I spied on Nigeria for Britain, says Forsyth

British novelist Frederick Forsyth has admitted that he spied on Nigeria in the 1960s for his country. The author who had covered the Nigeria civil war as a journalist made the admission in his just published autobiography: ‘The Outsider: My Life’.

He said while working as a journalist in Nigeria he was also sending intelligence for the British spy agency MI6.

Forsyth who has written several novels including The Day of the Jackal and the Dogs of War, which he reportedly drew from his experience of covering the Biafran War, said he started working for MI6 while he was in Nigeria.

He said he was approached by an intelligence officer who asked him to supply information to them during the civil war.

“For the last year of the Biafran War I was sending... both journalistic reports to the media and other reports to my new friend,” he said.

He said MI6 wanted to know if it was true that many children were dying.

“The Foreign Office was denying that there were any dying children and they were passionate in supporting the dictatorship in Lagos, and it was, oddly enough, MI6 that had a different viewpoint,” he said.

Forsyth said he saw “no harm” in confirming the truth that “children were dying like flies” in Biafra.

“It was controversial... but not about the security of our country,” he told BBC News.

During the war, the Nigerian government had suspected that he was siding with Biafra due to his close association with the Biafran leader Chukwuemeka Ojukwu.

The BBC, too, which he was initially working for, was reportedly uncomfortable with his alleged bias and moved to address its concerns.

He left the corporation and worked for Reuters news agency.