Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
BRITAIN and FULANI alliance, this transcontinental genocidist dual-headed power configuration that has executed the Igbo genocide with such abiding ruthlessness and monstrosity these past 53 years, has ensured that Igbo people’s history of the past century challenges, quite dramatically, a range of key assumptions in post-conquest studies/“post-colonial” studies/discourses that centres on race, racism, power, viciousness, brigandage, worldview, conquest(s), geography, restoration-of-independence.
Contests, collaboration
Here, two conqueror-states, two imperialisms, are initially in contests and later on in fulsome collaboration: British, from northwest Europe, and Fulani, from northwestcentral Africa, both on the prowl across this Africa’s central region in the 1800s ... Both soon, amicably, switch to relay ravages, post-1900, conquering state after state with catastrophic consequences for scores of constituent African peoples, laying the foundation where they ally most strategically, beginning 29 May 1966, in carrying out the Igbo genocide.
Contests, collaboration
Here, two conqueror-states, two imperialisms, are initially in contests and later on in fulsome collaboration: British, from northwest Europe, and Fulani, from northwestcentral Africa, both on the prowl across this Africa’s central region in the 1800s ... Both soon, amicably, switch to relay ravages, post-1900, conquering state after state with catastrophic consequences for scores of constituent African peoples, laying the foundation where they ally most strategically, beginning 29 May 1966, in carrying out the Igbo genocide.
EARLIER on in 1945, about 50 years after the beginning of the British conquest and occupation of Igboland, the Fulani (whose home is the Futa Djallon highlands of northwestcentral Africa, 1500 miles away) in occupied north Nigeria embarked on the invasion of Igbo territorial spaces emplaced in the overarching architecture of the British occupation (in Jos, northcentral Nigeria) with the latter’s tactical (if not strategic) connivance.
In effect, this attack, in which the Fulani unleashed a pogrom on the Igbo as the mode of invasion, formally inaugurated the Fulani-British dual-headed genocidist cabal that would oversee the perpetration of yet another season of pogrom on the Igbo in 1953 (Kano, north Nigeria), and then launch the horrendously full-blown, extended and expansive Igbo genocide, beginning on 29 May 1966.
DURING phases I-III of the genocide in the 44 subsequent months, the duo genocidists murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population. Tens of thousands additional Igbo have been murdered in phase IV of the genocide, 13 January 1970-present day. These include the 3000 Igbo murdered since November 2015 by the regime of the findish
In effect, this attack, in which the Fulani unleashed a pogrom on the Igbo as the mode of invasion, formally inaugurated the Fulani-British dual-headed genocidist cabal that would oversee the perpetration of yet another season of pogrom on the Igbo in 1953 (Kano, north Nigeria), and then launch the horrendously full-blown, extended and expansive Igbo genocide, beginning on 29 May 1966.
DURING phases I-III of the genocide in the 44 subsequent months, the duo genocidists murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population. Tens of thousands additional Igbo have been murdered in phase IV of the genocide, 13 January 1970-present day. These include the 3000 Igbo murdered since November 2015 by the regime of the findish
Existential
It is precisely because of the very genocidist terror that undergirds the Anglo-Fulani alliance in the wake of the 1945 Fulani invasion of Igbo homes and other interests in Jos that the Igbo resistance to this catastrophe does not categorise any of these invaders as either “primary” or “secondary”, despite the sequence of the timeframe of the invasions and despite the nature of the contributing resources that each of the co-operative executioners of this crime against humanity deploys.
FOR the Igbo, the grave existential challenges from both the British and Fulani in these past 74 years have occurred almost invariably in more fluid or composite frames.
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
It is precisely because of the very genocidist terror that undergirds the Anglo-Fulani alliance in the wake of the 1945 Fulani invasion of Igbo homes and other interests in Jos that the Igbo resistance to this catastrophe does not categorise any of these invaders as either “primary” or “secondary”, despite the sequence of the timeframe of the invasions and despite the nature of the contributing resources that each of the co-operative executioners of this crime against humanity deploys.
FOR the Igbo, the grave existential challenges from both the British and Fulani in these past 74 years have occurred almost invariably in more fluid or composite frames.
(John Coltrane Quintet, “Stardust” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Wilbur Harden, fluegelhorn; Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobbs, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 11 July 1958])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
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