Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
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, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa.
Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population during phases I-III of the genocide, 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 in southwest Africa, carried out by Germany in the early 1900s, 40 years before the latter embarked on the Jewish genocide in Germany and elsewhere in Europe when it murdered 6 million Jews.
DESPITE Nigeria’s subsequent seizure and looting of Biafra’s gargantuan wealth including, especially, the prodigious Igwe Ocha and conurbation real estate gardens in south Biafra and sales from Biafra’s expansive oil reserves since 13 January 1970 worth US$1000 billion, this genocide-state, this kakistocratic-state, has cascaded into a frighteningly degenerative slump politically, economically, intellectually, socially, morally, spiritually. And this terminal status, indeed, remains Nigeria’s epitaph.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Sun ship” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Impulse!, New York, US, 26 August 1965])
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