It is 45 years since Biafra in south-eastern Nigeria declared independence, sparking a bloody civil war that lasted two and a half years and killed more than a million people. Ben Okafor was just 12 years old when it began and told the BBC's Witness programme what happened.
My father wasn't at home that day. He was working as an adviser to the new Biafran government. It fell to my older brother to get the family out of the city.
With no support from the outside world, the Biafran government was under-resourced, and the army was using children, known as the Boys' Company, as spies behind federal government lines to gather intelligence.
A few hours later, we heard on the radio that they had been caught. Someone in the government had switched sides and given the Nigerians information about the Boys' Company.
A few individuals and organizations (mainly from mainland Europe) risked their lives to bring food supplies to Biafran refugees, but it was not enough to prevent widespread starvation.
My sister and I were lucky to find work – in a refugee camp.
My job was to ride a baker's bike to a nearby town where the Red Cross had their depot, collect food and take it back to my refugee camp.
People basically lived off the land. They hunted.
You learned to eat all kinds of leaves that you would not normally look at, and hope to survive.
Many did not. I saw them every day that I worked in that refugee camp. Every day. Sometimes you'd see them, and know they would be dead by the next day."
Ben Okafor spoke to Witness on the BBC World Service.