Ojukwu, than a military governor, and his followers rejected plans for reconciliation following violence against the Igbo people in the north and broke away.

CNN: Leader of Biafra breakaway state dies

One critic, Catherine Acholonu, attributes Jewish identification among the Igbo as a result of Christianity brought by missionaries, since most Igbo people are Christians.

CNN: Nigeria's Igbo Jews: 'Lost tribe' of Israel?

Last year, he published a long-awaited memoir about the brutal three-year Biafran war - when the south-eastern Igbo region tried to split from Nigeria in 1967.

BBC: Chinua Achebe: Obituary of Nigeria's renowned author

Last year, Mr Achebe published a long-awaited memoir about the brutal three-year Biafran war - when the south-eastern Igbo region tried to split from Nigeria in 1967.

BBC: Nigerian author Chinua Achebe dies

He was in the military before declaring independence for south-eastern Nigeria, where Igbo is the most widely spoken language, following the slaughter of thousands of ethnic Igbos in northern Nigeria.

BBC: Ex-Biafra leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu buried in Nigeria

But most of the Igbo who practice Judaism were not born to a Jewish mother and have not converted according to halakhah, Jewish law, so many Orthodox Jews would not recognize them.

CNN: Nigeria's Igbo Jews: 'Lost tribe' of Israel?

Within months, Nigeria was engulfed in independent Africa's first humanitarian catastrophe: a war for the independence of Mr. Achebe's Igbo homeland that left one million people dead, most of them children who starved.

WSJ: Chinua Achebe, Famed Nigerian Writer, Dies

Igbo people of the south-east are no different.

BBC: Letter from Africa: Rites of the dead

The village assemblies exist among various African tribes including: the Ashanti of Ghana, the Igbo of Nigeria, the Somali, the Tswana of Botswana, the Shona of Zimbabwe, the Xhosa and the Zulu of South Africa.

CNN: Why Western-style democracy is not suitable for Africa