Biafra freedom movement: Referendum, not “elections” organised by the occupying genocidist Nigeria regime – including, especially, the Saturday 16 February 2019 so-called poll

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE BIAFRA freedom movement surely dictates the terms of the freedom of the people of Biafra from Nigeria despite the savagery of the feudal Fulani islamist/jihadist-led genocidist Nigeria occupation and the overseeing ruthlessness on the ground by that league of quislings-of-occupation alternatively known as heads of regime of the administrative regions.

The movement insists on a referendum: nothing else, including bogus regime-elections, to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process. 

(Nnamdi Kanu: ... leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and freedom broadcaster, Radio Biafra) 

“Election” exercises in occupied Biafra have in the past been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the Fulani lead-occupiers with no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its own culture or brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence and genocide, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced republican democratic tradition for over 1000 years. 

THUS, for the Igbo in occupied Biafra or in the diaspora in Nigeria, the way forward couldn’t be clearer: boycott all “elections” organised by genocidist Nigeria including, particularly, the Saturday 16 February 2019 so-called poll.

Besides, “election” time in Nigeria is time-of-death. It is also time-of-destruction, time-of-desolation, time-of-waste, time-to-waste... Genocidist operative and one time head-of-regime Olusegun Obasanjo captures the characterisation of this season most vividly, if not horridly, in a February 2007 proclamation at Abeokuta, west Nigeria: “it’s do or die” (all-africa.com, 11 February 2007), a haunting disposition echoed readily by co-genocidist Muhammadu Buhari who paints a characteristically morbid portrait of  “dog-and-the-baboon-would-all-be-soaked-in-blood” (The Vanguard, Lagos, 15 May 2012) to attest to the extent of violence he would unleash during this appointed time-of-death.

Biafrans do freedom... 

Biafran people don’t do “it’s do or die” nor “soaked-in-blood”. Tufia kwa! 

EITHER of these is predictably genocidist Nigerian stuff – as Biafrans have known, most devastatingly, in the past 53 years, with 3.1 million of their people murdered, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands others additionally murdered since, 13 January 1970-present day, by this most gruesome band of murderers in African history since the 1908 end of the 30 years of genocide of African peoples of the Congo Basin, executed by Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state during which the latter murdered 13 million Africans (Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998, p. 344).

Biafrans, on the contrary, do freedom.  Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50 million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the referendum to proclaim this liberatory choice. This is the choice the rest of the world awaits eagerly.

“Ofe okazi day”

THE freedom movement, true to form in its assured peaceful trajectory, has already designated the Saturday 16 February 2018 day boycott call of the “poll” the “ofe okazi day”, after a local delicacy – essentially asking the population to stay firmly home with loved ones throughout the day and enjoy a scrumptious dinner and don’t partake in the desperate occupation’s strategy to prolong its murderous stay which is now clearly unsustainable.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Pursuance” {part-III of A Love Supreme suite} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones,  drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 9 December 1964]) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  

(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra freedom movement: Referendum, not “elections” organised by the occupying genocidist Nigeria regime

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE BIAFRA freedom movement surely dictates the terms of the freedom of the people of Biafra from Nigeria despite the savagery of the feudal Fulani islamist-led genocidist Nigeria occupation and the overseeing ruthlessness on the ground by that league of quislings-of-occupation alternatively known as heads of regime of the administrative regions.

The movement insists on a referendum: nothing else, including bogus regime-elections, to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process. 

“Election” exercises in occupied Biafra have in the past been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the Fulani lead-occupiers with no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its own culture or brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence and genocide, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced republican democratic tradition for over 1000 years. 

THUS, for the Igbo in occupied Biafra or in the diaspora in Nigeria, the way forward couldn’t be clearer: boycott all “elections” organised by genocidist Nigeria.

Besides, “election” time in Nigeria is time-of-death. It is also time-of-destruction, time-of-desolation, time-of-waste, time-to-waste... 

Vile genocidist operative Olusegun Obasanjo captures the characterisation of this season most vividly, if not horridly, in a February 2007 proclamation at Abeokuta, west Nigeria: “it’s do or die” (all-africa.com, 11 February 2007), a haunting disposition echoed readily by co-genocidist Muhammadu Buhari who paints a characteristically morbid portrait of  “dog-and-the-baboon-would-all-be-soaked-in-blood” (The Vanguard, Lagos, 15 May 2012) to attest to the extent of violence he would unleash during this appointed time-of-death.

Biafrans do freedom... 

Biafran people don’t do “it’s do or die” nor “soaked-in-blood”. Tufia kwa! 

EITHER of these is predictably genocidist Nigerian stuff – as Biafrans have known, most devastatingly, in the past 52 years, with 3.1 million of their people murdered, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands others additionally murdered since, 13 January 1970-present day, by this most gruesome band of murderers in African history since the 1908 end of the 30 years of genocide of African peoples of the Congo Basin, executed by Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state during which the latter murdered 13 million Africans (Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998, p. 344).

Biafrans, on the contrary, do freedom.  Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50 million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the referendum to proclaim this liberatory choice. This is the choice the rest of the world awaits eagerly.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Pursuance” {part-III of A Love Supreme suite} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones,  drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 9 December 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra freedom movement: Referendum, not “elections” organised by the occupying genocidist Nigeria regime

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE BIAFRA freedom movement surely dictates the terms of the freedom of the people of Biafra from Nigeria despite the savagery of the feudal Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist Nigeria occupation and the overseeing ruthlessness on the ground by that league of quislings-of-occupation alternatively known as heads of regime of the administrative regions.

The movement insists on a referendum: nothing else, including bogus regime-elections, to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process. 

“Election” exercises in occupied Biafra have in the past been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the Fulani lead-occupiers with no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its own culture or brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence and genocide, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced republican democratic tradition for over 1000 years. Thus, for the Igbo in occupied Biafra or in the diaspora in Nigeria, the way forward couldn’t be clearer: boycott all “elections” organised by genocidist Nigeria.

BESIDES, “election” time in Nigeria is time-of-death. It is also time-of-destruction, time-of-desolation, time-of-waste, time-to-waste... Vile genocidist operative Olusegun Obasanjo captures the characterisation of this season most vividly, if not horridly, in a February 2007 proclamation at Abeokuta, west Nigeria: “it’s do or die” (all-africa.com, 11 February 2007), a haunting disposition echoed readily by co-genocidist Muhammadu Buhari who paints a characteristically morbid portrait of  “dog-and-the-baboon-would-all-be-soaked-in-blood” (The Vanguard, Lagos, 15 May 2012) to attest to the extent of violence he would unleash during this appointed time-of-death.

Biafrans do freedom... 

Biafran people don’t do “it’s do or die” nor “soaked-in-blood”. Tufia kwa! Either of these is predictably genocidist Nigerian stuff – as Biafrans have known, most devastatingly, in the past 52 years, with 3.1 million of their people murdered, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands others additionally murdered since, 13 January 1970-present day, by this most gruesome band of murderers in African history since 1908.

BIAFRANS, on the contrary, do freedom.  Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50 million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the referendum to proclaim this liberatory choice. This is the choice the rest of the world awaits eagerly.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Acknowledgement” {part-I of A Love Supreme suite} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones,  drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 9 December 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Two important dates in this week’s Biafra calendar: Chinua Achebe’s birthday, Ofe nsala day

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Dates

1. Thursday 16 November 2017: Chinua Achebe’s birthday – commemorating the 87th birthday of one of Biafra’s preeminent intellectuals and Father of African Literature

(Father of African Literature)

2. Saturday 18 November 2017: Ofe nsala day – the Biafra freedom movement’s organised day of mass boycott of Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist Nigeria’s occupation regime-“election” in Biafra’s Anambra southwest region.

It should be noted that this lead grouping of the occupation which is arranging the Anambra election chimera has no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence, genocide… At the end of such an exercise in the past, it usually appoints the individual/“party” that it reckons will enable it to police its occupation of Biafra more ruthlessly.

(Nnamdi Kanu: ... leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and freedom broadcaster, Radio Biafra)

THIS IS precisely why the Biafra freedom movement insists on a referendum, nothing else including the occupation’s bogus elections, to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process. It has therefore called on the Anambra population to instead stay firmly home with loved ones throughout this day and enjoy a delicious dinner and don’t partake in the desperate occupation’s strategy to prolong its murderous stay***** which is now clearly unsustainable.

(Wynton Kelly Quintet, “Wrinkles” [personnel: Kelly, piano; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums; recorded: Fine Sound Studios, New York, US, 12 August 1959])

*****INDEED in these past two years of the Muhammadu Buhari regime, beginning in November 2015, the Nigeria genocidist military and its Fulani militia adjunct have murdered over 2000 Biafrans in scorched-earth campaigns across the country – marking it one of the bloodiest stretches during the course of phase IV (launched on 13 January 1970, following phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, when Nigeria and co-genocidist Britain murdered 3.1 million Biafrans or 25 per cent of the Igbo population) of the Igbo genocide in which tens of thousands of Biafrans have been murdered. Since 14 September 2017, the genocidists have murdered hundreds of Biafrans including the attack on the family home of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, when scores of Kanu’s relatives and friends were murdered. Scores of others are still unaccounted for. The whereabouts of Kanu himself and parents are still unknown since these bombardments. None of the regimes in the administrative regions of Biafra, essentially quisling-of-the-occupation, has condemned any of these spates of 24 months of slaughtering of their own people.

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra freedom movement: Referendum, not regime-“elections”

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE BIAFRA freedom movement surely dictates the terms of the freedom of the people of Biafra from Nigeria despite the savagery of the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist Nigeria occupation and the overseeing ruthlessness on the ground by the quislings-of-occupation.

The movement insists on a referendum, nothing else including bogus regime-elections,***** to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process.

(Nnamdi Kanu: ... leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and freedom broadcaster, Radio Biafra)

The first of these “elections” since the movement’s proclamation, the one on “local government” in Biafra’s Enuugwu northcentral region last Saturday (4 November 2017) was boycotted overwhelmingly by the people. The same level of mass boycott is expected in yet another regime-scheduled “election” – in the southwest Anambra region on Saturday 18 November 2017.

“Ofe nsala day”

THE freedom movement, true to form in its assured peaceful trajectory, has already designated the Saturday 18 November 2017 day boycott call of the Anambra “poll” the “ofe nsala day”, after a local delicacy – essentially asking the population to stay firmly home with loved ones throughout the day and enjoy a scrumptious dinner and don’t partake in the desperate occupation’s strategy to prolong its murderous stay which is now clearly unsustainable.

(Wynton Kelly Quintet, “What I know” {composer: Wayne Shorter}[personnel: Kelly, piano; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Shorter, tenor saxophone; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums; recorded: Fine Sound Studios, New York, US, 12 August 1959]

*****IT IS DOUBLY farcical that this lead grouping of genocidist Nigeria occupation regime that pursues the election phantasia currently in occupied Biafra has no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence, genocide...

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Nigerian regime begins to move heavy military weaponry into Igboland from the north (Thursday 7 September 2017)

By A Correspondent, Enuugwu, 1952HRS, September 7, 2017

TODAY September 7, 2017, the genocidist Nigerian regime, headed by ailing genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari, moved in more than ten pieces of heavy motorized military hardware and weaponry from the Caliphate north into Igboland. The motorized trailer convoy bearing the weapons and hardware and soldier escorts were sighted as they snaked their way into the regional capital, Enuugwu at around 5:45pm. The convoy which came on the Makurdi-Nsukka-Enuugwu trunk road followed back streets into the city.

They were sighted as they made their entry when dusk was already descending on the city on a rain-drenched day. The timing is probably intentional to avoid many eye witnesses in the bustling city.

The convoy then made its way to the part of Abakaliki Road where the army’s 82 Division formation outpost is located, where it parked alongside the road in line and waited. The escorts fanned out along it and kept close watch. It is still there at about 6:45pm when this correspondent took leave of the place to file this report after driving past it a number of times.

Since the convoy did not drive right into the sprawling grounds of the outpost that lays on the opposite sides of that portion of Abakaliki Road, the likelihood is that the weaponry and hardware will continue its journey later this night to the parts of the Igbo heartland where they will be deployed.

THIS CORRESPONDENT was alarmed by one of the soldier-escorts who jumped down when the convoy got to the junction of the back street and Abakaliki Road and lifted his assault rifle and aimed it at motorists driving on the opposite direction. Although his intention was clearly to stop traffic to make way for his convoy to join the main highway, the tactic of aiming his assault rifle at motorists is not only frightening. It was also indicative of the wanton bestial disregard of the Igbo by elements of the Hausa-Fulani dominated Nigeria military.

Poor visibility due to the descending dusk incapacitated efforts by this correspondent to capture clear video and still pictures of the convoy on a telephony device.

IT IS ON record that upon his return from an extended medical tourism in the UK, Buhari gave the military specific orders to crush the ongoing agitation for the actualization of the Republic of Biafra in the southeast in a referendum

The potent word is “referendum”!

INDEED. The Biafra freedom movement’s concerted plan to hold a referendum for 50 million Biafrans on restoration-of-independence appears to have dramatically sent the genocidist Nigeria state into free fall. Day in, day out, the Biafrans have continued to challenge and overturn the range of “conventional wisdom” that undergirds liberation quests of recent history.

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

On this eve of the Biafra referendum

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Imprimatur of freedom

AS I OBSERVED recently (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-biafra-freedom.html), the preemptive return of the Biafra freedom movement (to Biafra) has not only confronted and overridden the “conventional wisdom” that underscores the key trajectory of comparable liberation projects, the movement’s return is indeed its historic stamp of the imprimatur of the Biafra restoration-of-independence in Biafra for the first time since 13 January 1970 – genocidist Nigeria’s launch date of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide and the accompanying occupation of Biafra.

Appropriately to confront the pressing emergency of the times, the movement has at once planned a referendum throughout Biafra to democratically reestablish five decades of the loss of sovereign rights of the people and withdrawn from participating in any future “elections” organised in Biafra by the occupation. The latter exercises have in the past been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the feudal Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist and occupying regime with no democratic heritage in its culture or history, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced republican democratic tradition for over a thousand years. For the occupation, regimes in the Biafra administrative regions (Abia, Anambra, Delta, Enuugwu, Rivers, etc., etc) that emerge from these “elections” exist solely to contribute to police the occupation. Nothing more. The operationalisation of this envisaged role was demonstrated most tragically, just recently, when not one head of regime in any of these administrative regions condemned the slaughter of their very own citizens by the genocidist military/Fulani militia in the already mentioned pogroms across Biafra since October 2015 in which a total of 2000 Igbo were murdered.

In July 2010, a high profile grouping of Igbo human rights intellectuals met in a conference in Enuugwu to discuss the state of this occupation of Biafra which the Biafra freedom movement, seven years later, must now terminate. In its concluding communiqué, the conference captures most profoundly what it aptly categorises as the “siege and occupation” of Igboland (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/nigeria-perpetuates-violence-and.html):

[Igboland] has become militarized with a vast deployment of expeditionary and predatory police and army personnel who are from outside the region. For instance, there are 61 Police check-points between Abakal[e]k[e] … to Nsukka … (a distance of about 130km). In [contrast] between Obolo-Afo [Igboland] and Lokoja [Nigeria] (a distance of nearly 400 km) no checkpoints exist. This state of siege is exemplified by the current [situation] of … [Igbo] cities [including] Aba, [Enuugwu, Abakaleke, Onicha, Owere] and Nnewi – hitherto the fastest growing and thriving industrial cum commercial cities in the African continent now being turned into refuse dumps and ghettos. Businesses that would have provided jobs to engage our youths have been strangulated by incompetent and criminal leadership.

THERE CAN BE no other solution to this longest genocide of the contemporary era but the freedom of the Igbo people from Nigerian subjugation and occupation. The return of the Biafra freedom movement, shattering all known “conventions”, is the most strategic development in 47 years of the course of this journey. 

Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50 million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the referendum to pronounce this liberatory choice as the world awaits so eagerly.

(George Russell Sextet, “Honesty” [personnel: Russell. Piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt,
drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 8 May 1961])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra and Scotland’s plans for second referendum on restoration-of-independence

(Nicola Sturgeon: “The UK Government was clear in 2014 that an independence referendum should be, in their words, ‘made in Scotland, by the people of Scotland’ – that is a principle that should be respected today. The detailed arrangements for a referendum – including its timing – should be for the Scottish Parliament to decide ...We believe that the Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum if there is clear and sustained evidence that independence has become the preferred option of a majority of the Scottish people – or if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will” – extract from speech in Bute House, Edinburgh, Scotland, official residence of Scottish first minister, Monday 13 March 2017)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

NICOLA STURGEON, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party and first minister of Scotland has announced that Scotland will try again to vote in a new referendum, a second referendum, for the restoration of independence, 310 years after union with England in the state called United Kingdom. In the last referendum exercise in October 2014, the “Yes-for-independence” vote scored 45 per cent against the “No” campaigners who won by receiving 55 per cent. 

Speaking today (Monday 13 March 2017) at a specially convened media conference in her residence in Edinburgh, Sturgeon is emphatic about the second referendum that she could call as early as next year:

I am ensuring that Scotland’s future will be decided not just by me ... it will be decided by the people of Scotland ... it will be Scotland’s choice and I trust the people to make that choice.

No peoples are exempt

Sturgeon’s studied position on this all important subject of independence, an inalienable right indeed, is not only shared by Scots but by a stretch of peoples and nations across the globe. The Igbo people of Biafra in southwestcentral Africa, 3475 miles southeast of Scotland, are proud to belong to this illustrious heritage. For 51 years, beginning on 29 May 1966, the Igbo have sought to exercise this “choice” but have been subjected to a devastating genocide by Nigeria and Britain, the very country that Scotland has been part of since 1707. In fact, quite a few prominent Scottish politicians, most of whom were in the (British) Labour party at the time, were active agents in the perpetration of this genocide.  In phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the Anglo-Nigerian genocidist amalgam murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or one-quarter of this nation’s population.

This genocide is continuing as these lines are written. Since Muhammadu Buhari (current head of regime in Nigeria who the British government, under Prime Minister Cameron, and the ex-US President Obama, played a key role to install and wholeheartedly supports) came to power in May 2015, 2000 Igbo people demanding the restoration of their independence have been murdered – usually shot at sight during peaceful freedom marches by the Nigerian military equipped mostly with British weapons. Several human rights organisations in Biafra and abroad, including Amnesty International, have reported extensively on this current phase of the Igbo genocide.

UNLIKE THE Igbo, Scotland is not seeking freedom from the United Kingdom because it has been assailed by genocide or any other crimes from the union. Of course not. On the contrary, Scotland has been a distinct beneficiary from the union, this quintessential  expression of the “nation-state” if ever there was one, including access to the gargantuan wealth seized by the union across the globe during its centuries of conquests and occupations which included Biafra and other regions of the African World (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html).

What Scotland seeks from the UK is freedom to be in the “driving seat of their destiny”, a Sturgeon phrase used in the past to capture this quest, the right of self-determination which, we just noted, is inalienable, which is for all peoples, which is recognised by the United Nations. No peoples are therefore exempt from this right whatever may be their status, experience or circumstance in the state from which they wish to exit.

Appropriately it couldn’t

Britain, a signatory to the relevant articles of the UN convention that recognises this right to self-determination prefers, understandably, that Scotland continues its constituent relationship with the UK-union but respects Scotland’s right to seek to be “in the driving seat of [its] own destiny”. Appropriately, the British military or police couldn’t, conceivably, dare disrupt nor wish in any way to stop this morning’s Nicola Sturgeon’s press conference speech for renewed referendum for the restoration of independence. 

As in the 2014 Scottish voting process (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html), no Scottish voter, for or against restoration-of-independence at the Forth Bridge, outside Edinburgh, or in Glasgow or Inverness or Aye or Aberdeen or Stranraer or Edinburgh or Arbroath or Wick or indeed anywhere in Scotland would ever be shot at or harmed in any way by the British police/military/MI5/whatever in exercising this inalienable right, guaranteed by the United Nations, to decide on this crucial testament of freedom.

British suzerain state’s Nigeria

Astonishingly, in sharp contrast, Britain’s Nigeria, also a signatory to the UN declaration on the rights of peoples to self-determination, would have sent its genocidist military to drown an Edinburgh-style Biafran freedom party news conference held in any of the Biafran cities of Enuugwu, Onicha, Ugwuta, Oka, Igwe Ocha, Aba, Umuahia, Igwe Nga, Ehuugbo, or Asaba, for instance, in an orgy of massacres of the attending delegates and leaders. Nnamdi Kanu and several leaders and officials of the Biafran freedom movement are currently incarcerated in illegal detentions by the Nigeria regime. Given the antecedent of Britain’s stony silence (since the Cameron administration and Theresa May’s on not only these arrests but also on the string of recent massacres of Biafrans, beginning November 2015, Britain would very unlikely condemn any such expanded murder outrage by its Nigeria client-state and leadership.

MANY OBSERVERS, including those sympathetic to the course of the Nigeria genocidist regime, have shown repeatedly that if a referendum were held in Biafra today to determine the wishes of the people, the overwhelming majority of the population would vote for “restoration-of-independence” (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/how-anti-biafran-freedom-columnist.html). Inevitably, Britain will surely explain to the wider world much sooner than later why it accepts the rights of 5 million Scots to exercise this freedom which could cause the collapse of a union of 310 years of willing partners but is unrelentingly instrumental in waging/supporting a 51-year-old genocide campaign against 50 million Igbo people, forced into a conquest agglomeration of a “state” created and called Nigeria by Britain, but who, equally as the Scots, want their own freedom.

Statute of limitations

It is absolutely crucial to remind all those involved in the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, wherever they are domiciled, that there is no statute of limitations in international law in the apprehension, prosecution and punishment of persons or institutions involved in the crime of genocide. 

Igbo seek and will achieve justice for the perpetration of this crime against its people, a crime against humanity. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Igbo seek and will achieve the restoration of Biafra.

(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 29 January 1968]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

1st anniversary of the illegal detention of Nnamdi Kanu by genocidist Nigeria

(Nnamdi Kanu: ... leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and freedom broadcaster, Radio Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IN THIS PAST YEAR, beginning from the 14 October 2015 illegal detention of Nnamdi Kanu by the Nigeria genocidist regime, the freedom movement of Biafra has made giant strides in its restoration-of-independence goal the likes of which the world hasn’t seen since the January 1970 end of phase-III/launch of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide when Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population. 

Contrary to regime expectation that Kanu’s incarceration would ground the resistance, the freedom movement has demonstrated its profoundly decentralised leadership capabilities which encapsulate multiple spaces in occupied Biafra, the contiguous diasporic territory of Nigeria, and the broader world-wide diaspora. 

The decentralised leadership has not only exerted a microscopic focus on the politics, security, legal and welfare dynamics of Kanu’s detention for the world’s apt attention but it has used the period to engage in the arduous labour of concientisation on Biafra in Biafra and elsewhere in the world. Consequently, at a stroke, the Biafran resistance has abolished that contrived “fear” always generated hitherto by the genocidists and their allies especially in academia and media (particularly those emplaced in the Lagos-Ibadan [Nigeria] conurbation) of regime threats to “relaunch” the Igbo genocide full scale to thwart any “escalation” in the manifestation and drive for freedom by the freedom movement. 

So, despite the sheer savagery of the regime’s military/Fulani militia murders of hundreds of Biafrans across Biafra since last October, Biafrans have emerged even more focused, steadfast, resilient. They have converted their strategic goal of independence restoration to a tactical tool which they employ almost effortlessly here and there with exponential impact locally and internationally. This is extraordinary. The Biafra Sun is on the ascent. Any referendum conducted in Biafra presently on the restoration-of-independence for this population of 50 million will result in a high 90 per cent score. Biafrans now dictate the terms of this long drawn-out journey. 

On Nnamdi Kanu, the regime must now know that it has no other credible option than release this exponent of freedom unconditionally. Biafrans are redefining the tenor of the march for freedom in Africa. And the freedom movement has done it, in the past 12 months, it should be stressed, without firing a shot – either in defence or offence.

(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Scotland plans for a new referendum for restoration-of-independence

(Nicola Sturgeon: “Our dream is for Scotland to become independent … To be in the driving seat of our own destiny”)

Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party and first minister of Scotland has announced that Scotland will try again to vote in a new referendum for the restoration of independence, 309 years after union with England in the state called United Kingdom. In the last referendum exercise in October 2014, the “Yes-for-independence” vote scored 45 per cent against the “No” campaigners who won by receiving 55 per cent. 

Speaking yesterday (Saturday 12 March 2016) at the SNP’s spring conference in Glasgow, Sturgeon quoted Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of a former US president, who memorably stressed that the “future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. For Sturgeon,

Our dream is for Scotland to become independent … To be in the driving seat of our own destiny, to shape our own future. And on the basis of equality with our family across the British Isles and our friends across the globe, to play our part in building a better world. That is a beautiful dream. And we believe in it.

No peoples are exempt

Roosevelt’s vision and Sturgeon’s studied inspiration from it is indeed shared not only by Scots but by a stretch of peoples and nations across the globe. The Igbo people of Biafra in southwestcentral Africa, 3475 miles southeast of Scotland, are proud to belong to this illustrious heritage. For 50 years, beginning on 29 May 1966, the Igbo have sought to be in the “driving seat of their destiny … and shape [their] own future” but have been subjected to a devastating genocide by Nigeria and Britain, the very country that Scotland has been part of since 1707. In fact, quite a few prominent Scottish politicians, most of whom were in the (British) Labour party at the time, were active agents in the perpetration of this genocide.  In phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the Anglo-Nigerian genocidist amalgam murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or one-quarter of this nation’s population.

This genocide is still continuing. Since Muhammadu Buhari (current head of regime in Nigeria who the British played a key role to install and wholeheartedly supports) came to power in May 2015, hundreds of Igbo people demanding the restoration of their independence have been murdered – usually shot at sight during peaceful freedom marches by the Nigerian military equipped mostly with British weapons.

Unlike the Igbo, Scotland is not seeking freedom from the United Kingdom because it has been assailed by genocide or any other crimes from the union. Of course not. On the contrary, Scotland has been a distinct beneficiary from the union including access to the gargantuan wealth seized by the union across the globe during its centuries of conquests and occupations which included Biafra and other regions of the African World (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html).

What Scotland seeks from the UK is freedom to be in the “driving seat of their destiny”, the right of self-determination which is inalienable, which is for all peoples, which is recognised by the United Nations. No peoples are therefore exempt from this right whatever may be their status, experience or circumstance in the state from which they wish to exit.

Appropriately it couldn’t

Britain, a signatory to the relevant articles of the UN convention that recognises this right to self-determination prefers, understandably, that Scotland continues its constituent relationship with the UK-union but respects Scotland’s right to seek to be “in the driving seat of [its] own destiny”. Appropriately, the British military or police couldn’t, conceivably, disrupt yesterday’s SNP conference in Glasgow nor stop Nicola Sturgeon from making her speech for renewed referendum for the restoration of independence. 

As in the 2014 Scottish voting process (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html), no Scottish voter, for or against restoration-of-independence at the Forth Bridge, outside Edinburgh, or in Glasgow or Inverness or Aye or Aberdeen or Stranraer or Edinburgh or Arbroath or Wick or indeed anywhere in Scotland would ever be shot at or harmed in any way by the British police/military/MI5/whatever in exercising this inalienable right, guaranteed by the United Nations, to decide on this crucial testament of freedom.

Britain’s Nigeria

Astonishingly, in sharp contrast, Britain’s Nigeria, also a signatory to the UN declaration on the rights of peoples to self-determination, would have sent its genocidist military to drown a Glasgow-style Biafran freedom party conference held in any of the Biafran cities of Enuugwu, Onicha, Oka, Igwe Ocha, Aba or Asaba, for instance, in an orgy of massacres of the attending delegates and leaders. Nnamdi Kanu and several leaders and officials of the Biafran freedom movement are currently incarcerated in illegal detentions by the Nigeria regime. Given the antecedent of Britain’s stony silence on not only these arrests but also on the string of recent massacres of Biafrans, beginning November 2015, Britain would very unlikely condemn any such expanded murder outrage by its Nigeria client-state and leadership.

The link below shows the crux of Nicola Sturgeon’s yesterday’s important address to the Scottish people on plans for a new referendum to decide Scotland's future. Many observers, including those sympathetic to the course of the Nigeria genocidist regime, have shown repeatedly that if a referendum were held in Biafra today to determine the wishes of the people, the overwhelming majority of the population would vote for “restoration-of-independence” (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/how-anti-biafran-freedom-columnist.html). Inevitably, Britain will surely explain to the wider world much sooner than later why it accepts the rights of 5 million Scots to exercise this freedom which could cause the collapse of a union of 309 years but is unrelentingly instrumental in waging/supporting a 50-year-old genocide campaign against 50 million Igbo people who equally want their own freedom.

Statute of limitations

It is absolutely crucial to remind all those involved in the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, wherever they are domiciled, that there is no statute of limitations in international law in the apprehension, prosecution and punishment of persons or institutions involved in the crime of genocide. Igbo seek and will achieve justice for the perpetration of this crime against its people, a crime against humanity. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Igbo seek and will achieve the restoration of Biafra.

(Nicola Sturgeon: “... This summer we will embark on a new initiative to build support for Scottish independence...”)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe