Thoughts on the survivor-victor

No people who survives genocide is a “loser”: Armenians, Berg Damara, Boulangui, Darfuri, Herero, Igbo, Jews, Kongo, Luba, Mangbetu-Azande, Mongo, Nama, Tutsi... Someone or a people that survives genocide is at once a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter: “Happy Survival”! 

Foundation

In the case of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which Nigeria murders 3.1 million Igbo (one-quarter of this nation’s population), the agency that has consistently acknowledged this fact of the survivor-victor, throughout this dreadful epoch, is, pointedly, none other than Nigeria – the key perpetrator of this crime itself. Whatever else explains why Nigeria segues almost effortlessly to a new phase of its campaign, as early as 13 January 1970, to coincide with that Igbo celebratory life-invocation-of- “Happy Survival” that they proclaimed to the whole world:

(a) new vistas of charging murder trails, since, targeting and slaughtering tens of thousands of Igbo domiciled particularly in the geographies of north Nigeria but also elsewhere in the country with the murder-machine now morphed into Boko Haram   

(b) enhanced disarticulation/degradation/dismantling of Igboland economy and programmed “marginalisation” of the well-known contending assets of Igbo intellectual/politico-economic-cultural establishment – a crucial plank of the overarching goal of the Nigeria occupation

(c) unrelentingly fiendish valorisation of the genocide by genocidist “theorists”/ commanders/commandants/heads-of-regime including the Saturday 13 September 2014 outrageous, fulsome “eulogisation” of septic génocidaire Benjamin Adekunle by head-of-regime Goodluck Jonathan

(d) just as Adekunle, a Boko Haram-forebear, both organically and operationally, since 29 May 1966, those who currently execute Boko Haram’s slaughtering on the ground can look forward to being candidates for future bouts of “eulogisation” by a Jonathan or some other successor Nigeria head-of-regime

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Living space” [personnel: Coltrane, soprano saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])

We are here

Yet despite the desperation and savagery of genocidist Nigeria, the Igbo refuse to go under. Igbo will never go under, thanks to the resilience of the survivor-victor. In dazzling contrast, the world presently watches, unmistakeably, as Nigeria trots along to an ignominious collapse, having run the course of its bloody trail in history. Consequently, for the Igbo, they have their work cut out as they embark on constructing a new civilisation in their new state in the aftermath of Nigeria. They don’t only have to negate, in its entirety, that which was Nigeria, but subvert the very ideational crucible which inaugurated this pulverising nightmare 129 years ago.  

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