Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
One of the preeminent leaders of the African American freedom movement
(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])
TOWERING goalkeeper of the indomitable Enuugwu Rangers International, the football club, during the 1970s-1980s, which, arguably, most symbolises the dogged and resilient spirit of Igbo people in the wake of the cataclysmic genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, when Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson murder 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population
(Lee Morgan Quintet, “Gary’s notebook” [personnel:Morgan,trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone;Barry Harris, piano;Bob Cranshaw, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Geldar Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 December 1963])
Versatile tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader, collaborates with a number of distinguished artists (especially alto saxophonists Ornette Coleman and Prince Lasha, trumpeter Don Cherry, pianists Cecil Taylor and Keith Jarrett, guitarist Pat Metheny, bassist Charlie Haden, drummers Ed Blackwell, Paul Motian, Charles Moffett, Elvin Jones) in groundbreaking recordings (1960s-1990s), plays in the celebrated Jarrett’s American Quartet of the 1970s particularly in the ensemble’s exquisite composition, The Survivors’ Suite (1976), father of the equally brilliant and accomplished tenorist Joshua Redman
(Ornette Coleman Septet, “Happy house” [personnel:Coleman, alto saxophone;Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Bobby Bradford, trumpet; Redman, tenor saxophone, musette;Charlie Haden, bass;Billy Higgins, drums; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Columbia Studios E, New York, UK, 9 September 1971])
One of the preeminent alto saxophonists, bandleader, prolific composer including the classic Let Freedom Ring (1962), worked through as this phase of the great Afcrican American age of freedom gathers pace, altoist on the Charles Mingus Quintet’s recording of Pithecanthropus Erectus (1956), the iconoclastic bassist’s audacious orchestration of the tortuous and contraditory human march across the ages, co-founder, in 1970, with wife Dollie, of Hartford’s (Connecticut) Artists Collective which works for the preservation of African diaspora art and culture, academic, named after the University of Hartford’s department of African American Music – Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz
(Jackie McLean and McCoy Tyner, “Passion dance” [composer: McCoy Tyner] [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Woody Shaw, trumpet; Tyner, piano; Cecil McBee, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums; recorded: live, One night with Blue Note, Town Hall, New York, 22 February 1985])
(Barack Hussein Obama: ... supports Igbo genocide ... unconscionable tragedy of a presidency)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe On 30 March 2016, I published an essay on
Barack Hussein Obama entitled “‘African American son’, US foreign policy and
Africa: A statement” (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html). The former US president had just had a wide-ranging
interview in The Atlantic magazine on
his foreign policy during his two-terms in office, conducted by Jeffery
Goldberg and captioned “The Obama Doctrine”. My
essay is essentially a response to that entire Obama-Goldberg Atlantic conversation.
Africa, African affairs, African subjects,
hardly feature anywhere in this foreign policy review. Barack Hussein Obama only refers to
Libya, recalling the outcome of the tripartite US-Britain-France invasion which
overthrew the Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, but even here Libya is discussed within the
sphere of Middle East/islamist world geopolitical priorities and not Africa’s. Nowhere
in the interview, for instance, is the very important subject of France’s routinised
military interventionism in the so-called francophonie
states of Africa raised. President George W Bush had blocked these French
invasions throughout most of his presidency as “punishment” for the 2003 French
opposition to the US-led war in Iraq but Barack Hussein Obama reinstated it
soon after taking office, enabling the French to resume their invasions of
Africa with impunity. Soon, France carried out its most notorious invasion of
the era – its attack of Côte d’Ivoire (its 49th invasion of an African state
since 1960) and the ousting of its president and the latter’s replacement with
a preferred French choice, and the murder of 2300 Africansduring the
course of the assault. Several business and residential districts of capital Abidjan
were destroyed during this French invasion.
Presidential legacy
BUT MOST IMPORTATLY, though, the Atlantic interview did not focus on the very gruesome template that defines the
catastrophic legacy of the Barack Hussein Obama presidency – that Barack
Hussein Obama,first person of African descent to be elected to the position of
president of the United States 233 years after the founding of this republic,
supported the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest
Africa which has been waged by Britain and its Nigeria client state since 29
May 1966 and continues till this day with all its interlocking virulence, 51
years after.
Barack Hussein Obama’s support for the Igbo genocide was pursued with
virtual devotional zealousness. It formally began in March 2015 when he imposed
Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest Nigerian genocidist
operatives during these 50 years of the Igbo genocide, as head of Nigeria
regime. This imposition was carried out with then British prime minister David
Cameron. MuhammaduBuhari has been a genocidist
operative in the Nigeria military – straight ahead from the launch date of the
Igbo genocide and during the Nigerian expansive trail of the mass slaughter of
Igbo military and civilians alike in north and west Nigeria regions from 29
July 1966-July 1967 to encapsulate phases I-II of the genocide timeframe.
During phase-III of the genocide, the invasion of Biafra, July 1967-January
1970, Buhari was commander of a genocidist corps in north and northcentral Biafra,
slaughtering to the hilt. As from 13 January 1970, beginning of phase-IV of the
genocide, Buhari has adhered rigidly to or overseen the Nigeria regime’s
blanket policy of non-development of occupied Biafra, the regime’s aggressive
degradation of socioeconomic life in Biafra, and the regime’s exponential
expropriation of the rich oil reserves of Biafra. Biafran assets looted by the
occupation stand at US$1000 billion. Over time, since 13 January 1970, Buhari
has exhibited a calculated, deafening silence over the course of the murder of
those tens of thousands of Igbo people across Nigeria but especially in his
north Nigeria homeland by regime forces/allied forces including those massacred
by the Boko Haram terrorist organisation in the past six years.
SINCE Buhari was installed in power by the Barack Hussein Obama-David Cameron duo, 2000 Igbo across Biafran cities,
towns and villages 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 Barack Hussein 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-basedAmnesty Internationalto shatter the deafening
silence that emanated from the Barack Hussein Obama presidency on this ongoing
genocide by publishing widely on the genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 12 May 2017). In sharp contrast, we mustn’t
forget to note, the Barack Hussein Obama administration issued a robust
response on 12 December 2015 when a Buhari regime’s military
brigade operating in Zaria, northcentral Nigeria, attacked and murdered several
shiite muslim protesters in a procession. The US statement was clearly
unambiguous in its outrage:“The United States calls on
the government of Nigeria to quickly, credibly, and transparently investigate
these events in Zaria and hold to account any individuals found to have
committed crimes”. Thissame Barack Hussein Obama US-led government
wouldn’t, didn’t follow up with similar or any other statements of concern in
the entire stretch of genocidist massacres perpetrated by its imposed Buhari
client on the Igbo population in Biafra throughout the period.
Why? Why? Why?
Barack Hussein nwa
Obama, O gini ka ndiigbo melu gi?
Barack Hussein child of Obama, what
is your problem with the Igbo of Biafra, southwestcentral Africa? What is it
about the historic Igbo heritage of unrelenting resistance against African
subjugation for freedom across the Americas during the 400 years – the enslaved plantation estates of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Jamaica, Barbados, St Lucia, Belize, Trinidand & Tobago, Guyana, Surinam,
Saint-Domingue, Brazil… – that you must find very anguished? Or, is it the Igbo
vanguard role, 1930s-October 1960, in freeing Nigeria from the British conquest
and occupation which constitutes your problem with the Igbo? It is the latter
that riles the British and for Harold Wilson, prime minister, the Igbo genocide
becomes an opportunity to “punish” the Igbo for playing this cardinal role in
terminating its occupation in this part of Africa (Harold Wilson had insisted that he “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]). Barack Hussein Obama, when/how/why
did your own anti-Igbo hate originate? Whilst studying in California after the
relocation from Hawaii? Whilst studying in New York, Harvard, living in Chicago,
campaigning for the US presidency? Whilst, earlier on as a younger person living in Indonesia? When? Why? Why? Why? Barack Hussein Obamamust tell the world everything about why
he supported the Igbo genocide, this odious trail of Igbo hate...
THE IGBO STUDIES ASSOCIATION had in a conference held
at Howard University in April 2012 on “Nigeria and Boko Haram terrorism and its
impact on the Igbo population in north Nigeria” noted the overall silence by the
Barack Hussein Obama administration over this emergency. Barack Hussein Obama remained unrelentingly adamant, throughout this phase of his presidency,
ofnot designating the islamist Boko Haram, a terrorist
organisation despite the latter’s murder of thousands of African peoples,
overwhelmingly Igbo, at the time (it wouldn’t be until November 2013 that the
US declared Boko Haram “terrorist” because Washington judged the group was “[now]
develop[ing] links with other [islamists] such as al-Qaeda … to wage a global
jihad”). This was despite the evidence,
from the grounds in Nigeria, that those who supported Boko Haram, including Muhammadu
Buhari who Barack Hussein Obama would soon impose as head of the state’s regime,
were well known to the Goodluck Jonathan regime in power. Jonathan himself
personally made an astonishing radio and television broadcast to his country
and the world to this effect: “Boko Haram is everywhere in the executive arm of
[my] government, in the legislative arm of [my] government and even in the
judiciary. Some are also in the armed forces, the police and other security
[services] … Some continue to dip their hands and eat with you and you won’t
even know the person who will point a gun at you or plant a bomb behind your
house”. Despite this Boko Haram terrorist-pressure
on Jonathan, Barack Hussein Obama had no sympathies for the plight of this regime
whatever. Olusegun Adeniyi in his Against
the Run of Play (2017), quotes Jonathan “[that] Obama made it clear [right
from the outset] that he wanted a change of government in Nigeria” (allafrica.com, 26 April 2017). Jonathan, an Ijo zoologist, is the first personnage without any connections or roles in the Igbo genocide to occupy the position of head of regime in Nigeria since 29 May 1966.
No US president, since the outbreak of the Igbo genocide in May
1966 during the Lynden Johnson presidency, has unambiguously supported the mission of genocidist Nigeria as Barack Hussein Obama. Barack Hussein Obama has in fact disrupted the fulsome goodwill for the people of Biafra begun by the Richard Nixon presidency (Republican president, “right wing”!) soon
after the end of phase-III of the genocide (12 January 1970) (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html) and continued by
subsequent presidencies to date, Republican or Democrat, of an enhanced Igbo
emigration programme to the US. This accounts for the hundreds of thousands of
Igbo Americans presently, 50 years on, many of them in very influential positions in academia, the corporate world, media and information and the state, and their children and grandchildren thriving appreciably...
Unconscionable IT IS SURELY an unconscionable tragedy of incalculable historical
consequences that Barack Hussein Obama, the first African-descent president of
the US republic in 233 years of existence was elected in office in November
2008 to end up with a dreadful presidential legacy supporting the Igbo
genocide – executed on the ground by Nigeria, an islamist-led state, and its
suzerain state Britain. The duo genocidist states have murdered 3.1 million
Igbo and tens of thousands more since the launch of the genocide on Sunday 29
May 1966.
(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])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe ERUDITE human rights lawyer, distinguished international jurist at the International Court ofJustice, The Hague, 1962-1966 during which he sets up the defining international legal protocols that ensure the restoration-of-independence for African peoples in Namibia from the European World occupation; Biafran chief justice and ambassador extraordinary in the resistance government against the Igbo genocide, one of the leading intellectualswho defends the people throughout the duration of phases I-III of this genocide by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain led by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, in which 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population are murdered; Justice Mbanefo possesses that distinct scholar’s contemplative persona that has come to define the insistent resilience of the Biafra freedom movement
(John
Coltrane Quintet, “Brasilia” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor
saxophone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner,
piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums;
recorded: live, at The Village Vanguard, New York, US, 1-3 & 5 November 1961])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
