Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
(Born c1745, Essaka, Biafra; dies 31 March 1797, London, England) One of the African World’s most celebrated intellectuals – sailor, explorer, expeditionist, entrepreneur, orator, versatile campaigner, active exponent of African freedom (during the 1780s in Britain) from enslavement and other spheres of subjugation waged by an assemblage of European World states and interests (including, especially, Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, theNetherlands, Italian city-states, Germanprincelystates, Sweden-Norway, Denmark, theUnitedStates) and their “successor states” in the Americas/Caribbean, begun in the 15th century, visionary of eventual African liberation, author of the classic, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), towering member of the iconic men and women that constitute thefreedom pantheon from
which the currentBiafra freedom
movement derives invaluable insight,
tenacity, focus
(An Evening with Joe Henderson, Charlie
Haden, Al Foster, “Serenity” [personnel: Henderson, tenor saxophone; Haden,
bass; Foster, drums; recorded: live,
Genova Jazz Festival, Villa Imperiale, Genoa, Italy, 9 July 1987])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe Background of contrasts (Harold Wilson, British prime minister at the apogee of phase-III of Igbo genocide, 1968/1969, is totally unfazed as he informs Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator for relief to this British-led premeditated mass murder campaign that had comprehensively besieged and was bombarding Biafra for 44 months, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Fulani islamist/jihadist-led 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: 122])
Brexit TODAY, Wednesday 29 March 2017, at 1230 Hours British Summer Time, British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered off the so-called article 50 of the treaty of Lisbon, formally announcing British termination of its membership of the European Union following the country’s 23 June 2016 historic referendum decision. In this letter of termination to Donald Tusk, the EU president, May is adamant that Britain is leaving the union to “restore ... our self determination” (“Prime Minister’s letter to Donald Tusk on the triggering of article 50”, gov.uk, 29 March 2017, [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50], accessed 29 March 2017).
For Britain, a country that has spent the greater part of its 300 years of global conquest and occupation of states and peoples, constructing bogus and particularly ahistorical entities called “federations” to enhance its subjugation and expropriation drives (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays in African Politics, Genocide, Literature [Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011], especially pp. 1-6), its decision to desperately quit the EU agglomeration of states and peoples, just after 44 years, cannot be lost on the individual or collective sensibilities of students and scholars and other keen observers of this subject of history.
Biafra is before Brexit DEFINITELY, this is not lost on the Igbo people of Biafra of southwestcentral Africa who Britain and its amalgam of willing and ruthlesspan-African constituent nations in the British-constructed Nigeria “federation” (including, particularly, the Fulani, Kanuri, Jawara, Hausa, Nupe, Bachama, Tiv, and Jukun of the north region and the Yoruba, Itsekiri and Edo of its west provinces) have been subjected to the longest, most expansive and monstrous genocide in contemporary history – since Sunday 29 May 1966. Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbo population during 44 months of phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) to preserve this Nigeria “federation”; Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” have murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo people since 13 January 1970, phase-IV, to preserve this Nigeria “federation”; as these lines are written, Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” are murdering more Igbo people to preserve this Nigeria “federation” ... 2000 Igbo have been murdered between October 2015 and presently by the Nigeria regime, currently headed by Muhammadu Buhari (imposed in power in March 2015 by former British Prime Minister Cameron and ex-US President Obama, himself an African American, the first African-descent president after 233 years of the US republic), a notoriously fiendish genocidist operative who has been centrally involved in the genocide since 1966 to preserve this Nigeria “federation”… THE Igbo genocide is the longest and one of the bloodiest genocides of contemporary history. On the record, no single nation or people in Africa has suffered this extent of a catastrophic state(s)’-premeditated and organised genocide in history as the Igbo.
Post-Brexit, Biafra freedom
Prime Minster May knows that she must terminate, at once, this horrendous British-led genocide against Igbo people, 3130 miles away. Igbo people expect that a post-Brexit Britain will have no choice but sit down with a free Biafran government and discuss, fully, the entire history of the Igbo genocide, 400 years of the enslavement of the people of Biafra and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Biafra, forced into the genocidist Nigeria “federation”.
(Eric Dolphy Septet plays “Naima”, John Coltrane’s classic composition [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Nathan Davis, tenor saxophone; Jacques Dieval, piano; Jacques B Hess, bass; Franco Manzecchi, drums; Jacky Bambou, percussion; recorded: ORTF radio broadcasts, Paris, France, 11 June 1964])
(B 28Mar1912, Cayenne, French-occupied Guiana, S America)
Poet, editor, philosopher, academic, co-founder with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire of the 1930s-1940s “negritude” intellectual movement of African affirmation in Paris, France, and whose demonstrable volume of poetry, Pigments (1937), gives notice of the engaging trajectory of the movement:
… my hatred thrived on the margins of culture
the margin of theories the margin of idle talk
with which they stuffed me since birth
even though all in me aspired to be [African]
while they ransacked my Africa
(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Spectrum” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])
NEITHER Britain nor Nigeria can stop the current Biafra freedom train. No one else can.
This Igbo march to freedom,
an inalienable right for all peoples, is unstoppable. In the foundational
genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Britain in alliance with its
ruthless client-state it calls Nigeria, 2960 miles away in southwestcentral
Africa, have spent the past 51 years, beginning on Sunday 29 May 1966, waging a
most gruesome and devastating murder campaign on Igbo people to destroy this
freedom movement.
Historically embedded
Contrary to the often
generalised, predictable characterisation evident in international relations
discourses, especially currently, the Anglo-Nigeria alliance, particularly
London’s historically embedded relationship with that very apex retrograde religio-ideational-regional grouping in genocidist Nigeria is not really as
unlikely as some may wish to think
Indeed during phases I-III of the Igbo genocide
(29 May 1966-12 January 1970), Britain and Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo,
25 per cent of this nation’s population. Since then, the genocidists have
murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo. According to human rights
organisations in Biafra, 2000 Igbo have been murdered between October 2015 and
presently by the Nigeria regime, currently headed by Muhammadu Buhari, a
notoriously fiendish genocidist operative who has been centrally involved in
the genocide since 1966. The Igbo genocide is the longest and one of the
bloodiest genocides of contemporary history. On the record, no single
nation or people in Africa has suffered this extent of a catastrophic
state(s)’-premeditated and organised genocide in history as the Igbo.
IGBO SURVIVAL from this catastrophe has therefore been one of the preeminently
celebratory outcomes of recent history. The Igbo are primed to deploy their phenomenal
resilience from this history as it embarks on the expansive reconstructionary endeavour
to transform their Biafra homeland into a haven of creativity, humanism and progress, in the wake of the genocide.
Despite the
genocide and occupation, the Igbo control one ofAfrica’s
best-developed multidisciplinary humanpower conglomeration of assets which will
be invaluable in the mission ahead. Additionally, they will be tapping into an
epoch of immense possibilities in Africa – an Africa that, since 1981, has been
a net-exporter of capital to the West World and elsewhere, gargantuan resources
that should never leave this continent but retained therein solely for the
peoples who have created this wealth, and an Africa whose millions ofémigirés in the West World and elsewhere are nownet-exporters of capital back to Africa
through the latter’s remittances year in, year out
Biafran reconstruction at once signals to the
rest of the constituent peoples and nations enveloped in the European-created “Berlin-states” of death, immiseration, desolation and hopelessness that freedom and transformation, right there in Africa, are achievable goals – that
African peoples can build, reconstruct, embark on all possibilities of working for themselves and appropriating the fruits of their labour from their land and on their own terms... The world must
now know that Biafra flowers innumerable Biafras of rebirth not seen in Africa
for 500 years.
(Jackie McLean Quartet, “Melody
for Melonae” [personnel: McLean,
alto saxophone; Walter Davis, Jr, piano; Herbie Lewis, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van
Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 19 March 1962])
Virtuoso pianist and one of the preeminent leaders of the free-jazz movement beginning in the mid-1950s, prolific composer, poet, academic
(Two masters’ rare and perhaps only known recording session together: John Coltrane and Cecil Taylor play Coltrane Time, featuring the following four compositions: “Shifting down”, “Just friends”, “Like someone in love”, “Double clutching” [full personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Taylor, piano; Chuck Israels, bass; Louis Hayes, drums; recorded: United Artists Records, New York, US, 13 October 1958])
EVEN IF THE Igbo were not subjected to the cataclysmic genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which suzerain Britain and its Nigeria client state murdered 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population, and the current phase of the genocide that the Muhammadu Buhari regime and its adjunct duo Boko Haram and Fulani militia (erroneously tagged “Fulani herdspeople” in the media in Nigeria) forces are waging in occupied Biafra, they, the Igbo, just like any other peoples, have a right to declare themselves free from Nigeria or indeed any other state in Africa they find themselves domiciled if they so wish.
This was precisely why the Igbo didn’t have to offer some justification for its 30 year-old vanguard role (1930s-October 1960) in formally terminating 76 years of the British conquest and occupation of Nigeria, not even to the north region Hausa-Fulani Arabised-islamist political establishment, strategic ally of the occupation opposed to African liberation and progenitor of the prevailing dominant regime forces in Nigeria. It must be continuously stressed, if need be, that no comparable political forces anywhere else in the South World (Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas), during this epoch, wanted their lands occupied indefinitely by any of the rampaging conqueror pan-European states (Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) as this north Nigeria formation. This was why the British aptly “rewarded” the formation with the responsibility of “overseer”, beginning 1 October 1960, to protect Britain’s vast expropriatory economic interests in Nigeria in perpetuity as well as wage a 50-year-old genocide against one of the most enterprising and progressive nations in Africa. The catastrophe that is Nigeria becomes hugely intelligible in the context of this history.
Besides, the compositional aftermath of the (European)conqueror/conquered/conquest-state of Africa (Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, the Sudan, the Congo-B, the Congo-K, Guinea-B, Guinea-C, Guinea-E, whatever!) cannot be the basis of the restoration-of-independence for the peoples as this historic right to freedom affirmation rests incontrovertibly on the hitherto conquered constituent African nation or people – Igbo, Bakongo, Wolof, Luo, Ibibio, Darfuri, Gĩkũyũ, Herero, Efik, Akan, Bakongo, Gur, Ijo, Punu, Ovambo, Bamileke... Freedom train, not “agitators” This right to freedom for a people, for all peoples, isinalienable. As I have demonstrated severally elsewhere, it is the state, any state, that is transient; definitely, not the people(s) except, of course, they, such as the Igbo, are a target or programmed for genocide by some state(s) (Britain and Nigeria in this specific case) or some other agency. No one, no people, therefore, has to offer a reason for being free, for freedom. So, the rather perfunctory remarks, “agitating for Biafra”, “Biafra agitators”, often made by some commentators to highlight the current historic drive of the Biafra freedom movement is ironically an assault on the very essence of this freedom. One doesn’t “agitate” for freedom; they, instead, proclaim it: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”.
(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])
One of Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
(Lee Morgan Quartet, “Gary’s notebook” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Joe Henderson,
tenor saxophone; Barry Harris,
piano; Bob Cranshaw,
bass; Billy Higgins,
drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 December
1963])
(Alice Coltrane Trio, “Lovely sky boat”[personnel: Coltrane, harp; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 6 June 1968])
(City of Westminster London’s (Britain) commemorative plaque for Olaudah
Equiano, the outstanding 18th century Igbo intellectual and irrepressible
exponent of freedom, at 73 Riding House Street, Paddington, London, where Equiano lived and worked and published his classic,
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African in 1789. This building is now owned by the University College London.)
(Ornette Coleman Quartet, “Ecars” [personnel: Coleman, tenor saxophone; Don Cherry, pocket trumpet; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 27 March 1961])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe Unparalleled THE “Igbo question” is intrinsically linked to the Igbo strategic goal, presently, which is to end the occupation of their Biafra homeland by genocidist Nigeria– imposed since 13 January 1970, beginning of phase-IV of the genocide. This is the structural facet of the termination of the genocide itself which was launched byNigeria and its suzerain state Britain on 29 May 1966 (phases I-III). 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation were murdered byNigeriaand Britain. Britain, which sought to “punish” the Igbo for leading the freedom movement to terminate 100 years of the British conquest and occupation of the states and peoples of this southwestcental region of Africa, supported the genocide right from from the outset, from conceptualisation to execution – politically, diplomatically, militarily. As a result, Britain and Nigeria subjected the Igbo to 44 months of uninterrupted, unimaginable carnage and barbarity perpetrated on a people. Pointedly, no single nation or people inAfricahas suffered this extent of gruesome and devastating state(s)-premeditated and organised genocide in history.
(George Russell Sextet, “Thoughts” [personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; recorded Riverside Record, New York, US, 28 May 1961])
THE GENOCIDE CONTINUES unabatedand Britain’s support continues unflinchingly crucial, boosted by that dramatic March 2015 abominable support for the genocide by ex-US President Barack Obama, first African-descent president in 233 years of the founding of the United States republic. For Britain, contrary to the often clanking histrionics of prevailing international politics rhetoric, its strategic alliance here, in this African region, has always been with the islamist/jihadist, Arabist, north region Fulani leadership which vociferously opposed the restoration of African independence from the British occupation throughout the 1930s-1960s epoch. The Igbo steadfastly led this liberation mission. It is Britain’s alliance with the Fulani leadership, situated atop the prevailing congenital anti-African constellation-equation (which also includes, principally, the following constituent nations: Yoruba, Edo, Tiv Urhobo, Jukun, Bachama, Hausa, Nupe, Kanuri) emplaced in its Nigeria, that makes up the Anglo-Nigerian amalgam that executes the Igbo genocide. It is also from groupings with this same leadership that both Boko Haram (currently the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation, according to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics & Peace, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/institute-for-economics-peace-global.html) and the Fulani militia (see also the IE&P’s study on this militia) were created and unleashed to murder tens of thousands of Igbo and others in these times.
Saliency SO, given the critical links between the salient features of the politics of the Nigerian occupation of Biafra and the overarching architecture of the genocidal campaign, it is the case that the Igbo termination of the occupation is at once the beginning of their freedom march from Nigeriaand the implementation of an unprecedentedly expansive socioeconomic programme of reconstruction. The route remains Igbo freedom from Nigeria, an inalienable Igbo right with or without the genocide as I have argued severally. If the Scots, for instance, one-tenth of the Igbo population and without a genocide antecedent would wish to leave a union they have largely been exponential beneficiaries for 300 years (“Rights for Scots, Rights for the Igbo”, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html), the Igbo, surely, don’t require any agonisingly turgid historical and sociological treatise to wish to leave Nigeria.
Reification CONTRARY to the amazingly ahistorical discourses on the nature of the state and its survivability in some circles, particularly in Africa where the extant eurocentric conquest social sciences and history curriculums essentially reify the “state”, the state is very much a transient relationship in human history: Kemet, Roman “empire”, Ghana “empire”, Mali “empire”, Sweden-Norway, Czarist “empire”, Austro-Hungarian “empire”, Ottoman “empire”, Portuguese “empire”, Spanish “empire”, British “empire”, French Indo-China, Malaya Federation, Anglo-Egyptian-Sudan, Central African Federation, United Arab Republic, Mali Federation, Senegambia Confederation, West & East Pakistan, Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, the Sudan... What has indeed been the enduring feature of the state in world history on this accord, thankfully, has rather been “divisibility”, “dissolubility”, “destructibility”, each the antonym of that 3-headed genocidist mantra mouthed off at random by quite a few spokespersons of especially the genocide-state in Africa.
Mission IT IS THEREFORE not surprising that twenty-three (23) new states have, for example, emerged in Europe since the end of the 1980s. Even though a population of about 350 million, one-third of Africa’s, Europeans presently have more states per capita than peoples of Africa! And as history shows, the catastrophe is not the collapse of the state; the catastrophe is the attempt to destroy constituent peoples within the state as the Anglo-Nigeria amalgam has sought in Biafra since 29 May 1966. Here lies the Igbo question and the historically grounded response of the Biafra mission.
(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])
One of the most prolific and distinguished film directors of his generation (releasing over 30 movies in a career, begun 1983, including the classic Malcolm X [1992]), actor, producer, writer, academic
First African American-owned and edited newspaper is founded by Rev Peter Williamsand a group of influential African Americans in New York, and aptly named Freedom’s Journal
(Jackie McLean Quartet, “Melody for Melonae” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Walter Davis, Jr, piano; Herbie Lewis, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 19 March 1962])
Award-winning trumpeter, bandleader, educator and versatile composer whose output includes a range of film scores especially the critically-acclaimed music for director Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary, When the Leeves Broke:A Requiem in Four Acts on the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina
(Terence Blanchard Sextet & Orchestra, “Levees” [personnel: Blanchard, trumpet; Brice Winston, tenor and soprano saxophones; Aaron Parks, piano; Derrick Hodge, acoustic and electric basses; Kendrick Scott, drums, percussion; Zack Harmon, tabla drums; Northwest Sinofia {40-member string orchestra, conducted by Blanchard}; recorded: Blue Note, New York, 14 August 2007])
Poet, literary critic, academic, university president (vice-chancellor/rector), offers selfless and distinguished service as head of the crucial Biafran resistance government communication directorate during phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, carried out by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain with the total of 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population murdered
(Eric Dolphy Septet plays “Naima”, John Coltrane’s classic composition [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Nathan Davis, tenor saxophone; Jacques Dieval, piano; Jacques B Hess, bass; Franco Manzecchi, drums; Jacky Bambou, percussion; recorded: ORTF radio broadcasts, Paris, France, 11 June 1964])
(Nicola Sturgeon:“The UK Government was clear in 2014 that an
independence referendum should be, in their words, ‘made in Scotland, by the
people of Scotland’ – that is a principle that should be respected today. The
detailed arrangements for a referendum – including its timing – should be for
the Scottish Parliament to decide ...We believe that the
Scottish Parliament should have the right to hold another referendum if there
is clear and sustained evidence that independence has become the preferred
option of a majority of the Scottish people – or if there is a significant and
material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland
being taken out of the EU against our will” – extract from speech in Bute House, Edinburgh, Scotland, official residence of Scottish first minister, Monday 13 March 2017)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe NICOLA STURGEON, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party and first minister of Scotland has announced that Scotland will try again to vote in a new referendum, a second referendum, for the restoration of independence, 310 years after union with England in the state called United Kingdom. In the last referendum exercise in October 2014, the “Yes-for-independence” vote scored 45 per cent against the “No” campaigners who won by receiving 55 per cent. Speaking today (Monday 13 March 2017) at a specially convened media conference in her residence in Edinburgh, Sturgeon is emphatic about the second referendum that she could call as early as next year:
I am ensuring that Scotland’s future will be
decided not just by me ... it will be decided by the people of Scotland ... it
will be Scotland’s choice and I trust the people to make that choice.
No peoples are exempt Sturgeon’s studied position on this all important subject of independence, an inalienable right indeed, is not only shared by Scots but by a stretch of peoples and nations across the globe. The Igbo people of Biafra in southwestcentral Africa, 3475 miles southeast of Scotland, are proud to belong to this illustrious heritage. For 51 years, beginning on 29 May 1966, the Igbo have sought to exercise this “choice” but have been subjected to a devastating genocide by Nigeria and Britain, the very country that Scotland has been part of since 1707. In fact, quite a few prominent Scottish politicians, most of whom were in the (British) Labour party at the time, were active agents in the perpetration of this genocide. In phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the Anglo-Nigerian genocidist amalgam murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or one-quarter of this nation’s population.
This genocide is continuing as these lines are written. Since Muhammadu Buhari (current head of regime in Nigeria who the British government, under Prime Minister Cameron, and the ex-US President Obama, played a key role to install and wholeheartedly supports) came to power in May 2015, 2000 Igbo people demanding the restoration of their independence have been murdered – usually shot at sight during peaceful freedom marches by the Nigerian military equipped mostly with British weapons. Several human rights organisations in Biafra and abroad, including Amnesty International, have reported extensively on this current phase of the Igbo genocide.
UNLIKE THE Igbo, Scotland is not seeking freedom from the United Kingdom because it has been assailed by genocide or any other crimes from the union. Of course not. On the contrary, Scotland has been a distinct beneficiary from the union, this quintessential expression of the “nation-state” if ever there was one, including access to the gargantuan wealth seized by the union across the globe during its centuries of conquests and occupations which included Biafra and other regions of the African World (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html). What Scotland seeks from the UK is freedom to be in the “driving seat of their destiny”, a Sturgeon phrase used in the past to capture this quest, the right of self-determination which, we just noted, is inalienable, which is for all peoples, which is recognised by the United Nations. No peoples are therefore exempt from this right whatever may be their status, experience or circumstance in the state from which they wish to exit.
Appropriately it couldn’t Britain, a signatory to the relevant articles of the UN convention that recognises this right to self-determination prefers, understandably, that Scotland continues its constituent relationship with the UK-union but respects Scotland’s right to seek to be “in the driving seat of [its] own destiny”. Appropriately, the British military or police couldn’t, conceivably, dare disrupt nor wish in any way to stop this morning’s Nicola Sturgeon’s press conference speech for renewed referendum for the restoration of 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 or Inverness or Aye or Aberdeen or Stranraer or Edinburgh or Arbroath or Wick or indeed anywhere in Scotland 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.
British suzerain state’s Nigeria Astonishingly, in sharp contrast, Britain’s Nigeria, also a signatory to the UN declaration on the rights of peoples to self-determination, would have sent its genocidist military to drown an Edinburgh-style Biafran freedom party news conference held in any of the Biafran cities of Enuugwu, Onicha, Ugwuta, Oka, Igwe Ocha, Aba, Umuahia, Igwe Nga, Ehuugbo, or Asaba, for instance, in an orgy of massacres of the attending delegates and leaders. Nnamdi Kanu and several leaders and officials of the Biafran freedom movement are currently incarcerated in illegal detentions by the Nigeria regime. Given the antecedent of Britain’s stony silence (since the Cameron administration and Theresa May’s on not only these arrests but also on the string of recent massacres of Biafrans, beginning November 2015, Britain would very unlikely condemn any such expanded murder outrage by its Nigeria client-state and leadership.
MANY OBSERVERS, including those sympathetic to the course of the Nigeria genocidist regime, have shown repeatedly that if a referendum were held in Biafra today to determine the wishes of the people, the overwhelming majority of the population would vote for “restoration-of-independence” (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/how-anti-biafran-freedom-columnist.html). Inevitably, 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 of willing partners but is unrelentingly instrumental in waging/supporting a 51-year-old genocide campaign against 50 million Igbo people, forced into a conquest agglomeration of a “state” created and called Nigeria by Britain, but who, equally as the Scots, want their own freedom. Statute of limitations It is absolutely crucial to remind all those involved in the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, wherever they are domiciled, that 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. Igbo seek and will achieve justice for the perpetration of this crime against its people, a crime against humanity. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Igbo seek and will achieve the restoration of Biafra.
(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be”[personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 29 January 1968])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
