The Biafra freedom movement has indeed a dinner party dimension in its dynamics

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

MAO TSE-TUNG once proclaimed that a revolution is not a “dinner party” but an “insurrection, an act of violence” in which a group of subjugated people in a power relation overthrows the other that controls this power of subjugation.

In its own reading of prevailing history, 90 years after this declaration, the Biafra freedom movement has projected and is operationalising a liberation strategy with resounding effect that is dramatically antithetical to Mao’s: non-violence.

Quite a few find this strategy surprising, if not intriguing, as the Igbo have had to resist a genocidist Nigeria, during the course of these past 51 years, an evidently more ruthless murder machine than either the Kuomintang Chinese regime or the (external) Japanese forces that the Maoists confronted. Neither the Kuomintang nor the Japanese was genocidist – so the incredulous observers of Biafran current strategy do feel that the Igbo, given their history, would have been obvious candidates deeply engaged in a Maoist “insurrection, an act of violence”, not its distinct opposite.

Referendum

Two interlocking factors account for Biafrans’ non-violence drive. First, they have channelled the “long march” wealth of experience of one-half century of resistance to genocide to an evocative stream of conscientisation on Biafra freedom and restoration-of-independence across the length and breadth of the Biafran homeland where an essentially alternate Biafra state has begun to flourish despite the brutish Nigeria genocidist occupation. The Igbo now dictate the terms of their freedom from Nigeria. They have acquired this pivotal status, in the past 24 months, it should be stressed, without firing a shot – either in defence or offence. They insist on a referendum to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the process. They have turned Biafran towns and villages into freedom parks for open, participatory creative debates on Biafra, often involving a range of family members, that would have been deemed impossible just a few years ago. The quest for Biafra freedom is at once an occasion for celebration involving all generations of the people. Huge crowds of people across the country, varying from hundreds of thousands to two and three million estimates in the July 2017 Igwe Ocha and Owere assemblies, south and eastcentral Biafra respectively, and in mid-August (2017) in Ekwuluobia (west Biafra) have attended rallies organised by the Indigenous People of Biafra in which leader Nnamdi Kanu has fervently articulated the salient features that map out the current phase of the freedom movement with emphasis, particularly, on a referendum for the people for restoration-of-independence.

Guillotine

SECONDLY, 51 years after the launch of the Igbo genocide which coincides with the dramatic, ironical upheaval of the historic demands and consequences of Scotland’s quest for independence (or, more historically appropriate, restoration-of-independence) from Britain itself, a co-genocidist state in this genocide, and Britain’s own decision (through a referendum) to exit from the European Union (Brexit) that it had been a member for 44 years, Biafrans now regard Britain, not the on the ground genocidist Nigeria, as the primary agency that not only funds the genocide but is prepared to maintain its continuing execution as a means of controlling its Nigeria-creation in perpetuity. Clearly, Britain is the owner and director of the genocidist guillotine that has murdered Igbo people so gruesomely for five decades. The Nigerians are nothing more than the executioner in this project. For Britain, thanks to Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s notorious stance taken right soon after the outset of the genocide on 29 May 1966 (“I 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, London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977: 122), just 18 years after the end of the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide by Germany during which 6 million Jews were murdered, its central role in the Igbo genocide represents an incredibly low-risk strategy as an Africa-based executioner force, headed by Britain’s close allies in the region for over 100 years, the Hausa-Fulani/islamists, is right there in Biafra to murder the Igbo as ever as it wills with no expected condemnation from Britain – a corresponding position invariably adopted particularly by its West allies as the history of this crime attests.

Beacon

DESPITE the sheer savagery of this British-led genocide in which 3.1 million Igbo were murdered in the first three phases (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and tens of thousands murdered subsequently in phase-IV (i.e., since 13 January 1970 to this day), the Igbo have not only survived but have emerged more focused, steadfast, and resilient to free themselves from Nigeria and restore Biafran sovereignty.

Britain must now know that it cannot stop this process. No one else can stop Igbo freedom from Britain’s genocidist Nigeria. Surely, Britain has no other choice but terminate its role at once in waging this crime against humanity in Biafra, 3130 miles away in southwestcentral Africa, accept full responsibility, apologise to Igbo people, and pay them comprehensive reparations.

As most observers know, Biafra is the beacon of the long-sought African peoples’ renaissance of the current epoch.

(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])

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