Showing posts with label phase-IV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phase-IV. Show all posts

Sunday, 13 January 2019

49th anniversary of Nigeria’s launch of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide

(resplendent Biafra flag: ... on the ascent...)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

WHAT IS NIGERIA? This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist and kakistocratic state, currently led by Fulani islamist/jihadists whose homeland is in the Futa Djallon highlands of northwest Africa, 1500 miles away.

Nigeria was created by Britain in the early 1900s after the latter’s conquest and occupation of  the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, stretching to the Atlantic coast, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf  by its Fulani confederate. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, if one uses any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic variable, year in, year out.

Igbo genocide: Africa’s age of pestilence

Nigeria inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadful mid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966 when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded to Biafra. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the mid 1930s-October 1960. 

IN THIS foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocide against the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa between 1904-1907.

BESIDES Britain, Nigeria was supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources: principally the Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, Egypt, 
Syria, the Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Niger, Guinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars in Africa carried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.

Phase-IV ... and abhorrent legacy of US’s first African-descent president

On 13 January 1970, 49 years ago to the day, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigeria launched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders have continued, unabated, to this day, as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html)

SINCE imposing jihadist-genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html) particularly in his last two years in office. Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US and elsewhere in the Americas during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against the Igbo, an African people in this continent of his fathers, is an incalculable tragedy, this presidential legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 3000 Igbo have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces, Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations

Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria ever condemned any of these murders. It had been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016). 

Breakthrough

THE IGBO will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import of this development.
(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 6 June 1968]) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonichaof Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe






Saturday, 13 January 2018

48th anniversary of Nigeria’s launch of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide

(resplendent Biafra flag: ... on the ascent...)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

WHAT IS NIGERIA? This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist state, currently occupied by Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists whose Fulani affiliate hegemons came from their home in the Futa Djallon highlands of northwest Africa, 1500 miles away.

Nigeria was created by Britain in the early 1900s after the latter’s conquest and occupation of  the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, stretching to the Atlantic coast, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Hausa-Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf  by its Hausa-Fulani confederates. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, using any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic variable, year in, year out.

Igbo genocide: Age of pestilence

Nigeria inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadful mid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966 when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded to Biafra. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the 1930s-1960. 

IN THIS foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocide against the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa between 1904-1907
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/blog-post_23.html).

BESIDES Britain, Nigeria was supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources: principally the Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, Egypt, Syria, the Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Chad, NigerGuinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars in Africa carried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.

Phase-IV ... and legacy of US’s first African-descent president

ON 13 January 1970, 48 years ago to the day, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigeria launched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders have continued, unabated, to this day, as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html)

Since imposing jihadist-genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html) particularly in his last two years in office. Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against an African people in this continent of his fathers is an incalculable tragedy, a legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 3000 Igbo have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces, Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria ever condemned any of these murders. It had been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016). 

Breakthrough

THE IGBO will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import of this development.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Untitled original 90314” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Friday, 13 January 2017

47th anniversary of Nigeria’s launch of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide

(resplendent Biafra flag: ... on the ascent...)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

WHAT IS NIGERIA? This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist state. It was created by Britain in the early 1900s after its conquest and occupation of  the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Hausa-Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf  by its Hausa-Fulani confederates. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, using any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic variable, year in, year out.

Igbo genocide: Age of pestilence

Nigeria inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadful mid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966 when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded to Biafra. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the 1930s-1960. 

In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocide against the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa between 1904-1907 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/blog-post_23.html).

Besides Britain, Nigeria was supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources:  principally the Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, Egypt, Syria, the Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Chad, NigerGuinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars in Africa carried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.

Phase-IV

On 13 January 1970, 47 years ago to the day, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigeria launched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders have continued, unabated, to this day, as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV
http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html

Since imposing genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, the outgoing US President Barack Obama has actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html). Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against an African people in this continent of his fathers is an incalculable tragedy, a legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 2000 Igbo have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces, Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria has ever condemned any of these murders. It has been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016).

Breakthrough

The Igbo will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import of this development.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Dusk-Dawn” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe














Tuesday, 17 November 2015

Igbo legacy for the freedom clergy

The Igbo clergy, during these times of existential threat to the people, does have its work cut out. The role of the church in freedom movements has been invaluable as the world has seen in recent history – particularly in places such as Poland, the United States (the African American church, for example), several countries in Central/South America and, of course, in Biafra as occurred, beginning 49 years ago to the day… 

Surely in the next sermon in the churches and cathedrals and assembly halls of the land, the congregation will be interested to learn of the legacies of the venerables Akanu Ibiam, Godfery Okoye, Benjamin Nwankiti and others who gave their unalloyed support to the inalienable right of the people to freedom during phases I-III of the genocide by Nigeria, launched on 29 May 1966. 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nations population were murdered in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa.
(Bishop Godfrey Okoye)
(Dr Akanu Ibiam)
(Cardinal Francis Arinze)
The Igbo are therefore entitled to carefully evaluate the comments, any comments, of contemporary clerics in Biafra as the people resist this phase-IV of the genocide. The question at stake couldn’t be clearer: in their own words or deed, does cleric “A”, “B”, “C” … “Z” support the people’s right to freedom?

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Friday, 2 August 2013

Igbo deportation from Lagos


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

On Wednesday 24 July 2013, Nigeria’s Lagos region regime, headed by Raji Fashola, deported 72 Igbo people from Lagos to Onicha, the Igbo Oshimili delta city, 230 miles away. This is the second such deportation that Fashola has embarked upon within a year. On 18 September 2012, Fashola deported “hundreds” of Igbo people from Lagos to Onicha. The deportees had all been earlier detained in “warehouses” in Lagos and some in the neighbouring Ogun region for months before their deportation to Igboland, Biafra. Many of the deportees are children and older people and some have disabilities.
(Raji Fashola)
Raji Fashola is a lawyer, a member of the Nigerian bar and he is in fact categorised as “senior advocate”. The world will note that these deportations contravene articles 2 (b) and (c) of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to which Nigeria is a signatory. The deportations do indeed fit into the overarching architecture of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide, initiated principally by Obafemi Awolowo, another lawyer, another “senior advocate” of the Nigerian bar, who was then deputy to the genocide prosecuting junta (prime minister) as well as head of the finance ministry and “chief theorist” of the campaign.

(Obafemi Awolowo)
This phase’s strategic objective is to dismantle/degrade the pre-genocide Igbo economy, Africa’s most resourceful and dynamic, in perpetuity. The Awolowoist/Awolowoid expectation is that millions of Igbo would be “forced” out of a “stagnant” homeland-economy with an ever-deteriorating infrastructure to be domiciled elsewhere in the world, with Nigeria envisaged as “main destination” where they would primarily labour in the local industry and services – quite clearly, a form of deportation and this one is straight out of a nazification textbook. What Fashola has tried his hands on twice, within the past 10 months, is the beginning of the reverse trend in deportation. And this can only become more virulently pursued subsequently – again, out of a nazification textbook.

None of the usually visible and shrilling human rights practitioners (individuals or institutions) in and around Lagos has condemned this outrage. If the governor of the state of New York, the US “equivalent” to Raji Fashola, were, for instance, to have deported 72 African Americans to, say, Georgia or Louisiana last week’s Wednesday, the Lagos practitioners would have since been working their phones and pounding their keyboards on calls to the BBC and other broadcasters and website outlets denouncing (rightly) such an act for the record! The hapless New Yorker would probably have lost their job by now, due to the predictable outcry against such repugnant behaviour from both domestic and international audiences. This outrage is another reminder which often affronts the sensibilities of the African democrat in the African World, outside Africa, that continental African heads of regime currently murder and/or inflict greater levels of damage on the African public than any other agency in the world and more often than not walk away free.

It is instructive to note that as the nondescript but ubiquitous Boko Haram cells murder Igbo people (and some others) in their north region homes, businesses, places of worship and recreation and force survivors and the maimed and the bereaved racing back to Igboland with the remains of loved ones, Raji Fashola-operatives, traceable and in uniform, abduct the Igbo from the streets and highways of Lagos, dump them in secured “warehouses” for disorientation for months and then “upload” them on trailers for the journey east to be “offloaded” at Onicha at dawn – usually between 2 and 3. The latter is no doubt a variation on the ultimate goal of the former as both play out in sync to Nigeria’s current thinking on waging this protracted genocide: intensify the murder of the Igbo in the north and begin to challenge Igbo businesses elsewhere, especially in the Lagos district, despite or rather because of the well-known fact that Igbo capital and industriousness have played a key role in building up Lagos for about a century now. These dual vectors of genocide do clearly point the Igbo to one direction only: the east, the Igbo homeland.

It should now be evident to all that Igbo deportation is at the crux of Nigeria’s sustenance of the Igbo genocide, the engine that fires it on. The deportation at stake here is of course the Awolowo-original, not the Raji Fashola-modulation even though the latter has brought this savagery to a head. The Igbo have no greater opportunity since January 1970 than today, now, to begin to deal with and overcome this evil permanently. To confront this deportation with dispatch is to begin the termination of this longest genocide of the contemporary epoch. No one else will accomplish this feat for them.

Disinvestment and boycott

For the Igbo, the long march to re-take Igboland, re-claim Igboland, Biafra, their homeland, for themselves, and consequently end the deportation of 43 years and phase-IV of the genocide begins now. Aimé Césaire would deftly put it this way: “quest to reconquer something, our name (sic), our country … 
ourselves”. And Lagos, pivotally, where Igbo investments and assets are worth billions of US dollars, is where this march begins. Here lies the key to Igbo freedom. Igbo should now embark to disinvest in Lagos and transfer their gargantuan assets to Biafra – move your companies and stocks and shares out of Lagos to Biafra. Business cannot strive in a fascist stockade. Or would it? The contrast of the democratic redoubts of Biafra couldn’t be more welcoming.

Begin anew and invest and invest and invest in Biafra. The specifics, vitality and range abound for the choices of the investor, inventor, scientist, plumber, innovator, thinker, carpenter, analyst, surgeon, builder, artist, composer, mechanic, estate developer, researcher, chef, sportsperson, manufacturer, trader, architect, nurse, entertainer, banker, distributor, painter, teacher, insurer, lawyer, fisherperson, musician, engineer, trucker, producer, sculptor, hotelier, physician, draughtsperson, director, writer, decorator, academic … All conceivable cutting-edge  fields in ideas, science and technology are here to be worked at – researched on, understood, adapted, reworked, invented, manufactured, distributed… Biafra will resume the quest towards establishing the high-powered global-oriented economic enterprise interrupted catastrophically by the genocide.

Igbo entrepreneurs are therefore thrust with the challenge to turn Biafra into the workshop that serves its people and competes actively with the rest of the world. The world will surely respond accordingly by establishing crisscrossing routes of communication to Igboland to enhance cooperation and exchange. The investment and transformational opportunities emplaced within the population of 50 million throughout the 200-mile north-south stretch of highlands and escarpments and forestlands and grasslands and valleys and waterfalls and lakes and assorted reserves of mineralogical and agricultural resources from the Nsukka plateau (north) to Azumini, Igwe Nga/Opobo, Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt, Umu Ubani/Bonny, Umuebelengwu and Ahoada of the Igbo Atlantic (south) and the 100 mile-panhandle from Ugwuta, Onicha and Anioma west to the Abakaleke/Ehugbo/Bende/Arochukwu east are breathtakingly immense for the imaginative and industrious investor.

To complement Igbo disinvestment of Lagos over the deportation, Igbo must also begin to boycott all goods and services made in and for Lagos. The Lagos brand is henceforth toxic: “Don’t buy ‘Made in Lagos’”. The frequently commuting Igbo should cancel all ticket reservations on flights in and out of Lagos and bookings in Lagos hotels. They should use other airports en route to Biafra such as Enuugwu, Owere, Asaba, Igwe Ocha and those in Calabar and Uyo. New airports should be built to cope with the fast changing situation. A Lagos boycott will only soon force airlines to route directly to hitherto un-used facilities (with the necessary upgrades of course!) such as Enuugwu and Owere, for instance, as ultimately, as everyone knows, successful business orients to the client’s preferences. There is no reason why the overwhelming majority of Igbo travellers should not fly straight to their Biafran destinations in a few months as the boycott of Lagos intensifies. No more Lagos business conferences: don’t plan one there; don’t attend one there – just skip it as “unimportant”! Finally, the Igbo importers and exporters who command a dominant space in the Lagos district ports’ activities should move their businesses elsewhere: Igwe Ocha, Calabar, Warri, Sapele, Burutu and, soon, Igbo entrepreneurs and engineers will add to these capacities new outlays in Azumini, Onicha and elsewhere and the bridging up of the Aba-Igwe Ocha conurbation to further diversify enterprise and opportunities.  

The return of the Igbo has indeed begun.

(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Turnaround” [personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, trumpet; Red Mitchell, bass; Shelly Manne, drums; recorded: Contemporary’s Studio, Los Angeles, US, 23 February 1959])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe