47th anniversary of Nigeria’s launch of phase-IV of the Igbo genocide

(resplendent Biafra flag: ... on the ascent...)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

WHAT IS NIGERIA? This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist state. It was created by Britain in the early 1900s after its conquest and occupation of  the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Hausa-Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf  by its Hausa-Fulani confederates. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, using any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic variable, year in, year out.

Igbo genocide: Age of pestilence

Nigeria 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. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the 1930s-1960. 

In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 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 southwest Africa between 1904-1907 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/blog-post_23.html).

Besides Britain, Nigeria was supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources:  principally the Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, Egypt, Syria, the Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Chad, Niger, Guinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars in Africa carried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.

Phase-IV

On 13 January 1970, 47 years ago to the day, 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 in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders 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

Since imposing genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, the outgoing US President Barack Obama has actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html). Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against an African people in this continent of his fathers is an incalculable tragedy, a legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 2000 Igbo have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces, Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria has ever condemned any of these murders. It has been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016).

Breakthrough

The Igbo will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import of this development.

(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