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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,
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).
