112th birthday of the venerable Akanu Ibiam

(Born 29 November 1906, Unwana, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

AFFABLE physician, erudite theologian, principled statesperson, works for 30 years in the Church of Scotland/Presbyterian Church rural medical programme in central and east regions of Biafra and who, in August 1967, returns to Queen Elizabeth II of England the three insignias of knighthood (OBE, KBE, KCMG) conferred on him by both her and her father, King George VI,  in protest against the instrumental role being played by Britain in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, when it and its Fulani islamist/jihadist-led client state Nigeria murder 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970, phases I-III of the genocide. This genocide, phase-IV, continues unabated since 13 January 1970. The Anglo-Nigerian genocidists have murdered tens of thousands of Igbo during this period.

Dr Ibiam’s towering position against the Igbo genocide is a challenge particularly to those clusters of the Igbo intelligentsia, especially in the diaspora, who have exercised a mortifying silence over the existential emergency that the Igbo face, currently, as the genocidists pursue phase-IV of the slaughtering… 

It is also a reminder of how deeply embedded British involvement in the execution of the genocide is as shown in that historic August 1967 letter of Dr Ibiam’s to Queen Elizabeth II in which he renounces the awarded 3-set knighthood from the English crown (see excerpts of letter below) and illustrated further by the calculated indifference of the Church of England, markedly its present leadership, to the genocide. 

Church of England

SINCE NOVEMBER 2015, during the course of the notorious génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari regime in Nigeria (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-it-is-indeed.html), imposed on the country by ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron and ex-US President Barack Obama (first African-descent US president in 233 years of the founding of the republic – https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2017/05/on-30-march-2016-i-published-essay.html), 3000 Igbo have been murdered in expanded scorched earth campaigns by its military and adjunct Fulani militia terrorists across Biafra. Sixty per cent of these murders have occurred in Onicha and neighbouring towns and villages, southwest Biafra, which are all located in the Onicha diocese of the Anglican communion, part of the Church of England, one of this denomination’s largest population districts in the world. Neither the Church of England nor its head, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who has known Muhammadu Buhari personally since the former enjoyed an exponentially-lucrative post working for French oil company Elf Aquitaine in the early 1980s in the petroleum oil industry in Biafra’s Oshimili Delta, has condemned any of these Igbo slaughters of the past three years or offered public condolences to the aggrieved and traumatised Anglican communion congregants... 

(paragraphs 14-20 of Dr Ibiam’s letter to Queen Elizabeth II of England, August 1967)

...

YOUR MAJESTY, the British officials in Nigeria are fully aware of all these. They know that we are injured and deeply grieved people and had been cruelly treated by our erstwhile fellow citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria. The British officials not only knew the crux of the matter, but they also encouraged Northern Nigeria to carry out and execute their nefarious plan against us. They are angry with Biafra because Biafra categorically refused to remain as part of the Nigeria federation and political unit only to be trampled upon, discriminated against and hated, ruthlessly exploited and denied her rights and privileges, and slaughtered whenever it suited the whims and caprices of the favoured people of Northern Nigeria. To add insult to injury, Your Majesty’s Britannic Government, instead of being neutral in our quarrels or finding ways and means to mediate and bring peace to the two countries, has now taken it upon herself to supply military aid to Nigeria to help them defeat and subjugate Biafra.

It is simply staggering for a Christian country like Britain to help a Moslem country militarily to crush another Christian country like Biafra. This is just too much for me, Your Gracious Majesty, this act of unfriendliness and treachery by the British Government towards the people of Republic of Biafra who, as Eastern Nigerians, had so much regard for Britain and British people.

In the circumstance, Your Majesty, I no longer wish to wear the garb of the British Knighthood. British fair play, British justice, and the Englishman’s word of honour which Biafra loved so much and cherished have become meaningless to Biafrans in general and to me in particular. Christian Britain has shamelessly let down Christian Biafra.

I love the Republic of Biafra very dearly and pray that, by grace of God, she may remain and continue to grow and live and always act like a truly Christian country for all times.

I am, your Majesty

Yours Most Respectfully

(AKANU IBIAM)

(John Coltrane Quintet, “The believer” {composer: McCoy Tyner} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Bryd, trumpet; Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Louis Hayes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 10 January 1958)

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Biafra Revisited (2006) and author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)

(https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Donald-Trump-great-Africa-ebook/dp/B07KFQHXKV/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1542585950&sr=8-1)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

49th anniversary of John Lennon’s decision to return MBE knighthood medal to Queen Elizabeth II over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide

(Medal is sent back to Buckingham Palace, London, 25 November 1969)

ICONIC Beetle’s John Lennon sends back the 1965 MBE knighthood medal bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth II of England over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide with its client state’s Fulani islamist/jihadist-led Nigeria in which 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbo population are murdered between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 (phases I-III) in the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa…

Forty-nine years after Lennon’s towering stand, Britain is still deeply embedded in this most devastating, expansive, and longest genocide of contemporary history … It chiefly arms and provides robust political and diplomatic cover internationally to its Nigerian on the ground génocidaires who continue the slaughtering of Igbo people unrelentingly in occupied Biafra (phase-IV) and are now assisted by their Boko Haram and Fulani militia adjuncts, two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations .

Nigeria has murdered tens of thousands of Igbo during this phase including the 3000 killed since October 2015 under the leadership of the fiendish jihadist Muhammadu Buhari imposed in office by ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron and ex-US President Barack Obama – first African-descent president of the United States in 233 years of the founding of the republic and the only US president in office who has actively supported the Igbo genocide in these past 52 years.

FORTY-NINE years on, John Lennon’s witness to this genocide is an enduring challenge to all artists/intellectuals and everyone else: say “no!” to the Igbo genocide … Register your opposition to this evil today in the best way you deem fit … Your continuing silence on this crime against humanity, perpetrated by Britain and Fulani Nigeria, can no longer be an option. Speak out! Now is the time.

-----------------------------------------------------

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Biafra Revisited (2006), Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011) and author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)

(https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-Donald-Trump-great-Africa-ebook/dp/B07KFQHXKV/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1542585950&sr=8-1)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

219th birthday of Alexander Pushkin

(Born 6 June 1799, Moscow, Russia)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

ARGUABLY Russia’s most famous poet and father of modern Russian literature whose matrilineal great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, is an enslaved African who works himself through to become an engineer, regional governor, and general in the czarist army and rises to the Russian aristocracy, and whose great-granddaughter Nadejda de Torby marries Prince George of Battenburg of the British royal family, uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, grandfather of Prince Harry who, on 19 May 2018, marries Meghan Markle whose mother, Doria Ragland, is African American

(Miles Davis Quintet plays “Footprints”, a composition by Wayne Shorter [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, US, 24-25 October 1966]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Kingsley Kanu, “The Queen should put pressure on the Nigerian government to respect the people of Biafra”, The Independent, London, Monday 16 April 2018

(British Queen Elizabeth II)

Kingsley Kanu*****

IT HAPPENED on the afternoon of 14 September last year, 2017.

I had come back to visit my family home in Biafra a few weeks earlier from Germany, where I now live. I call it Biafra because Biafra is my country, not Nigeria.

My mother and father, my older brother Nnamdi Kanu and I were in the house, along with friends. It was my son’s thirteenth birthday. I had just been on the phone congratulating him when the first gas canisters were thrown over the fence followed by gunfire. It was 4pm. The house was surrounded by Nigerian soldiers.

I found it hard to breathe. Everyone was panicking. I was witnessing a full on military attack on my parents’ home. I saw a soldier jump over the high fence that surrounds our house and open our main gate. He started shooting at the young men inside. That was when I realised if I didn’t escape now I would die.

There were soldiers and guns everywhere. How I got out only heaven knows. I remember I had to jump two walls. There was sporadic firing from the soldiers and one of the people who tried to follow me, a good family friend, was killed. My youngest brother, Emmanuel, had left a few minutes before and was only a few metres away. Since that afternoon, I’ve heard nothing from my mother and father and my brother Nnamdi.

THE ONLY explanation for my family being targeted by the Nigerian government is that we believe in an independent Biafra. People may remember the Biafran War fifty years ago. For a few years, between 1967 and 1970 we were a free state. I was born during the war in December 1969. My family had to leave our home in Umuahia to escape the invasion by the Nigerian army then. My mother was pregnant with me and it was no longer safe. There was fighting just behind our house. 

Biafran people were shot and bombed and starved to death; millions of them. Our experience was genocide. My parents lost most of their relatives.

SO I GREW up in an occupied country, an unhappy country. We were forced to be part of a state manufactured by colonial rule: Nigeria. I remember my father, like everyone else, was given the equivalent of £20 in recompense, to start again.

But despite everything, we had a very happy childhood and a loving family life. My older brother Nnamdi and I did everything together. We were about the same height, so we even shared clothes and shoes. He took care of me as a younger brother and guided me. My father traded in farm produce. Now he is a traditional ruler. People look up to him. They trust him.

When I was younger I knew I couldn’t stay in Biafra. Since the mid-’70s our culture, our history, our people had been all but erased. My brother and I needed to do something to help people to remember and we couldn’t do it there.

I moved to Germany sixteen years ago and raised a family. He moved to London and began the online Radio Biafra, broadcasting in English and Igbo, the language of Biafra, stories about our country, music, commentary and news. The Nigerian government has wanted to shut this down since it first broadcast in 2010.

NNAMDI also started our organisation, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, seeking peaceful ways to bring about self-determination and independence for Biafra through democracy. We are a young organisation. Many of our members are too young to remember the war, but we are passionate that we will see an independent Biafra and a free Biafran people in our lifetimes.

Many Biafrans have been killed or detained before, during and after the 14th September 2017. There have been peaceful protests to commemorate the war where the security services have just opened fire on us.

AS FAR AS we are concerned, the government of Mohammadu Buhari is determined to stifle the independence movement. This week, President Buhari will meet the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The Queen needs to know that, if my experience is anything to go by, Buhari’s government will resort to the most serious human rights violations in order to gag the people of Biafra.

 *****Kingsley Kanu who lives in Germany is younger brother of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

111th birthday of the venerable Akanu Ibiam

(Born 29 November 1906, Unwana, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

AFFABLE physician, erudite theologian, principled statesperson, works for 30 years in the Church of Scotland/Presbyterian Church rural medical programme in central and east regions of Biafra and who, in August 1967, returns to Queen Elizabeth II of England the three insignias of knighthood (OBE, KBE, KCMG) conferred on him by both her and her father, King George VI,  in protest against the central role being played by Britain in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, when it and its Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led client state Nigeria murder 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 (phases I-III of the genocide).

Dr Ibiam’s towering position against the Igbo genocide is a challenge particularly to those clusters of the Igbo intelligentsia, especially in the diaspora, who have exercised a mortifying silence over the existential emergency that the Igbo face, currently, as the genocidists pursue phase-IV of the slaughtering … It is also a reminder of how deeply embedded British involvement in the execution of the genocide is as shown in that historic August 1967 letter of Dr Ibiam’s to Queen Elizabeth II in which he renounces the awarded 3-set knighthood from the English crown (see excerpts of letter below) and illustrated further by the calculated indifference of the Church of England to the genocide. 

Church of England

SINCE NOVEMBER 2015, during the course of the génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari regime in Nigeria (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-it-is-indeed.html), over 2000 Igbo have been murdered in expanded scorched earth campaigns by its military/adjunct Fulani militia across Biafra. Sixty per cent of these murders have occurred in Onicha and neighbouring towns and villages, southwest Biafra, which are all located in the Onicha diocese of the Anglican communion, part of the Church of England, one of this denomination’s largest population districts in the world. Neither the Church of England nor its head, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who has known Muhammadu Buhari personally since the former worked in the petroleum oil industry in Nigeria in the early 1980s, has condemned any of these Igbo slaughters of the past two years or offered public condolences to the aggrieved and traumatised Anglican communion congregants...

(paragraphs 14-20 of Dr Ibiam’s letter to Queen Elizabeth II of England, August 1967)

...

YOUR MAJESTY, the British officials in Nigeria are fully aware of all these. They know that we are injured and deeply grieved people and had been cruelly treated by our erstwhile fellow citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria. The British officials not only knew the crux of the matter, but they also encouraged Northern Nigeria to carry out and execute their nefarious plan against us. They are angry with Biafra because Biafra categorically refused to remain as part of the Nigeria federation and political unit only to be trampled upon, discriminated against and hated, ruthlessly exploited and denied her rights and privileges, and slaughtered whenever it suited the whims and caprices of the favoured people of Northern Nigeria. To add insult to injury, Your Majesty’s Britannic Government, instead of being neutral in our quarrels or finding ways and means to mediate and bring peace to the two countries, has now taken it upon herself to supply military aid to Nigeria to help them defeat and subjugate Biafra.

It is simply staggering for a Christian country like Britain to help a Moslem country militarily to crush another Christian country like Biafra. This is just too much for me, Your Gracious Majesty, this act of unfriendliness and treachery by the British Government towards the people of Republic of Biafra who, as Eastern Nigerians, had so much regard for Britain and British people.

In the circumstance, Your Majesty, I no longer wish to wear the garb of the British Knighthood. British fair play, British justice, and the Englishman’s word of honour which Biafra loved so much and cherished have become meaningless to Biafrans in general and to me in particular. Christian Britain has shamelessly let down Christian Biafra.

I love the Republic of Biafra very dearly and pray that, by grace of God, she may remain and continue to grow and live and always act like a truly Christian country for all times.

I am, your Majesty

Yours Most Respectfully

(AKANU IBIAM)

(John Coltrane Quintet, “The believer” {composer: McCoy Tyner} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Bryd, trumpet; Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Louis Hayes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 10 January 1958)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

48th anniversary of John Lennon’s decision to return MBE knighthood medal to Queen Elizabeth II over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide

(Medal is sent back to Buckingham Palace, London, 25 November 1969)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

ICONIC Beetle’s John Lennon sends back the 1965 MBE knighthood medal bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth II of England over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide with its client state’s Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria in which 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbo population are murdered between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 (phases I-III) in the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa – 48 years after Lennon’s towering stand, Britain is deeply embedded in this most devastating, expansive, and longest genocide of contemporary history … It chiefly arms and provides robust political and diplomatic cover internationally to its Nigeria on-the-ground génocidaires who continue the slaughtering of Igbo people unrelentingly (phase-IV) in scorched earth military operations in Biafra they have occupied since 13 January 1970

(John Lennon, “Oh my love” [composers: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1971])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

218th birthday of Alexander Pushkin

(Born 6 June 1799, Moscow, Russia)

ARGUABLY Russia’s most famous poet and father of modern Russian literature whose matrilineal great-grandfather, Abram Gannibal, is an enslaved African who works himself through to become an engineer, regional governor, and general in the czarist army and rises to the Russian aristocracy, and whose great-granddaughter Nadejda de Torby marries Prince George of Battenburg of the British royal family, uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II

(Miles Davis Quintet plays “Footprints”, a composition by Wayne Shorter [personnel: Davis, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, US, 24-25 October 1966])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

110th birthday of Akanu Ibiam

(Born 29 November 1906, Unwana, Biafra)

Affable physician, erudite theologian, principled statesperson, works for 30 years in the Church of Scotland/Presbyterian Church rural medical programme in central and east regions of Biafra and who, in 1967, returns to Queen Elizabeth II of England the three insignias of knighthood (OBE, KBE, KCMG) conferred on him by both her and her father, King George VI,  in protest against the central role being played by Britain in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, when it and its client state Nigeria murder 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970

(John Coltrane, “Dear Lord” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 26 May 1965]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

47th anniversary of John Lennon’s decision to return MBE knighthood medal to Queen Elizabeth II over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide

(Medal is sent back to Buckingham Palace, London, 25 November 1969)

ICONIC BEETLE’s John Lennon sends back the 1965 MBE knighthood medal bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth II of England over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide with its client state Nigeria in which 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent  of this nation’s population are murdered between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 (phases I-III) in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Draft of the Beatle’s John Lennon’s historic November 1969 letter to Queen Elizabeth II of England renouncing his MBE knighthood in protest against British role in Igbo genocide appears in Liverpool (England) car boot auction!

(John Lennon:... medal is sent back to Buckingham Palace, London, 25 November 1969)

FWD: The Telegraph reporters,  “John Lennon letter to the Queen explaining return of MBE valued at £60,000 after being found in car boot sale”, The Telegraph, London, 27 October 2016

A LETTER WRITTEN BY John Lennon to the Queen explaining why he returned his MBE has been valued at £60,000, say auctioneers.

The note remains in royal archives but a version of the letter was brought along by a member of the public to a memorabilia event in Liverpool on Wednesday.

The person, who wishes to remain anonymous, assumed it was a copy and said they found it tucked away inside the sleeve of a record contained in a collection of 45rpm singles they bought for £10 at a car boot sale 20 years ago.

Recently unearthed in the owner’s attic, the letter has been described as an “incredible find” by Darren Julien of Los Angeles-based Julien’s Auctions who believes it may be the original letter.

Mr Julien has a theory that Lennon’s letter was a draft version that he never sent to the Queen because the ink in the signature had been smudged.

He said: “If you’re writing to the Queen, you want the letter to look pretty perfect, you don’t want the ink to be smudged. This suggests that he wrote a second version of the letter, which was the one that was actually sent to the Queen.

“We’ll be doing some further research but this could be the Beatles find of the year. There is no doubt that the handwriting is definitely that of John Lennon.”

The letter (draft)

In his letter, Lennon wrote: “Your Majesty I am returning this MBE in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam and against Cold Turkey slipping down the chart.

“With love John Lennon

“John Lennon of Bag.”

The letter was one of a number of items belonging to members of the public that were valued during the memorabilia day at The Beatles Story exhibition at the city’s Albert Dock. 

Martin King, of The Beatles Story, said: “This is an absolute gem and we are thrilled to have seen a piece of memorabilia with such historical significance. Ironically, 26th October was the day that The Beatles received their MBEs from The Queen so it’s quite fitting that the letter was brought into us on the exact same date many years later.”

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Dr Akanu Ibiam’s letter to Queen Elizabeth II: The world appears to have hardly changed in 50 years…

(Venerable: Dr Akanu Ibiam)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Forty-nine years ago to the day, in August 1967, the venerable Dr Akanu Ibiam, Christian missionary physician, erudite theologian and statesperson who had worked for 30 years in the Church of Scotland/Presbyterian Church rural medical programmes across central and east regions of Biafra, wrote a 20-paragraph historic letter to Queen Elizabeth II of England. 

In his letter, Dr Ibiam denounced, unreservedly, the central role being played by Britain in the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, which had then entered its second year of unremittingly ruthless slaughter. In protest to this role, Dr Ibiam renounced and returned to the British head of state the three insignias of knighthood (OBE, KBE, KCMG) that both she and her father, King George VI, had earlier conferred on the esteemed missionary physician for services to church and state.

Britain and Nigeria would ultimately murder 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, by 12 January 1970 at the end of phase-III of the genocide. The genocide then moved on to phase-IV which has gone on to this day...

Testament vs that establishment consensus

As is evident in the last four main paragraphs of Dr Ibiam’s letter published below (paragraphs 14-17 in the original), this document could easily have been written by the great humanist to Queen Elizabeth last year, 2015, after the month of  March, when this same Britain, now under the political leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron, who was born 5 months after the 29 July 1966 launch of the genocide (coordinated then by No. 10 Downing Street resident Prime Minister Harold Wilson), installed Muhammadu Buhari, the notorious genocidist trooper of north/north central Biafra killing fields (July 1967-January 1970), as new head of Nigeria regime. No, Dr Ibiam could well have written this testament a few days ago! As the world duly knows, Buhari now drives this segment of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide as ruthlessly as he deems fit, murdering thousands of Igbo people in all regions of Biafra especially since October 2015, aware that, as before, he and Nigeria have the back of the British government to ensure, particularly, that Nigeria is shielded from international outrage and sanctions in its strategic goal to destroy Igbo people. Consequently, the British government is yet to condemn any of these murders nor confront its own involvement in the perpetration of the entire 50-year stretch of this most gruesome and devastating genocide of contemporary history. 

Quite gravely, there is a haunting half-a-century-old consensus shared by the critical clusters of the British establishment including the political “class”, academia, media, charities, human rights, even the church, to maintain a deafening silence as the British state uninterruptedly wages this Igbo genocide in alliance with its on the ground Hausa-Fulani north region islamist-led client state in Nigeria. The goal is pointedly to protect, in perpetuity, Britain’s perceived strategic and economic interests in this southwestcentral Africa region – 3500 miles away from Britain. The fact that this alliance appears to challenge some of the more predictable characterisation of the salient features of contemporary international politics is indicative of how much more resilient and enduring shared worldviews (for instance, in this case, to collaborate to wage a genocide on a third party, a mutually-targeted people, for complementary interests) from supposedly or seemingly contradictory state systems can be.

(Paragraphs 14-20 of Dr Ibiam’s letter to Queen Elizabeth II of England, August 1967)

(Queen Elizabeth II: recipient of Dr Ibiam’s August 1967 letter)

...

YOUR MAJESTY, the British officials in Nigeria are fully aware of all these. They know that we are injured and deeply grieved people and had been cruelly treated by our erstwhile fellow citizens of Federal Republic of Nigeria. The British officials not only knew the crux of the matter, but they also encouraged Northern Nigeria to carry out and execute their nefarious plan against us. They are angry with Biafra because Biafra categorically refused to remain as part of the Nigeria federation and political unit only to be trampled upon, discriminated against and hated, ruthlessly exploited and denied her rights and privileges, and slaughtered whenever it suited the whims and caprices of the favoured people of Northern Nigeria. To add insult to injury, Your Majesty’s Britannic Government, instead of being neutral in our quarrels or finding ways and means to mediate and bring peace to the two countries, has now taken it upon herself to supply military aid to Nigeria to help them defeat and subjugate Biafra.

It is simply staggering for a Christian country like Britain to help a Moslem country militarily to crush another Christian country like Biafra. This is just too much for me, Your Gracious Majesty, this act of unfriendliness and treachery by the British Government towards the people of Republic of Biafra who, as Eastern Nigerians, had so much regard for Britain and British people.

In the circumstance, Your Majesty, I no longer wish to wear the garb of the British Knighthood. British fair play, British justice, and the Englishman’s word of honour which Biafra loved so much and cherished have become meaningless to Biafrans in general and to me in particular. Christian Britain has shamelessly let down Christian Biafra.

I love the Republic of Biafra very dearly and pray that, by grace of God, she may remain and continue to grow and live and always act like a truly Christian country for all times.

I am, your Majesty

Yours Most Respectfully

(AKANU IBIAM)

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Wise one” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 24 April 1964)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

46th anniversary of John Lennon’s decision to return MBE knighthood medal to Queen Elizabeth II over British instrumental role in the Igbo genocide

(Medal is sent back to Buckingham Palace, London, 25 November 1969)

Iconic Beetle’s John Lennon sends back the 1965 MBE knighthood medal bestowed on him by Queen Elizabeth II of England over Britain’s instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide with its client state Nigeria in which 3.1 million Igbo people, one-quarter of this nation’s population, are murdered between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe