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.

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe