nigerian government declared war.

Estimates of the death toll range from 500,000 to three million people, many of them children. The conflict became the world’s first televised humanitarian disaster, with graphic footage of starving children broadcast into living rooms globally. After 30 months of fighting, Biafra surrendered.

Yet despite its scale and significance, the war remains poorly understood even within Nigeria. For more than a decade before September 2025, history was not formally part of Nigeria’s national school curriculum. Leke described learning about it as a line or two lines in a book.

Nigeria is just scared to confront its own truth, he said.

Filling a Cultural Void

The filmmakers noted how few films about the civil war have been made by Nigerians, and how difficult it was to find truthful accounts of what happened. It is a topic that is whispered, Meji said. It has not been attacked head on and presented from an inquisitive younger generation like this before.

The documentary draws on talent from across the region, including Ghanaian composer Ray Michael Djan Jr, who worked on the soundtrack for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. It also relied on the expertise of the BBC Igbo service and Igbo historians, and features survivors who have never spoken publicly about their trauma.

For the Alabi family, the project has been transformative, a confrontation with history that previous generations preferred to leave unspoken.

When you find out that your truth is not the only truth, it was a humbling moment, Leke said.

Image Source: MYJOYONLINE