Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Which of the
following 51 states listed below has the following inscription etched brazenly on its
coat-of-arms:
Our lead regime cadres of genocidist and putschist
sergeants and “generals” and privates and corporals
are indeed recycled routinely as immanent crucibles of statecraft
1. Kiribati
2. Solomon Islands
3. Britain
4. Turkmenistan
5.Sénégal
6.São Tomé & Principe
7. Hungary
8. Estonia
9. Surinam
10. The Netherlands
11.Congo Democratic Republic 12. Kosovo 13. Canada
14. Myanmar
15. New Zealand
16. Columbia
17. Russia
18. Kenya 19. Thailand 20. Togo
21. Venezuela
22. Saudi Arabia
23. Peru
24. St Lucia
25. Libya
26. Vanuatu
27. Brazil
28. Yemen
29. Finland
30. Laos
31. Argentina 32. Somalia
33. Nigeria
34. Guinea-Bissau
35. Pakistan 36. Jamaica
37. Ghana 38. Chad
39. Poland
40. Honduras
41. Australia
42. Kenya
43. Kazakhstan
44. Papua New Guinea 45. Kyrgyzstan 46. Côte d’Ivoire
47. Ukraine 48. Ecuador 49. North Korea 50. East Timor 51. Austria
(New York Art Quartet plays Charlie Parker’s composition, “Mohawk” [personnel: John Tchicai, alto saxophone; Roswell Rudd, trombone; Reggie Workman, bass; Milford Graves, drums; recorded: Nippon Phonogram, New York, 16 July 1965])
Alto saxophonist genius and composer who plays an instrumental role in inaugurating the bebop revolution in jazz, African American classical music, in the 1940s/early 1950s, channelling its creativity and outcomes crucially to this epoch of African American freedom quest
(Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, “Hot house” [personnel: Parker, alto saxophone; Gillespie, trumpet;
Dick Hyman, piano; Sandy Block, bass; Charlie Smith, drums; recorded: DuMont
television network, New York, US, 24 February 1952])
Distinguished theoretical physicist, expert on solar energy, professor emeritus and prolific multidisciplinary author including a set of biographical studies on leading Igbo intellectuals, one of which is on mathematician Chike Obi aptly subtitled: The foremost African mathematical genius of the 20th century Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
Many would probably adjudge as “too modest” the following 12 tasks* that states in contemporary Africa are called upon to accomplish for their peoples in the next five years starting tomorrow, Friday 28 August 2015. Despite such reservation, the tasks are available here for the challenge. Can any of these states achieve the set goals? Which? Which cannot? Why not? Each of the current 54 so-called sovereign African states has the capacity to accomplish these tasks during the the set timeframe including, particularly, those disarticulated entities where regime cadres of genocidist and putschist sergeants and “generals” and privates and corporals are ritually recycled as immanent crucibles of statecraft. Freedom vs Not-fit-for-purpose If any of the states can’t, then such a state should be deemed dissolved – not fit for purpose. This is now the opportunity for constituent nations or peoples to seize the historic initiative of freedom, since February 1885, and march along focused with a sense of mission to embark on this reconstruction/redevelopment themselves, underscoring that lucid insight since proffered by Walter Rodney – “development means a capacity for self-sustaining growth” . In other words, the engine of societal development is located internally, in the peoples, themselves, not the prevailing and pervasive fraudulent developmentalism beamed to Africa whose mission has the etched signature of some external agency and the latter’s central interests.
Goals for states/new states 1. Cut by 50 per cent prevalence of communicable ailment in the population
2. One hundred quality primary health care centres with excellent facilities, equipment and medicine
3. One hundred quality primary and secondary schools with excellent world-standard curriculum content, equipment, staff and study environment
4. One university of worldwide standard, attracting staff and students from across the region and world
5. One thousand apprenticeship opportunities to study at excellent technical schools, producing skilled workforce of electricians, builders, welders, plumbers, mechanics
6. Fifty per cent of young people, 18-25, have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures
7. Fifty per centof women have access to small-scale loans to start business ventures
8. Pave 1000 kilometres of well-constructed road linking towns and cities and country
9. Engage 1000 new farmers in agricultural work, providing technical and financial support
10. Fifty per centof population have access to clean pipe-borne water supply
11.Fifty per cent of population have access to power 24 hours a day, seven days a week
12. Fifty per cent of homes connected to the internet
(John Coltrane &
Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry,
cornet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New
York, 28 June/8 July 1960])
*I wish to thank Dr Okwuonicha Nzegwu for her contribution to this commentary
“Pres”/“Prez” of the tenor, influential tenor saxophonist whose unique, more introverted tone has had an immense impact on several successive lead players of the instrument including, especially, Gordon, Getz, Mulligan, Cohn, Sims, Quinichette and Stitt
(Billie holiday
& Her All Stars, featuring Lester Young, play “Fine and mellow” [full personnel: Holiday, vocals;
Roy Eldridge, trumpet; Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Gerry Mulligan,
baritone saxophone; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Ben Webster, tenor
saxophone; Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxophone; Danny Baker, guitar; Mal Waldron,
piano; Milt Hinton, bass; Osie Johnson, drums; recorded: CBS, “Sound of Jazz”,
New York, US, 8 December 1957])
Perspicuous harpist, pianist, organist, bandleader and versatile composer which includes the ethereal masterpiece,Ptah, the El Daoud (personnel: Coltrane, piano, harp; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Ben Riley, drums [recorded: Impuse! Records, New York, 26 January 1970])
(Born 26 August 1918, White Sulphur Springs, W Virginia, US) Iconic mathematician, physicist, computer scientist and space scientist, with expansive work in the US space programme Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe The “Igbo Question” is intrinsically linked to the Igbo strategic goal, presently, which is to end the occupation of their homeland, Biafra, by genocidist Nigeria – imposed since 13 January 1970. This is phase-IV of the genocide, launched by Nigeria on Sunday 29 May 1966. 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies including, especially, Britain, which supported the genocide right from conceptualisation to execution – politically, diplomatically, militarily. These were 44 months of uninterrupted, unimaginable carnage and barbarity perpetrated on a people. No single nation or people in Africa has suffered such a gruesome and devastating state(s)-premeditated and organised genocide in history.
(George Russell Sextet, “Thoughts” – personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums [recorded Riverside Record, New York, US, 28 May 1961])
Architecture Given the critical links between the salient features of the politics of the occupation and the overarching architecture of the genocidal campaign, most agree that the Igbo termination of the occupation is at once the beginning of their freedom march from Nigeria and the implementation of an expansive socioeconomic programme of reconstruction unprecedented in this southwestcenral region of Africa. If this is the case, one does not need an Igbo “presidency” in Abuja to achieve this as some Igbo commentators as well as a few others have, at times, contended, but quite uncritically. Indeed no Igbo “presidency”, not even one reinforced with an all-Igbo personnel in the key cabinet military/police/“security”-positions can halt this genocide. This campaign has now acquired an inexorable logic to its being. What the emergence of Boko Haram and its other subalterns have demonstrated in Nigeria is that the prosecuting agency of the genocide has become very much decentred, very much motivated, very much engagingly virulent. The typical Boko Haram suicide-operating cell is a handful-strength, in single digits, and none in the group knows any of the others until they meet at the designated, targeted site of operation – in which they, invariably, are not expected to survive! If any survives, they, of course, become a member of new cell of hitherto unknown members and the cycle goes on...
Inalienable Prior to Boko Haram, still on the Igbo “presidency”, we mustn’t forget that Nigeria was under the leadership of an Igbo general when the genocide began on 29 May 1966. Thus, Igbo “presidency”, however attractive the proposition, offers no route to the Igbo halting the genocide. None whatsoever. The route remains Igbo freedom from Nigeria. This is an inalienable Igbo right with or without the genocide as I have argued severally. If the Scots, for instance, one-tenth of the Igbo population and without a genocide antecedent would wish to leave a union they have largely been exponential beneficiaries for 300 years (“Rights for Scots, Rights for the Igbo”, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html, accessed 18 July 2015), the Igbo, surely, don’t require any agonisingly turgid historical and sociological treatise to wish to leave Nigeria.
Resolution Contrary to the amazingly ahistorical discourses on the nature of the state and its survivability in some circles, particularly in Africa, the state is very much a transient relationship in human history: Kemet, Roman “empire”, Ghana “empire”, Mali “empire”, Czarist “empire”, Austro-Hungarian “empire”, Ottoman “empire”, British “empire”, Malaya Federation, West & East Pakistan, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, the Sudan... Twenty-three (23) new states have, for example, emerged in Europe since the end of the 1980s. Even though a population of about 350 million, one-third of Africa’s population, Europeans presently have more states per capita than Africans! And as history shows, the catastrophe is not the collapse of the state; the catastrophe isto destroy/attempt to destroy constituent peoples within the state as the Igbo, for instance, have faced in a Nigeria since 29 May 1966. Here lies the Igbo Question. Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
Cerebral tenor and soprano saxophonist, member of the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet (1964-1968; personnel: Davis, trumpet;Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums)) and arguably the most prolific living composer in the repertoire – compositions include standards “Lester left town”, “Footprints”, “Nefertiti” and “ESP” andSchizophrenia,Speak No Evil and the classic,The All Seeing Eye
(Wayne Shorter Septet, “Chaos” [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, EnglewoodCliff, NJ,US, 15 October 1965)
BYBiafra Diboh (slightly edited
from the original)
(Teresa Kemp)
Teresa R Kemp, one of African Americans
involved in the free medical care trip to the Anambra region, northwest
Igboland, has traced the ancestral home of her father to Oka, Igboland.
Kemp, a military historian, who recently organised an Igbo arts and cultural festival in South Carolina, United States, said
that her great grandfather, named Osinachi, was enslaved and trafficked over
187 years ago as a metalsmith from Oka to the United States, as confirmed by
DNA.
With an interest in the works of
African peoples, Kemp told The Nation
that she had written a book, Keeper of
the Fire, of an Igbo metalsmith from Awka, detailing the story of her ancestor.
She describes Igbo people as hardworking, intelligent, unassuming, and
entrepreneurial in nature: “I am proud to be linked to Ndiigbo, the world has
prospered because of Ndiigbo”.
Kemp went to Anambra with an
organisation called ASA-World (which has membership in 27 countries), made up of the
region’s indigenes resident overseas whose mission is to provide free medical
care for the people, costing US$ 800,000.
The team brought diagnostic
equipment and medicine to be left behind for resident doctors and other health
officials to continue using in Oko, in Orumba north local government, Abagana, Njikoka
local government, Obosi, Idemili north local government, Ihembosi and Ozubulu,
both Ekwusigo local government, and Oba, Idemili south local government
district.
The medical mission treated and
provided medicine to people suffering from different ailments. Total treated
are: 1,100 in Oko, 8,500 in Abagana, 1,200 in Ihembosi, 1,300 in Obosi, and 1,200
in Ozubulu.
Pianist, organist, composer, arranger, his salutary majesty of the big band and swing whose orchestra for 50 years, beginning in 1935, becomes a conservatoire for the distinguished graduating array of instrumentalists and singers of the age including, particularly, tenor saxophonist Lester Young, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry Edison and singers Billie Holiday, Helen Humes, Big Joe Turner, Joe Williams and Jimmy Rushing
(Count Basie and
Orchestra, “One O’clock jump” [Reveille with Beverley film, 1943])
However you disguise it, this thing
does not change:
The perpetual struggle between Good
and Evil.
(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”, 1934)
Instrument Britain, under the
primeministership of Harold Wilson, plays an instrumental role in the
perpetration of the Igbo genocide – politically, diplomatically and militarily.
Without this entrenched British role, there probably would not have been the
Igbo genocide… In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa,
Nigeria and its British principal ally murder 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter
of this nation’s population during the course of 44 months…
(Harold Wilson: central
role)
1.***** Early December
1967: Britain supplies six Saladin
armoured personnel carriers (APCs), 30 Saracen APCs along with 2,000 machine
guns for them, anti-tank guns and 9 million rounds of ammunition to Nigeria genocidist
military…
2.By the end of December
1967: Britain approves export of 1,050
bayonets, 700 grenades, 1,950 rifles with grenade launchers, 15,000 lbs of
explosives and two helicopters to Nigeria genocidist military…
3. In the first half
of 1968: Britain approves export of 15 million rounds of ammunition, 21,000
mortar bombs, 42,500 Howitzer rounds, 12 Oerlikon guns, 3 Bofors guns, 500
submachine guns, 12 Saladins with guns and spare parts, 30 Saracens and spare
parts, 800 bayonets, 4,000 rifles and two other helicopters to Nigeria
genocidist military…
4.November 1968:
Britain agrees that 5 million more rounds of ammunition, 40,000 more mortar
bombs and 2,000 rifles, six Saladins and 20,000 rounds of ammunition for them,
and stepped up monthly supplies of ammunition, amounting to a total of 15
million rounds additional to those already agreed, should be sent to Nigeria
genocidist military…
5.1968: The recent
deal meant that Britain had supplied 36 million rounds of ammunition in the
last few months alone. 6. By the end of 1968: Britain had sold £9 million worth of arms,
£6 million of which was spent on small arms, to genocidist Nigeria military …
7.March 1969: Britain
approves export of 19 million rounds of ammunition, 10,000 grenades and 39,000
mortar bombs to Nigeria genocidist military…
8.August 1969:
Britain dispatches two senior RAF officers to Nigeria to advise the genocidists
on their air terror campaign…
9.December 1969: Even
as the Nigeria genocidist military is about to overrun the Igbo resistance, Michael
Stewart, British foreign secretary, is calling for more British military supplies
to the campaign, especially armoured cars…
(*****Reference to
compendium [1-9] of British arms dispatch to genocidist Nigeria: Mark Curtis,
“Nigeria’s war over Biafra, 1967-70”, markcurtis.wordpress.com)
Annhilative score As the slaughter of the Igbo intensifies, particularly in the
catastrophic months of 1968-1969, Harold Wilson is totally unfazed as he
informs Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator
for relief to Biafra, that he, Harold
Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took”
Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain
Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122).
As the final tally
of the murder of the Igbo demonstrates, Harold Wilson probably has the
perverted satisfaction of having his Nigerian subalterns perform far in excess
of the prime minister’s grim target, a subject coldly stated in Wilson’sownmemoirs where he notes that the Nigerian
military, equipped zealously by Britain as highlighted above, expends more
small arms ammunition in its campaign to achieve its annhilative mission in
Igboland than the amount used by the British armed forces “during
the whole” of the
Second World War (Harold Wilson,Labour
Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, 1971: 630, added emphasis).
And on this very
annhilative feature, Colonel Robert Scott, military advisor in the British
diplomatic mission in Nigeria, during the period, acknowledges, equally
gravely, that as Nigerian genocidist military forces unleash their attacks on
Igbo cities, towns and villages, they are the “best defoliant agent
known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970).
(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, EnglewoodCliff, NJ,US, 15 October 1965)
Where is the
knowledge we have lost in information?
(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the
Rock”, 1934)
FOR THE Igbo, prior to 29 May 1966,
three important holidays were high up on their annual calendar: the Igbo
National Day, the iri ji, or the New Yam Festival, and 1 October.
The latter was the day of celebration for the restoration of independence for
peoples in Nigeria after 60 years of the British conquest and occupation. Or,
so were the thoughts predicated on this date’s designation...
Beacons
The Igbo were
one of the very few constituent nations in what was Nigeria, again prior to 29
May 1966, who understood, fully, the immense liberatory possibilities ushered
in by 1 October and the interlocking challenges of the vast reconstructionary
work required for state and societal transformation in the aftermath of foreign
occupation. The Igbo had the most robust economy in the country in their east
region homeland, supplied the country with its leading writers, artists and
scholars, supplied the country’s top universities with vice-chancellors (or presidents)
and leading professors and scientists, supplied the country with its first
indigenous university (the prestigious university at Nsukka), supplied the
country with its leading and most spirited pan-Africanists, supplied the
country with its top diplomats, supplied the country’s leading high schools
with head teachers and administrators, supplied the country with its top
bureaucrats, supplied the country with its leading businesspeople, supplied the
country with an educated, top-rated professional officers-corps for its
military and police forces, supplied the country with its leading
sportspersons, essentially and effectively worked the country’s rail, postal,
telegraphic, power, shipping and aviation services to quality standards not
seen since in Nigeria…
And they were
surely aware of the vicissitudes engendered by this historic age precisely
because the Igbo nation played the vanguard role in the freeing of Nigeria from
Britain, beginning from the mid-1930s. The commentator, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde,
couldn’t have been more emphatic in summarising the thrust of the Igbo mission
during the period:
The Igbo nation ha[s] attributes most
other Nigerian nationalities can only dream of and are what most other nations
[are] not. The Igbo made Nigeria better. Any wonder then that the Igbo can do
without Nigeria; but Nigeria and her myriad nationalities cannot do without the
Igbo? Take the Igbo out of the Nigeria equation … and Nigeria will be gasping
for air (nigeriavillagesquare.com, 28 July 2004).
THE IGBO’s break with Nigeria occurred
catastrophically on Sunday 29 May 1966. On this day, leaders of the Fulani islamist/jihadist north
region (feudal overlords, muslim clergy, military, police, businesspeople,
academics, civic servants, other public officials and patrons,alimajiri), who were long
opposed to the liberation of Nigeria (there were no comparable clusters of
political, cultural, ideational, religious, national or racial groupings
anywhere else in the Southern World, during the era, which had a similar,
unenviable disposition of hostility to emancipation from the European
occupation of their lands as the Fulani leadership), launched waves of
premeditated genocidal attacks on Igbo migrant populations resident in the
north. These attacks were later expanded to Igboland itself, Biafra, during the
third phase which began on 6 July 1967, boosted particularly by the robust
participation in the slaughter by the Yoruba, Urhobo, and Edo nations of west
Nigeria as well as others elsewhere in the country. 3.1 million Igbo or
one-quarter of this nation’s population were murdered during those 44 dreadful
months.
Opportunism
THE Yoruba
support for the genocide, as from 6 July 1967, for instance, bears all the
hallmark of a squelching cadence of opportunism. Influential Yoruba personages
(especially Obasanjo, Adekunle, Gbadamosi King, Akinrinade, Rotimi, Are, Taiwo)
under the operational gaze of chief genocidist “theorist” Obafemi Awolowo,
plunged headlong, carrying out theirown
rolein this gruesome
foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa most fiendishly,
particularly across their chosen south Igboland killing fields. The Yoruba
appeared to have lost, quite spectacularly, the 1930s-1960s Igbo-Yoruba
competitive “preparatory drive” to develop the high-level humanpower and
ancillary resources required to run the prospective post-conquest state after
the British departure. They therefore viewed the outbreak of the mid-1966 Igbo
mass killings in the north region and elsewhere as welcome season to “avenge”
their “loss” during the great sociocultural rivalry of those previous three
decades, clutching onto any bomb or missile available, from July 1967, on their
onward death-march east to lob, remorselessly, into besieged Biafra, into an
Igbo home, Igbo school, Igbo shrine, Igbo church, Igbo hospital, Igbo office,
Igbo market, Igbo farmland, Igbo factory/industrial enterprise, Igbo children’s
playground, Igbo town hall, Igbo refugee centre…
(Ornette Coleman
Quartet, “C&D” {or Civilisation and its Discontents – Freud} [personnel: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket
trumpet; Scott LaFaro,
bass; Ed Blackwell,
drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 31 January 1961])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe THERE is presently a visionary and
purposeful spirit felt by the Igbo as well as across Igboland, Biafra. This development
is immensely uplifting. The Igbo appear poised to complete the march begun on 29
May 1966 – the reinforcement of their inalienable right to freedom, in the wake
of the outbreak of the genocide. Surely, the sun is on its ascent. These are
indeed extraordinary times the likes of which have not been seen since the 12
January 1970 end of phase-III of the genocide and the progression to phase-IV.
During the previous, phases I-III-harrowing 44 months (29 May 1966-12 January
1970), the Nigeria state and its allies murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, or
one-quarter of this nation’s population, in this foundational and most gruesome
genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa.
20 years before…
AS THIS march to the restoration of freedom dawns, the Igbo should, as a matter
of urgency, retrieve from the archives the plan for the reconstruction and
transformation of the then east Nigeria drawn up in the 1950s by Mbonu Ojike,
the cerebral Chicago University scholar and African peoples-centred economist, who was
the minister of the region’s economic development and planning. The Ojike Plan
had envisaged a 20-year timeframe, beginning in 1954, during which the east
would be transformed into an advanced multifaceted industrial and agricultural
economy.
The main thrust of this plan is still valid and should be reworked and adapted
to 21st century priorities and the advantage of new technologies. Such was the
impressive pace of this programme that, by 1964, ten years later, the overall
economic performance of the east had not only outstripped the rest of Nigeria
but was in fact Africa’s fastest growing economy. The east had the best schools
and the first independent university system in the country, the best humanpower
development in the country across a range of fields including, crucially,
engineering, medicine, the arts, and the middle-range technical cadre. THE REGION also had the most integrated infrastructural development in Nigeria and
its manufacturing, distributive and extractive enterprises centred in the
Enuugwu-Nkalagu-Emene conurbation to the north, Onicha (commercial capital and
home to the future Oshimili stock exchange and index) to the west and Igwe
Ocha/Port Harcourt-Aba-Calabar to the south were clearly the hubs of the making
of this African industrial revolution of recent history. But for the Igbo
genocide, the east was on course to construct the “Taiwan”
or the “China”
or the “South Korea”
or the “India”
inAfrica– 20 years before these
post-1939-1945 war much-vaunted “economic transformational miracles” of the era
emerged!
(Alice Coltrane Sextet, “Something about John Coltrane” [Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, soprano
saxophone, bells; Cecil McBee, bass; Tulsi, tambura; Rashied Ali, drums; Majid Shabazz, tambourine, bells; recorded: Impulse! Records, New
York, US, 8 November
1970])
Complementarity
The Igbo should now resume this
journey in earnest. Right from the outset, Igbo women, who, in the past (i.e.
prior to the British conquest and occupation), controlled and exercised
extensive rights and authority over their own affairs as well as those of the
rest of society, must be repositioned at the epicentre of the shared
dual-gender complementary spaces of responsibility, power and authority in this
historic transformation of Biafra (for authoritative insights into pre-conquest Igbo gender relations, see, especially, the studies and writings of sociologist Kamene Okonjo and novelist Flora Nwapa). THE Igbo have one ofAfrica’s
best-developed, multidisciplinary humanpower contingents to work this
transformation. Given their well-known hardworking ethic and entrepreneurial
drive, the Igbo should be able to achieve an annual 10 per cent growth rate in
their economy to effectuate this transformation without difficulty. They should
immediately set up a trust fund foundation to finance the enterprise in the
next decade. The foundation should have a core membership of distinguished Igbo
men and women of which the Igbo have unlimited number. An appeal should be sent
out at once, calling on every adult Igbo woman and man at home and in the
diaspora in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world to make an annualvoluntarycontribution of US$100 dollars to the
fund with allowances made of course for those who wish to contribute more than
this stipulated figure or indeed less. The foundation should set up actualising
working/implementation committees made up of experts in their fields to focus
on various sectors of the Biafran economy: power generation, town-city/urban
revival/development, industrial manufacturing, agriculture, information
technology, communication/infrastructure, healthcare, education,
culture/history/heritage, recreation/leisure, rural embodiment,
environment/regeneration – particularly focusing on the heightened erosion and
landslide occurrence in the northwest region.
Hubs of industrial and agricultural activities are already in place in their
designated sites of operation in Igboland and these would form the foci of this
transformation: the Onicha-Nnewi-Oka-Ihiala industrial conurbation for machine
tools and heavy industry; the Enuugwu-Emene-Nsukka information technology
valley; the Aba-Umuahia-Abiriba-Igwe Ocha precision equipment/light industry;
the Uburu-Okposi-Egbema sodium carbonate deposits/other minerals for potential
pharmaceutical and food-processing manufacturing; reactivation of Enuugwu-Udi
coal fields for unlimited power generation to work this manufacturing
enterprise and provide affordable lighting and other energy requirements for
domestic and industrial requirements in addition to exports to countries across
west Africa and elsewhere; work on renewable energy resources such as solar,
wind, refuse – it is indeed incumbent on Biafran engineers to exponentially
increase the country’s access to these renewables in this first vital phase of
redevelopment; enhanced agricultural activities in the central and east
Asu/Ebonyi valleys/Abakaleke corridor and the Onicha/upper Anambra farming
belt...
(Andrew
Hill Trio, “Tripping” or “Naked spirit” [Hill, piano;Rufus
Reid, bass;Ben Riley, drums;
recorded: Barrigozi Studio, Milan, Italy, 3/4 July 1986])
Skills & talents
The involvement of Igbo expertise, especially that
currently based abroad in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australasia, and
elsewhere in the world is of utmost importance in this transformation project.
The utilisation of this asset will understandably be managed with obvious
flexibility in the drive and implementation of the enterprise. This will
involve opportunities for visiting/adjunct professorships with appropriate
colleges/schools/hospitals/laboratories/industrial facilities in Igboland to
work in, summertime slots, and sabbatical emplacements.
RESTRUCTURING the communication/infrastructure base ofBiafrawould appear to be the
trigger to impact tremendously on other sectors of the economy. Igbo road,
rail, waterway and air networks should now be rehabilitated and expanded
radically. The entire length and breadth of Igboland from Igwe Nga/Opobo,
Azumini, Umuebelengwu, Umu Ubani/Bonny, Ahoada, Igwe Ocha, Asaba, Onicha, Aboh,
Ogwashi-Ukwu in the Oshimili Delta to Enuugwu, Nsukka, Eha-Amuufu and Abakeleke
in the central, north and northeast should be comprehensively networked by these
services. There should, for instance, be daily express rail services linking
Igwe Nga, Azumini and Igwe Ocha in the south to Nsukka and Eha Amuufu in the
north, viaAba and Enuugwu,
and from Umu Ubani and Ahoada in the south to Olu, Okigwe, Ugwuta, Onicha,
Asaba and Agbo in the west/northwest. Other trains should be crisscrossing on
the east-west routes originating from Abakaleke, Aruchukwu, Ohafia, Umuahia,
Abriba and Ehuugbo to Enuugwu, Oka, Onicha, Asaba, Ogwashi-Ukwu and Agbo and
vice versa. This transformation should envisage dredging the Oshimili south of
Onicha to the Atlantic coast and the construction of additional international
ocean-bound port facility at Azumini and Onicha and a dry dock atAba.
Another road and rail bridge should link the historic twin cities of Asaba and
Onicha and a tunnel service under the Oshimili to carry these dual modes of
transport should also be constructed. Both bridge and tunnel should be
appropriately namedChukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu. Asaba and Onicha should also have a modern hovercraft
service in operation. Commuter bus, coach, tram and rail services in Igbo
cities and towns should quickly replace the ill-suited and unsafe “okada” or
motorcycle provisions of the present. The Igbo, a much travelled people
worldwide, must now establish direct flight access entry to Igboland from the
outside world that is not dependent onNigeria viaLagos,Abuja andKano or any of its
other “entry points”. The Enuugwu and Owere airports should be transformed
immediately to the full,operational
statusof international
airports to ensure the uninterrupted movement of people, goods and services
overseas flying directly intoBiafra and vice versa. Direct
flight routes from Igboland to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, São Tomé and Principe,
Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Sénégal, South
Africa, United States, Canada, Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Austria,
Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, China, Brazil, Jamaica, Barbados and
Australia should be in operation here as of utmost priority in this first phase
of the implementation, given the high number of Igbo people who live and work
in the cited countries. Igbo émigrés in these countries should negotiate with
their hosts for the latter to establish or augment existing consular/diplomatic
presence in Igboland to ease travel plans and processing, especially for those
starting their journeys from Igboland: Asaba, Onicha, Enuugwu, Oka, Owere,
Umuahia, Igwe Nga,Aba,
Abakaleke, Ugwuta and Igwe Ocha should enjoy these upgraded facilities.
International airports should also be built at Onicha and Ugwuta to cater for
the movement of people, goods and services in the west, and at Nsukka and
Abakaleke to respond to demands in the north and east of the country
respectively.
Culture
The restructuring of city and local governments inBiafrais vital in this
transformation project. Igbo cities and towns should enjoy extensive autonomous
status in order to transform themselves into advanced modern spaces for living,
working, recreating, and the growth and development of culture. Each Biafran city
and town should have a municipal authority to raise its own taxes, power its
own development including the establishment of educational institutions at all
levels, transport systems, including buses, trams and rail services
(underground and overground) and city airport facility, cultural institutions
(including homes for orchestras and bands of varying musical genres and
traditions) and recreational facilities such as parks, theatres, museums,
galleries, concert halls, stadiums and the like.
EVERY Igbo child must have access to a computer and every school in Igboland
linked to the internet. Equally crucial, technical colleges should be set up in
Igbo cities and towns to develop and expand on that sphere of humanpower
resource upon which the advancement of society is largely predicated – growth
of plumbers, electricians, draughtspeople, carpenters, builders, etc., etc.
Cities and towns including Aba, Nnewi, Agbo, Nsukka, Eha Amuufu, Abakaleke,
Ohafia, Mbano, Item, Umuahia, Onicha-Ugbo, Owere, Ogwashi-Ukwu, Aboh, Ozubulu,
Agbaani, Akaeze, Abaa, Okigwe, Enuugwu, Asaba, Ogidi, Igwe Ocha, Olu, Isele-Ukwu,
Igwe Nga, Onicha, Mbaise, Okpana, Oshiri, Ahoada, Ogwu, Ehuugbo, Ehuugbo Road,
Uburu, Aguleri, Nnobi, Umu Ubani, Ahiara, Abiriba, should be sites for these
colleges. These urban centres could also have their own city universities to
cope with the continuously high demands from Igbo youths and others who have,
since 1970, consistently maintained top position for the highest number of
students seeking university places inNigeria,despitethe occupation. The existing
universities in Igboland need to expand even further to respond to these needs.
The trust fund will no doubt be looking into ways to increase funding to these
institutions after 45 years of programmed neglect and degradation, which have,
all along, been critical features of the overarching strategy of phase-IV of
the genocide by the occupation regime. THE 50 MILLION Igbo should now set to
work as determindly as ever. The prospects are incredibly exciting. This
resultant transformation of Biafra within a generation will at once be a time-honoured memorial to the 3.1 million and the additional tens of thousands murdered since (phase-IV) and the triumph of the nonnegotiable right to freedom by the survivors and their children and grandchildren and theirs...
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of, among others, Biafra Revisited (2006) and Readings from Reading: Essays on African History, Genocide, Literature (2011) Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe
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).
