This long trail of reckoning?

“On a personal note, the phased end of the USSR was a turning point for me. It convinced me that change can be brought about without firing a single shot” (Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian commander, northcentral Igboland during phase-III of the Igbo genocide, 6 July 1966-12 January 1970, addressing a meeting at Chatham House, London, England, 1000-1030 Hours GMT, Thursday 26 February 2015)

Very much interpellated in this thought process in Muhammadu Buhari’s mind of not-force and the fall of the Soviet Union must be his realisation, even if belated, that despite the staggering pulverising force his genocidist military deployed to destroy Igbo people during the genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the Igbo survived whilst contemporary Nigeria is a withering wretch.

The Soviet Union supported the genocide by sending in the squadrons of MiGs to Nigeria flown by loaned Egyptian pilots, specialists in the carpet bombing of Igbo homes, offices, markets, churches, shrines, schools, children’s playgrounds, hospitals, railway stations, trains, cars, car parks, refugee centres… This same Soviet Union, the seemingly redoubtable state, soon, beginning January 1990, collapses “without (sic) a single shot fired” (!) but its constituent peoples survived – a reminder, if ever one is required, that the state is transient; peoples endure (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/state-is-transient-peoples-endure.html, accessed 19 February 2015)).

It should now be evident to Buhari (and others) that those epaulettes for “majors” and “sergeants” and “corporals” and “generals” and lieutenants” and “colonels” garlanded by genocidists who streamed to Igboland during those 44 dreadful months to murder 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men are nothing else but signifiers for perpetrating this heinous crime against humanity.

(Sam Rivers Trio, “Afflatus” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Steve Ellington, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, NJ, US, 17 March 1967])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe