Towards 29 May 2019 – reminder of those three engraved words that encapsulate the very unlikely outcome of the Igbo genocide, this most gruesome and devastating slaughtering of a people not seen in Africa since the late 19th century/early 20th century, launched by Britain and its client Fulani-led jihadist islamist Nigeria state on 29 May 1966: Igbo people survived

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Extraordinary!

IT IS INDEED an extraordinary survival story of history that someone that goes by the name Obiageli, Nkechi, Chinyere, Ifeoma, Amaechi, Nwakaego, Ngozi, Chinelo, Ada, Uzo, Chibundu, Nkemdilim, Chukwuka, Okwuonicha, Chikwendu, Ogonna, Nwafo, Ikechukwu, Onwuatuegwu, Chukwuemeka, Onyekachi, Nnadozie, Okonkwo, Chido, Okafo, Chikwendu, Nkeiiru, Ifeyinwa, Nkemakolam, Ikenga, Uchendu, Okennwa, Nwaoyiri, Okonta, Ukpabi, Amaka, Ofokaaja, Nnamdi, Mbazulike, Chukwuma, Kanayo, Ndukaeze, Chidi, Kamene, Nneka, Onyeka, Osita, Kalu, Ifekandu, Obioma, Chioma, Ndubuisi…  actually walks the face of the earth, today, having survived this programmed sentence of death by Anglo-Nigeria genocidists beginning on Sunday 29 May 1966 and through to 12 January 1970 (phases I-III). 

The genocidists murdered the grisly total of 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population during the period. The genocide still continues today, Sunday 12 May 2019, with the additional murder of tens of thousands of Igbo people since 13 January 1970 (phase-IV), including the 3000 Igbo murdered since November 2015 by fiendish génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari, installed in office as Nigeria’s head of regime in February 2015 by none other than ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama, first African-descent president in 233 years of the founding of the United States republic, and ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron.

OBAMA’s support of the ongoing Igbo genocide is an unconscionable tragedy, the abhorrent legacy of his presidency.

(Barack Hussein Obama... unconscionable tragedy, abhorrent legacy of a presidency)

Wilsonian decree of Igbo mass slaughter

NONE of the lead génocidaires of this genocide – Harold Wilson, Adesanya Maja Adekunle, Olusegun Obasanjo, Obafemi Awolowo, Allison Ayida, Ibrahim Haruna, Tony Enaharo, Yakubu Danjuma, Yakubu Gowon, Jeremiah Useni, Muhammadu Buhari, Oluwole Rotimi… reckoned, in their dire prognosis of the outcome of the 44 months of Igbo slaughtering that they directed and executed, that the Igbo stood a chance of surviving. 

Harold Wilson, then British prime minister who chiefly coordinated the genocide from the comfort of his offices and residence at 10 Downing Street, London, 3000 miles away from Biafra, had notoriously set the pace for his fellows on what he saw as the future of the Igbo when he informed Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122). 

(Harold Wilson: “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”)

ON the ground genocidist trooper “boy-boy” Adesanya Maja Adekunle who was engaged in the slaughter theater in south Biafra in 1968 was so enthralled by his “massa” Wilson’s notorious directive that he publicly reminded the world, in a news conference attended largely by British and other foreign correspondents, of the definitive goal of this genocide: “We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces march into the centre of I[g]bo territory, we shoot at everything, even at things that don’t move” (The Economist, London, 24 August 1968).

(Adekunle: “I want to prevent even one I[g]bo having even one piece to eat ... We shoot at everything that moves in ... I[g]bo territory ... even at things that don’t move”)

Repudiation

BY SURVIVING the genocide, the Igbo have not only dramatically repudiated this vile Wilsonian decree of Igbo mass slaughter and the Adekunleist wretched-soul-of-“boy boy”-executioner, but they are poised today, 53 years later, as the Biafra freedom movement has grown inexorably, to resume the interrupted construction of their beloved state of Biafra – Land of the Rising Sun.

(Cecil Taylor, “Pontos cantados” [personnel: Taylor, piano; recorded: One night with Blue Note – the historic all-star reunion concert, Town Hall, New York, US, 22 February 1985])

******Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Compelling lessons for African peoples in this April month of genocide awareness and prevention ... The European World conquest of Africa is at once a genocide campaign and brigandage – Belgium, Germany and Britain’s relay-genocides-race of first half of 20th century Africa: Herero, Nama, Derg Damara, Igbo

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE state in Africa, as presently constituted, can only lead Africans to perdition. 

The European World “abandoned” a toxic waste that goes by the name “state” in Africa and Africans, themselves, must get rid of it to survive. African peoples, just as others across the world, are in the position to construct organic state forms that are responsive to their worldviews and progress. 

The state is a transient relationship that exists at the behest of the goodwill and aspirations of its constituent people or peoples. If the logic of its existence is to murder and pulverise, it is impossible to see any prospect for its future. Does a Nigeria, for instance, realistically see any future of meaningful development in the wake of the Igbo genocide, in these past 53 years? After murdering 3.1 million Igbo people and tens of thousands additional Igbo since 29 May 1966? Definitely, definitively, no.

It is therefore a dreadful proposition to conceptualise any progress of human or other lives in a genocide state – the likes of Nigeria, the Sudan, the Congo … or whatever their ghastly signatures denote. These are contraptions of murder and murdering; nothing else, as the salient features of this history demonstrate:

EuroConqueror genocidist state

IN OCTOBER 1904, Lother von Trotha (pictured above), the general officer commanding the genocidist German military forces engaged in the genocide of the Herero, Nama and Derg Damara peoples of southwest Africa (contemporary Namibia) issued the following proclamation which he unambiguously captioned an “Extermination Order”: “The Herero people will have to leave the country. Otherwise I shall force them to do so by means of guns … [E]very Herero, whether found armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot. I shall not accept any more women and children. I shall drive them back to their people – otherwise I shall order shots to be fired at them. These are my orders to the Herero people” (Horst Drechsler, “Let Us Die Fighting”: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German Imperialism, 1884-1915, London: Zed, 1980: 156-157).

A. Consequences: Haunting milestones

(1)  1904-1907: In this German state-organised genocide of Herero people, supervised by Lother von Trotha, the Germans murdered 65,000 out of 80,000 Herero during the period – i.e., 80 per cent of the total Herero population was wiped out

(2)  1904-1907: In this German state-organised genocide of Nama people, supervised by Lother von Trotha, the Germans murdered 10,000 Nama during the period  – i.e., 50 per cent of the total Nama population was wiped out

(3)  1904-1907: In this German state-organised genocide of Berg Damara people, supervised by Lother von Trotha, the Germans do not have the original population figure for the Berg Damara at the onset of the genocide, but, according to their own estimates, the genocidists may have wiped out 30 per cent of the total Berg Damara population by 1907

LEST WE FORGET, Germany had duly received the lead European-World powers’ instituted relay-genocides-in-Africa race baton from none other than Leopold II (pictured above), first cousin of Queen Victoria of England, grandson of  King Louis Philippe of France, and second king of the Belgians. It was now evident, if ever there were any doubts, that the European World-conqueror/conquest state in Africa, the “Berlin-state”, right from the outset, in the wake of the infamous November 1884-February 1885 Berlin conference, was at once an occupying and genocide state. During the course of 30 years, 1878-1908, genocidist Leopold II-led Belgian monarchy/state carried out the genocide of a host of constituent peoples in the Congo River basin of central Africa (2,442,240 sq km landmass, 80 times the size of Belgium). Leopold II and the Belgian state murdered 13 million African constituent peoples (Isidore Ndaywel  è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998: 344). The génocidaire Belgian king was adamant why he supervised this long-stretched genocide, equally obsessed, as his other European league of conquerors,  with Belgium’s own share of the conquest and occupation of Africa: “I do not want to risk … losing a fine chance to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake” (Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999: 58).

B. Consequences: Haunting milestones

JUST OVER 60 YEARS to the day after German genocidist general von Throta’s “Extermination Order” to destroy the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa, Britain, occupying the prized lands of southwestcentral Africa 2200 miles away in the wake of the Berlin conference, took over the baton of the European World relay-genocides-race in Africa from Germany. In May 1966, Britain, under the prime ministership of Harold Wilson (pictured above), embarked on the genocide of Igbo people. Beginning in the mid-1930s, the Igbo had spearheaded the restoration-of-independence movement for the constituent peoples in British-occupied Nigeria – an agglomeration of states that are a hefty slice indeed of the scrumptious African cake à la Leopold II. Harold Wilson sought to “punish” the Igbo for their historic role. 

Instructively, unlike the Belgians and Germans earlier, the British were able to construct a panoply of pan-African nations from north Nigeria (especially Fulani, Kanuri, Nupe, Hausa, Jukun, Bachama, Jawara) and west Nigeria (particularly Yoruba, Urhobo, Edo) to directly execute this genocide against an African people on the ground, on its behalf. But the actual operationalising mission itself could easily have been taken directly from von Throta’s “Extermination Order”. 

FOR Britain, its eminent position in Africa (and the rest of the world) during this epoch could not be overstated. Having remained the lead beneficiary of 400 years of the pan-European World enslavement of African peoples since the latter part of the 17th century (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature, Reading and Dakar: African Renaissance, 2011: 1-6), it had now become the European World premier power in Africa after being part of the victorious US-led alliance that defeated its German global-domination rivals twice in the essentially intra-European wars of 1914-1918 (so-called World War I) and 1939-1945 (so-called World War II).

Such was the sheer impudence of Harold Wilson as he oversaw the slaughter of the Igbo from his 10 Downing Street London official residence,  particularly in the catastrophic months of 1968-1969, that he went on record to inform Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, London & New York: Quartet Books, 1977: 122). Few would fail to note the  grotesquely expressed diminution of African life made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide in Europe. Besides, Britain was a key participant in the drafting of the crucial 1948 UN convention on the crime of genocide, 18 years before it launched the Igbo genocide, and one of its early signatories. Britain and its pan-African allies eventually murdered 3.1 million Igbo, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, during phases I-III of the genocide, 29 May-12 January 1970, and an additional count of tens of thousands of Igbo murdered in phase-IV of the genocide, 13 January 1970-present day. 

AS THE final tally of the murder of the Igbo people demonstrates, Harold Wilson probably had the perverted satisfaction of having his Nigerian co-genocidists perform far in excess of the prime minister’s grim target, a subject coldly stated in Wilson’s own memoirs where he notes that the Nigerian military, equipped zealously by Britain, expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to achieve its annhilative mission in the Igbo genocide than the amount used by the British armed forces  “during the whole” of  the 1939-1945 war or “World War II” (Harold Wilson, Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1971: 630, added emphasis). On this feature, Robert Scott, military advisor in the British diplomatic mission in Nigeria during the Igbo genocide acknowledges, equally gravely, that as genocidist Nigeria military forces unleashed their attacks on Igbo cities, towns and villages, they were the “best defoliant agent known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970).

Survivors’ commitment

SOMEONE or a people who survives genocide is simultaneously a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter, the dehumanisation, the immiseration: “Happy Survival”!

The Derg Damara, Herero, Igbo and Nama are great survivors and victors – and precisely because of these outcomes, these peoples will play a critical role in charting the very nature of the future relationship of Africa and Belgium, Africa and Germany, Africa and Britain, and Africa and the rest of the European World. 

The perpetrators of these genocides, Belgium, Britain and Germany, must acknowledge and atone, fully, for executing these crimes against humanity. Belgium, Germany and Britain must each pay comprehensive reparations at once to the host of constituent African peoples in the Congo River basin, Derg Damara, Herero, Nama and Igbo peoples, respectively, for committing this stretch of genocides between 1878 and 2018. 

THESE crimes will never be forgotten by the survivors and the rest of the world. This is the proclamation that surely endures and not General von Trotha’s “Extermination Order”.

(John Coltrane Duo, “Mars” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, bells; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 22 February 1967])

References
Drechsler, Horst. “Let Us Die Fighting”: The Struggle of the Herero and Nama against German Imperialism, 1884-1915. London: Zed, 1980.

Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature. Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011.

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.

Isidore Ndaywel  è Nziem. Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique. Paris: Duculot, 1998.

John Coltrane Duo. “Mars”. Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 22 February 1967.

Morris, Roger. Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, London & New York: Quartet Books, 1977.

Wilson, Harold. Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record. London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1971.

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe