Back in Nigeria in 1969, he was involved in relief work and the spiritual care of civilians in Oballo-Afor, Owerri, Imo state.
In January 1966, a group of Nigerian Army Officers overthrew the Nigerian Government. This led to much bloodshed and turmoil in the country in which the young Father Caffrey was then engaged in teaching and missionary work, according to a report.
In July 1967 Nigerian troops invaded Biafra where there was a higher concentration of Holy Ghost Fathers than anywhere else in Nigeria. Amongst them was Fr. Caffrey who was then serving in Obube, a locality in Owerri North Local Government of Imo state.
The outbreak of violence interrupted the usual work of the local people so that the planting season passed without crops being sown. Inevitably starvation followed and Fr. Caffrey with his helpers tried as best they could to feed up to 6,000 children twice a week and another 1,000 or so children four times a week in a desperate attempt to keep them alive. Children were given priority but arrangements were also put in place to feed widows and the elderly, both of which groups were also extremely vulnerable in the war-torn territory of Biafra.
All of this relief work went on while the Civil War was in progress. Fr. Caffrey had to take evasive action on several occasions to avoid the menacing attention of Nigerian airforce planes. An Irish colleague, Sr. Cecilia of the Presentation Nuns, was a martyr of the Biafran War, shot and killed when a car in which she was travelling was attacked by a Nigerian fighter plane.
In January 1970 the Biafran Army resistance collapsed and the Nigerian Army took control of the Eastern part of the country. Missionaries living or working in Biafra were arrested and confined under house arrest. These included Fr. Caffrey who was detained with 28 fellow Missionaries including nine nuns and Bishop Joseph Whelan of Owerri.
All were charged with illegal entry into Nigeria and working in that country without permits. Fines were imposed but although the fines were paid the Missionaries were kept in detention. Police vans arrived to where they were under house arrest in Port Harcourt to take them to prison. The Missionaries, priests and nuns alike, staged a sit down in the street demanding to be released as the fines imposed on them had been paid.
The local police and the military authorities could not agree as to what to do with the recalcitrant Missionaries but eventually the impasse was resolved and they were all lodged in a local prison. Cell blocks originally built to accommodate two prisoners were for the next six or seven days home to groups of ten Irish clerics. Fr. Caffrey and his colleagues were eventually taken from the prison and brought to the local airport where on the instructions of the Police Inspector General they were flown to Lagos from where they were deported from Nigeria.
The fate of the Irish Missionaries who had been the backbone of the Biafran relief effort was later reported in the Evening Herald of 16th February 1970 under the headline, “Jail Protest - Nuns and Priests sit in street.”
After being expelled from Nigeria in February 1970, Fr. Caffrey was assigned to Kenya the following year. He taught Applied Mathematics at Polytechnic School in Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa until he took up pastoral ministry in the late 1970s.
