91st birthday of Theophilus Enwezor Nzegwu

(Born 3 July 1928, Onicha, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

DISTINGUISHED electrical engineer, academic, air force pilot, okee nwoke mmadu

electrical engineer: plays key role in expanded electrification programme in Igwe Ocha, Biafra’s Oshimili Delta, and elsewhere in Biafra, and Nigeria, in the early 1950s on return from the United States where he had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

academic: particularly meritorious career at both Kumasi College of Technology School of Engineering (now Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology), Ghana, 1955-1958, and Royal Air Force Halton School of Technical Training, England, where he is flying instructor, 1959-1964

air force pilot: Royal Air Force – commissioned flying officer, July 1959 and becomes flight lieutenant, 1962; pioneer air force pilot major and commander, Nigeria air force, September 1964

(Red Garland Quintet, “All mornin’ long” [personnel: Garland, piano; Donald Bryd, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums;  recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 15 November 1957]) 

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s recently published books on the Igbo genocide are The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

90th birthday of Mariama Bâ

(Born 17 April 1929, Dakar, Sénégal)

NOVELIST and influential intellectual, author of the seminal Une si longue lettre (1979)/So Long a Letter (1981)

(Red Garland Quintet, “All mornin’ long” [personnel: Garland, piano; Donald Bryd, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums;  recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 15 November 1957]) 

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe (2001) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

183rd birthday of James Beale Africanus Horton

(Born 1 June 1835, Gloucester, Sierra Leone)

PHYSICIAN, first Igbo and African graduate of University of Edinburgh Medical School (August 1859), prolific author of the sciences and history, distinguished officer of the British army medical corps, visionary of freedom and restoration-of-African-independence and transformation of African fortunes in the world after centuries of European World enslavement, conquest, occupation and expropriation; entrepreneur and banker
(Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)

(Red Garland Quintet, “All mornin’ long” [personnel: Garland, piano; Donald Byrd, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums;  recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 15 November 1957]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

104th birthday of Mbonu Ojike

(Born 5 May 1914, Arundizuogu, Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

CELEBRATED AFRICAN peoples-centred intellectual, graduate of University of Chicago, arguably the profoundest political economic thinker in the provisional restoration-of-independence government of (British occupied) east region Nigeria, home of the historic Igbo village republican democratic states that had flourished for over a millennium; minister of economic development and planning and architect of the 1947-1966 transformation of this pre-Igbo genocide political economy to Africa’s most dynamic with immense possibilities.

The Ojike Plan had envisaged a 20-year timeframe, beginning in 1954, during which the east region would be transformed into an advanced multifaceted industrial and agricultural economy. Such was the impressive pace of this programme that, by 1964, ten years later, the overall economic performance of the east had not only outstripped the rest of Nigeria but was in fact Africa’s fastest growing economy. The east had the best schools and the first independent university system (University of Nsukka) in the country, the best humanpower development in the country across a range of fields including, crucially, engineering, medicine, the arts, and the middle-range technical cadre. 

The region also had the most integrated infrastructural development in Nigeria and its manufacturing, distributive and extractive enterprises centred in the Enuugwu-Nkalagu-Emene conurbation to the north, Onicha (commercial capital and home to the future Oshimili stock exchange and index) to the west and Igwe Ocha-Aba-Calabar to the south were clearly the hubs of the making of this African industrial revolution of recent history. But for the Igbo genocide, launched by Britain and its Hausa-Fulani islamist/jihadist north region-led Nigeria client state on 29 May 1966 and continuing as these lines are written, 52 years on, with the murder of 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population during the first three phases of the crime (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the east was on course to construct the “Taiwan” or the “China” or the “South Korea” or the “India” in Africa – 20 years before these post-World War II much-vaunted “economic transformational miracles” of the era emerged...

Mbonu Ojike City of Innovation and Enterprise

THE MAIN thrust of this plan is still valid and should be retrieved from the archives, reworked, and adapted by the ongoing Biafra freedom movement to 21st century priorities and the advantage of new technologies. This phase would appropriately be Ojike Plan II and the Mbonu Ojike City of Innovation and Enterprise, built on the morrow of the restoration of Biafra independence, will offer Biafrans with multiform creative interests and goals, especially start-up entrprenuereship, an enabling environment dedicated solely to work through their ideas and transform.

(Red Garland Quintet, “All mornin’ long” [personnel: Garland, piano; Donald Byrd, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums;  recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 15 November 1957]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

89th birthday of Mariama Bâ

(Born 17 April 1929, Dakar, Sénégal)

NOVELIST and influential intellectual, author of the seminal So Long a Letter (1981)

(Red Garland Quintet, “All mornin’ long” [personnel: Garland, piano; Donald Bryd, trumpet; John Coltrane, tenor saxophone; George Joyner, bass; Art Taylor, drums;  recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 15 November 1957]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe