Unconscionable silence from Africa as Fulani-led genocidist Nigeria murders Igbo people of Biafra most beastly

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE PAST 45 MONTHS, namely since May 2015, have indeed been a catastrophic track in phase-IV***** of the ongoing Igbo genocide by Nigeria. 

Under the Fulani-led islamist/jihadist génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari regime, imposed in power by none other than Barack Hussein Obama, the first African-descent president of the United States in 233 years of the founding of the US republic (and ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron), the Nigerian military and its adjunct Fulani militia (one of the world’s five deadliest terrorist groups) have slaughtered 3000 Igbo people across Biafra, especially in cities and towns Onicha, Oka, Nkpo, Igweocha, Enuugwu, Aba, Owere, Asaba, Umuahia and Ubulu-Ukwu. On 14 September 2017, the genocidists stormed the Afaraukwu-Ibeku (eastcentral Biafra) family home of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra and Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster. Kanu narrowly escaped death from the attack in which 28 members of the Biafra freedom movement were ruthlessly murdered.

CONTEMPORANEOUSLY, on the key subject of the universal right of a people, all peoples, to freedom, to self-determination, on focus here, the Nigerian assault on Kanu’s home and its harrowing aftermath would be equivalent to a British military attack on the family homes of restoration-of-independence Scottish leaders Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond or a Spanish military assault on the home of Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan restoration-of-independence leader.

Unpardonable

Not one state contiguous to Nigeria nor any of the other 14 states in this southwestcentral region of Africa has condemned this Nigerian sheer savagery unleashed on Biafra nor indeed has there been any condemnation from the rest of the 40 states of Africa. Not one. Silence.

But what remains egregiously pronounced in this African response is the silence of most of the 25 million diaspora African population (who have emigrated from Africa since the mid-1980s to Europe, the Americas/Caribbean, Oceania and elsewhere), particularly intellectuals who would readily express an opinion of outrage from the often more liberal democratic heritage of their new-found domicility. The latter’s position is unquestionably unpardonable.

Moral rectitude

African peoples’ lives matter. Or don’t they? This must surely be the case wheresoever African peoples live: Biafra, Sénégal, Tanzania, Botswana, United States of America, South Africa, Barbados, Kenya, India, Côte d’Ivoire, Guyana, Canada, Britain, Surinam, St Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, France, Ghana, Finland, Uganda… So, diaspora African publics cannot justifiably restrict their quest to uphold African lives’ interests usually in geographical spaces marked outside Africa but exercise a predictable stone-walled silence when these same interests are assaulted, quite often more viciously, inside Africa, as is the case presently in Biafra.

FOR PEOPLES who denounce anti-African racism in all its forms especially in the Americas and Europe (rightly so), day in, day out, Africans, wherever they are, must now know that they stand to forfeit any moral rectitude if they continue this morbid silence over the gruesome, unrelentingly driven Fulani islamist/jihadist-led genocidist Nigeria campaign to annihilate the Igbo, one of Africa’s most talented and enterprising peoples.

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(*****Igbo genocide is the most devastating and expansive genocide in Africa since Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state-organised genocide against African peoples in the central regions of the Congo River basin, 1878-1908, murdering 13 million Africans. During phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, Nigeria and co-genocidist and [its] suzerain state Britain murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population. Tens of thousands of additional Igbo people have been murdered by the dual genocidists in the course of phase-IV of the slaughtering which was launched on 13 January 1970 and continues to this day.)

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Lonnie’s lament” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood, Cliff, NJ, US, 27 April 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