This 7/24 free-fire zone

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

“Every people should be originators of their own destiny”

(Martin Delany, 19th century African American freedom nationalist and writer)

Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”, 1934)

The Muhammadu Buhari islamist regime in Nigeria has effectively turned Biafra into a free-fire zone where its genocidist occupying troops can pick and choose where and when to murder the next Igbo child, woman or man. Since October 2015, particularly, genocidist commanders have roamed brazenly, ceaselessly and sadistically across Biafra with troopers pinpointing population layouts for the next targeted firing range: Onicha … Igwe Ocha … Asaba … Oka … Enuugwu … Aba … Igwe Ocha … Asaba … Enuugwu … Igwe Ocha … Onicha …

To ensure that all conceivable spheres of this savage ritual are exhausted, the genocidists have also employed their Boko Haram and Fulani militants’ adjunct terrorists in this slaughtering spree. Buhari authorised the Boko Haram massacre of Uzo-Uwani, north Biafra, on Monday 25 April 2016 in which 200 Biafrans asleep in their beds were murdered (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/uzo-uwani-herbertekwe-ekwe-in.html). Earlier on in January (5th,  2016), Fulani militants abducted and murdered Akaeze Ofulue III, the obi or king of Ubulu-Ukwu, southwest Biafra, west of the Oshimili River.

On Friday 5 May 2016, the troopers wrestled the relay baton of death from their Boko Haram surrogate in Uzo-Uwani and returned to Aba, 100 miles to the south, for yet another free firing stop-over at the commercial city, murdering 3-8 Biafrans this time… The last time they free-fired Aba was 9 February 2016. On that occasion, a genocidist brigade murdered 22 Biafrans.

Silence

Both the British and US governments which imposed Buhari in power in March 2015 have remained deafeningly silent over this slaughtering in Biafra (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html), a policy dictated principally to shield themselves from obvious censure from both domestic and international opinion for their appalling complicity. The British state broadcaster, the BBC, which broadcasts to southwestcentral Africa intensely, and has supported the Igbo genocide campaign throughout the past 50 years (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/bbc-nationalists-or-secessionists.html), is also studiously quiet over the catastrophe. Nowhere else on earth, in 2016, are any peoples murdered so monstrously with scant responses of revulsion from the rest of the world especially from the chanceries of those chiefly responsible for propping up this most ruthless genocidist regime in Africa.

Acknowledgement

As they keep mute on this raging savagery, it appears that both Cameron and Obama administrations and the BBC are reconciled to the awareness that the Biafrans do not consider themselves some doomed sitting ducks awaiting their dreadful enemies to ultimately decide their fate. After all, self-defence, as most people know, is at once a natural right and a right guaranteed in the universal declaration of human rights to which Britain, the US, and indeed genocidist Nigeria are all signatories.

(John Coltrane Sextet, “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost”, part-I of the five-part suite Meditations [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, percussion, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone, tambourine, bells; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 November 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Uzo-Uwani

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

The world turns and the world changes,

But one thing does not change.

In all my years, one thing does not change,

However you disguise it, this thing does not change:

The perpetual struggle between Good and Evil.

(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”, 1934)

In November 2014, I wrote a speculative commentary entitled “Thinking the unthinkable? Can Boko Haram attack Igboland?” in which I wondered about the possibilities of a direct attack on Biafra by this north Nigeria-based terrorist amalgam (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/thinking-of-unthinkable-can-boko-haram.html). I concluded the piece by noting that while Boko Haram possessed the capability to carry out such an attack (especially considering the expansive links the organisation has with the Nigeria genocidist military and police) the reason why such an invasion had not yet occurred was “undoubtedly strategic rather than just tactical” (emphasis in the original). Boko Haram has since emerged as the world’s deadliest terrorist organisation (see Institute for Economics & Peace, “Global Terror Index 2015”, http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf, accessed 17 November 2015).

It appears the Muhammadu Buhari islamist regime in Abuja may have reassessed the strategic considerations raised in that commentary and authorised a Boko Haram strike in Biafra to go ahead regardless of the consequences. The Nigerian terrorist attack on the Biafran province of Uzo-Uwani last Monday, 25 April 2016, was carried out by Boko Haram, not Fulani “herdspeople” or, more appropriately, Fulani militants, surely the Haram’s cousins, who are one of the globe’s five most deadly terrorist groups (see IEP’s study already cited). On the contrary, the Fulani “herdspeople” and their cows in Uzo-Uwani had been withdrawn the previous day (Sunday the 24th) and headed back north to their homeland to pave the way for the Boko Haram invasion.

Two hundred (200) Biafran children, women and men asleep were murdered by the terrorists in this premeditated military-style assault, begun shortly after 4am, fully armed with AK47 rifles, grenades, generously stacked ammunition and explosives – attacking homes, churches, schools, shops, markets…

The islamist terrorists attacked Uzo-Uwani with the same motivation, precision and virulence that an ISIS (less deadly record than Boko Haram [again, see IEP’s study]) terrorist unit would effect whilst attacking the Charlie Hebdo editorial board meeting in Paris, France, or attacking a Jewish supermarket in Paris or a rock concert in Paris or attacking an airport terminal in Brussels, Belgium, or attacking a metro train in Brussels or attacking a Tunis (Tunisia) hotel full of mostly British tourists… These latter attacks solicited appropriated responses (particularly invoking natural law, right of self-defence) from the targeted publics and the blood-soaked regime in Abuja can be in no doubt that the Igbo are fully conversant with their rights and responsibilities. Ironically, the two key foreign states that imposed islamist Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015, Britain and the United States, have the scourge of islamist terrorism as the current principal threat to their respective national security as the islamist genocidist regime in Abuja constitutes an existential threat to Igbo people. Just as Britain and the United States vow to defeat islamist terrorism, Biafra will defeat islamist genocidist jihadism.  

Savagery
I have not been able to publish here any of the raft of still pictures/videos of the Uzo-Uwani massacre that have been posted on the internet because of the sheer horror of the carnage. It is indeed indescribable savagery … revoltingly unspeakable sadistic savagery … The islamist terrorists were transported to Uzo-Uwani in buses from their bases in the Benue valley in eastcentral Nigeria, 100-150 miles away north of Biafra, and had crossed the innumerable military/police checkpoints that envelope all land route approaches to occupied-Biafra from Nigeria (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/in-wake-of-murder-of-three-possibly.html). In other words, checkpoints’ genocidist troopers flagged through the terrorists to their gruesome southbound-mission to Uzo-Uwani at dawn on Monday and later flagged the murderers through northbound back to their Benue bases soon after mission-accomplishment, four hours later… In the final scene of this carefully choreographed clockwork orgy of bloodbath, overseeing/coordinating genocidist troopers positioned in the region then moved into Uzo-Uwani soon after Boko Haram’s withdrawal at mid-morning from its murder scene, and began to “patrol” the district.

Eve

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the launch of phase-I of the Igbo genocide (29 May 2016) by Nigeria and Britain, the islamist regime in Nigeria has now added “Fulani-‘herdspeople’-and-their cows” as a crucial component to its death strategy in its campaign to annihilate Igbo people. A cardinal feature of the strategy is to swap or switch around murderers from the Boko Haram and Fulani militant adjunct forces at its disposal under the overarching command of “regular” genocidist military and police who, in addition, remain free to murder Biafran freedom movement demonstrators as has been the case since November 2015 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/onitsha-nigeria-4-th-march2016.html).

Uzo-Uwani duly inaugurated this new strategy compendium. With the Boko Haram bestialising murder of 200 Igbo ensconced in their beds and the vandalising destruction of the people’s property and spiritual and sociocultural institutions, all within a timeframe of just four hours, the islamist regime must feel highly elated at this initial grisly outcome. But the attack and outcome are intrinsically cowardly and scream of desperation. Muhammadu Buhari and all those in this strategy of death must now know that they cannot destroy Igbo resistance to this longest genocide in recent human history: 3.1 million and more and more over the past 50 years, Igbo have survived and will build an advanced state in this southwestcentral Africa that will reinforce the crucible of the enormous human capacity to triumph against evil.

Immediate

As the Igbo formulate appropriate programmes to ensure self-defence for the people, especially for those who live in the border regions, there are other urgent steps that they must embark upon, right away, in response to this “Fulani-‘herdspeople’-and-their-cows” strategy:

1. All Fulani “herdspeople and cows” must now leave all Biafra territory, east and west of the Oshimili River.

2. Igbo must henceforth boycott all beef and beef products emanating from the Fulani including, especially, those marketed throughout Biafra. Repeat: Don’t buy Fulani beef for either home consumption for self or family or for commercial purposes e.g. in cafés, hotels or restaurants. In the wake of Uzo-Uwani, islamist Fulani beef is toxic, not fit for purpose. The red-line has been crossed. For every one pound weight of islamist Fulani beef/beef product purchased by a Biafran, the latter adds approximately one British-pound sterling equivalent to the islamist Fulani genocidist treasury that enables the jihadist to purchase the next AK47, the next clutch of grenades, the next suicide belt, the next cache of explosives, and plan the next Uzo-Uwani style attack on Biafra. One must never be a party to their own annihilation. The knock-on effect of this immediate boycott is that the Fulani “herdspeople” will have no other realistic choice but withdraw their “cows” from Biafra when no longer able to be “sold” for beef/beef products, at once blowing the cover of the genocidists’ advance territorial occupying-positioning for the envisaged jihadist take-over.

3. All Igbo in the diaspora in Nigeria especially those living in Lagos/west Nigeria and in the Abuja region must join in this “Don’t buy Fulani beef for either home consumption for self or family or for commercial purposes e.g. in cafés, hotels or restaurants” immediately. No Igbo person is exempt from participating in this historic response.

4. It is now a challenge to Biafran livestock/animal husbandry farmers and experts to expand the growth and management of efi-Igbo to offset any loss in beef availability from this boycott. Given the expected specialist skill availability, Biafra can establish beef self-sufficiency within five years and embark on exporting the product to other parts of Africa and the world. In the meantime, people can turn to sheep, goat, chicken and fish for their protein requirement.

5. All adult Biafrans in the liberal-democratic spaces of abode in the Americas, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and elsewhere should, as a matter of urgency, compile a dossier of the Uzo-Uwani savagery and the other murders of Biafrans by the islamist genocidist military since November 2015 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/onitsha-nigeria-4-th-march2016.html)and brief their members of parliament/congresspeople/senators/deputies/prime ministers/presidents… Similarly, these adult Biafrans should present such dossier to their parish priest/pastor and district/provincial/regional bishop and archbishop… 

6. In the wake of Uzo-Uwani, each and every Biafran has a personal, individual role to act. The least is: inform someone, inform everyone. Muhammadu Buhari and his ilk cannot escape the tribunal to account for the Igbo genocide, this most gruesome genocide in Africa and one of the worst ever recorded across the world. There is no statute of limitations in international law in the pursuit, arrest, trial, sentencing and punishment of anyone involved in the perpetuation of the crime of genocide. Reinhold Hanning, 94, is currently on trial in a German court at Detmold for his role as a guard in an Auschwitz death during the Jewish genocide between January 1942 and June 1944 (The Telegraph, London, Friday 29 April 2016). Both Nigeria and joint-ally Britain are signatories to the relevant UN convention on genocide.

7. All adult Biafran woman and man, wherever they live on the planet, should contribute towards the arduous task to reconstructing Uzo-Uwani. This task begins today. People should contact community and church leaders on the ground in Uzo-Uwani and discuss how and where they can support this enormous rebuilding. No offer for Uzo-Uwani must be made via the quisling region regime in Enuugwu which failed monstrously to stand firmly by the people during last Monday’s islamists’ slaughtering of innocents.

(John Coltrane Sextet, “Consequences”, part-IV of the five-part suite Meditations [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, percussion, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone, tambourine, bells; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 November 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe