Unconscionable silence from Africa as Fulani-led genocidist Nigeria murders Igbo people of Biafra most beastly

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE PAST 45 MONTHS, namely since May 2015, have indeed been a catastrophic track in phase-IV***** of the ongoing Igbo genocide by Nigeria. 

Under the Fulani-led islamist/jihadist génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari regime, imposed in power by none other than Barack Hussein Obama, the first African-descent president of the United States in 233 years of the founding of the US republic (and ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron), the Nigerian military and its adjunct Fulani militia (one of the world’s five deadliest terrorist groups) have slaughtered 3000 Igbo people across Biafra, especially in cities and towns Onicha, Oka, Nkpo, Igweocha, Enuugwu, Aba, Owere, Asaba, Umuahia and Ubulu-Ukwu. On 14 September 2017, the genocidists stormed the Afaraukwu-Ibeku (eastcentral Biafra) family home of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra and Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster. Kanu narrowly escaped death from the attack in which 28 members of the Biafra freedom movement were ruthlessly murdered.

CONTEMPORANEOUSLY, on the key subject of the universal right of a people, all peoples, to freedom, to self-determination, on focus here, the Nigerian assault on Kanu’s home and its harrowing aftermath would be equivalent to a British military attack on the family homes of restoration-of-independence Scottish leaders Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond or a Spanish military assault on the home of Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan restoration-of-independence leader.

Unpardonable

Not one state contiguous to Nigeria nor any of the other 14 states in this southwestcentral region of Africa has condemned this Nigerian sheer savagery unleashed on Biafra nor indeed has there been any condemnation from the rest of the 40 states of Africa. Not one. Silence.

But what remains egregiously pronounced in this African response is the silence of most of the 25 million diaspora African population (who have emigrated from Africa since the mid-1980s to Europe, the Americas/Caribbean, Oceania and elsewhere), particularly intellectuals who would readily express an opinion of outrage from the often more liberal democratic heritage of their new-found domicility. The latter’s position is unquestionably unpardonable.

Moral rectitude

African peoples’ lives matter. Or don’t they? This must surely be the case wheresoever African peoples live: Biafra, Sénégal, Tanzania, Botswana, United States of America, South Africa, Barbados, Kenya, India, Côte d’Ivoire, Guyana, Canada, Britain, Surinam, St Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, France, Ghana, Finland, Uganda… So, diaspora African publics cannot justifiably restrict their quest to uphold African lives’ interests usually in geographical spaces marked outside Africa but exercise a predictable stone-walled silence when these same interests are assaulted, quite often more viciously, inside Africa, as is the case presently in Biafra.

FOR PEOPLES who denounce anti-African racism in all its forms especially in the Americas and Europe (rightly so), day in, day out, Africans, wherever they are, must now know that they stand to forfeit any moral rectitude if they continue this morbid silence over the gruesome, unrelentingly driven Fulani islamist/jihadist-led genocidist Nigeria campaign to annihilate the Igbo, one of Africa’s most talented and enterprising peoples.

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(*****Igbo genocide is the most devastating and expansive genocide in Africa since Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state-organised genocide against African peoples in the central regions of the Congo River basin, 1878-1908, murdering 13 million Africans. During phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, Nigeria and co-genocidist and [its] suzerain state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population. Tens of thousands of additional Igbo people have been murdered by the dual genocidists in the course of phase-IV of the slaughtering which was launched on 13 January 1970 and continues to this day.)

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Lonnie’s lament” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 27 April 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

134th anniversary of the conclusion of the pan-European World conference on Africa subjugation and plunder in Berlin, Germany – 15 November 1884-26 February 1885

(1. infamous gathering in session)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

TODAY MARKS the 134th anniversary of the conclusion of the infamous 15 November 1884 – 26 February 1885 European leaders’ Berlin conference on Africa. 

Cake and genocides and plunder

The gathering was chaired by German Chancellor von Bismarck to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation, and irrepressible exploitation of the gargantuan riches of the African World which Leopold II, the génocidaire king of the Belgians, described predatorily as “this magnificent African cake”. 

It was indeed to “secure for ourselves [Belgians] a slice of this magnificent African cake”, Leopold II’s own haunting words, that this monarch and his private forces and those of the Belgian state and others elsewhere in Europe carried out a devastatingly reprehensible 30-year trail (1878-1908) of genocide against Africans in the Congo basin in which they annihilated 13 million constituent peoples (Isidore Ndaywel  è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998: 344).

The following countries attended the Berlin meeting: Belgium, Holland, Britain, France, Portugal, Ottoman “empire”, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Czarist Russia, Sweden-Norway, United States. 

The catastrophic aftermath of this Berlin-assembly, essentially its state’s genocidist architecture (genocide in the Congo basin by King Leopold II [BELGIUM], Herero genocide [GERMANY], Nama genocide [GERMANY], Berg Damara genocide [GERMANY], Igbo genocide [BRITAIN-FULANI-led NIGERIA], Rwanda genocide [FRANCE-RWANDA STATE] Darfur genocide [THE SUDAN STATE], genocide elsewhere in the Sudan [THE SUDAN STATE] genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC STATE/LEAGUE OF STATES IN REGION & ELSEWHERE... ]) is the bane of contemporary Africa which the peoples, themselves, not anyone else, must dispense with to survive. 

Breakthrough
THIS  “dispense with to survive” precisely encapsulates the historic goal of the Biafra freedom movement in southwestcentral Africa, the continent’s most peaceful restoration-of-independence movement and one of the preeminent of its kind in the world, whose imminent victory constitutes a strategic breakthrough for African freedom since the Berlin cataclysm.

(2. infamous gathering in session: to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation, and irrepressible exploitation of the gargantuan riches of the African World – “this magnificent African cake”)

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Stolen moments” [Nelson, tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard, trumpet, Eric Dolphy, flute; George Barrow, baritone saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Hayes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961]) 

*****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

105th birthday of James Cameron

(Born 25 February 1914, La Crosse, Wisconsin, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

INDEFATIGABLE lynching-survivor in Marion, Indiana, US (7 August 1930), and author of A Time of Terror (1982) which recounts this catastrophe, engineer, educator, founder of Milwaukee’s African American holocaust museum dedicated to the history of African Americans from the epoch of enslavement to quest for freedom

(Lee Morgan Sextet, “Search for the new land” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 15 February 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

151st birthday of WEB Du Bois

(Born 23 February 1868, Great Barrington, Mass, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

SOCIOLOGIST, historian, African peoples-centred scholar, freedom activist extrordinaire, towering public intellectual – decades before “public intellectual” becomes in vogue albeit problematically

(Marcus Roberts Trio – with expanded ensemble, “Deep in the shed” [Roberts, piano; Roland Guerin, bass; Jason Marsalis, drums; solos from expanded ensemble: Etienne Charles, trumpet; Ron Westray, trombone; Wess Anderson, alto saxophone; recorded: live, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, US, 1 February 2008])

*****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

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster, speaks to BBC News Igbo in an interview conducted by Chiagozie Nwonwu, London, Wednesday 20 February 2019 – part 3

(Nnamdi Kanu...: leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, interviewed by Chiagozie Nwonwu [part 3],  BBC News Igbo, London, Wednesday 20 February 2019)

INTERVIEW: part 1 Nnamdi Kanu’s interview by Chiagozie Nwonwu (Wednesday 13 Februar 2019):
(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/02/as-biafrans-boycott-this-saturday-16.html)

INTERVIEW: part 2 Nnamdi Kanu’s interview by Chiagozie Nwonwu (Friday 15 Februar 2019):
(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/02/httpswww.html)

*****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

February 16 and the Cypher

 Chuks Iloegbunam

THE CYPHER is said to wish that his “cold and iron” dispensation is revalidated on Saturday February 16, 2019. It cannot be realistically stated that, deep down, he really and truly yearns reelection. He is not there. It can only be repeated what those behind the Mask have put out: that the Cypher covets a second term of office! This is the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English’s third ordinary meaning of Cypher (also spelt as Cipher): Zero.

Two questions are apposite: One, why does the epitome of Nothingness seek continued “leadership” over a country of nearly 200 million people? Two, why is there this insistent spectacle of a multitude salaaming Zero, positing him as the Mostest, and threatening that without his continued tenancy of Aso Rock, they would scatter the ground?  The answers are blowing in the wind. But, before spelling things out for general benefit, another sentence or two on the theme of definitions.

The Cypher had a grand ride in 2015 because there was an avalanche of propaganda that blighted the sensory perceptions of those deserving of being exposed to the truth. The national swindle was orchestrated by a motley collection of deceitful hypocrites. Things since changed. The taste of the pudding is in the eating. Or, as Nigerians put it in marriage register, after a sampling of spouses one is placed in an unimpeachable position to determine the better husband or better wife. Or, again, as Stephen Osita Osadebe, the late, great Highlife music superstar sang it, “You step forward, you retreat. You repeat the going forth and coming back. Then you decide for yourself which, between moving forward and backwards is the better option”.

The verdict is out there. People are fed up to the hairline with a government that is inchoate in character, nebulous in policy, callous in relating to the masses and encased in a veritable tissue of lies. People with conscience will never stop asking why more than 300 Shiites were massacred under the Cypher’s watch. This is a crime against humanity. People with conscience will never stop asking why IPOB agitators were buried by the hundreds in mire or put down by automatic gunfire. That is another crime against humanity. Are there not people today that consider themselves high but are liable to be docked at the International Criminal Court in the foreseeable future?

THE GREATEST lament, though, is that the nation hurtles at a speed dangerously conjured by the force of Zero. Even Cypher’s wife went public to announce that the husband was not in charge. What could be more damning? What other testament could hold better accord with veracity, even if that truth currently appears only latent in certain quarters? In creative and serious settings someone mostly unaware of their circumstances cannot possibly be entrusted with the responsibility of climbing up or down a flight of stairs. People who put such a mentally disarticulated person up for national leadership do incalculable harm to humankind because the contingency of their success is not of their candidate stumbling to a broken neck, but one of reducing the entity to a tinderbox.

That is why the Cypher is not electable. That is why he is certain to lose the February 16 ballot.

TO RETURN to the two questions in paragraph two. The Cypher is not the one insisting on continued direction of the nation’s affairs. Incongruous Faces behind the Mask are responsible for the clearly avoidable calamity. If the Cypher stays, the Incongruous Faces get a fresh “mandate” for even wilder political excesses and further propagation of their ideological dubieties. Some of those shouting themselves hoarse at campaign stops and others restless with posting mendacity on the Internet cannot realistically believe themselves. Shame reduced a broad swathe of their kind to self-inflicted anonymity. Many of them are in it for the coins, reeling as they are from the remorseless pummeling of the prevailing hard times.  One of them boasted that his family lived abroad and he owned an American passport that he always carried about. If a conflagration resulted from a terrible choice, he would hit the nearest airport and hop on the first available aircraft!

Some from the educated but uncritical fringe cite the prophecy that Cypher was incapable of lasting another four years, for which reason he should be retained on a post more complex than his faculties since he would sooner peg off for their own man to mount the saddle. Apart from being irreligious, their attitude is as senseless as hoping that an unserviceable aircraft with a drunk at the controls would make a trans-Pacific flight to deliver Eldorado. Besides, the proponents have not reckoned with the fact that senility is not the same thing as imminent demise. Cypher could outlive most of those expecting him to drop dead almost anytime.

AT THE LAST WORD, the fear is not the outcome of the presidential ballot. That one is settled. The mind-numbing fear is whether the umpire will not turn out to be wilful and, thus, announce other than the people’s verdict.

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Chuks Iloegbunam is a distinguished journalist and author of Ironside, 1999 (iloegbunam@hotmail.com))

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe 

201st birthday of Frederick Douglass

(Born c14 February 1818, Talbot county, MD, US)

ONE of the most outstanding intellectuals of his age – author of the classic Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and other publications, orator, expansive traveller, indefatigable exponent of African American freedom

(Thelonious Monk Quartet, “Misterioso” [personnel: Monk, piano; , Johnny Griffin, tenor saxophone; Ahmed Abdul-Malik, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: live, Five Spot Café, New York, US, 7 August 1958])

*****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