As we begin the countdown to Year 51 commemoration of the launch of the Igbo genocide by Britain and Nigeria on Monday 29 May 2017, a reminder of those three engraved words that encapsulate the very unlikely outcome of this most gruesome and devastating studiously premeditated slaughtering of a people not seen in Africa since the 19th century: Igbo people survived

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Igbo survived

IT IS INDEED an extraordinary survival story of history that someone that goes by the name Obiageli, Nkechi, Chinyere, Ifeoma, Amaechi, Nwakaego, Ngozi, Chinelo, Ada, Uzo, Chibundu, Nkemdilim, Chukwuka, Okwuonicha, Chikwendu, Ogonna, Nwafo, Ikechukwu, Onwuatuegwu, Chukwuemeka, Onyekachi, Nnadozie, Okonkwo, Chido, Okafo, Chikwendu, Nkeiiru, Ifeyinwa, Nkemakolam, Ikenga, Uchendu, Okennwa, Nwaoyiri, Okonta, Ukpabi, Amaka, Ofokaaja, Nnamdi, Mbazulike, Chukwuma, Kanayo, Ndukaeze, Chidi, Kamene, Nneka, Onyeka, Osita, Kalu, Ifekandu, Obioma, Chioma, Ndubuisi…  actually walks the face of the earth, today, having survived this programmed sentence of death by Anglo-Nigeria genocidists beginning on 29 May 1966 and through to 12 January 1970. The genocidists murdered the grisly total of 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population during the period.

None of the lead génocidaires of this genocide – Harold Wilson, Benjamin Adekunle, Olusegun Obasanjo, Obafemi Awolowo, Allison Ayida, Ibrahim Haruna, Tony Enaharo, Yakubu Danjuma, Yakubu Gowon, Jeremiah Useni, Oluwole Rotimi… – reckoned in their dire prognosis of the outcome of the 44 months of Igbo slaughtering that they directed and executed that the Igbo stood a chance of surviving. Harold Wilson, then British prime minister who chiefly coordinated the genocide from the comfort of his offices and residence at 10 Downing Street, London, 3000 miles away from Biafra, had notoriously set the pace for his fellows on what he saw as the future of the Igbo when he informed Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122). 

BY SURVIVING the genocide, the Igbo have not only dramatically repudiated this vile Wilsonian logic of Igbo mass slaughter, but they are poised today, 51 years later, as the Biafra freedom movement has grown inexorably, to resume the interrupted construction of their beloved state of Biafra – the Land of the Rising Sun.

“And those that create out of the holocaust of their own inheritance anything more than a convenient self-made tomb shall be known as ‘Survivors’” (single sentence liner note on Keith Jarrett, The Survivors’ Suite, 1976)

(Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet, The Survivors’ Suite {beginning and conclusion} [personnel: Jarrett, piano, soprano saxophone, bass recorder, celeste, drums; Dewey Redman, tenor saxophone, percussion; Charlie Haden, bass; Paul Motian, drums, percussion; recorded: Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg, Germany, {?} April 1976])

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