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