Genocide survivor

How else could a people, any peoples, who survives genocide not be the victor(s) in the aftermath of this cataclysm rather than the perpetrator(s)? This is precisely why the génocidaires are perpetually in terror of the future subsequently. An examination of any of the extant genocide-states, particularly in Africa, underlines this trauma. Memory, thankfully, prevails.

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108th birthday of Johnny Hodges

(Born 25 July 1906, Cambridge, Mass, US)

Enduring lead alto saxophonist in the incomparable Duke Ellington Orchestra for nearly 40 years, beginning 1928

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1st anniversary of second deportation of Igbo people from Lagos, Nigeria

Date of deportation: 24 July 2013

On this day, 24 July 2013, Raji Fashola, head of the Lagos region regime in Nigeria, deports 72 Igbo, including several children and older people some of whom have disabilities, from Lagos to Onicha, the Igbo Oshimili/Niger delta city, 230 miles away

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html

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207th birthday of Ira Aldridge

(Born 24 July 1807, New York, US)

One of the leading Shakespearean actors of the 19th century, active on the London stage and principal theatres across Europe between the mid-1820s and 1867

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212th birthday of Alexandre Dumas

(Born 24 July 1802, Villiers-Cotterêts, France)

One of the preeminent luminaries of French letters, prolific across genres – novels, drama, travel books, history, journalism – with classics which include The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, Twenty Years Later, The Last Cavalier, Georges

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68th birthday of Danny Glover

(Born 22 July 1946, San Francisco, US)

Award-winning film, television and theatre actor and director and human rights activist

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89th birthday of Frantz Fanon

This week, the world celebrates the 89th birthday of Frantz Fanon (born 20 July 1925, Fort-de-France, Martinique), psychiatrist and one of the preeminent revolutionary theorists of the 20th century whose landmark publications are The Wreathed of the Earth (1963), A Dying Colonialism (1965),  Black Skin, White Masks (1967), Toward the African Revolution (1969)

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65th birthday of Thulani Davis

(Born 19 July 1949, Hampton, Virginia, US)

Award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, poet, librettist, outstanding works include My Confederate Kinfolk ([2006] on family history with immense national and wider resonance), The Souls of Black Folk ([2003] play on adaptation of WEB Du Bois’s classic of the same title), All the Renegade Ghosts Rise ([1978] poems), Playing the Changes ([1985] poems) and writes the libretti to two operas she collaborates with cousin and composer/pianist Anthony Davis: X ([1986] on the life of Malcolm X) and Amistad ([1997] on the 1839 enslaved African maritime uprising)

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76th birthday of Dudu Pukwana

(Born 18 July 1938, Port Elizabeth, South Africa)

Alto saxophonist and composer and dedicated South African restoration-of-independence activist

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96th birthday of Nelson Mandela

(Born 18 July 1918, Mvezo, South Africa)

Lawyer, leader of the African restoration-of-independence movement that frees South Africa after 342 years of the European World conquest and occupation

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152nd birthday of Ida B Wells

(Born 16 July 1862, Holly Springs, Miss, US)

Sociologist, celebrated investigative journalist and unrelenting human rights activist

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53rd birthday of Forest Whitaker

(Born 15 July 1961, Longview, Texas, US)

Versatile and highly accomplished television and film actor with award-winning performances which include Bird ([1988] on iconoclastic alto saxophonist, bandleader and composer Charlie Parker), The Last King of Scotland ([2006] on vile dictator Idi Amin) and The Great Debaters ([2007] on the debating society team from the African American Wiley College of the 1930s)

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45th birthday of Beth Brown

(Born 15 July 1969, Roanoke, Virginia, US)

Cerebral astrophysicist and academic with outstanding outreach science education programmes

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Ref: BBC News, London, Tuesday 15 July 2014, “Man claims African land for daughter to become princess”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/28308329

Not as outlandish as it may appear! That’s indeed how the European World often conquered and occupied African territory  in the past – until about a hundred years to the day, as it embarked on its 1914-1918 war. Nations, peoples and states in Africa were targeted and seized by all sorts from Europe to plunder in the name of the monarch and the crown or the republic (France!) back home. The outcome? The genocidist inchoate assemblages strewn around presently tagged Nigeria, Niger, Chad, the Sudan, the Central African Republic, Zaïre/the Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc., etc. History, it seems, continues to project itself almost inexorably...

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78th birthday of Albert Ayler

(Born 13 July 1936, Cleveland, Ohio, US)

Iconic tenor saxophonist and composer whose July 1964 album, Spiritual Unity (Ayler, tenor saxophone; Gary Peacock, bass; Sunny Murray, percussion), celebrates the concept of rhythmic freedom that captures the saliency of the ongoing age of freedom drive in the United States and elsewhere in the world

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How Nigeria enhances Igbo freedom drive

One of the obvious features any student of genocide picks up quite quickly about the perpetrator of this heinous crime is how open, less subtle, and often brazenly defiant they are with respect to their programme/policy towards a prescribed or targeted people. Nigeria, indeed, typifies this prototype but even more! Nigeria’s is crude, loathsome, vindictive, remorseless: read or listen to any genocidist Nigerian on this subject – from an Obafemi Awolowo to an Ibrahim Haruna, an Olusegun Obasanjo, a Yakubu Gowon... If anything, these attributes should and do alert the people so targeted – the Igbo, in this case. In effect, in its very deeds, the Nigeria agency aids Igbo freedom markedly despite itself.

(Wayne Shorter Sextet, “The soothsayer” – personnel: Shorter, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; James Spaulding, alto saxophone;  McCoy Tyner, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums [recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 4 March 1965])

Burden of history

If one goes through the copious analyses and papers by the Biafran leadership on the mindset of Nigerian génocidaires during 1966-1970, it is fascinating to note how the former’s very advanced thinking at the time has impacted contemporary genocide studies and the mode of pronouncement by many in international relations on the nature of the “global emergency” especially since 9 September 2001. Nearly 50 years ago, the Igbo, particularly their intellectuals, clearly articulated the existential threat they faced (and still face) and responded accordingly. The Igbo today, including their intellectuals, do have a historical precedent. No one else, howsoever their altruistic credentials, resolves someone’s burden of history except themself. Surely the Igbo couldn’t think otherwise!

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77th birthday of Bill Cosby

(Born 12 July 1937, Philadelphia, US)

Celebrated comedian, actor, author, public speaker and unrelenting human rights campaigner, television producer, creator of The Bill Cosby Show, the influential television sitcom programme of the 1980s on the life and times of an African American family

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37th birthday of Chiwetel Ejiofor

(Born 10 July 1977, London, England)

Award-winning theatre, television and film actor whose breathtaking career has featured lead performances ranged across some of the most tortuous terrains that define humanity’s current history: Congo Basin, Igbo genocide, European World enslavement of Africans in the Americas

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139th birthday of Mary McLeod Bethune

(Born 10 July 1875, Mayesville, South Carolina, US)

Versatile human rights campaigner and educator who sets up a school for the education of African American children in Florida (1904) that has now become Bethune-Cookman University

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112th birthday of Nicolás Guillén

 (Born 10 July 1902, Camagüe, Cuba)

Celebrated prolific liberatory poet, essayist, journalist, human rights activist

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FWD: Chris Oji on the “Agony of Igbo people” in Nigeria’s Benue region

{It is important for anyone reading Chris Oji’s report (by clicking on link below) to please bear in mind Article II [b] and [c] of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:

[b] Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

[c] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

– Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe}

http://scannewsnigeria.com/opinion/agony-of-igbos-in-benue/

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Salute to intellectuals in defence of the people during the Igbo genocide!

Let it never be forgotten that, four decades ago, Igbo intellectuals and others, many very talented and widely accomplished men and women in their varying fields of expertise – writers, academics, artists, diplomats, bankers, military officers, clergy, accountants, scientists, physicians, lawyers, engineers – contributed most profoundly to the eventual survival of the Igbo during phases I-III of the genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, when only few in the world thought they would accomplish such an improbable feat. The following names are etched in our memories forever: Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Louis Mbanefo, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Flora Nwapa, Kamene Okonjo, Godfrey Okoye, Michael Echeruo, Ifeagwu Eke, SJ Cookey, Sam Mbakwe, Janet Mokelu, Obiora Udechukwu, Uche Chukwumerije, Kalu Ezera, Philip Efiong, Ignatius Kogbara, Alvan Ikoku, Celestine Okwu, Benjamin Nwankiti, Benedict Obumselu, Donatus Nwoga, NU Akpan, Adiele Afigbo, Michael Okpara, Chukwuka Okonjo, Akanu Ibiam, CC Mojekwu, Okoko Ndem, Agwu Okpanku, Tim Onwuatuegwu, Chudi Sokei, Pol Ndu, Ben Gbulie, Chuks Ihekaibeya, Conrad Nwawo, Dennis Osadebe, Osita Osadebe, Chuba Okadigbo,  Okechukwu Ikejiani, Winifred Anuku, Francis Arinze, Anthony Modebe, Alex Nwokedi, Zeal Onyia, Chukwuedo Nwokolo, Pius Okigbo, Godian Ezekwe, Felix Oragwu, Ogbogu Kalu, Kevin Echeruo, Emmanuel Obiechina, Uche Okeke, Chukwuma Azuonye, Onuora Nzekwu, Chukuemeka Ike, Eddie Okonta, Cyprian Ekwensi, Nkem Nwankwo, John Munonye, Gabriel Okara, Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Eni Njoku, Okechukwu Mezu, William Achukwu.

Legacy

For contemporary Igbo intellectuals, this, surely, is an historic legacy to contend with particularly in response to phase-IV of the genocide. The Igbo genocide is one of the most comprehensively documented crimes against humanity. 3.1 million Igbo, one-quarter of this nation’s population, were murdered by Nigeria and its allies during those dreadful 44 months of unrelenting slaughtering and immiseration. Igbo intellectuals must contribute robustly to continue to inform the entire world of the nature and extent of the genocide, examining, pointedly, the variegated contours of the expansive trail of the crime, the parameters and strictures of the monstrosity of denialism of the crime (especially by some clusters of the core perpetrators of the genocide in Nigeria and their collaborators abroad including some in academia and media) and the debilitating and oppressive burden of 40 years of Nigeria’s occupation of Igboland. 

The crime of genocide, thankfully, has no statutes of limitations in international law. Igbo intellectuals should therefore double their efforts to work for the prosecution of all individuals and institutions involved in committing this crime, and effect the restoration of Igbo sovereignty, Biafra.

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112th birthday of Gwendolyn Bennett

(Born 8 July 1902, Giddings, Texas, US)

Poet, graphic artist, organiser and leader of artists’ guilds, cultural magazine editor and contributor, academic, one of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s

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84th birthday of Hank Mobley

(Born 7 July 1930, Eastman, Ga, US)

Tenor saxophonist, composer, bandleader, with an impressive recording career beginning in the mid-1950s and spanning two decades

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108th birthday of Helene Johnson

(Born 7 July 1906, Boston, Mass, US)

One of the outstanding poets of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s, later develops the discipline to write a poem each day for a period stretching almost five decades

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FWD: “Nigeria federal college cut-off marks released – 2014”

The Federal Ministry of Education has released the cut-off marks on State-by-State basis of the just concluded National Common Entrance Examination for admission processes into Federal Unity Colleges nationwide.

Wayne Shorter Septet, “The all seeing eye” – personnel: Shorter, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Grachan Moncur III, trombone, James Spaulding, alto saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums [recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliff, NJ, US, 15 October 1965)

Pupils that scored above the cut-off marks based on their state of origin are eligible for admission on merit.

Abia – Male (130) Female (130)

Adamawa – Male (62) Female (62)

Akwa-Ibom – Male (123) Female (123)

Anambra – Male (139) Female (139)

Bauchi – Male (35) Female (35)

Bayelsa – Male (72) Female (72)

Benue – Male (111) Female (111)

Borno – Male (45) Female (45)

Cross-Rivers – Male (97) Female (97)

Delta – Male (131) Female (131)

Ebonyi – Male (112) Female (112)

Edo – Male (127) Female (127)

Ekiti – Male (119) Female (119)

Enugu – Male (134) Female (134)

Gombe – Male (58) Female (58)

Imo – Male (138) Female (138)

Jigawa – Male (44) Female (44)

Kaduna – Male (91) Female (91)

Kano – Male (67) Female (67)

Kastina – Male (60) Female (60)

Kebbi – Male (9) Female (20)

Kogi – Male (119) Female (119)

Kwara – Male (123) Female (123)

Lagos – Male (133) Female (133)

Nassarawa – Male (58) Female (58)

Niger – Male (93) Female (93)

Ogun – Male (131) Female (131)

Ondo – Male (126) Female (126)

Osun – Male (127) Female (127)

Oyo – Male (127) Female (127)

Plateau – Male (97) Female (97)

Rivers – Male (118) Female (118)

Sokoto – Male (9) Female (13)

Taraba – Male (3) Female (11)

Yobe – Male (2) Female (27)

Zamfara – Male (4) Female (2)

FCT Abuja – Male (90) Female (90)

(*****Scholars and researchers can’t but scrupulously note the higher mark expectation trends that uniformly affect the performances of all students, female and male, from the seven regions of occupied Igboland [Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enuugwu, Delta, Imo, Rivers] than their counterparts in Nigeria and will appropriately draw their own considered conclusion/s – Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)

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99th birthday of Margaret Abigail Walker

(Born 7 July 1915, Birmingham, Al, US)

Poet, novelist, academic, immensely influential figure in the development of African American letters, author of the 1942 classic For My People, a volume of poetry that focuses on African American history, Jubilee (1966), a family historical novel, and an array of other published studies

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77th birthday of Bessie Head

(Born 6 July 1937, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa)

Arguably Botswana’s leading writer whose critically acclaimed publications include the novels When Rain Clouds Gather (1968), Maru (1971) and A Question of Power (1973) and the historical study, Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981)

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47th anniversary of Nigeria’s launch of phase-III of Igbo genocide: 6 July 1967-12 January 1970

On 6 July 1967, Nigeria expands the territorial range of its execution of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, which it launched 14 months earlier, 29 May 1966, murdering 100,000 Igbo people. Now, it embarks on a land and sea-borne invasion of Igboland, Biafra. This campaign stretches for 30 months during which 3 million Igbo are murdered. 

(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Dedication” – personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums [recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])

Definitive mission

Nigeria is supported militarily, diplomatically and politically in its invasion by a string of allies, notably Britain, under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Egypt, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. Right from the outset, genocidist Nigeria establishes on the ground and employs rape and abduction of Igbo girls and women and the public execution of Igbo boys and men as pivotal instruments in waging the campaign. Its ghoulish anthem of the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly on state-owned Kaduna radio (shortwave transmission) and television and with editorial comments on the theme, regularly published in both state-owned New Nigerian (daily) newspaper and (Hausa) weekly Gaskiya Ta fi Kwabo during the period, has these lyrics in Hausa:

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)

This genocidist intent, particularly its empirically earmarked specifics, is unequivocally explicit and its overarching method sets the precedent of the savagery and barbarity that are the hallmark of the genocide and subsequent genocides in Africa as Rwanda, Darfur/Nuba Mountains/Blue Nile/South Kordofan (the Sudan), and Democratic Republic of the Congo attest.

At the apogee of the Igbo genocide, beginning from the second-half of 1968 when thousands of Igbo children and older citizens die daily from starvation, one of the genocidist’s publicly-stated “weapons” in the prosecution of the crime as articulated by chief “theorist” Obafemi Awolowo himself, British Prime Minister Wilson insists, most unconscionably, when he informs Clyde Ferguson (United States State Department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigerian génocidaires to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy [London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977]: 122). Nigeria in fact ends up murdering 3 million Igbo – 2 and one-half million more than Wilson’s grim 500,000 Igbo-death wish. Furthermore, it is indeed a telling irony, given British support for Nigeria and the génocidaires’ strategy of rape and abduction of Igbo womanhood in Biafra, that it is in London, in June 2014, forty-seven years later, that the first international conference on “rape and sexual violence” in war, with emphasis on Africa (and particular focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo), is hosted by none other than the British government in which foreign secretary of state William Hague describes rape as “‘one of the great mass crimes’ of modern times” (BBC News, 10 June 2014).

In Biafra, beginning 6 July 1967, every Igbo town or village overrun by the Nigerian génocidaires becomes  a gruesome milestone in an inexorable march of rape, death, and destruction: Obollo Afo ... Obollo Eke ... Enuugwu-Ezike ... Opi ... Ukehe … Nkalagu ... Owgwu ... Abakaleke … Eha Amuufu ... Nsukka ... Enuugwu ... Agbaani ... Asaba ... Ogwashi-Ukwu ... Isele-Ukwu ... Onicha-Ugbo …Agbo …Umunede ... Onicha ... Nkpo …Oka ... Aba ... Udi ... Ehuugbo ...  Ehuugbo Road ... Okigwe ... Umuahia ... Owere ...Abagana ... Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt ... Ahaoda ... Obiigbo ... Azumini ... Umu Ubani/Bonny ... Igwe Nga/Opobo ... Ugwuta ... Amasiri ... Akaeze ... Uzuakoli ... 

Clearly invoking Nazi-style “search through population-round off-isolate-and-destroy”-tactics in overrun non-Igbo towns and cities such as Calabar, Oron, Ikot Ekpene, Uyo, Ogoja, Obubara, Obudu, Nkarasi and Eket, the genocidists meticulously profile Igbo nationals. Thousands of such profiled Igbo are shot at sight or marched off and later executed at city limits, forest firing-range sites, river banks, or at specifically dedicated genocidist-occupied barrack venues…

Incubation & manifestation

As contemporary Nigeria demonstrates, most graphically, as these lines are written, grounded genocidist advocates/“theorists”/operatives especially Obafemi Awolowo, Tony Enaharo, Hassan Katsina, Alison Ayida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Gbadomosi King, Umaru Dikko, Benjamin Adekunle, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Yakubu Danjuma, Ibrahim Haruna and Ibrahim Taiwo are perhaps just coming to terms with the realisation that their thoughts and deeds have incubated within their very own and become hauntingly cyclical across generations. This is precisely why survivors from these purveyors of state-directed mass slaughter, such as the Igbo, for example, must keep well away from the latter’s tent. Boko Haram insurgents now ravaging swathes of territory across the north, northeast and northcentral Nigeria are remarching along the paths first trodden by their parents/grandparents/greatgrandparents/Nigeriana-génocidaires, beginning 29 May 1966, 48 years ago to the day.

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91st birthday of Johnny Hartman

(Born 3 July 1923, Houma, Louisiana, US)

Critically accomplished balladist who records widely, including the 1963 classic John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman with tenor and soprano saxophonist John Coltrane

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86th birthday of Theophilus Enwezor Nzegwu

(Born 3 July 1928, Onicha, Igboland)

First class electrical engineer MIT-trained scientist and pilot, plays key role in expanded electrification programme in Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt and elsewhere in Nigeria in the early 1950s, academic – particularly meritorious career at both Kumasi College of Technology School of Engineering, Ghana (1955-1958) and RAF Halton School of Technical Training, England, where he is also flying instructor (1959-1964), air force pilot, Royal Air Force (commissioned flying officer, July 1959; becomes flight lieutenant, 1962), pioneer air force pilot major and commander, Nigeria air force, September 1964  

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106th birthday of Thurgood Marshall

(Born 2 July 1908, Baltimore, US)

Preeminent human rights lawyer, first Africa American judge appointed to the US high court, October 1967

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The state is transient; the people endures

The right to self-determination is for every people. It is inalienable and is guaranteed by the United Nations. No people, any peoples, is exempt from exercising this right. This is why the slogan that proclaims such gibberish or ahistoricism as “indivisibility”/”indissolubility”/“indestructibility” of a state, any state, is not really worth the paper it is written on except of course it is an embedded code by a slaughtering-horde for the plot of the next pogrom or the reinforcement of the terror of an ongoing genocide as a Nigeria, for instance, objectifies. 

As everyone knows, the states that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of its 1884-1885 Berlin conqueror-conference, cannot provide the fundamental needs of Africans.  This “Berlin-state”, with its cursed name (Nigeria, Niger, the Sudan, Central African Republic, Chad, whatever!), cannot lead Africans to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the tragic history of centuries of occupation. Such change was and never is the mission of this state but instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest. Essentially, the “Berlin-state” still serves the interests of its creators and those of the ruthless cabal of African-overseers which polices the dire straits of existence that is the lot of Africans currently.

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

As in Berlin, the state is not a gift from the gods. On the contrary, the state is a relationship painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings on our planet Earth to pursue aspirations and interests envisioned by these same human beings within a shared historical and geographical articulation. The African humanity is presently gripped in a grave crisis for survival. It is now time that it abandoned the contrived “Berlin-state” in order to survive. This state is a bane of African existence. African nations, namely the Igbo, Ijo, Wolof, Ibibio, Asante, Baganda, Bakongo, Gĩkũyũ, Bambara, Luo, etc., etc, remain the basis for the regeneration of Africa’s redevelopment. These nations are the sites of the continent’s intellectual and other cultural creativity.

Path to civilisation

What is being stressed here is that African peoples, themselves, must decide on the issue of sovereignty in the post-“Berlin-state” epoch even if the outcome were to lead to the creation of 1001 states in Africa – or more. In this epoch of freedom, any African peoples who, for instance, wishes to chart a future based on the precepts of their forebears in the 12th century Contemporary Era (CE) or even way back, to say, 8th century Before Contemporary Era (BCE), has the right to pursue this goal. Equally any African peoples who believes that their aspirations lie in working through challenges of the 21st century CE and projecting targets of creativity and transformations subsequently, must exercise this right. 

To achieve the goal(s) of any of the stipulated paths does not therefore require anyone to embark on murdering someone else or have themselves murdered, as typified, again as an example, a contemporary Nigeria.  For the future survival of the African humanity, let no more die for the path to their envisaged civilisation or, in other words, howsoever this civilisation a people chooses is construed. It surely can be attained and sustained without committing a crime, particularly genocide – a crime against humanity.

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