On that introspection on Igbo people by Balarabe Musa

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

BALARABE MUSA is one of the leading Fulani islamist/jihadist north genocidist Nigeria public persons. He was once head of regime of the Kaduna northcentral region.

Musa has recently been speaking to his “country”’s media on Igbo people who, for the past 52 years, 1966-2018, have been subjected to the most gruesome and expansive genocide in the history of Africa by Nigeria and its suzerain state, Britain. The dual genocidists murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbo population during phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and a further murder tally of tens of thousands of Igbo in organised pogroms executed in north Nigeria and elsewhere in Nigeria as well as in Biafra during the course of phase-IV of the genocide (13 January 1970-present day: 1980 ... 1982 ... 1985 ... 1991 ... 1993 ... 1994 ... 1999 ... 2000 ... 2001 ... 2002 ... 2004 ... 2005 ... 2006 ... 2007 ... 2008 ... 2009 ... 2010 ... 2011 ... 2012 ... 2013 ... 2014 … 2015 … 2016 … 2017 … 2018 …).

MORE IGBO have been murdered in genocides committed in African history than any other African peoples. The primary perpetrator of the Igbo genocide, it cannot be overemphasised, is an African-led state, not European. The Igbo genocide far outstretches the 30 years’ duration of the horrendous genocide of a host of constituent African peoples of the Congo River basin of central Africa carried out by Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state, 1878-1908, when the Belgians and their European World allies murdered 13 million Africans.

THE crux of Musa’s reminiscences on the Igbo in that media interview is rendered in the following direct quotes (criticaltimesnews.com, Saturday 17 February 2018):

“Igbo are more republican than the [n]orth and other [peoples in Nigeria] … [Peoples in Nigeria] are afraid of the Igbo because they [Igbo] are more competitive … both in practice and history. The Igbo are more competitive than the Hausa and the Yoruba. The Hausa and Yoruba bourgeoisie are afraid of this … Igbo are more competitive because they don’t have inhibition … You can say largely that Igbo are free thinkers …”

“Republican history and competitive drive” and genocide

NOWHERE in his interview, though, does Musa condemn the Igbo genocide by Nigeria unreservedly nor demand forthright the punishment of those culpable in this crime against humanity. Those categorisations of his on features of Igbo national character are indeed central, right from the outset, in the execution of the Igbo genocide particularly as conceived and evaluated by its notorious lead perpetrators – the British and Fulani islamist/jihadist north region Nigeria. It is precisely in response to those Musa’s repeated references to Igbo republican history and competitive drive that Fulani islamist/jihadists executed the pogroms of Igbo immigrants in Jos (northcentral Nigeria) in 1945 and in Kano (north Nigeria), 1953, precursors or “dress rehearsals” to the Igbo genocide (29 May 1966-present day); it is precisely in response to those Musa’s repeated references to Igbo republican history and competitive drive that Ahmadu Bello, the Fulani islamist/jihadist leader and sardauna of Sokoto, carried out his infamous late 1950s/early 1960s interview where he called for the mass murder of Igbo people (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/igbo-tenacity-drive-and.html); it is precisely in response to those Musa’s repeated references to Igbo republican history and competitive drive that Britain, in full alliance with the Fulani islamist/jihadist north Nigeria which opposed the freedom of African peoples under the British conquest and occupation which the Igbo led (1930s-October 1960), planned and executed the Igbo genocide (29 May 1966-present day), this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html); it is precisely in response to those Musa’s repeated references to Igbo republican history and competitive drive that the Yoruba nation or what Musa tags “Yoruba bourgeoisie” joined the Igbo genocide-prosecuting amalgam of Britain, Fulani islamist/jihadists and other constituent Nigeria nations (Kanuri, Tiv, Idoma, Nupe, Yergam, Bachama, Edo, Uhrobo, etc., etc.) on 6 July 1966 and have remained a reliable and dedicated ally in pursuit of this morbid enterprise ever since; it is precisely because of those Musa’s repeated references to Igbo republican history and competitive drive and indefatigable opposition to any form of human oppression and subjugation that the Igbo led the African peoples’ freedom movement (mid-1930s-October 1960) to terminate the British occupation of the states and peoples of this southwestcentral region of Africa it calls “Nigeria” (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/blog-post_19.html).

Nigeria collapsed as a state with any serious prospects for the future on Sunday 29 May 1966 – verily, the day it embarked on the Igbo genocide. Musa should have conveyed this fact to his interviewers most urgently and explicitly. Surely, Nigeria couldn’t recover from committing this heinous crime, this crime against humanity... Besides being contemporary Africa’s most vicious genocidist state, it is Africa’s worst kakistocratic state, home to two of the world’s five most deadly terrorist organisations (Boko Haram, Fulani militia), worst murderer of an African people in history…

Biafra

THANKFULLY, for the survivors of the Igbo genocide and for African peoples and the rest of the world, the only redemptive breakthrough that has occurred from the haunting tragedy that is Nigeria has been the emergence, therein, of the transformative state of Biafra. This is indeed extraordinary.

(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

80th birthday of Ishmael Reed

(Born 22 February 1938, Chattanooga, Tenn, US)

PROLIFIC poet, essayist, novelist, pianist, composer, academic

(John Coltrane Quartet, “My favorite things” [personnel: Coltrane, soprano saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live, Comblain-la-Tour, Hamoir, Belgium, RTBF radio & television network, 1 August 1965])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

150th birthday of WEB Du Bois

(Born 23 February 1868, Great Barrington, Mass, US)

Sociologist, historian, African peoples-centred scholar, freedom activist extrordinaire, towering public intellectual – decades before “public intellectual” becomes in vogue

(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

200th birthday of Frederick Douglass

(Born c14 February 1818, Talbot county, MD, US)

ONE of the most outstanding intellectuals of his age – author of the classic Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and other publications, orator, expansive traveller, indefatigable exponent of African American freedom

(Thelonious Monk Quartet, “Misterioso” [personnel: Monk, piano; , Johnny Griffin, tenor saxophone; Ahmed Abdul-Malik, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; recorded: live, Five Spot Café, New York, US, 7 August 1958])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe 

87th birthday of Toni Morrison

(Born 18 February 1931, Lorain, Ohio, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

ONE of the African World’s and US’s preeminent intellectuals – novelist, academic, essayist, editor, commentator, librettist, winner of 1992 Nobel prize for literature

“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another” (Toni Morrison)

“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it” (Toni Morrison) 

(Wynton Marsalis Septet, “Black codes from the underground” [personnel: Marsalis, trumpet; Wycliffe Gordon, trombone; Wes Anderson, alto saxophone; Todd Williams, tenor saxophone; Marcus Roberts, piano; Reginald Veal, bass; Herlin Riley, drums; recorded: Berlin Jazzfest, Germany 3 November 1989])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Oxfam and the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

OXFAM, the British-based “charity organisation”, responds to the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake with its own earthquake unleashed most expansively in Haiti (see largely unprintable press reports on the subject that make for depressing reading, carried extensively by multimedia services)...

(Jackie McLean Quintet, “Hipnosis” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Grachan Moncur III, trombone; LaMont Johnson, piano; Scott Holt, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 3 February 1967])

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Genocidist Nigeria: Where is Nnamdi Kanu? Where are Nnamdi Kanu’s parents, Eze Israel Okwu Kanu and Ugoeze Nnenne Kanu?

(Nnamdi Kanu and his loving parents)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

TODAY marks five months or 150 days since the 14 September 2017 genocidist Nigeria military, led by Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists, stormed the home of Nnamdi Kanu’s parents at Afaraukwu-Ibeku, eastcentral Biafra. Consequently, the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (constituted integrally in the Biafra freedom movement), and his parents, remain unknown. Scores of the Kanus’ relatives and friends were murdered during the assault and scores of others are still unaccounted for.

GENOCIDIST Nigeria, this most beastly and serially kakistocratic and notoriously most vividly anti-African state ever emplaced in Africa, surely knows that it will account for the safety of Nnamdi Kanu and his parents and take full responsibility for the consequences of that savage raid on a family home.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Consequences” – 4th movement in First Meditations {for Quartet} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 2 November 1965])

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African peoples or constituent nations ... Post-(European)conquest Africa? Post-(Arab/islamist)conquest Africa? ... African peoples or constituent nations – Biafra and this epoch of restoration-of-independence

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

AFRICAN peoples or constituent nations, 7th century CE-21st century CE:

1. Arab/islamist conquest and enslavement and occupation/control of north, northcentral, northeast, northwestcentral/Sahel, east Africa: 7th century CE-21st century CE 

2. European World enslavement, conquest, occupation/control of Africa: 15th century CE-21st century CE 

Is the era post-Arab/islamist conquest Africa?/post-European conquest Africa? Why? How? Where?

Affirmation: Biafra and this epoch of restoration-of-independence for African peoples or nations

(Sonny Rollins Sextet, “Misterioso” {composer: Thelonious Monk} [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone, J J Johnson, trombone; Monk, piano; Horace Silver, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Blakey, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 14 April 1957])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe 

Mmuo Biafra closes in: First modern Britons are Africans ... A hundred years on, DNA analysis on the 10,000-year-old so-called Cheddar skeleton from Somerset, south England, projects its stunning results...

(First Brit: ... Secrets of the 10,000 year old man, The Natural History Museum, London)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Henry Bodkin, in the Daily Telegraph (London, Wednesday 7 February 2018), writes on the outcome of the Natural History Museum’s DNA studies on the 10,000-year-old Cheddar skeleton from Somerset, south England (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/02/07/first-britons-black-natural-history-museum-dna-study-reveals/), accessed 7 February 2018

(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

94th birthday of Pius Okigbo

(Born 6 February 1924, Ojoto, Biafra)

RENOWNED economist, brother of celebrated poet Christopher Okigbo and cousin of distinguished agronomist Bede Okigbo, economic advisor to the Biafra resistance government during the Igbo genocide (phases I-III) perpetrated by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, when both genocidist states murder 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of this nation’s population

(Sonny Rollins Quintet, “Decision” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone, Donald Byrd, trumpet; Wynton Kelly, piano; Gene Ramey, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 16 December 1956])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe 

73rd birthday of Bob Marley

(Born 6 February 1945, Nine Mile, Jamaica)

ICONIC musician who with fellow Jamaican artists Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailers and others, beginning in the 1960s, transform reggae into a driving global music genre of social justice and change – “Exodus”  classic composition (link below) is the freedom anthem worldwide including, particularly, the great people of Biafra whose own subjugating monster “Babylon” registered in the lyrics is the lair of annihilative savagery called genocidist Nigeria: “.../Uh! Open your eyes and look within,/Are you satisfied (with the life you’re living)? Uh!/We know where we’re going, uh!/We know where we’re from./We’re leaving Babylon,/We’re going to our ... land/.../Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move! Move!/...” 

(Bob Marley & the Wailers, “Exodus” [musicians and performers: Marley, lead vocal, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion; Aston “Family Man” Barrett, fender bass, guitar, percussion; Carlton Barrett,  drums, percussion; Tyrone Downie, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals; Alvin “Seeco” Paterson, percussion; Julian (Junior) Marvin, lead guitar; I Threes (Rita Marley, Marcia Griffiths, Judy Mowatt), backing vocals; recorded: Harry J studio, Kingston, Jamaica, 1976 & Island Studio, London, England, January-April 1977]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

120th birthday of Melvin Tolson

(Born 6 February 1898, Moberly, Missouri, US)

AWARD-WINNING prodigiously creative poet, playwright, essayist and academic whose works include Rendezvous with America ([poetry] 1944), The Fire in the Flint ([play] 1952), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia ([poetry] 1953), Harlem Gallery, Book 1, the Curator ([poetry] 1965) and A Gallery of Harlem Portraits ([poetry] 1979) and whose mentoring and training of the celebrated Wiley College (Marshall, Texas) students’ debating society in the 1930s is the focus of the film The Great Debaters (2007), directed by Denzel Washington who also plays Melvin Tolson’s character

(John Coltrane Quartet, “My favorite things” [personnel: Coltrane, soprano saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live, Comblain-la-Tour, Hamoir, Belgium, RTBF radio & television network, 1 August 1965])

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

105th birthday of Rosa Parks

(Born 4 February 1913, Tuskegee, Ala, US)

EMINENT African American freedom movement exponent – appositely reminds the world, including the great people of Biafra currently resisting the expansive stretch of annihilative savagery from genocidist Nigeria: “You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right”

(Thelonious Monk Quartet, “Bolivar blues” [personnel: Monk, piano; Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; John Ore, bass; Frankie Dunlop, drums; recorded: Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York, US, 31 October 1962])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

86th birthday of Stuart Hall

(Born 3 February 1932, Kingston, Jamaica)

ONE of AFRICAN BRITISH preeminent intellectuals –
cultural theorist, academic, editor, versatile radio & television commentator

(Sam Rivers Quartet, “Ellipsis” [personnel: Rivers, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 11 December 1964])

 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

104th birthday of William Ellisworth Artis

(Born 2 February 1914, Washington, NC, US)

CELEBRATED versatile sculptor and academic

Artis working on A Mother’s Love (1963)

(Sonny Rollins Quartet, The Bridge [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone;  Jim Hall, guitar; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Ben Riley, drums; Harry 
“HT” Saunders, drums {on “God bless the child” – track five – only}; recorded: RCA-Victor Studio B, New York, US, 30 January/13-14 February 1962])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

44th anniversary of first open heart-surgery in Biafra and southwestcentral region of Africa

(1 February 1974: operation performed, Nsukka University Teaching Hospital, Enuugwu, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

FIRST OPEN heart-surgery in Biafra/southwestcentral Africa was performed at the Nsukka University Teaching Hospital, Enuugwu, Biafra, on 1 February 1974 – four years and just over a month to the day after the formal end of phase-III (beginning of phase-IV) of the 44-month long Igbo genocide, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, perpetrated by Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain in which 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered.  

The surgeons who worked on the surgery included CH Anyanwu, DC Nwafor, FA Udekwu and M Yacoub. In the subsequent 26 years, i.e., by 2000, a total of 102 (one hundred and two) open heart-surgeries were carried out at the Enuugwu centre.

FORTY-FOUR YEARS since the first surgery, Africa and the rest of the world cannot wait for the triumph of the Biafra freedom movement to witness the exponential expansion of the stretch of such creative and transformational energy by Biafrans – an African people building and reconstructing on their land and on their own terms, a disposition which surely challenges those outrageous British presumptions on African peoples given Britain’s role as the principal architect and codifier of anti-African racism as an ideology (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe, 2001, especially pp. 1-54) and whose involvement in the Igbo genocide is to “punish”  the Igbo for the latter’s vanguard role in terminating the British conquest and occupation of the states and peoples of this southwestcentral Africa region.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Untitled original 90314” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

116th birthday of Langston Hughes

(Born 1 February 1902, Joplin, Missouri, US)

ONE OF THE most distinguished alumni of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s-1930s – prolific award-winning poet, novelist, playwright, columnist, freedom movement exponent

First published in 1926 by Hughes, just 24, the poems here in The Weary Blues are a preview of the enduring liberatory portraiture of a stretch of anthologies and other writings that the savant contributes to African American and world literature

(Wynton Marsalis Septet, “Black codes from the underground” [personnel: Marsalis, trumpet; Wycliffe Gordon, trombone; Wes Anderson, alto saxophone; Todd Williams, tenor saxophone; Marcus Roberts, piano; Reginald Veal, bass; Herlin Riley, drums; recorded: Berlin Jazzfest, Germany 3 November 1989])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

49th birthday of Joshua Redman

(Born 1 February 1969, Berkeley, California, US)

ONE OF THE most inventive saxophonists (tenor, soprano, alto) and composers of his generation and son  of Dewey Redman, the versatile tenor saxophonist, composer and bandleader

(Joshua Redman Quartet, “Mischief” [personnel: Redman, tenor saxophone; Brad Mehldau, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Brian Blade, drums; recorded: Power Station, New York, US, 8/9/10 March 1994])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe