Nigeria’s secret police, the State Security Service (SSS), has ordered the removal of parts of the internationally acclaimed movie, Half of a Yellow Sun, before it can be screened in Nigeria.

Based on the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967-70, the movie is adapted from a book of the same title by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and turned into film by Biyi Bandele. Both Adichie and Bandele are wave-making Nigerian writers based abroad – Adichie in America and Bandele in Britain.

The almost $10 million wide screen movie has already been screened to international audiences abroad but the Nigerian screening billed for April 25 and then shifted to May 2, 2014, could not hold, as the Nigerian Film and Video Censors Board (NFVCB) withheld approval.

A report this morning in The Guardian said that feelers from the SSS (also known as State Security Department) “indicate that certain scenes in the movie are too inflammatory at this critical moment of grave security concerns to allow them be aired the way they are. The fear of government is that such scenes might inflame public sentiments in reopening sores already healing to cause public disaffection.”

The report said that NFVCB Director-General, Patricia Bala, has been directed to indicate the observed scenes to the producers of the film, with a view to expunging them before it could be exposed to the viewing public.

The refusal to approve the movie for release in Nigeria has sparked widespread condemnation, with many commentators describing it as unnecessary censorship.