That Olusegun Obasanjo Liberia “appointment”: Most irresponsible of the United Nations

(Olusegun Obasanjo)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IT IS INDEED a sickening and cruel joke by UN Secretary General António Guteress to have “appointed” genocidist Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo as UN envoy to Liberia to “support the transfer of power peacefully to a democratically-elected government”. Unbelievably dreadful! Does Guteress really believe that Olusegun Obasanjo would recognise peace if he sees it?

What “peace envoy”?

Guteress may have just taken the cue from his predecessor in making this irresponsible appointment of Obasanjo as “peace envoy” to Liberia. In 2008, Ban Ki-moon, then UN secretary-general, did not find it outrageous to appoint Obasanjo UN “peace envoy” to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was despite Obasanjo’s rigging of three previous head-of-regime elections in Nigeria (including, particularly, the April 2007 “poll” which Obasanjo codenamed “Operation Do-or-Die”  [Vanguard, Lagos, 11 February 2007] and had, on its eve, imported the following range of weaponry fit to equip a small army to effectuate his vicious “electoral” coup d’état: 40,000 AK-47 rifles with 20 million rounds of 7.62 x 39 mm ammunition, 30,000 K2 rifles with 10 million rounds of 5.5 x 45 ammunition, 10,000 Beretta pistols with four million rounds of .9mm ammunition [nigeriavillagesquare.com, 7 March 2007, accessed 29 December 2017]), despite Obasanjo’s egregious moral turpitude, despite Obasanjo’s desperately-engineered attempt to extend his own second-term tenure as Nigeria’s head of regime before the April 2007 “election”, despite Obasanjo’s appalling human rights record and corruption during 11 years as Nigeria’s head of regime, and, most gravely of all, despite Obasanjo’s role as one of the most notorious genocidist officers in the Nigeria military whilst the latter waged the genocide (phases I-III) against Igbo people of Biafra in the 1960s. Obasanjo commanded a monstrous brigade in south Biafra that murdered tens of thousands of Igbo people during the period. Between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970, Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. The Igbo genocide is the continent’s most gruesome genocide since Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state-perpetrated genocide against African peoples in the Congo Basin, central Africa, 1878-1908.

OLUSEGUN OBASANJO shows no remorse, whatsoever, in his principal role in the perpetration of this heinous crime against humanity, so categorised, definitively, by the United Nations itself in 1948 (see UN, Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, 
https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf, accessed 29 December 2017). On the contrary, Obasanjo boasts of his involvement in the Igbo genocide as he reminds the world in My Command (London and Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1981: 79), his memoirs of the time, of ordering the shooting down of a clearly-marked, relief-bearing International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7 aircraft bound for the Igbo whose country was then being blockaded and bombarded by the genocidists. The 3-person crew in this plane perished as a result of this crime.

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

WHAT in fact is at stake here is that the UN has been quite prepared to “receive” and “fraternise” with personages such as Olusegun Obasanjo, in spite of their past, in ways and means that would have been unthinkable if they were a European or Asian or Arab people, for instance, or if the target of their despicable mission on Igbo people and Biafra in 1966-1970, and subsequently, was directed at some European or Asian or Arab people, for example. Would Guteress, conceivably, appoint a Serb genocidist commander as his peace envoy to say, Chechnya?, or a Cambodian genocidist commander to say, the Philippines or Myanmar? (It is significant to cite Myanmar here given that this is the country that U Thant, the UN secretary general that had laid the foundation of UN complicity in the Igbo genocide, right from the outset, came from. It is fascinating to speculate what U Thant’s position would be today on the raging crisis of the Rohingya people in Myanmar...)

UN: facilitating agency

How does anyone realistically expect an Olusegun Obasanjo to recognise what peace is if he sees one?! In the same breadth, in 2007, Andrew Young, an African American who once served his country as ambassador to the UN and later made a huge, personal fortune in his business interests in Nigeria, thanks to Obasanjo’s patronage during the latter’s first tenure as head of regime, campaigned for Obasanjo to be “awarded” the Nobel Peace Prize. One can’t but recall that as Young marched across the United States with the venerable Martin Luther King and others, defending and demanding universal societal recognition of African American freedom quest, the genocidist brigades of his latter-day unlikely pal and business partner were engrossed in the orgy of firebombing Igbo towns and villages east of the Atlantic. 

THIS GROTESQUE Wilsonic-dimunition of African life and wellbeing (from British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s infamous, “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide – proclaimed at the 1968/69 apogee of the Igbo genocide [see Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122]) which has undoubtedly given the impetus to the UN “receptibility” and “fraternisation” that the Olusegun Obasanjos of Africa have “enjoyed”, so uncritically, is a major contributing factor to the glaring tragedy of contemporary Africa. That the very leadership of the United Nations, since the launch of the Igbo genocide in May 1966, is a facilitating agency to this tragedy is indeed a troubling fact that African peoples and the rest of the world can no longer ignore.

(Mal Waldron Quartet, “Hymn from the inferno” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: Vanguard Studios, New York, US, 15 August 1981])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Reminder of the Biafra mission in one sentence as 2018 dawns!

Biafra freedom movement prevails: to teach basic lessons on competence, to overcome challenges, to exercise transformative initiatives, to affirm life, African life, as sacrosanct particularly given 51 years of Hausa-Fulani/islamist-controlled genocidst Nigeria’s programmed savagery to destroy the lives of 50 million Igbo people.
(Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)

(John Coltrane Duo, “Mars” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone;  Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 22 February 1967]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

94th birthday of Cheikh Anta Diop

(Born 29 December 1923, Caytou, Sénégal)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

MATHEMATICIAN, physicist, linguist, anthropologist, philosopher, historian and Egyptologist, demonstrates, most copiously in his near-40 years of research (beginning in the 1940s) and publication of papers and books, especially Nations Nègres et Culture, 1955 (English translation: African Origin of Civilization, 1974), L’unité culturelle de l’Afrique noire, 1959 (English: The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Matriarchy & Patriarchy in Classical Antiquity, 1989)  and Civilisation ou barbarie, 1981 (English: Civilization or Barbarism, 1991), that Kemet, “ancient Egypt”, is an African civilisation and that African peoples are the indisputable heirs to its heritage

Cheikh Anta Diop,  African Origin of Civilization (Chicago: Chicago Review, 1989), 336 pp, US$11.30/£10.73 pbk

Cheikh Anta Diop, Civilization or Barbarism (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1991), 464 pp, US$15.64/£15.49 pbk

FOR AN ASSESSMENT of Cheikh Anta Diop’s  salient contribution to the scholarship of the African World, see, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (Dakar & Reading: African Renaissance, 2011), pp.7-11. 

(Alice Coltrane Quintet, “Blue Nile” [personnel: Coltrane, harp; Joe Henderson, alto flute, Pharoah Sanders, alto flute; Ron Carter, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studios, Dix Hills, New York, US, 26 January 1970])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

75th birthday of Stanley Macebuh

(Born 28 December 1942, Aba, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

SPARK of enduring Biafran creative energy! Celebrated cultural and literary critic and executive editor of The Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria, beginning February 1983, when he embarks on the  radical transformation of the focus and scope and qualitative threshold of journalism practice not seen in Africa’s southwestcentral region in 50 years – since the edifying standard set for post-(European)conquest Africa journalism by Nnamdi Azikiwe, political scientist, academic, poet, journalist, multiform entrepreneur, leader in Igbo vanguard role in the drive for restoration of independence for African peoples in this region (mid-1930s-October 1960) from the British conquest and occupation ... 

BIAFRA FREEDOM MOVEMENT is on its way back to continue its work viciously disrupted by the genocide: to teach basic lessons on competence, to overcome challenges, to exercise transformative initiatives, to affirm life, African life, as sacrosanct particularly given 51 years of Hausa-Fulani/islamist-controlled genocidst Nigeria’s programmed savagery to destroy the lives of 50 million Igbo people…

(John Coltrane & Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry, pocket trumpet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 28 June/8 July 1960])

 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

57th anniversary of French nuclear bomb “test” in Sahara Desert

(27 December 1960, explodes bomb at Regganne, west Algeria)

IN FLAGRANT disregard for the lives of African peoples and their environment and those of future generations, France carries out an atomic bomb “test” over the Sahara Desert, the third in the year (earlier explosions had been conducted in February and April) – exploded bomb has plutonium with yield of 10,000-14,000 TNT, equivalent to one-half power of atomic bomb the United States air force dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 6 August 1945; instructively, at no occasion during this entire grim epoch does the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, which has authorised these bomb blasts, consider carrying out the “tests” in any provinces or regions of France or indeed Europe

(Charles de Gaulle: ... his presidency couldn’t consider carrying out these bomb “tests” anywhere in France...)

(Emmanuel Macron: ... What is current French president’s position on these “tests”)

(Andrew Hill Septet, “Premonition” [personnel: Hill, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; John Gilmore, bass clarinet; Richard Davis, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; Renaud Simmons, conga, percussion; Nadi Qamar, percussion, African drums, thumb piano; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 8 October 1965])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

For the genocidist Nigeria regime which spends most of its time murdering Igbo people in Biafra, abducting/detaining their creative entrepreneurs and smashing up their economy, it isn’t really a surprise that it lacks the capability to provide a basic, efficient petrol/gas delivery service to the peoples domiciled in its territory (see pictures below)

(predictable scenes that highlight the gross indolence and incompetence of regimes in genocidist Nigeria, December 2017)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

EVEN AT the apogee of the Igbo genocide in Biafra (phase-III) as the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigerian gruesome genocidists slaughtered to the hilt (August-December 1969), the Biafrans, under a comprehensive land, aerial and naval siege unprecedented in Africa, refined their petroleum oil ingeniously. There were never such distressing queues in Biafra as evident in the pictures (above) in Nigeria, in December 2017, 48 years later! Biafrans definitely couldn’t have had such queues for petrol during the genocide as they would have constituted a set target for the squadrons of Egyptian pilots which the génocidaires had rented to carpet bomb Biafran population centres, another pivotal feature of the savagery in vogue.

BIAFRA is on its way back to teach basic lessons on competence, overcoming challenges, exercising transformative initiatives…

(John Coltrane Sextet, “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost”, part-I of the five-part suite Meditations [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, percussion, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone, tambourine, bells; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 November 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

86th birthday of Uzo Egonu

(Born 25 December 1931, Onicha, Biafra)

One of the African World’s multifaceted and most distinguished painters, his evocative landmark Exodus (1970) captures the devastating aftermath of phase-I of the Igbo genocide, perpetrated by Nigeria and its co-genocidist state Britain, 29 May 1966-4 January 1967, as nearly 2 million Igbo who survive this initial slaughter in the north region and elsewhere in Nigeria stream home before the subsequent phases (II & III: 5 January 1967-5 July 1967, 6 July 1967-12 January 1970, respectively) when the genocidists effect a comprehensive range of land, aerial and naval blockade of Biafra, unprecedented in Africa, and murdering a total of 3 million people therein by 12 January 1970
(Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)

(For Biafra: ... Uzo Egonu, Exodus [1970])

(Don Cherry Quartet, “Art deco” [personnel: Cherry, pocket trumpet; James Clay, tenor saxophone; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 27/28/30 August 1988])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

97th birthday of Michael Okpara

(Born 25 December 1920, Umuahia, Biafra)

Physician and irrepressible advocate of harnessing Africa’s vast agricultural resource potential as launch base to embark on far-reaching societal transformation, head of pre-military junta 15 January 1966 east region Nigeria government then home to Africa’s most resourceful and dynamic economy en route to emerging as a major manufacturing and industrial power in its own right but for the catastrophe of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January, when the quintessentially indolent and anti-African Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa; 51 years on, the Biafra freedom movement, on the cusp of the restoration of Biafra sovereignty, can’t wait to resume the construction of the state and societal transformative project of the Michael Okpara legacy and its consequential impact on the African World and the rest of the globe
(Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)

(Booker Little Sextet, “We speak” [personnel: Little, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Don Friedman, piano; Art Davis, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Nola’s Penthouse Studios, New York, 17 March 1961])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

73rd birthday of Woody Shaw

(Born 24 December 1944, Laurinburg, North Carolina, US)

ASTOUNDINGLY INNOVATIVE trumpeter, fluguelhornist, clarinettist and composer, collaborates expansively in groundbreaking recordings with fellow leading innovative musicians of the age including multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, vibists Bobby Hutcherfield and Lionel Hampton, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, tenor saxophonists Joe Henderson, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley, Charlie Rouse and Pharoah Sanders, pianists Andrew Hill, Mal Waldron and Horace Silver and drummers Max Roach, Art Blakey  and Louis Hayes

(Mal Waldron Quintet, “The seagulls of Kristiansund” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Woody Shaw, trumpet;  Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone;  Reggie Workman, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: live, Village Vanguard, New York,  US, 16 September 1986])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

FOR Nnamdi Kanu and parents at Christmas 2017 as the Biafra freedom movement marches assuredly into 2018

(Nnamdi Kanu and his loving parents)

(John Coltrane Heptet, Om [personnel: Coltrane, tenor and soprano saxophones; Donald Garrett, clarinet, bass; Joe Brazil, flute;  Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Camelot Sound Studios, Lynwood, Seattle, US, 1 October 1965)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

124th birthday of Chancellor Williams

(Born 22 December 1893, Bennettsville, South Carolina, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

DISTINGUISHED historian and sociologist, prolific author including the authoritative tome, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD (1974) – It would appear that Chancellor Williams has the Igbo genocide poignantly in mind particularly as he writes the very distressing lines in his illustrious study (see quote from p. 218 below) of Africans trained by conqueror-European World occupation forces in Africa to murder other Africans so ruthlessly … In the past 51 years, beginning on 29 May 1966, Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria has been trained and feverishly equipped militarily by its bature British overlords to slaughter 3.1 million Igbo people in Biafra (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and tens of thousands more subsequently (13 January 1970-present day [22 December 2017]) in this foundational, most gruesome, and most devastating genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa … The genocide continues unrelentingly and the immanently hate-driven perpetrators wage this crime against humanity on every conceivable contour of Igbo political, social, economic existence…

Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD (Chicago: Third World, new edition, 1995), 345pp, pbk, US$12.43/£12.99:

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. Very little European blood was ever spilled. (The Destruction of Black Civilization, p. 218)

(John Coltrane Sextet, “Out of this world” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Garrett, clarinet, bass; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live at Penthouse Jazz Club, Seattle, US, 30 September 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

68th birthday of Thomas Sankara

(Born 21 December 1949, Yako, Burkina Faso)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Military commander, historian, and head of state of Burkina Faso, 4 August 1983-15 October 1987, when he leads a transformative government in “post”-(European)conquest Africa which demonstrates, overwhelmingly with indelible successes, just as the resourceful Biafran resistance had breathtakingly inaugurated this breakthrough on the Africa continental scene during the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, phases I-III, that the engine of societal development is located internally, in the people, themselves – not the prevailing and pervasive fraudulent developmentalism unleashed on Africa in the 1960s by the same France, Britain/other lead European World conqueror-states that had for 400 years enslaved, dispersed, occupied and immiserised Africa and its peoples; thus, Thomas Sankara’s and Biafra’s historic liberatory legacies of transformative outreaches emanating internally, not externally, forged so tenaciously, constitute contemporary Africa’s freedom path to the restoration of unfettered independence from continuing European World seizure via the latter’s imposition of local client states and overseers (for instance, the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led notorious Nigeria genocidist and kakistocratic state), enhanced expropriation, and hardly disguised impunity

(John Coltrane Duo, “Mars” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone;  Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 22 February 1967])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Irrepressible Biafran creativity and enterprise: Elvis Chidere, 19

(Elvis Chidere: Igweocha, south Biafra, December 2017)

ELVIS CHIDERE, “How I went from programming with a feature phone to working for an MIT startup”, freeCodeCamp, 15 December 2017 (https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-i-went-from-programming-with-a-feature-phone-to-working-for-an-mit-startup-40ca3be4fa0f), accessed 16 December 2017

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Giant steps” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Tommy Flannagan, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 4-5 May/2 December 1959])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra-Britain relations: Abstract

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THERE IS DEFINITELY no subject in these past 51 years, i.e., since the 29 May 1966 Anglo-Nigeria launch date of the Igbo genocide, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, in which the critical institutions of the British state (including, particularly, academia, media, church) have all converged, unproblematically, to support as the perpetration of the Igbo genocide. Igbo independence is in fact anathema to Britain (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html). Without this robust British involvement, the field/on-the-ground Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led génocidaires in Nigeria, this brazenly indolent anti-African grouping immanently obsequious to the diktats of its bature overlords, cannot continue to commit this crime against humanity much longer – definitely, not beyond a few weeks. The restoration of Igbo independence will surely inaugurate a strategic reordering of Biafra-Britain relations which will have far-reaching consequences on the rest of the African World and elsewhere.

(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])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Genocidist Nigeria detains leading Biafran industrialist Innocent Chukwuma, 56

(Innocent Chukwuma: CEO, Innoson Group)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

REPORTS FROM Enuugwu, Biafra, indicate that one of the occupation’s prowling forces seized Innocent Chukwuma from his Enuugwu family residence early hours Tuesday 19 December 2017.

Neither the family nor anyone else knows presently where the industrialist has been taken to by the génocidaires. Besides slaughtering the Igbo, the other extirpating component in this genocidist register is to stymie Igbo creativity and enterprise across all contours.

(all above: Innoson Motor manufacturing plant, Nnewi, Biafra) 

(John Coltrane Quartet,  “Equinox” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Steve Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 26 October 1960])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

142nd birthday of Carter G Woodson

(Born 19 December 1875, New Canton, Va, United States)

Historian, journalist, versatile educator and inaugurator of the “African World History Month”, now a very important fixture in the annual calendar in several regions of the African World, outside Africa, and who, whilst researching the nature of the education of African Americans in the 1930s, concludes on the following consequences on someone, anyone, being controlled and defined by an agency outside their own centre of being, an observation as salient as ever, 80 years on (Woodson, 2010: 48):

IF YOU can control a [person’s] thinking, you don’t have to worry about [their] action. If you can determine what a [person] thinks you do not have to worry about what [they] will do. If you can make a [person] believe that [they are] inferior, you don’t have to compel [them] to seek an inferior status [for they] will do so without being told and if you can make a [person] believe that [they are] justly an outcast, you don’t have to order [them] to the back door. [They] will go to the back door on [their] own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the [person] will demand that you build one [for them]. (added emphasis)

(Charles Mingus Sextet – with Eric Dolphy, Cornell University 1964, “Meditations” [personnel: Mingus, bass; Johnny Coles, trumpet; Dolphy, flute, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: live, Cornell University, 18 March 1964]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

117th birthday of Ras T Makonnen

(Born [?][?]1900, Buxton, Guyana; dies 18 Dec 1983, Nairobi, Kenya)

Geologist, historian and influential Africa World intellectual, co-organiser, with Kwame Nkrumah and others, of the landmark 1945 Manchester (England) conference of leading African-descent intellectuals on African World affirmation and the future 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Why is the archbishop of Canterbury conspicuously silent on the ongoing Igbo genocide?

(Justin Welby: archbishop of Canterbury)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

SINCE NOVEMBER 2015, during the course of the génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari regime in Nigeria (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-it-is-indeed.html), over 2000 Igbo have been murdered in expanded scorched earth campaigns by its military/adjunct Fulani militia across Biafra. Sixty per cent of these murders have occurred in Onicha and neighbouring towns and villages, southwest Biafra, which are all located in the Onicha diocese of the Anglican communion, part of the Church of England, one of this denomination’s largest population districts in the world. 

Neither the Church of England nor its head, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who has known Muhammadu Buhari personally since the former worked in the petroleum oil industry in Nigeria in the early 1980s, has condemned any of these Igbo slaughters of the past two years or offered public condolences to the aggrieved and traumatised Anglican communion congregants...

(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 6 June 1968]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

100th birthday of Kenneth Onwuka Dike

(Born 17 December 1917, Oka, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

HISTORIAN, okaa amalu, doyen of the Reconstructionary School of African Historical Studies in the aftermath of 400 years of the pan-European enslavement, dispersal, conquest and occupation of the African World: lays the foundation of this restoration of the African as subject and agency in history in the 1956 publication of his classic, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830-1885, inaugurates a stretch of an encompassing African heritage archive and becomes the first African vice-chancellor (president/rector) of the University of Ibadan, and later, 1966-1970, travels the world as one of the envoys of eminent and resolute Biafran intellectuals who campaigns tirelessly against the Igbo genocide (phases I-III) waged by Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, in which 3.1 million Igbo people (25 per cent of this nation’s population) are murdered between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 in this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa

(Eric Dolphy Quartet, “Softly as in a morning sunrise” [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; JC Moses, drums; recorded: live, University of Illinoi, 10 March 1963])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

72nd birthday of Tony Williams

(Born 12 December 1945, Chicago,US)

BRILLIANT DRUMMER, composer and bandleader, child prodigy who, in 1963, just 17, joins the Miles Davis Second Great Quintet (full personnel: Davis, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Williams, drums)

(1. Tony Williams Quartet, “Extras” [personnel: Williams, drums; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone {takes first tenor solo}; Sam Rivers, tenor saxophone {takes second tenor solo}; Gary Peacock, bass; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 12 August 1965])

(2. Tony Williams Quartet, “Tee” [personnel and recording details as in “1” above with tenor solo: Wayne Shorter])

(3. Tony Williams Quartet, “Love song” [personnel and recording details as in “1” above with tenor solo by Sam Rivers; piano solos in all selected compositions are of course by Herbie Hancock and the bass’s is by Gary Peacock])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

“Tribe” and “tribes” and genocidist Nigeria

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IN STRIKING contrast to the name Biafra which rattles the sensibilities of the leadership of the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist Nigeria so irredeemably (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/blog-post.html), 
the notorious epithet, “tribe”, is arguably this grouping’s most enduring mantra. Even though “tribe” has no meaning in any African language, it is invoked by regime spokespersons with such relish as part of its broader historical anti-African worldview, particularly its visceral hostility to African agency which includes its opposition to the restoration-of-African-independence (in this southwestcentral Africa region) from the British conquest and occupation. The Igbo led this freedom movement during 1930s-October 1960 and, pointedly, if not predictably in response, the grouping launched the Igbo genocide with full British involvement.

It should be obvious that there is, in fact, no “tribe” or its plural “tribes” in genocidist Nigeria nor indeed anywhere else in Africa; definitely, not in Biafra.

AS in the rest of the world, there are peoples or nations in Africa: Igbo people or Igbo nation, Gĩkũyũ people or Gĩkũyũ nation, Wolof people or Wolof nation, Ndebele people or Ndebele nation, Herero people or Herero nation, Tiv people or Tiv nation, Kanuri people or Kanuri nation, Bini people or Bini nation, Luo people or Luo nation, Akan people or Akan nation, etc., etc. Elsewhere in the world, for instance, there are Scottish people or Scottish nation, Catalonian people or Catalonian nation, Welsh people or Welsh nation, Kurdish people or Kurdish nation... Each and every people or nation, whatever their size, wherever found in the world, has a profoundly layered history that embodies and projects its inheritance.

Dehistoricisation

This is the background or context that helps to elucidate the contemporary use of the tag, “tribe”, in genocidist Nigeria and indeed anywhere else on earth. “Tribe” is a racist Western anthropological/sociological categorisation of African peoples/nations and others elsewhere that pan-European World conquered and occupied, beginning in the 15th century CE. It is essentially a conqueror-epithet aimed chiefly to dehistoricise or deny the history of these hitherto subjugated peoples as a means of “rationalising” the conquest while simultaneously privileging the concocted state-name (“Nigeria”, “Niger”, “Gold Coast”,  “Rhodesia”, “Côte d’Ivoire”, “Upper Volta”, “Guinea-R”, “Guinea-S”,  “Guinea-T”...) it has imposed on the peoples’ states or homelands in the wake of the conquest (at times the occupation mischievously but incorrectly interchanges its designation of its concocted, imposed name on the peoples with the term “the nation”!).

CONSEQUENTLY, “tribe” is often employed in uncritical academia and media as a weapon to demonise these peoples. This is why, in its rampant usage, no one in their right mind would dare refer to 5 million Scots as “tribe” or 7.5 million Catalans as “tribe”, whilst, for example, cavalierly categorising the 25 million Oromo or 20 million Amhara as “tribe”. Nothing but geographical emplacements (namely, Scots and Catalans are peoples in Europe; Oromo and Amhara are peoples in Africa) dictate the choice made in these last four classifications, underlying its sheer racist tract.

(John Coltrane & Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry, pocket trumpet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 28 June/8 July 1960])

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