One thing the Nigerian government noticed here was that Biafra had decent amounts of agriculture to keep the calories going, but were heavily dependent on imports for protein. A general blockade was thus put in place to quite simply starve the place out, resulting in the first major African famine to grab the west's attention (your parents probably remember the starving children with bloated stomachs on TV). Some volunteers and aid organisations started flying in food.
The Nigerian air force (or rather their mercenaries) also happily attacked civilian villages, markets and so on with strafing runs and rockets, while doing their best to bomb any airfield where aid was flown in. Biafra tried to do some air raids of their own in return (some good stories there too
http://napoleon130.tripod.com/id307.html ), they had pilots that had flown in both the Nigerian air force and Air Nigeria, but their aircraft inventory quickly went from minimal to just plain nothing.
Now one of the pilots flying in aid here was the Swedish count Gustaf von Rosen. Apparently the black sheep of his family on account of not being a nazi, he also seems to have been the adventurous sort. A KLM pilot he had gotten a bit irate with the Russians in the winter war, bought a passenger plane, converted it into a bomber, flew over and bombed the Russians before leaving the aircraft with the Finnish air force. He was one of the pilots evacuating the Dutch government to England when Germany invaded, and tried volunteering to the RAF. They declined, on account of his sister being married to Göring.
So, it's 1969 and von Rosen (now aged 59) is once again getting a bit miffed, now at the Nigerian governments genocidal attacks on Biafra. Noting that Biafra was looking for planes for its pilots he suggested to them a Mini-COIN concept. Forget old bombers or new jets, instead go for really small and light aircraft flying amongst the treetops and based on small dirt patches in the jungle. Guerilla air raids.
