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Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “The Nigerian
state, Igbo genocide and the Africom”, Tensões Mundiais/World
Tensions, Vol 17, No 13, December 2012, pp 155-168.
In “The Nigerian state, Igbo
genocide and Africom” (see link below), Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe critically examines the Igbo genocide,
the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, and its
consequences on contemporary Africa. The results have been catastrophic.
Ekwe-Ekwe demonstrates the glaring inability of the state in Africa to fulfil
its basic role to the peoples and concludes that the way out for Africa is for
constituent peoples to construct democratic and extensively decentralised new
states that guarantee and safeguard human rights and freedom for the people and
individual.
Last night friends, colleagues
and families converged on the picturesque market town of Henley-on-Thames, west
of London, to celebrate Chinua Achebe’s incomparable and irrepressible There
was a Country. A spontaneous rendering by all gathered of a popular Igbo
chorus on a variation on the theme of “Happy Survival”, appropriately the Igbo
post-genocide survival anthem, launched the party.
There was a Country is an
indefatigable reminder to an oft-complacent world of the gruesome and
devastating Igbo genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 and the incredible
survival of Igbo people. 3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s
population were murdered by the Nigeria state and its domestic and foreign
allies during these 44 months of the foundational genocide of
post-(European)conquest Africa. It is precisely this dual-track mission of There
was a Country that has been most troubling to those fanged assailants of
Achebe’s memoirs. Any reminder of the Igbo genocide and, particularly, the Igbo
survival therefrom, riles the sensibilities of assailants whose life’s quest is
to continue to dart around the crumbling edifice of a doubtful sage, more
demonstrably a genocidist “theorist” who insensately advocated and co-supervised the
murder of 3.1 million children, women and men. This marks the beginning of
Africa’s current age of pestilence. What a burden of a legacy for anyone to
wish to prop up; truly, a dreadfully punishing ordeal.
It is instantly recognisable by
everyone that the Igbo survival from the genocide is a monumental repudiation
of this legacy whatsoever guises it appears to be recycled. This is pointedly
what the assailants of There was a Country are struggling to come to
terms with.
Igbo will never forget. Happy
Survival! Land of the Rising Sun.
We mustn’t forget to note that
the stretch of phases-I, II and III of the Igbo genocide encapsulates the timeframe
29 May 1966-12 January 1970. The conduct of each and every operative –
civilian, military – involved in organising/abetting/prosecuting this crime
against humanity is consequently evaluated across this entire stretch.
When one adds phase-IV, beginning 13 January 1970 to the present, the
composite parameter, and therefore the overall picture, appropriately becomes
fully encompassing. The pressing question of this age of pestilence is thus
posed as follows: What is the role of operative A or operative B or operative C, for instance,
in the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966 to the Present Day?
The Nigerian state murdered 3.1
million Igbo children, women and men, a quarter of this nation’s population,
during the genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. This genocide is still
ongoing (phase-IV). Yakubu Gowon headed the junta that executed the genocide
and Obafemi Awolowo, a lawyer, was his deputy and genocidist “theorist”
for the campaign and head of the all-powerful finance ministry. The ghoulish
anthem of the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly in Hausa on Kaduna state-run
radio (short wave band) and television throughout its 44 months’ duration has
the following blatantly-expressed gruesome lyrics for this crime’s tactical and
strategic goals: Mu je mu kashe nyamiri Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su Mu chi mata su da yan mata su Mu kwashe kaya su (English translation: Let’s
go kill the damned Igbo/Kill off their men and boys/Rape their
wives and daughters/Cart off their property)
Those responsible for the death
of 3.1 million Igbo people must face trial for this crime against humanity.
Thankfully, there is no statute of limitations in the prosecution of genocide in
international law. If the Nigerian genocidists had been tried after 12 January
1970, Africa would probably have been spared the additional 12 million who have
been murderedin
subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan (all
three in the Sudan) and Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in other
wars in Africa. Finally, a genocide-state, such as Nigeria, has indeed no
future as its raison d’être is nothing else but murder and murder and
murder...
“...
Of course I used my weapon, which was writing, to express my disapproval of the
[Biafran] ... war into which we were about to enter. These were people who’d
been abused, who’d undergone genocide, and who felt completely rejected by the
rest of the community, and therefore decided to break away and form a nation of
its own” –Wole Soyinka (emphasis
added), interviewed by Peter Godwin, Hay literary festival, Xalapa, Mexico, 12
October 2012.
The Nigerian state murdered 3.1
million Igbo, a quarter of this nation’s population, during the genocide of 29
May 1966 and 12 January 1970. This genocide is still ongoing (phase-III). Since
the September 2012 publication of Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country,
the world has witnessed the staggering depravity that underscores the ways and
means a stretch of Nigerian intellectuals (especially journalists and writers –
even a “poet”! –, etc., etc.) in Nigeria and abroad continues to “defend” the
genocide. Everyone must know that there is no statute of limitations in the
prosecution of the crime of genocide in international law.
1. How does Raphael Lemkin who, in 1943,
formulated the word “genocide”, define this crime?
Generally speaking, genocide
does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished
by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a
coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential
foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the
groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of
the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings,
religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of
the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the
individuals belonging to such groups.
2. What is the United Nations
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 9
December 1948?
For details, please click on
following link from Office ofthe
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/genocide.htm (accessed 11 October 2012).
In Africa, since this UN convention, the following peoples have been subjected to the crime of
genocide:
1. Igbo, 1966-1970; still
continuing – see particularly article II (a), (b) and (c) in link above
2. Tutsi, 1994
3. Darfur, west of the Sudan,
since 2004
4. Abyei, south of the Sudan,
ongoing
5. Nuba, south of the Sudan,
ongoing
6. Multiple
nations/nationalities, Zaĩre/Democratic Republic of the Congo (especially east
region), variously, since the late 1990s
Since the presumed conclusion of
the Igbo genocide, during which 3.1 million Igbo were murdered, 12 million
additional Africans have been murdered in the subsequent genocides (see above)
and in other wars in Liberia, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea,
Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Algeria, Libya,
Kenya, Central African Republic, Angola, Zimbabwe, Burundi and Mali, Ethiopia,
Congo Republic, Somalia, South Sudan and Chad.
The major preoccupation of an aggressor/conqueror state
is to seek to effectuate a process of memory erasure over its overrun
nation and land. This is the opportunity for the conqueror to begin to construct
a bogus narrative of possession and control of the targeted society that
arrogates it to the fictive role of primary agent of the course of history.
The enduring success of Chinua Achebe’s Things fall Apart is that the
classic not only anticipates this conqueror’s predilection but it subverts the
triumphalism of the latter’s Pyrrhic victory. Despite the District Commissioner’s bombastically-captioned anthropological treatise at the end of
the novel, heralding the latest European “possession and control” of another
region of Africa, this time Igboland, the future direction of history here
neither lies with the administrator nor his evolving occupation regime – nor
indeed with his conquering capital back home in Europe!
To locate the source for change and transformation in Igboland, subsequently,
we need to examine, carefully, the import and circumstance of historian
Obierika’s address to the administrator on the life and times of his friend and
people’s hero, Okonkwo, who had recently committed suicide. We are
reminded that as he speaks, two full sentences into a third, Obierika’s voice
“trembled and choked his words”, trailing off into gasps and silences of deep
contemplation. It is precisely within the context of these kaleidoscopic frames
of Obierika’s recalls and introspection that we discern the sowing of the Igbo
nation’s regenerative seeds of resistance and quest for the restoration of lost
sovereignty. It is therefore not surprising that Okonkwo’s grandchildren would
spearhead the freeing of Nigeria, to which Igboland had since been arbitrarily
incorporated by the conquest, from the British occupation – beginning in the
1930s, just 30 years after the so-called formal inauguration of the conquest.
(George
Russell Sextet, “Ezzthetic” [Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker,
trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums;
recorded: Riverside Records, New York, 8 May 1961])
Abolish the sun now!
For the aggressor state with a clear genocidal goal,
memory erasure of the crime scene at the targeted nation is even more
frantically pursued. On the morrow of the conclusion of its execution of the third phase of the Igbo genocide in January 1970, Nigeria wheeled out pretentious
cartographers to embark on erasing the illustrious name Biafra from all maps
and records that it could lay its hand on! During its meetings, the genocidist
junta in power banned the words “sun”, “sunlight”, “sunshine”, “sundown”,
“sunflower”, “sunrise” or any other word-derivatives from the great sun star
that unmistakably reference the inveterate Land of the Rising Sun. This task
and symbolism of sun-banning and sun-bashing were of course bizarre if not daft
as the junta itself was to discover much sooner than later – and from a most
unlikely source indeed…
At the time, a British military advisor to the junta, who was out dining with a
senior member of the council in Lagos, unwittingly compared Igbo national
consciousness and tenacity with that of the Poles. The advisor, who had studied
modern history at university and was a great admirer of the exceptional
endurance of Polish people in history, stated that the Igbo had demonstrated
similar courage in the latter’s defence of Biafra and that the “rebirth of
Biafra is a distinct possibility in my lifetime” – this was unlike the 123 (one
hundred and twenty-three) years it took the Polish state to re-appear in
history after its disappearance from the world map! The advisor was then in his
early 30s and the obvious implications of his Igbo-Polish analysis were not
lost on his host. The junta member co-diner was understandably most outraged by
the advisor’s crass insensitivity on the subject which he readily shared with
his junta colleagues. Predictably, the immediate consequence of the hapless
advisor’s impudence was an early recall home to Britain.
There were other bouts of farcical treats on display in Nigeria during the
period aimed at erasing the memory of the Igbo genocide. Junta and other state
publications and those of their sympathisers would print the name Biafra, a
proper noun, with a lower case “b” or box the name in quotes or even invert the
“b” to read “p”, such was the intensity of the schizophrenia that wracked the
minds of the members of the council over the all important subject of the
historic imprint of Igbo resistance and survival.
3.1 million Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were murdered in the
genocide between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970. This is the foundational and most
gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. Despite the
catastrophic stretch of slaughter in 44 months, it was business-as-usual, or so
it appeared, for the genocidists on the morrow of the conclusion of phase-III of the murder
on 12 January 1970. Lest we forget, the new phase was pursued with utmost vengeance, with the
added highly prized fiscal and capital assets sequestrated by the genocidists –
namely, the pillaging of the multibillion(US)dollar-Igbo economy at home and
those located in Nigeria, particularly in the Lagos/greater Lagos
industrial-commercial region. Many operatives who worked as advisors, at
varying layers of the genocidist command and control infrastructure, went to,
or returned to universities and colleges as professors and researchers, some
became university administrators, bureaucrats, media editors and executives,
company chief executives and directors, ministers of state, ministers of
religion, businesspeople; many of the commanders and commandants became
generals and admirals and marshals, and state legislators, administrators and
the like; some even sought the highest office of state – head of regime
(Obafemi Awolowo, variously, without success; Olusegun Obasanjo, three times
successful; Muhammadu Buhari, once successful; Ibrahim Babangida, once successful;
Sanni Abacha, once successful; Abdulsalami Abubakar, once successful).
The Awolowoists and Awolowoids (supporters of Obafemi
Awolowo – junta deputy chair, genocidist “theorist” and head of finance
ministry) on the junta even toyed with the idea of abolishing money altogether
in the economy of the soon occupied-land of the resourceful and enterprising
Igbo. They reasoned that this would deliver the “final solution” that had
eluded them during the “encirclement, siege, pounding and withering away”-strategy
of the previous 44 months… They ended up with the “compromise” pittance of £20.00
sterling (twenty pounds sterling only) per the surviving male-head of the
Igbo family – a derisory sum, which, they reckoned, stood no chance of averting
the catastrophe of social implosion they envisaged would occur in Igboland
subsequently. We mustn’t fail to note that the £20.00-handout excluded the
hundreds of thousands of Igbo families whose male-heads had been murdered
during the genocide… Dreadfully, the accent placed by Nigeria on this fourth phase of the genocide, starting from 13 January 1970, was the economic
strangulation of the 9 million Igbo survivors…
Survival
Igbo survival from the genocide is arguably the most
extraordinary feature for celebration in an otherwise depressing and
devastating age of pestilence in Africa of the past 46 years. Few people
believed that the Igbo would survive their ordeal, especially from September
1968 when 8-10,000 Igbo, mostly children and older people, died each day as the
overall brutish conditions imposed by the genocidist siege deteriorated
calamitously.
The Igbo are probably the only people in the world who were convinced that they
would survive. And when they did, the aftermath was electrifying. In
spontaneous celebration, the Igbo prefaced their exchange of greetings with
each other, for quite a while, with the exaltation, “Happy Survival”! Igbo
survival, at the end, does represent the stunning triumph of the human spirit
over the savage forces unleashed by Nigeria and its allies that had tried
determinably, for four years, to destroy it.
Forty-two years on, first and second generations removed from their parents and
grandparents, respectively, who freed British-occupied Nigeria in 1960 and
survived the follow-up genocide, Okonkwo’s progeny are once again tasked and
poised to restore Igbo lost sovereignty and track of progress and transformation. Everyone knows of their firm resolve
and ability to achieve this goal. The Igbo can feel it; they indeed feel it; the rest
of the world feels it. Surely, the successful outcome of this endeavour is one
of the most eagerly awaited news developments in contemporary Africa. *****Herbert
Ekwe-Ekwe’s 2192-word essay on Chinua Achebe’s all-important memoir, Another
Country, London: Allen Lane, 2012, is published in Literary Encyclopedia, 4 October 2012,
Despite the increasingly grave
level in the rise of tension between the Sudan and the South Sudan over a
mutually acceptable borderline demarcation between the two states, it should be
stressed that it is not inevitable that another war is the way forward
to settle this dispute. The South Sudan has signed the November 2011 “border
roadmap”, drawn through African Union mediation, but the Sudan still refuses to
endorse this document, arguing that “to do this (sic) could prejudice final
settlement negotiations on the subject”.
But the Sudan must now know that
it cannot destroy the independence and sovereign rights of the South Sudan
despite several decades of war and the resultant catastrophic death tally of
2.5 million people, mostly South Sudanese. The eventual, most painful success
of the South Sudan resistance, since 1955, has been an historic boon to African
determination to halt the agelong expansionism of the Arabo-imperium in this
pivotal strategic region of the continent. Furthermore, with its 98 per cent
“yes” vote in last year’s referendum to free itself from the Sudan, the South
Sudan has decisively shaken the foundation of that seemingly ossified
architecture of the “Berlin state” in post-(European)conquest Africa of which
the Sudan, pointedly and ironically, is the “first to be run” by “African”
management. Few now doubt that, thanks to the landmark decision in this
referendum, the “Berlin state” in Africa is, at long last, in free fall.
Current frenetic developments on this score in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa
underline the deep yearnings of the peoples to now begin to construct and
transform their own states and societies, themselves, based on the
precepts of their respective aspirations and worldviews. We are invariably on
the eve of a dazzling age of African social transmutation. As I have argued
severally,[1]
the “Berlin state” in Africa is the bane of African existence and progress.
This state is at once genocidal and immanently anti-African. Since the
cataclysmic 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, it has murdered 12 million additional
Africans in further genocide in Rwanda, Darfur (west of the Sudan –
continuing), Nuba Mountains (south of the Sudan – continuing), South Kordofan
(south of the Sudan – continuing) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(ongoing), and in other wars across the continent.
The Sudan has been at varying
shades of devastating war and crippling immiseration since 1955. It is from
this background of staggering brutalisation that the Republic of the South
Sudan emerged! Surely, the peoples of the Sudan and the South Sudan deserve
life’s immense choices for freedom, peace, and productive possibilities. Or
don’t they?
For the regime in Khartoum, particularly, there are indeed other
arenas of contestation with its southern neighbour, which it had probably never
thought of, instead of planning for yet more campaigns of certain death and
deprivation. The Juba administration, for its own part, must no longer allow
itself to be boxed in a quagmire of indefinite conflict with the Sudan that
only further impoverishes its people. Instead, both states can embark on the
following track of competition which will mark a charging break from the past.
The timeframe for this contest is five years – 2012-2017. It will be monitored
by a team of African-centred scholars which starts work right away and the
results will be published in October 2017.
The rule for the contest, with
the content and scope many would probably adjudge as too modest,[2]
is simple and straightforward: which of these two states – the South Sudan or
the Sudan will achieve the following set of goals by 15 September 2017:
1. 100 quality primary and
secondary schools with excellent world-standard curriculum content, equipment,
staff and study environment
2. One university of worldwide
standard, attracting staff and students from across the region and world
3. 1000 apprenticeship
opportunities to study at excellent technical schools, producing a skilled workforce
of electricians, builders, plumbers and mechanics
4. Pave 1000 kilometres of
well-constructed road linking towns and cities
5. Engage 1000 new farmers in
agricultural work, providing technical and financial support
6. 100 quality primary health
care centres with excellent facilities, equipment and medicine
7. Fifty per cent of the
population have access to clean pipe-borne water
8. Fifty per cent of population
have access to power 24 hours a day, seven days a week
9. Fifty per cent of young people,
18-25, have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures
10. Fifty per cent of women
have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures
Now, Both – Get Set! Ready: Go!
*I wish to thank Dr Okwuonicha
Nzegwu for her contribution to this commentary
Twitter
@HerbertEkweEkwe
[1]See, for
instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African
Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance,
2011).
[2]It is well to
reflect that if every African “leadership” which has been in power since the
so-called restoration of independence on 1 January 1956 (in the Sudan!) has
envisioned and achieved this track of objectives enumerated here during just
five years in office, African post-conquest recovery and transformation,
presently, would be second to none.
It appears increasingly
fashionable for a number of broadcasters, websites, news agencies, newspapers
and magazines, the United Nations/allied agencies and some governments, writers
and academics to use the term “sub-Sahara Africa” to refer to all of Africa (54
countries) except the 5 predominantly Arab states of north Africa (Morocco,
Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) and the Sudan, a northcentral African country.
Even though its territory is mostly located south of the Sahara Desert, the
Sudan is excluded from the “sub-Sahara Africa” tagging by those who promote the
use of the epithet because the regime in power in Khartoum describes the
country as “Arab” despite its majority African population. Which science? As we now demonstrate, the concept “sub-Sahara
Africa” is absurd, misleading, if not a meaningless classificatory schema. Its
use defies the science of the fundamentals of geography but prioritises
hackneyed, stereotypical, racist labelling. It is not obvious, on the face of
it, which of the four possible meanings of the prefix, “sub”, its users attach
to the “sub-Sahara Africa” labelling. Is it “under” the Sahara Desert or “part
of”/“partly” the Sahara Desert? Or, presumably, “partially”/“nearly” the Sahara
Desert or even the very unlikely (hopefully!) application of “in the style of,
but inferior to” the Sahara Desert, especially considering that there is an
Arab people sandwiched between Morocco and Mauritania (northwest Africa) called
Saharan? The example of South Africa is appropriate here.
Crucially, this is a reference underlined in the relevant literature of the era
especially those emanating from the West, the United Nations (principally UNDP,
FAO, WHO, UNCTAD), the World Bank and IMF, the so-called NGOs/“aid” groups, and
some in academia who all are variously responsible for initiating and
sustaining the operationalisation of this “sub-Sahara Africa” dogma. The point
is that prior to the formal restoration of African majority government in 1994,
South Africa was never designated “sub-Sahara Africa” by anyone in this
portrait, unlike the rest of the 13 African-led states in southern Africa,
which were also often referred to at the time as the “frontline states”. South
Africa then was either termed “white South Africa” or the “South Africa
sub-continent” (as in the “India sub-continent” usage, for instance), meaning
“almost”/“partially” a continent – quite clearly a usage of “admiration” or
“compliment” employed by its subscribers to essentially project and valorise
the perceived geostrategic potentials or capabilities of the erstwhile European
minority occupation regime-led country. But soon after the triumph of the African freedom
movement there, South Africa became “sub-Sahara Africa” in the quickly adjusted
schema of this representation! What happened suddenly to South Africa’s
geography to be so differently classified?! Is it African liberation/rule that
renders an African state “sub-Sahara”?[1] Does this post-1994 West-inflected South Africa-changed
classification make “sub-Sahara Africa” any more intelligible? Interestingly,
just as in the South Africa “sub-continent” example, the application of the
“almost”/“partially” or indeed “part of”/“partly” meaning of prefix “sub-” to
“Sahara Africa” focuses unambiguously on the following countries of Africa:
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, each of which has 25-75 per cent of
its territory (especially to the south) covered by the Sahara Desert. It also
focuses on Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and the Sudan, which variously have
25-75 per cent of their territories (to the north) covered by the same desert.
In effect, these ten states would make up sub-Sahara Africa.
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, the
five Arab north Africa countries, do not, correctly, describe themselves as
Africans even though they unquestionably habituate African geography, the
African continent, since the Arab conquest and occupation of this north
one-third of African territory in the 7th century CE. The West governments,
press and the transnational bodies we referred to earlier (which are led
predominantly by West personnel and interests) have consistently “conceded” to
this Arab cultural insistence on racial identity. Presumably, this accounts for
the West’s non-designation of its “sub-Sahara Africa” dogma to these countries
as well as the Sudan, whose successive Arab-minority regimes since January 1956
have claimed, but incorrectly, that the Sudan “belongs” to the Arab World. On
this subject, the West does no doubt know that what it has been engaged in, all
along, is blatant sophistry and not science. This, however, conveniently suits
its current propaganda packaging on Africa, which we shall be elaborating on
shortly. It would appear that we still don’t seem to be any
closer at establishing, conclusively, what its users mean by “sub-Sahara
Africa”. Could it, perhaps, just be a benign reference to all the countries
“under” the Sahara, whatever their distances from this desert, to interrogate
our final, fourth probability? Presently, there are 54 so-called sovereign
states in Africa. If the 5 north Africa Arab states are said to be located
“above” the Sahara, then 49 are positioned “under”. The latter would therefore
include all the 5 countries mentioned above whose north frontiers incorporate
the southern stretches of the desert (namely, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and
the Sudan), countries in central Africa (the Congos, Rwanda, Burundi, etc.,
etc), for instance, despite being 2000-2500 miles away, and even the southern
African states situated 3000-3500 miles away! In fact, all these 49 countries,
except the Sudan (alas, not included for the plausible reason already cited!),
which is clearly “under” the Sahara and situated within the same latitudes as
Mali, Niger and Chad (i.e., between 10 and 20 degrees north of the equator),
are all categorised by the “sub-Sahara Africa” users as “sub-Sahara Africa”. “Sub-”s of the world? To
replicate this obvious farce of a classification elsewhere in the world, the
following random exercise is not such an indistinct scenario for universal,
everyday, referencing: 1. Australia hence becomes
“sub-Great Sandy Australia” after the hot deserts that cover much of west and central Australia 2. East Russia, east of the Urals, becomes
“sub-Siberia Asia” 3. China, Japan and Indonesia
are reclassified “sub-Gobi Asia” 4. Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam become “sub-Himalaya
Asia” 5. All of Europe is “sub-Arctic
Europe” 6. Most of England, central and southern counties,
is renamed “sub-Pennines Europe” 7. East/southeast France,
Italy, Slovenia, Croatia are “sub-Alps Europe” 8. The Americas become “sub-Arctic Americas” 9. All of South America south
of the Amazon is proclaimed “sub-Amazon South America”; Chile could be
“sub-Atacama South America” 10. Most of New Zealand’s South Island is renamed
“sub-Southern Alps New Zealand” 11. Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama become “sub-Rocky North America” 12. The entire Caribbean becomes “sub-Appalachian
Americas” African-centred scholarship So, rather than some benign
construct, “sub-Sahara Africa” is, in the end, an outlandish nomenclatural code
that its users employ to depict an African-led “sovereign” state – anywhere in
Africa, as distinct from an Arab-led one. It is the users’ non-inclusion of the
Sudan in this grouping (despite its majority African population and
geographical location) but its inclusion of South Africa only after the latter’s
1994 liberation that gives the game away! More seriously to the point, “sub-Sahara
Africa” is employed to create the stunning effect of a supposedly shrinking African
geographical landmass in the popular imagination, coupled with the continent’s
supposedly attendant geostrategic global “irrelevance”. “Sub-Sahara Africa” is
undoubtedly a racist geopolitical signature in which its users aim repeatedly
to present the imagery of the desolation, aridity, and hopelessness of a desert
environment. This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of 1 billion
Africans do not live anywhere close to the Sahara, nor are their lives so affected
by the implied impact of the very loaded meaning that this dogma intends to convey.
Except this steadily pervasive use of “sub-Sahara Africa” is robustly challenged
by rigorous African-centred scholarship and publicity work, its proponents will
succeed, eventually, in substituting the name of the continent “Africa” with
“sub Sahara Africa” and the name of its peoples, “Africans”, with “sub-Sahara
Africans” or, worse still, “sub-Saharans” in the realm of public memory and
reckoning. *This essay is a slightly
updated version of a paper entitled “What is ‘sub-Sahara Africa’”?, read at the
IDeoGRAMS Conference: Contemporary Media, University of Leicester, 14 September
2007.
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
[1]Roger Tangri,
Politics in Sub-Sahara Africa (London and Portsmouth, N. H.:James Currey, 1985), p. ix, passim.
The Thursday 16 August 2012 South
African police massacre of 34 striking miners at the Lonmin-owned platinum
mines at Marikana, northwest of Johannesburg, is outrageous, beastly and
tragically ironic. An observer would be forgiven if they thought that the
gruesome footage emanating from the scenes of this slaughter was ripped off
from the catalogue of the incessant and long-stretched police/military-organised murdering of Africans during the epoch of the European-minority
occupation of South Africa: Weenen, Rand, Sharpeville, Boipatong, Lellefontein,
Bisho, Shell House, Sizzlers, Soweto…
No state has the right to turn
its guns on people – its own or indeed others whatever the circumstances. Not
least the state in Africa given its atrocious legacy since the Igbo genocide,
1966-1970, when it has murdered 15 million Africans in all genocides and other wars across the continent.
Notably, President Zuma reflects
on the “sanctity of human life and the right to life” in his official statement
on the Marikana murders, a conviction his police officers responsible for the
outrage don’t appear to share. Africans and the rest of the world expect the
Zuma administration to respond urgently to the multifold ramifications of this
carnage which include the following:
1. All persons and institutions responsible
for the murder of these miners must account for their actions and punished
accordingly
2. All victims (the dead, the
wounded and those variously victimised by the mine owners and others, and all
their families) must have full reparations on their ordeal paid for by the
state and Lonmin
3. The working conditions and pay in Lonmin’s Marikana mines must be comparable to the high standards tenable elsewhere
in the world
4. Never again does the South Africa
police/military shoot the people
Less than 24 hours after the
spectacular crash of that obligatory haematophagous monster at the London 30th
Olympiad, with the ignominious tally of bronze medals=zero, silver medals=zero,
gold medals=zero, two revanchist commentators, Y and Z, each representing two
of the tripartite genocidist bloc that executed the Igbo genocide, beginning 46
years ago, had an unlikely reunion. Both must have felt so weighed down with
grief by their country’s abysmal performance. Just one item dominated their
grisly exchange: Which of their contributing constituencies murdered more of
the total 3.1 million Igbo during the 44 months of extirpation? “We did!”
thundered Z, “C’mon listen to me, little one! We started this
slaughter. Yes, we, who own this place, launched it. Check the history! We
slaughtered more Igbo than you ever could and did – beginning from our
backyard, across our backyard, starting mid-morning on the 29th of that May,
fourteen straight months before you stomached the courage to join us. Indeed,
not before we warned your [genocidist] ‘theorist’ to open the uninterrupted
slaughter-corridor to Biafra. Or – ”
“No! No! No! My dear frien’,” the incredulous Y got so
riled up: “It was my people that deployed the real-slaughtering generals, the
real-slaughtering generals across swathes of Biafra, especially its south,
slaughtering and slaughtering and slaughtering the Igbo and devastating and
devastating and devastating their prized land. It was our real-slaughtering
generals, my dear frien’, who accomplished this task. OK? Please check the
history. It is there! Will you? Maybe you reneged on our collective
understanding to allow our great theorist to be president after the slaughter
because you didn’t really appreciate the role of our real-slaughtering generals
in the slaughter of the Igbo.”
In April 2009, Nigeria was not
invited to attend the London G-20 summit. Head of regime Umaru
Yar’Adua mournfully noted his disappointment: “Today is a sad day for Nigeria
as a country. This is because we are not invited to a meeting of the 20 world
leaders. We have the population, we have the resources and we have the
potential”. Predictably, Yar’Adua referred to those hackneyed, bogus indices
(“population”, “resources”, “potential”) that every school child knows
obfuscate the immanent fragility, infamy and hopelessness that chart the
quagmire that is Nigeria.
It is impossible to overstate
that the Igbo genocide put paid to any Nigeria pretensions to transform itself
to a serious state of global contention. Nigeria, which the Igbo had
strategically led to liberate from 60 years of British occupation, collapsed, irremediably,
on 29 May 1966. This is the date that interlocutor Z rightly referenced as the
beginning of the genocide during the macabre reminiscences with Y. On this day,
students, teachers, civil servants, community leaders, varying security
personnel, clergy, alimajiri and the like in north Nigeria planned and
descended on Igbo children, women and men domiciled in the region: murdering, raping,
maiming, looting, destroying… The first phase of the genocide, the most
gruesome and devastating in Africa not seen since the 1900s, was now underway.
Starting on 6 July 1967, the Nigerians expanded their murdering zones of
operation to liquidate the Igbo by attacking the entire stretch of Igboland –
from Issele-Ukwu, Agbo, Anioma, Ugwuta and Onicha in the west to Ehuugbo, Aba
and Umuahia to the east; from Nsukka and Eha Amuufu in the north to Igwe
Ocha/Port Harcourt, Umu Ubani/Bonny and Igwe Nga/Opobo to the south.
On the morrow of this
pulverising season of slaughtering, the only tangible capability that the
murderers have acquired is one to commit even more murders – nothing else …
definitely, not the more challenging capacity to develop and transform its
human potential and economy and, in turn, attract and merit the accolades and
recognitions from peers elsewhere.
With such an unenviable
legacy, it would indeed have been quite bizarre for anyone to expect this
Malebolge to win anything “respectable” in the just concluded London games. Understandably, the
world is eagerly looking forward to welcoming the elegant and focussed men and
women athletes from these southwestcentral contours of Africa flying the indomitable flag
of the Land of the Rising Sun in future Olympiads – with Rio, a tantalising marker?
(excerpts from Readings from
Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature [pp. 183-194]
which you may find helpful as you decide to join the movement)
… It should therefore be stressed
that whilst the dichotomy often placed between “legal arms” and “illegal arms”
by some observers (in the African militarisation, genocide and war debate) has
some analytical credit, its outcome on the ground, particularly in enabling us
evaluate the comparative impact that the two categories ultimately pose on
African social co-existence and security, always comes as a shock! Contrary to
the initial value judgement that most people would make between the “legality”
of a particular commodity (in this case, arms) and its “illegality”, it is
definitely no comfort at all when it is shown at the end of the exercise that
the overwhelming majority of the 15 million murdered in Africa’s genocide and
wars in the past 45 years were in fact slaughtered with the use of “legal”
armaments, operatedseemingly legallyby
the armed forces of the state and their allies. The examples of the Nigerian
state in 1966-1970, the Rwandan central government in the 1990s, and the
current Arab regime in Khartoum are acutely illustrative of this cataclysmic
sequence. In effect, whether “legal” or “illegal”, armaments in Africa,
controlled overwhelmingly by the African state and its allies, are used to
murder targeted African nations and populations domiciled within these states;
the African states, since the Igbo genocide, have deployed armaments in their
armouries to murder their peoples most brutally, massively and extensively.
These states, starting from Nigeria, have murdered a ghastly total of 15
million Africans in a generation. They are still murdering without let up… They
have devastated communities. They have disfigured and traumatised peoples’
lives and aspirations. In the hands of the typical African state, since the
Igbo genocide, these armaments, even though classified “conventional”, are
indeed weapons of mass destruction. Nothing else, but weapons of mass
destruction… In Africa, the pistol, the rifle, the grenade, the rocket, the
bazooka, the landmine, the helicopter gunship, the naval gunship, the fighter
aircraft, the bomber, the tank – each and every one of these items, imported by
and large from abroad, is a killer used primarily by the state to murder
targeted peoples within its border. The African stateshould
and must be stopped from murdering peoples within its frontiers. The rest
of the world, especially from where weapons to these African states originate,
day in and day out, can no longer remain bystanders as this orgy of death is
brazenly played out in Africa. Since the Igbo genocide, the African state has
been destroying African lives; they are presently destroying African lives;
they will continue to destroy African lives until stopped. The African state
must surely be stopped from its pursuit of this pulverising mission of death…
… On this score, the ethos that
governs the African journey of recovery is the commitment of all Africans and
the demand that they need to make to the rest of the world to place a mandatory
embargo on all arms sales and transfers to all of Africa, as well as a complete
demilitarisation of the continent. Africa needs justice and peace for, and with
itself, to enable it embark on the much-vaunted era of reconstruction…
… On this, Africa’s
challenge to the rest of the world couldn’t be clearer: those who live outside
Africa but “care so much for Africa” should now scale down their multitudinous
“aid-ventures for Africa” and turn their incredible talents to lobbying their
respective states and other institutions in their countries and elsewhere to
ban arms sales/transfers to Africa. This new focus for the world’s leading
charities, away from the band-aid syndrome, will surely be more exciting, even
less taxing, but definitely more rewarding for the ultimate outcome for Africa
and the rest of the world alike. Africa seeks no resources from anyone, not even
for one US dollar, to accomplish its current transformative mission to
dismantle the genocide state. It is simply asking the world to completely seal
off its vast armouries to deny access to the deadly claws of the African
genocide state. For once, no one is asking anyone to raise money for Africa!
Given the devastating impact of arms, arming, armies, genocide and other armed
conflicts on Africa’s tragic history and the present, Africa, today, projects
an unwavering signpost for the world’s attention that proclaims: Africa Is An
Arms-Free Zone. A demilitarised continent. No More Arms Sales Or Transfers To
Africa…
(Why not get a copy of Readings
from Reading today, read through the argument and join the movement to ban
all arms to Africa. There is no centralising arm of this movement. You are the
centre! Form yours today by sharing with family and friends and colleagues
everywhere – at discussion/entertainment venues, work, places of worship and
spiritual fellowship, union meetings [trades, schools/colleges,
family/village/town/district/regional, etc., etc.], next surgery with your
electoral ward/precinct/local government representative, member of
parliament/congressperson/senator… You can begin and join this movement
wherever you are in the world. To ban arms to Africa is at once supporting
African wellbeing and that of the rest of humanity. Now is the time!)
It is about 24 hours since the announcement of the sudden
death of President John Atta Mills of Ghana. The news was received across Ghana
with shock and grief – as of a family member. The state’s constitutional wheel
of response to such an emergency moved in sync with all the sensitivity and
subtlety in observance. Vice-president John Dramani Mahama, a writer and
historian, has since been sworn in by the chief justice as new president in a
dignified ceremony. All the while, no tanks have moved from some base to
another nor has anyone seen an armoured personnel carrier gatecrashing through
some barricade. No sermons have been preached by anyone from anywhere for
anyone to murder anybody. No news has been broadcast by any radio or television station or newspaper or on the internet or any other media asking anyone to murder someone or any people or peoples. On the contrary, Ghana gets on with life in a
mood reflective of poise, dignity and compassion.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra
Revisited (Dakar & Reading: African Renaissance, 2006), ISBN 9780955205002,paperback,188pp., £19.50/US$33.95/CDN$34.69/EUR28,19/￥ 2,950
Forty
years after the onset of the 1966-1970 Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide
of post-(European)conquest Africa, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe returns to the subject on
which he published two seminal books in 1990. In Biafra Revisited,
Ekwe-Ekwe demonstrates that the Biafra War (1967-1970) is the second phase of
the Igbo genocide after the initial massacre of 100,000 Igbo people across the
principal towns and cities and villages across north Nigeria and elsewhere in
the country between May and September 1966. The slaughter was organised and
carefully coordinated by the Nigeria state and its leading institutions – the
military, police, religious, academic, media, business. In Biafra, 3 million
Igbo or a quarter of this nation’s population were annihilated within 30
months. This is a holocaust of unprecedented proportions in recent African
history. The study shows that the British government of the day fully supported
this devastating stretch of genocide militarily, politically and
diplomatically. On this, Ekwe-Ekwe insists: “It is evident that this genocide,
the worst in 20th century Africa, would probably not have occurred without the
active support that the perpetrators received directly from the British
government … As a result, Britain, crucially, has played akey
role in the emergence of the ongoing age of pestilence
ravaging Africa” (emphasis in the original). The author contends that Nigeria
is a failed state that does not serve the interests of the constituent peoples,
a failure which, pointedly, occurred in 1945 under the “very watch of the
British occupation regime” when the Igbo immigrant population in Jos (north
Nigeria) were subjected to a harrowing pogrom organised by Hausa-Fulani (north)
regional leaders, the much coveted British political allies opposed to
the restoration of African independence. The British did not prosecute any of those
responsible for the Jos massacre. This pogrom and another carried out once
again against the Igbo, this time in Kano (north Nigeria) in 1953, became “dress rehearsals” for the 1966-1970 genocide.
Nigeria
has now run the course of its bloody trail in this history. The greatest
challenge currently facing the Igbo and other oppressed nations in Nigeria,
Ekwe-Ekwe concludes this major study, is to negotiate the formal and orderly
dissolution of this state and embark on the creation of democratic and
extensively decentralised new states that guarantee and safeguard lives, human
rights, equality and freedom for all peoples and individuals.
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).
