Licence to murder? What’s the difference between the Nigeria military and al-Mourabitoun/al-Shabaab/Ansar dine/al-Qaeda/al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula/al-Qaeda in the islamic Maghreb/Boko Haram/Islamic state/Taleban?

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Select terrorist outrages across the world, November 2015-January 2016

(1) 10 November 2015

Nigeria occupation military brigade (comprising army, police, secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at Igwe Ocha, south Biafra, attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for the restoration of Biafra sovereignty and release of Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015), murdering 3 and wounding several others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as current Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading global news outlets

(2) 12 November

Islamic state suicide bombers murder 43 people and 240 others wounded in an attack in Beirut, Lebanon

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(3) 13 November

Islamic state fighters attack central Paris, France, murdering 38 people and wounding 368 others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(4) 20 November

Al-Mourabitoun and al-Qaeda in the islamic Maghreb fighters attack hotel in Bamako, Mali, murdering 27 people and wounding 2

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(5) 24 November

Islamic state suicide bombers attack bus in Tunis, Tunisia, murdering 12 people and wounding 17 others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(6) 2 December

[a] Sayed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a husband-wife-terrorist duo, attack a holiday facility at San Bernardino, California, United States, murdering 14 people and wounding 23 others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

[b] Nigeria occupation military brigade (comprising navy, army, police, secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at head bridge, Onicha, southwestcentral Biafra, attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for restoration of Biafran sovereignty and release of Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015), murdering 11 people and wounding scores of others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as Nigeria’s current head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading global news outlets

(7) 12 December

Nigeria military brigade (comprising army, police, secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at Zaria, northcentral Nigeria, attacks Shiite muslims led by Ibrahim Zakzaky, murdering 300 people and wounding scores of others including Zakzaky who the Nigeria regime detains subsequently

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE … condemnation by a number of countries including the US which states categorically after this attack: “The United States calls on the government of Nigeria to quickly, credibly, and transparently investigate these events in Zaria and hold to account any individuals found to have committed crimes”; Shiite Iran condemns the attack and its parliament calls on Nigeria to “launch an investigation into these deaths”; massacre widely publicised by leading global news outlets                                                         

(8)  17 December

Nigeria occupation military brigade (comprising navy, army, police, secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at head bridge, Onicha, southwestcentral Biafra, attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for restoration of Biafran sovereignty and celebrating an Abuja (Nigeria) court’s ruling releasing Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015), murdering 8 and wounding scores of others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as current Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading global news outlets

(9) 12 January 2016

Islamic state suicide bomber attacks shopping facility in Istanbul, Turkey, murdering 11 people and wounding 14 others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(10)  14 January 2016

Islamic state suicide bombers/other designated fighters attack central Jakarta, Indonesia, murdering 4 people and wounding 24 others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations, widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(11) 15-16 January 2016

Al-Qaeda in the islamic Maghreb attack hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, murdering 29 people and wounding 56 others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global news outlets

(12) 19 January

Nigeria occupation military brigade (comprising army, police, secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at Aba, southeast Biafra, attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for restoration of Biafran sovereignty and calling for release of Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015), murdering 8 and wounding scores of others

INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as current Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading global news outlets

Notes

As the empirical evidence above shows (1, 6b, 12 ), genocidist Nigeria can, in the contemporary era, 2015-2016, openly and defiantly murder the world’s people who are Igbo and Biafran and African and Christian without any protest or sanction from the rest of the world, not least from the leading powers of the age including the United Nations, the organisation that proclaims that it exists to serve human solidarity and progress.

Thanks to the British government led by Harold Wilson, Nigeria indeed acquired this licence to murder the Igbo as it sought fit during phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 – hence the world’s deafening silence that accompanies each of the three Nigerian atrocities recorded above. This is one of the haunting catastrophes of this epoch. At the apogee of the genocide, 1968-1969, Harold Wilson insisted, on record, that he, 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, London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977, p. 122). The Nigerian subalterns on the ground in this southwestcentral Africa region, the “boys” – indolent, toady, virulently and vindictively anti-African operatives, handsomely obliged their “massa”, slaughtering far beyond the grim Wilson-target of 500,000 Igbo or 4.2 per cent of the Igbo population (then) by 12 January 1970. The Nigerians had instead murdered 3.1 million Igbo, 25 per cent of this nation’s population.  

Essentially, Harold Wilson, an elected politician, a politician in Britain, an advanced West democracy, indeed the leader of the British Labour party, had authorised and managed his country’s support for the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, 21 years after the end of the deplorable Jewish genocide by Germany in Europe in which 6 million Jews were murdered. Furthermore, Harold Wilson’s “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took”-declaration became the defining template of the diminution of African life which formed the context of Nigeria’s continuation of the Igbo genocide beyond 12 January 1970, further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur/Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan (all in Sudan since 2003) and in other wars on the continent. A total of 15 million Africans have been murdered across the continent in these genocides and other wars since Nigeria launched the Igbo genocide in May 1966. In this all-Africa cataclysmic outcome, Harold Wilson and his Nigerian génocidaires have operationalised that gripping insight of historian Chancellor Williams’s of the critical role that the African, themself, plays in their own subjugation by the pan-European World:

Now the shadows lengthened. The Europeans had also been busily building up and training strong African armies. Africans trained to hate, kill and conquer Africans. Blood of Africans was to sprinkle and further darken the pages of their history … Indeed, Africa was conquered for the Europeans by the Africans [themselves], and thereafter kept under [conquest] control by African police and African soldiers... (Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization, Chicago: Third World, new edition, 1995, p. 218)

“Massa”, “boys”, genocide

Pointedly, one of those principal commanding operatives who beckoned to the Wilson-“a half million dead Biafrans”-target 50 years ago is none other than Muhammadu Buhari who presently directs this phase (IV) of Nigeria’s licence to murder Igbo people. During the Wilson phase, Buhari was commander of a genocidist corps operating in north and northcentral Biafra, slaughtering to the hilt. Another monstrous commander of that phase, Olusegun Obasanjo, whose genocidist brigade operated in south Biafra slaughtering and laying waste to towns and villages and towns and villages on its trail and who, in June 1969, ordered his air force to shoot down an international Red Cross aircraft flying in urgently needed relief supplies to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo, has vociferously supported Buhari’s current death mission on Igbo people. Just as Obasanjo had gloated over his Igbo genocidist campaigns of the 1960s and the destruction of that relief plane in his memoirs (My Command, Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980), emphasising the firm support the genocidists enjoyed from Britain (My Command, p. 165, passim), Obasanjo has recently used newspaper and television interviews in Nigeria to propagate this phase-IV of Nigeria’s “Murder-Igbo” licence.

(O Obusonjo: one of the most notorious operatives of the Igbo genocide)

Yet if this Buhari-Obasanjo swaggering duo Nigerian genocidists and others in their haematophagous lair of Nigeria were European, having participated in the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990s, for instance, murdering a European people, they would have since been tried and sentenced to a long, life imprisonment term by a The Hague court. No one murders Europeans and struts around on the world stage as the Obasanjos and Buharis of Africa... But it must be stressed here that “massa” is not really in this business of ensuring global silence on Nigeria’s atrocities in Biafra in order to protect its genocidist “boys” in Nigeria from censure; no, to the contrary, “massa” doesn’t really relish in such transcontinental solidarity but will speedily dispose of the “boys” as the momentum of the march of the Biafran restoration-of-independence movement gathers pace. 

What has instead been the preoccupation of “massa”, all the while, is to shield itself, Britain, from international censure as the principal driving force in the execution of the Igbo genocide in these past 50 years. As I have shown in several studies (see, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature, 2011, and Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Longest genocide – since 29 May 1966, forthcoming), Britain has played this instrumental role in the Igbo genocide militarily, politically, diplomatically. As these lines are written, Saturday 30 January 2015, the world must be reminded that it is with British weapons largely that Nigerian genocidists employ to murder Igbo people at will in occupied Biafra. As always, the Nigerian “boys” on the ground are confident that they have their “massa”’s back, 2961 miles away in Europe, in “upholding” this crime against humanity.

Postscript

Recently, Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party and first minister of Scotland, announced that if Britain were to vote to leave the European Union in a forthcoming referendum, this outcome “could trigger” another referendum in Scotland itself (BBC, London, 26 January 2016) demanding the restoration of Scottish independence. As in the 2014 Scottish voting process (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html), no Scottish voter, for or against restoration-of-independence at the Forth Bridge, outside Edinburgh, or in Glasgow, Inverness, Aye, Aberdeen, Stranraer, Edinburgh, Arbroath, Wick, anywhere in this country, would ever be shot at or harmed in any way by the British police/military/MI5/whatever in exercising this inalienable right, guaranteed by the United Nations, to decide on this crucial testament of freedom.

Britain (as well as Nigeria) is a signatory to the UN declaration on the rights of peoples to self-determination. Britain will surely explain to the wider world much sooner than later why it accepts the rights of 5 million Scots to exercise this freedom which could cause the collapse of a union of 310 years but is unrelentingly instrumental in waging a 50-year-old genocide campaign against 50 million Igbo people, 3150 miles away in southwestcentral Africa, who equally want their own freedom.

For all those concerned in the Igbo genocide, there is no statute of limitations in international law in the apprehension, prosecution and punishment of persons or institutions involved in the crime of genocide, a crucial feature of justice underscored just recently with the news that a 95-year-old suspect operative in the Nazi Germany genocide machine against the Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, in 1944, will go on trial next month, February 2016 (CNN, Atlanta, 19 January 2016), for this crime committed 72 years ago.

Igbo seek and will achieve justice for the perpetration of this crime against its people. Igbo seek and will achieve the restoration of Biafra.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Lonnie’s lament” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 27 April/1 June 1964])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

62nd birthday of Oprah Winfrey

(Born 29 January 1954, Kosciusko, Miss, US)

Actress, presenter, The Oprah Winfrey Show popular television interviewing series, 1986-2011, entrepreneur, philanthropist, including part-funding of a number of historic films on African American history especially Malcolm X (1992), Beloved (1998), Selma (2014)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

FWD ... History: alumni, endowment, Oriel College, Cecil Rhodes, the statue, funding, future

Javier Espinoza and Gordon Rayner,  “Cecil Rhodes statue to remain in Oxford University after alumni threaten to withdraw millions”, Daily Telegraph, London, Daily Telegraph, London, Thursday 28 January 2016:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/12128151/Cecil-Rhodes-statue-to-remain-at-Oxford-University-after-alumni-threatens-to-withdraw-millions.html

See also,  “Whose lands? Whose resources? Whose scholarship?”:
http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/whose-lands-whose-resources-whose.html

81st birthday of Ivan Van Sertima

(Born 26 January 1935, Karina, Guyana)

Poet, linguist, journalist, historian, academic and author of the seminal They Came Before Columbus (1976) which explores thousands of years of African relationship with the peoples of the Americas, prior to the European invasion of these west continents beginning in the 15th century CE

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

87th birthday of Benny Golson

(Born 25 January 1929, Philadelphia, US)

Award-winning tenor saxophonist and bandleader and versatile composer including jazz standards “I remember Clifford”, “Blues march”, “Whisper not”, “Stablemates”, “Are you real?” and “Along came Betty” and scores for films on television (including Mission: Impossible, Ironside, M*A*S*H)

(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Whisper not” [personnel: Blakey, drums; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Golson, tenor saxophone; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; recorded: live, L’Olympia, Paris, France, 22 November 1958 & 17 December 1958])

(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Blues march” [personnel: Blakey, drums; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Golson, tenor saxophone; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Hackensack, NJ, US, 30 October 1958])

(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Moanin’” [personnel and recording dates as in “Blues march” above])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

142nd birthday of Arthur Schomburg

(Born 24 January 1874, Santurce, Puerto Rico)

Historian, writer, activist archivist on sources and resources on African history in the Americas and Europe, 1900-1938, and seminal contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, beginning in 1919, with New York public library’s Schomburg Center for research in African American culture named in his honour

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

101st birthday of Arthur Lewis

(Born 23 January 2015, Castries, St Lucia)

Erudite and widely published economist, academic, economic advisor to Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah government (1957-1959), awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1979, university administrator, Caribbean regional bank president, Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, SALISES, Cave Hill, Barbados named in his honour

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

91st birthday of JJ Johnson

(Born 22 January 1924, Indianapolis, US)

Arguably the most influential trombonist of the bebop revolution of the 1940s/50s, composer, including scores for films, and arranger

(JJ Johnson Sextet, “Mohawk” [personnel: Johnson, trombone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Cedar Walton, piano; Arthur Harper, bass; Albert Heath, drums; recorded: Columbia Records, New York, US, 1 & 3 August 1960])

 Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

189th birthday of Hiram Rhodes Revels

(Born 20 January 1827, Fayetteville, NC, US)

Theologian, educator, Republican party politician, elected first African American senator in the US senate, representing Mississippi, February 1870

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Latest: More Biafrans murdered by Nigerian genocidist military in Aba, Biafra

The current orgy of massacres of Biafrans by the Nigerian occupation genocidist military, begun on Wednesday 2 December 2015 in Onicha, has continued unabated. On Monday 18 January 2016, the genocidists positioned in Aba, commercial city in southeast Biafra, shot dead eight Biafrans peacefully protesting the incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu, freedom broadcaster of Radio Biafra and leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Vanguard, Lagos, Tuesday 19 Janauary 2016), illegally detained by the Nigerian regime in a secret police facility in Abuja since mid-October. Scores of other demonstrators were seriously wounded in the slaughter and several others seized and taken away by the genocidists.  

Every Biafran murdered or wounded or “disappeared” in this trail of murders is meticulously documented and archived. Each genocidist unit involved in these murders, including command and control personnel, is meticulously documented and archived. Everyone must now know that no one or institution involved in these murders will escape justice in court for committing the crime of genocide. This crime, it couldn’t be overstressed, has no statute of limitations in international law.

Stunning silence

In the meantime, what the world cannot understand is the deafening silence on this massacre – Monday 18 January 2016 – from the Abia region regime in Aba. Is this regime not aware that its citizens, its own citizens, are being murdered by Nigerian occupation military (army, police, secret police, other undisclosed units) in Aba, commercial capital of the region and one of the principal cities of Biafra? Is Aba not part of its administrative jurisdiction? Have there been no massacres in Aba? Why hasn’t there been any condemnation of these murders from regime executive offices in Aba? When will the Abia region regime in Aba unequivocally condemn this Aba massacre?

(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])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

160th birthday of Daniel Hale Williams

(Born 18 January 1856, Holidaysbury, Penn, US)

Influential surgeon, one of the pioneers of open-heart surgery, founder of Chicago’s Provident Hospital in 1891 that plays a crucial role in African American health provision and care in the region during the epoch

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

85th birthday of James Earl Jones

(Born 17 January 1931, Arkabutla, Miss, US)

Actor extraordinaire, “one of the greatest actors in [US] history” in a career spanning over 60 years

 Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

92nd birthday of Jewel Plummer Cobb

(Born 17 January 1924, Chicago, US)

Renowned biologist specialising in cancer research, academic, and president (vice-chancellor) of California State University, Fullerton, 1981-1990

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

257th birthday of Paul Cufee

(Born 17 January 1759, Cuttyhunk Is, Mass, US)

Asante-descent leading African freedom proponent during African enslavement in the United States, sailor, successful and expansive businessperson, owner of a shipping conglomerate, founder of schools and promoter of educational opportunities for African Americans as well as others, actively involved in the early 19th century’s African American and African British return-to-Sierra Leone projects 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Olusegun Obasanjo

Straight from the horse’s mouth itself: “[Nigeria] is jinxed and cursed; we should all go to hell”! 

This declaration is from none other but Olusegun Obasanjo – speaking in Ibadan, west Nigeria, in August 2013. In the speech, not surprisingly (saharareporters.com, 13 August 2013), Obasanjo, who had been head of regime for 11 years, totally absolves himself of being a key agency in facilitating the status of his “jinxed and cursed”-Nigeria as can be shown clearly in the following (“‘Cargo cult mentality’, Nigeria and the illusions of NEPAD”,
http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2011/03/cargo-cult-mentality-nigeria-and.html).

(Obusonjo’s unmistakeable verdict: “[Nigeria] is jinxed and cursed...”)

Age of pestilence
“[J]inxed and cursed”-Nigeria has the unenviable accolade of having carried out the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa against Igbo people, thus inaugurating the current age of pestilence in Africa that includes the ravaging terrorist campaigns which affect all regions of the continent with Nigeria’s Boko Haram emerging as the world’s deadliest (Institute of Economics & Policy, “Global Terrorism Index 2015”, New York: IEP, November 2015). 

During the course of 44 months, beginning from 29 May 1966, Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo, or one-quarter of this nation’s population. And Olusegun Obasanjo is one of the most notorious Nigerian military commanders of this genocidal campaign. At its apogee, 1968/1969, the Obasanjo-led brigade, operating in the outstretched south Biafra, had converted this panhandle into a veritable killing field in which it slaughtered “… everything that moves … we shoot at everything, even at things that don’t move”, as its previous commander, the equally notorious Benjamin Adekunle, had  so grimly proffered. 

The skies of Biafra were neither spared from this “shoot-at-everything” monstrosity. In June 1969 Obasanjo ordered his air force to shoot down a 3-person crew international Red Cross aircraft bringing urgent relief to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo and he later boasted fiendishly of this crime in his memoirs, aptly entitled My Command (Ibadan & London, 1980: 78-79). 

(DC-7 aircraft similar to the ICRC relief-carrying plane shot down over south Biafra by genocidist Nigeria military on the orders of Obusonjo)

Not since the German genocide against the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples in contemporary Namibia in the early 1900s had Africa witnessed such brazen act of savagery on expansive display. As I have argued, severally, Nigeria collapsed as a state with few prospects on that Sunday 29 May 1966 it launched the Igbo genocide (See, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “29 May 1966”,

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/where-is-life-we-have-lost-inliving.html).

DNA signature

Obasanjo’s imprimatur is writ large on this catastrophe. Given that it is, after all, not just unbridled opportunism that the London Financial Times not too long ago dubbed this same Obasanjo “godfather of modern Nigeria” (Financial Times, London, 14 April 2012), the hardly disguised FT’s sardonic characterisation in the pointed reference to the kakistocracy that most know is Nigeria notwithstanding, the génocidaire’s Nigeria-is-“jinxed-and-cursed” acknowledgement, albeit belated, is testimony that the offspring indeed carries the unmistakeably doomed DNA signature of its paternity.

(The New York Contemporary Five plays Bill Dixon’s composition, “Trio” – [personnel: Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet;  Tchicai, alto saxophone; Don Moore, bass; JC Moses, drums [recorded: live, Jazzhus Montmarte, Copenhagen, Denmark, 15 November 1963][note particularly Tchicai’s ethereal solo - first - at this session])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe 

Buhari, génocidaires, Biafra

“On a personal note, the phased end of the USSR was a turning point for me. It convinced me that change can be brought about without firing a single shot” (Muhammadu Buhari, Nigerian genocidist commander, north/northcentral Biafra during phase-III of the Igbo genocide, 6 July 1966-12 January 1970, addressing a meeting at Chatham House, London, England, 1000-1030 Hours GMT, Thursday 26 February 2015)

Very much interpellated in this thought process in Muhammadu Buhari’s mind of not-force and the fall of the Soviet Union must be his realisation, even if belatedly, that, despite the staggering pulverising force his genocidist military deployed to destroy Igbo people during the genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the Igbo survived whilst contemporary Nigeria is a withering wretch.

The Soviet Union supported the genocide by sending in the squadrons of MiGs to Nigeria flown by loaned Egyptian pilots, specialists in the carpet bombing of Biafran homes, offices, markets, churches, shrines, schools, children’s playgrounds, hospitals, railway stations, trains, cars, car parks, refugee centres… This same Soviet Union, this seemingly redoubtable state, soon, beginning January 1990, collapsed “without (sic) a single shot fired” (!) but its constituent peoples survived – a reminder, if ever one is required, that the state is transient; peoples endure (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/state-is-transient-peoples-endure.html, accessed 11 January 2016).

It should now be evident to Buhari (and others) that those epaulettes for “majors” and “sergeants” and “corporals” and “generals” and lieutenants” and “colonels” garlanded by his league-of-genocidists who streamed to Biafra during those 44 dreadful months to murder 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men are nothing else but signifiers for perpetrating this heinous crime against humanity.

(Sam Rivers Trio, “Afflatus” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Steve Ellington, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, NJ, US, 17 March 1967])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

87th birthday of Martin Luther King

(Born 15 January 1929, Atlanta, US)

One of the most outstanding leaders of the freedom movement in history

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

85th birthday of Flora Nwapa

(Born 13 January 1931, Ugwuta, Biafra)

First African (continental) woman published novelist (Efuru, 1966, and, soon after, Idu, which she begins to work on at the onset of the Igbo genocide and later publishes in 1970) whose landmark works as well as those of sociologist Kamene Okonjo’s open up the expanse of possibilities in Igbo Women/African World Studies within which the scholarship, artistry and writings of subsequent generations of intellectuals, working worldwide, have richly flourished

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

46th anniversary of Nigeria’s launch of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide

What is Nigeria? This state in southwestcentral Africa inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadful mid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966 when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded to Biafra.

In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or one-quarter of this nation’s population during the course of 44 months, ending 12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocide against the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of Namibia in the early 1900s.

Nigeria was supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of foreign powers which provided it with the critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources:  principally Britain, the Soviet Union, Egypt, Syria, the Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Niger, Guinea-Conakry. Since this genocide, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars in Africa carried out by similarly ruthless African regimes and their foreign allies.

Phase-IV

On 13 January 1970, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigeria launched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms that have continued, unabated, to this day as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV: 
http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html

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

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

126th birthday of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

(Born 12 January 1890, Paris, Tennessee, US)

Economist and theologian, first African American president (vice-chancellor) of Howard University (1926-1960) during which the university attracted a range of luminaries to teaching positions including the philosopher Alain Locke, poet Sterling Brown, surgeon Charles Drew, political scientist Ralph Bunche and chemist Percy Lavon Julian

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Nigeria genocide-state: Indictment

For all intents and purposes, Nigeria collapsed as a functioning state with few prospects or possibilities on Sunday 29 May 1966 – the day it launched the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population during 44 months (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) of indescribable savagery not seen in Africa since the genocide of the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples, carried out by Germany in the early 1900s. Despite Nigeria’s subsequent seizure and looting of Biafra’s gargantuan wealth including sales from oil reserves since 13 January 1970 worth US$1000 billion, this genocide-state has cascaded into a frighteningly degenerative slump politically, economically, intellectually, socially, morally, spiritually. And this terminal status, surely, remains Nigeria’s epitaph.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Consequences” – 4th movement from First Meditations {for Quartet} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 2 November 1965])

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