134th anniversary of the conclusion of the pan-European World conference on Africa subjugation and plunder in Berlin, Germany – 15 November 1884-26 February 1885

(1. infamous gathering in session)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

TODAY MARKS the 134th anniversary of the conclusion of the infamous 15 November 1884 – 26 February 1885 European leaders’ Berlin conference on Africa. 

Cake and genocides and plunder

The gathering was chaired by German Chancellor von Bismarck to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation, and irrepressible exploitation of the gargantuan riches of the African World which Leopold II, the génocidaire king of the Belgians, described predatorily as “this magnificent African cake”. 

It was indeed to “secure for ourselves [Belgians] a slice of this magnificent African cake”, Leopold II’s own haunting words, that this monarch and his private forces and those of the Belgian state and others elsewhere in Europe carried out a devastatingly reprehensible 30-year trail (1878-1908) of genocide against Africans in the Congo basin in which they annihilated 13 million constituent peoples (Isidore Ndaywel  è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998: 344).

The following countries attended the Berlin meeting: Belgium, Holland, Britain, France, Portugal, Ottoman “empire”, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria-Hungary, Denmark, Czarist Russia, Sweden-Norway, United States. 

The catastrophic aftermath of this Berlin-assembly, essentially its state’s genocidist architecture (genocide in the Congo basin by King Leopold II [BELGIUM], Herero genocide [GERMANY], Nama genocide [GERMANY], Berg Damara genocide [GERMANY], Igbo genocide [BRITAIN-FULANI-led NIGERIA], Rwanda genocide [FRANCE-RWANDA STATE] Darfur genocide [THE SUDAN STATE], genocide elsewhere in the Sudan [THE SUDAN STATE] genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC STATE/LEAGUE OF STATES IN REGION & ELSEWHERE... ]) is the bane of contemporary Africa which the peoples, themselves, not anyone else, must dispense with to survive. 

Breakthrough
THIS  “dispense with to survive” precisely encapsulates the historic goal of the Biafra freedom movement in southwestcentral Africa, the continent’s most peaceful restoration-of-independence movement and one of the preeminent of its kind in the world, whose imminent victory constitutes a strategic breakthrough for African freedom since the Berlin cataclysm.

(2. infamous gathering in session: to formalise the pan-European seizure, planned occupation, and irrepressible exploitation of the gargantuan riches of the African World – “this magnificent African cake”)

(Oliver Nelson Septet, “Stolen moments” [Nelson, tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard, trumpet, Eric Dolphy, flute; George Barrow, baritone saxophone; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Hayes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 February 1961]) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

105th birthday of James Cameron

(Born 25 February 1914, La Crosse, Wisconsin, US)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

INDEFATIGABLE lynching-survivor in Marion, Indiana, US (7 August 1930), and author of A Time of Terror (1982) which recounts this catastrophe, engineer, educator, founder of Milwaukee’s African American holocaust museum dedicated to the history of African Americans from the epoch of enslavement to quest for freedom

(Lee Morgan Sextet, “Search for the new land” [personnel: Morgan, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Grant Green, guitar; Reggie Workman, bass; Billy Higgins, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 15 February 1964])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

151st birthday of WEB Du Bois

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

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

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

(Marcus Roberts Trio – with expanded ensemble, “Deep in the shed” [Roberts, piano; Roland Guerin, bass; Jason Marsalis, drums; solos from expanded ensemble: Etienne Charles, trumpet; Ron Westray, trombone; Wess Anderson, alto saxophone; recorded: live, Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, US, 1 February 2008])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster, speaks to BBC News Igbo in an interview conducted by Chiagozie Nwonwu, London, Wednesday 20 February 2019 – part 3

(Nnamdi Kanu...: leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, interviewed by Chiagozie Nwonwu [part 3],  BBC News Igbo, London, Wednesday 20 February 2019)

INTERVIEW: part 1 Nnamdi Kanu’s interview by Chiagozie Nwonwu (Wednesday 13 Februar 2019):
(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/02/as-biafrans-boycott-this-saturday-16.html)

INTERVIEW: part 2 Nnamdi Kanu’s interview by Chiagozie Nwonwu (Friday 15 Februar 2019):
(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/02/httpswww.html)

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

February 16 and the Cypher

 Chuks Iloegbunam

THE CYPHER is said to wish that his “cold and iron” dispensation is revalidated on Saturday February 16, 2019. It cannot be realistically stated that, deep down, he really and truly yearns reelection. He is not there. It can only be repeated what those behind the Mask have put out: that the Cypher covets a second term of office! This is the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English’s third ordinary meaning of Cypher (also spelt as Cipher): Zero.

Two questions are apposite: One, why does the epitome of Nothingness seek continued “leadership” over a country of nearly 200 million people? Two, why is there this insistent spectacle of a multitude salaaming Zero, positing him as the Mostest, and threatening that without his continued tenancy of Aso Rock, they would scatter the ground?  The answers are blowing in the wind. But, before spelling things out for general benefit, another sentence or two on the theme of definitions.

The Cypher had a grand ride in 2015 because there was an avalanche of propaganda that blighted the sensory perceptions of those deserving of being exposed to the truth. The national swindle was orchestrated by a motley collection of deceitful hypocrites. Things since changed. The taste of the pudding is in the eating. Or, as Nigerians put it in marriage register, after a sampling of spouses one is placed in an unimpeachable position to determine the better husband or better wife. Or, again, as Stephen Osita Osadebe, the late, great Highlife music superstar sang it, “You step forward, you retreat. You repeat the going forth and coming back. Then you decide for yourself which, between moving forward and backwards is the better option”.

The verdict is out there. People are fed up to the hairline with a government that is inchoate in character, nebulous in policy, callous in relating to the masses and encased in a veritable tissue of lies. People with conscience will never stop asking why more than 300 Shiites were massacred under the Cypher’s watch. This is a crime against humanity. People with conscience will never stop asking why IPOB agitators were buried by the hundreds in mire or put down by automatic gunfire. That is another crime against humanity. Are there not people today that consider themselves high but are liable to be docked at the International Criminal Court in the foreseeable future?

THE GREATEST lament, though, is that the nation hurtles at a speed dangerously conjured by the force of Zero. Even Cypher’s wife went public to announce that the husband was not in charge. What could be more damning? What other testament could hold better accord with veracity, even if that truth currently appears only latent in certain quarters? In creative and serious settings someone mostly unaware of their circumstances cannot possibly be entrusted with the responsibility of climbing up or down a flight of stairs. People who put such a mentally disarticulated person up for national leadership do incalculable harm to humankind because the contingency of their success is not of their candidate stumbling to a broken neck, but one of reducing the entity to a tinderbox.

That is why the Cypher is not electable. That is why he is certain to lose the February 16 ballot.

TO RETURN to the two questions in paragraph two. The Cypher is not the one insisting on continued direction of the nation’s affairs. Incongruous Faces behind the Mask are responsible for the clearly avoidable calamity. If the Cypher stays, the Incongruous Faces get a fresh “mandate” for even wilder political excesses and further propagation of their ideological dubieties. Some of those shouting themselves hoarse at campaign stops and others restless with posting mendacity on the Internet cannot realistically believe themselves. Shame reduced a broad swathe of their kind to self-inflicted anonymity. Many of them are in it for the coins, reeling as they are from the remorseless pummeling of the prevailing hard times.  One of them boasted that his family lived abroad and he owned an American passport that he always carried about. If a conflagration resulted from a terrible choice, he would hit the nearest airport and hop on the first available aircraft!

Some from the educated but uncritical fringe cite the prophecy that Cypher was incapable of lasting another four years, for which reason he should be retained on a post more complex than his faculties since he would sooner peg off for their own man to mount the saddle. Apart from being irreligious, their attitude is as senseless as hoping that an unserviceable aircraft with a drunk at the controls would make a trans-Pacific flight to deliver Eldorado. Besides, the proponents have not reckoned with the fact that senility is not the same thing as imminent demise. Cypher could outlive most of those expecting him to drop dead almost anytime.

AT THE LAST WORD, the fear is not the outcome of the presidential ballot. That one is settled. The mind-numbing fear is whether the umpire will not turn out to be wilful and, thus, announce other than the people’s verdict.

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Chuks Iloegbunam is a distinguished journalist and author of Ironside, 1999 (iloegbunam@hotmail.com))

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe 

201st 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])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe 

88th 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

(just published!)

“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])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

tter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Mmuo Biafra strikes! As the British Labour party fractures over the antisemitism/racism crisis of its leader Jeremy Corbyn with this morning’s dramatic resignation from the party of seven influential members of parliament (Lucina Berger, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffey, Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker), a reminder that this affliction in the party started half a century ago – 53 years ago to be exact, when the then Labour leader and prime minister, Harold Wilson, centrally directed the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)occupation Africa, with Britain’s client-state Nigeria … More resignations are expected from the party as this crisis worsens

(Harold Wilson: “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

“Diminution-of-African life”

AT the apogee of phase-III of this genocide, summer 1968-autumn 1969, 23 years after the horrendous Jewish genocide in east and central Europe carried out by Germany, Harold Wilson informed Clyde Ferguson (United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra), on record, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigerian génocidaires to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122). Wilson pursued his genocide drive against the Igbo, steeped in that overarching ideological rubric of the expressed “diminution-of-African life” that constitutes the engaging, subjugating template of 400 years of pan-European enslavement of the African humanity in the Americas and elsewhere, beginning in the 15th century, and Europe’s consequent occupation of the African homeland itself (see, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe, 2001: 1-54).

Wilson’s Igbo death-wish tally of 500, 000 represented 4.2 per cent of the Igbo population at the time. The prime minister’s on the ground African executioners led by Fulani islamist/jihadists, fulsomely obliged their “massa” Wilson, murdering 3.1 million Igbo by 12 January 1970 – 2.6 million more Igbo than the Labour leader’s slaughtering target or 25 per cent of the Igbo population. 

WILSON would later acknowledge the extent of the British role in the sheer savagery of the Igbo genocide. In his memoirs, he noted that the Nigeria genocidist military, equipped zealously by Britain, expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to achieve its annhilative mission in Biafra than the amount used by the British armed forces “during the whole” of the Second World War (Harold Wilson, Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, 1971: 630, added emphasis). Robert Scott, military advisor in the British diplomatic mission in Nigeria then couldn’t agree more with Wilson on the subject. Scott stated that as Nigerian genocidist military forces unleashed their attacks on Biafran cities, towns and villages, they are the “best defoliant agent known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970). Chillingly dreadful...

(Jeremy Corbyn: current Labour party leader)

Intelligible
SEEN AGAINST this background of Harold Wilson’s repugnant involvement in the Igbo genocide, the very trenchant charge of antisemitism and racism that current Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has had from some of his colleagues and other prominent persons in Britain, including, especially, those seven members of the party who have just quit, becomes hugely intelligible...

(The seven members of parliament who made their exit from the British Labour party today: [l-r] Chris Leslie, Mike Gapes, Luciana Berger, Ann Coffey, Chuka Umunna*****, Angela Smith, Gavin Shuker) (pic and graphics: Daily Mail, London, Monday 18 February 2019)

SNIPPETS of comments made by two of the seven members of the Labour party during the London press conference today announcing their exit from the party:

Luciana Berger:  “I am embarrassed and ashamed to remain in the party … [the Labour party] is “institutionally anti-Semitic … I cannot remain in the party that I have today come to the sickening conclusion is anti-Semitic … I am leaving behind a culture of bullying, bigotry and intimidation”.

Mike Gapes: “I am sickened that the Labour Party is now a racist, anti-Semitic party”.

*****It is immensely significant to note that Chuka Umunna, one of these now seven ex-Labour party members of the British parliament, is Igbo British, born in England in October 1978, 12 years after the launch of the Igbo genocide

Marcus Roberts Septet, “Nebuchadnezzar” (personnel: Roberts, piano; Wycliffe Gordon, trombone; Wessell Anderson, alto saxophone; Herbert Harris, tenor saxophone; Chris Thomas, bass; Maurice Carnes, drums; Herlin Riley, percussion; recorded: Mastersound Studios, Astoria, New York, US,  9-10 August 1989/10 December 1989 and The Saenger Theatre, New Orleans, US, 15 December 1989)

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster, speaks to BBC News Igbo in an interview conducted by Chiagozie Nwonwu, London, Friday 15 February 2019 – part 2

(Nnamdi Kanu...: leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, interviewed by Chiagozie Nwonwu (part 2),  BBC News Igbo, London, Friday 15 February 2019 – video of this interview at link below)

(https://www.facebook.com/biafradigest/videos/252601542352989/), accessed Friday 15 February 2019


FOR Nnamdi Kanu’s interview by Chiagozie Nwonwu (part 1– Wednesday 13 Februar 2019):
(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/02/as-biafrans-boycott-this-saturday-16.html)

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Bruce Fein and Bruce DelValle of Washington DC (US) law firm Fein & DelValle PLLC formally file criminal complaint on Igbo genocide against Muhammadu Buhari et al in International Criminal Court, The Hague, The Netherlands, Monday 11 February 2019

THE Law Firm of Fein & DelValle PLLC, Washington, D.C., USA, acting on behalf of the EKWENCHE Research Institute in Chicago, Illinois, USA, have submitted the names of President Muhammadu Buhari and Nigerian Army Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Yusuf Buratai, to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Madam Fatou Bensouda, for trial.

EKWENCHE Research Institute disclosed this on Friday via a statement issued in Chicago, Illinois, USA signed by the President, Prof Justin Akujieze, and Chair, Genocide Legal Committee, Mr. Luke Nwannunu.

The statement named others whose names were submitted to the ICC to include governors William Obiano and Okezie Ikpeazu of Anambra and Abia states respectively; former Nigerian Inspectors Gen of Police, Solomon Arase and Ibrahim Idris, and former Director Gen of SSS, Lawan Musa Daura, among others. 

The statement said:

“The successful filing of criminal complaint was done on 11th February 2019 at the Office of the ICC Prosecutor in the Netherlands and in accordance with Article 15 of the ICC Statute of 1998. Owing to overwhelming evidence earlier submitted, Mr. Bruce Fein (former Associate Attorney Gen of USA) and his associate, Mr. Bruce DelValle were graciously invited by the Chief Prosecutor (Ms. Fatou Bensouda) to her office in the Netherlands to make their formal presentation and filing of other necessary documentations. The eloquent and erudite Law Firm was accompanied to the Netherlands by Prof Justin Akujieze (President of EKWENCHE Research Institute and Mr. Luke Nwannunu, Chair of the Genocide Legal Committee of our Institute/Organization).

“The submission of the perpetrators’ names and filing of the criminal complaint were in response to Nigerian Government ordered genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated or committed against defenseless citizens of Igbo origin in Eastern Nigeria. The horrendous crimes were committed in non war situation without any form of justification under Nigeria’s extant laws and international laws including treaty laws signed and ratified by the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

“This latest bold step taken by EKWENCHE is as a result of three years of research work done on the massacre by the Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law-INTERSOCIETY. Intersociety is a foremost researcher Nigerian rights NGO based in the Igbo heartland city of Onitsha which recently conducted and completed an 85 page research work with another 62 page photo album of the victims. The Intersociety’s research work, leading to the filing of the criminal complaint at ICC is titled: Under Buhari & Osinbajo: Many Have Gone & Crippled For Life In Eastern Nigeria (Detailed Chronology of Nigerian Military Massacre Operations in Eastern Nigeria: August 2015-Sept. 2017). The pieces of evidence contained in the research work are shocking and overwhelming.

“It would be recalled that EKWENCHE had in June 2017 filed a civil claimant suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit filed on behalf of ten Nigerian families who lost their loved ones or were grievously tortured by Nigerian security personnel under the authorization of named Nigerian security chiefs with complicity of others including Govs William Obiano and Victor Ikpeazu of Anambra and Abia States, is presently at the preliminary appeal stage before a US Court of Appeal.

“The latest moves by EKWENCHE is also in fulfillment of her earlier promise in 2017 through the Law Firm of Fein & DelValle, PLLC, to drag PMB and other identified Nigerian security chiefs and the above named conspirator Govs to ICC concerning coordinated and systematic genocidal massacre in Eastern Nigeria.”
(Source: News Express, posted 15/02/2019 07:17:19)

(Bruce DelValle and Bruce Fein discuss the track of the legal proceedings against Muhammadu Buhari et al in a Q&A session in Washington DC, Monday 11 February 2019, after filing the Igbo genocide case at the ICC, The Hague) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

As Biafrans boycott this Saturday 16 February 2016 fraudulent elections organised by the Fulani-led islamist/jihadist genocidist Nigeria, Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster, speaks to BBC News Igbo in an interview conducted by Chiagozie Nwonwu, London, Wednesday 13 February 2019

(Nnamdi Kanu...: leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, interviewed by Chiagozie Nwonwu, BBC News Igbo, London, Wednesday 13 February 2019 [excerpts])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  (https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra freedom movement: Referendum, not “elections” organised by the occupying genocidist Nigeria regime – including, especially, the Saturday 16 February 2019 so-called poll

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE BIAFRA freedom movement surely dictates the terms of the freedom of the people of Biafra from Nigeria despite the savagery of the feudal Fulani islamist/jihadist-led genocidist Nigeria occupation and the overseeing ruthlessness on the ground by that league of quislings-of-occupation alternatively known as heads of regime of the administrative regions.

The movement insists on a referendum: nothing else, including bogus regime-elections, to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process. 

(Nnamdi Kanu: ... leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and freedom broadcaster, Radio Biafra) 

“Election” exercises in occupied Biafra have in the past been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the Fulani lead-occupiers with no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its own culture or brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence and genocide, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced republican democratic tradition for over 1000 years. 

THUS, for the Igbo in occupied Biafra or in the diaspora in Nigeria, the way forward couldn’t be clearer: boycott all “elections” organised by genocidist Nigeria including, particularly, the Saturday 16 February 2019 so-called poll.

Besides, “election” time in Nigeria is time-of-death. It is also time-of-destruction, time-of-desolation, time-of-waste, time-to-waste... Genocidist operative and one time head-of-regime Olusegun Obasanjo captures the characterisation of this season most vividly, if not horridly, in a February 2007 proclamation at Abeokuta, west Nigeria: “it’s do or die” (all-africa.com, 11 February 2007), a haunting disposition echoed readily by co-genocidist Muhammadu Buhari who paints a characteristically morbid portrait of  “dog-and-the-baboon-would-all-be-soaked-in-blood” (The Vanguard, Lagos, 15 May 2012) to attest to the extent of violence he would unleash during this appointed time-of-death.

Biafrans do freedom... 

Biafran people don’t do “it’s do or die” nor “soaked-in-blood”. Tufia kwa! 

EITHER of these is predictably genocidist Nigerian stuff – as Biafrans have known, most devastatingly, in the past 53 years, with 3.1 million of their people murdered, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands others additionally murdered since, 13 January 1970-present day, by this most gruesome band of murderers in African history since the 1908 end of the 30 years of genocide of African peoples of the Congo Basin, executed by Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state during which the latter murdered 13 million Africans (Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998, p. 344).

Biafrans, on the contrary, do freedom.  Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50 million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the referendum to proclaim this liberatory choice. This is the choice the rest of the world awaits eagerly.

“Ofe okazi day”

THE freedom movement, true to form in its assured peaceful trajectory, has already designated the Saturday 16 February 2018 day boycott call of the “poll” the “ofe okazi day”, after a local delicacy – essentially asking the population to stay firmly home with loved ones throughout the day and enjoy a scrumptious dinner and don’t partake in the desperate occupation’s strategy to prolong its murderous stay which is now clearly unsustainable.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Pursuance” {part-III of A Love Supreme suite} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones,  drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 9 December 1964]) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  

(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Sparks of Biafran creativity! 45th 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/anywhere else in southwestcentral Africa including genocidist Nigeria, 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, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa perpetrated by the Fulani islamist/jihadist-led 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.

Ethic and drive

FORTY-FIVE 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 squarely repudiates 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.

It can’t be overstated that one of the insistent factors that has fuelled the Igbo genocide in these past 53 years is the mutually shared British and Fulani Nigeria islamist leadership’s trenchant aversion to the well-known Igbo hardworking ethic and entrepreneurial drive. Consequently, this dual attribute of ethic and drive has transformed Igbo people to presently control one of Africa’s best-developed multidisciplinary humanpower conglomeration of assets which will surely be deployed in building Biafra.

BIAFRA is dedicated to furthering and nurturing the resilience of its people and to enable them pursue their highest creative endeavours. This state continuously strives to remove all limitations in the paths of its people  to create and transform. Biafra primes its people to flourish.

(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])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)  

(https://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com/2019/01/published-longest-genocide-since-29-may.html)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe