Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Showing posts with label “Lonnie’s lament”. Show all posts
Showing posts with label “Lonnie’s lament”. Show all posts
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 ora 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), particularlyintellectuals 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 markedoutsideAfrica 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. _______________________________________________
(*****Igbogenocide 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 THE PAST 20 MONTHS, namely since May 2015, have indeed been a catastrophic track in phase-IV***** of the ongoing Igbo genocide by Nigeria. Under the jihadist génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari regime, the Nigerian military and its adjunct Fulani militia have slaughtered 3000 Igbo people across Biafra, especially in cities and towns Onicha, Oka, 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. Kanu hasn’t been seen subsequently nor have his parents who were home with their son during the bombardment. Scores of Kanu’s relative and friends were murdered during the raid and scores of others are still unaccounted for. CONTEMPORANEOUSLY, on the key subject of the universal right of a people 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 ora 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. FOR PEOPLES who denounce anti-African racism in all its forms across the globe (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 Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist Nigeria campaign to annihilate the Igbo, one of Africa’s most talented and enterprising peoples. _______________________________________________
(*****Igbogenocide 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])
THE RECENT comical if not bizzare
assemblage of appointments by the overseer regime in Owere, Imo, east Biafra
region, must not mask a salient characteristic of an occupation enterprise by a conqueror force,
particularly the genocidist’s. It is to entrench lilliputians on the ground to
police the occupation as part of expanding even further the parameters of the
genocidist drive. Lilliputians-of-occupation
In this land of enriched statutes
of ideas and transformations that elevated Biafra to Africa’s most dynamic
economy prior to the genocide, launched by Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria
and Britain on 29 May 1966, the lilliputians of the occupation are designed by
the génocidairesto destroy the critical milestones of a people’s history. These
lead murderers of Africans in Africa since the 1900s are desperate indeed (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-catastrophe-that-is-genocidist.html).
They do know, though, that Biafrans
are solidly knowledgeable of their history and that the days of this occupation
and season of the little, petty personages of vile enforcers are coming to an
end. Biafra, the pearl of African affirmation, is defiantly on the way back.
THE SCHOOLS’ curricula and the dramatic
arts and other sites of creativity in Biafra on the morrow of the restoration-of-independence
will surely contend with the evolving encyclopaedic material that references
this tragic epoch of Igbo history in its entirety.
(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])
Notes on depravity, responses, contrasts Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
1. Sunday 12 June
2016Chronicle of bursts, booms,
flashes, murders: islamist terrorist outrage in the United States ravages night
club in Orlando, Florida, beginning at about 2am, Sunday 12 June 2016,
murdering 49 clubgoers and wounding scores and scores and scores – several
critically…
Paraphernalia of US
state response to tragedy: police, including special forces, is deployed right
away to aid and save stricken citizens, battling the source of the terror ferociously
until eliminated; continuing stretch of medical services and support made
available to victims; retinue of state officials including state president,
regional governor, regional attorney-general or chief law enforcement officer,
town’s mayor, intelligence and security forces’ apparatus key representatives
and leading candidates of ongoing presidential campaign rush to their
microphones condemning outrage, reassuring citizens and vowing to bring
retribution on the vector/agency of the terrorism; international revulsion
abound with tweets and voice comments alike from many a leader and a range of
public officials and personalities; continuing, comprehensive coverage by
domestic and international media
2.Monday 30 May 2016Chronicle of bursts, booms, flashes, murders:
islamist terrorist Nigeria state outrage ravages worshippers
attending mass on the grounds of St Edmund’s Church, Nkpo, near Onicha, Biafra
(a country that has been under occupation by Nigeria since 13 January 1970), beginning
at 3am, and later continues its free-fire assault on Biafra Heroes Day/Independence
Day celebrants in the greater Onicha district and on the bridge over the Oshimili
River and across the bridge into Asaba twin-city, Biafra, slaughtering a total
of 120 Biafrans and wounding scores and scores and scores – several critically…
In the meantime, the terrorists return to some hospitals in Onicha and environs
treating survivors of the massacre and wrench these (survivors) off their beds/theatre
wards and load them up on trucks and drive away to “unknown destinations” …
These survivors haven’t been seen since and are very unlikely to ever be found
alive…
Paraphernalia of
genocidist Nigeria state response to this act of genocide of its very own premeditated
creation: defiance, defiance, more slaughtering of Igbo, more slaughtering of
Igbo planned; response from the rest of the world including especially leaders
such as David Cameron and Barack Obama who imposed islamist Muhammadu Buhari as
head of regime in Nigeria in March 2015 but who have duly condemned the Orlando
terror slaying: silence, haunting silence, deafening silence … No reporting of
the Onicha slaughtering from the international media nor church, not even from the
Anglican church to which millions of Igbo in this west region of Biafra belong
… Why has there been the “aching silence” on this ongoing genocide from Lambeth
Palace, for instance? Is the Archbishop of Canterbury not aware that Igbo
people are been “gunned down” by genocidist Nigeria – to quote a phrase from
the well-publicised Amnesty International report on the genocide published in
London on 10 June 2016? When will the Archbishop of Canterbury condemn the slaughtering
of Igbo people?
3.Monday 25 April 2016Chronicle of bursts, booms, flashes, murders:
islamist terrorist Nigeria state outrage ravages Uzo-Uwani,
north Biafra, beginning shortly after 4am, slaughtering 200 Biafran children,
women and men asleep in their beds and wounding scores
and scores and scores – several critically…
Paraphernalia of
genocidist Nigeria state response to this act of genocide of its very own
premeditated creation: defiance, defiance, more slaughtering of Igbo, more
slaughtering of Igbo planned; response from the rest of the world including
especially leaders such as David Cameron and Barack Obama who imposed islamist
Muhammadu Buhari as head of regime in Nigeria in March 2015 but who have duly
condemned the Orlando terror slaying: silence, haunting silence, deafening silence
…
4. Wednesday 9 February
2016Chronicle of bursts, booms,
flashes, murders: islamist terrorist Nigeria state outrage ravages Aba,
southeast Biafra, beginning shortly after 6.30am, slaughtering 22
Biafrans gathered for morning prayers at the National High School for the release
of Nnamdi Kanu (Biafran freedom broadcaster and leader of the Indigenous People
of Biafra illegally detained currently by the Nigerian regime), and wounding scores and scores and scores – several critically…
Paraphernalia of genocidist
Nigeria state response to this act of genocide of its very own premeditated
creation: defiance, defiance, more slaughtering of Igbo, more slaughtering of
Igbo planned; response from the rest of the world including especially leaders
such as David Cameron and Barack Obama who imposed islamist Muhammadu Buhari as
head of regime in Nigeria in March 2015 but who have duly condemned the Orlando
terror slaying: silence, haunting silence, deafening silence …
As this phase-IV of the Igbo genocide (earlier
on during phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, Nigeria and strategic ally Britain
murdered 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of the nation’s population in this
foundational genocide of post-European[conquest] Africa) demonstrates most
appositely in our age of “instant information”/“instant communication”, nowhere
else on earth, in 2016, are any peoples murdered so monstrously with scant
responses of revulsion from the rest of the world particularly from the key chanceries
of those chiefly responsible for propping up this desperately fiendish Nigeria
islamist genocidist regime emplaced in southwestcentral Africa.
(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 Select terrorist
outrages across the world, November 2015-January 2016
(1) 10
November 2015
Nigeria
occupation military brigade (comprising army, police,
secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at Igwe Ocha, south Biafra,
attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for the restoration of
Biafra sovereignty and release of Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster
and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the Nigeria
regime since 14 October 2015), murdering 3 and wounding several others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading
powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist
commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as current
Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading
global news outlets
(2) 12
November
Islamic
state suicide bombers murder43 people and 240 others wounded in an attack in
Beirut, Lebanon
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(3) 13
November
Islamic
state fighters attack central Paris, France, murdering38 people and wounding
368 others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(4) 20
November
Al-Mourabitoun
and al-Qaeda in the islamic Maghreb fighters attack hotel in Bamako, Mali, murdering
27 people and wounding 2
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(5) 24
November
Islamic
state suicide bombers attack bus in Tunis, Tunisia, murdering 12 people and
wounding 17 others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(6) 2
December
[a]Sayed
Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a husband-wife-terrorist duo, attack a
holiday facility at San Bernardino, California, United States, murdering 14
people and wounding 23 others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
[b]Nigeria
occupation military brigade (comprising navy, army, police,
secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at head bridge, Onicha, southwestcentral
Biafra, attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for restoration of
Biafran sovereignty and release of Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom
broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the
Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015), murdering 11 people and wounding scores of
others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading
powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist
commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as Nigeria’s current
head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading global news
outlets
(7) 12
December
Nigeria
military brigade (comprising army, police, secret police,
other undisclosed units) positioned at Zaria, northcentral Nigeria, attacks Shiite
muslims led by Ibrahim Zakzaky, murdering300 people and wounding scores of
others including Zakzaky who the Nigeria regime detains subsequently
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE … condemnation by a number of countries including the US which states
categorically after this attack: “The United States
calls on the government of Nigeria to quickly, credibly, and transparently
investigate these events in Zaria and hold to account any individuals found to
have committed crimes”;Shiite
Iran condemns the attack and its parliament calls on Nigeria to “launch an
investigation into these deaths”; massacre widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(8) 17
December
Nigeria
occupation military brigade (comprising navy, army, police,
secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at head bridge, Onicha, southwestcentral
Biafra, attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for restoration of
Biafran sovereignty and celebrating an Abuja (Nigeria) court’s ruling releasing
Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People
of Biafra illegally detained by the Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015),
murdering8 and wounding scores of others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading
powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist
commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as current
Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading
global news outlets
(9) 12
January 2016
Islamic
state suicide bomber attacks shopping facility in Istanbul, Turkey, murdering11
people and wounding 14 others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(10) 14
January 2016
Islamic
state suicide bombers/other designated fighters attack central Jakarta,
Indonesia, murdering4 people and wounding 24 others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations, widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(11) 15-16
January 2016
Al-Qaeda
in the islamic Maghreb attack hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, murdering29
people and wounding 56 others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: world-wide condemnation by leading powers including the US and
Britain, as well as the United Nations; widely publicised by leading global
news outlets
(12) 19 January
Nigeria
occupation military brigade (comprising army, police,
secret police, other undisclosed units) positioned at Aba, southeast Biafra,
attacks peaceful Biafra freedom marchers campaigning for restoration of Biafran
sovereignty and calling for release of Nnamdi Kanu (Radio Biafra freedom
broadcaster and leader of Indigenous People of Biafra illegally detained by the
Nigeria regime since 14 October 2015), murdering8 and wounding scores of
others
INTERNATIONAL
RESPONSE: stunning silence from the world – including, especially, leading
powers US and Britain who played a crucial role in installing genocidist
commander Muhammadu Buhari, who oversees these Igbo massacres, as current
Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015; scant mention of massacre by leading
global news outlets
Notes
As the
empirical evidence above shows (1, 6b, 12 ), genocidist Nigeria can, in the contemporary
era, 2015-2016, openly and defiantly murder the world’s people who are Igbo and
Biafran and African and Christian without any protest or sanction from the rest
of the world, not least from the leading powers of the age including the United
Nations, the organisation that proclaims that it exists to serve human solidarity
and progress.
Thanks
to the British government led by Harold Wilson, Nigeria indeed acquired this
licence to murder the Igbo as it sought fit during phases I-III of the Igbo
genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 – hence the world’s deafening silence that
accompanies each of the three Nigerian atrocities recorded above. This is one
of the haunting catastrophes of this epoch. At the apogee of the genocide,
1968-1969, Harold Wilson insisted, on record, that he, Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took”
Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris,Uncertain Greatness: Henry
Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, London and New York: Quartet Books,
1977, p. 122).TheNigerian subalternson
the ground in this southwestcentral Africa region, the “boys” – indolent, toady,
virulently and vindictively anti-African operatives, handsomely obliged their
“massa”, slaughtering far beyond the grim Wilson-target of 500,000 Igbo or 4.2
per cent of the Igbo population (then) by 12 January 1970. The Nigerians had
instead murdered 3.1 million Igbo, 25 per cent of this nation’s population.
Essentially, Harold Wilson, an elected
politician, a politician in Britain, an advanced West democracy, indeed the
leader of the British Labour party, had authorised and managed his country’s
support for the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of
post-(European)conquest Africa, 21 years after the end of the deplorable Jewish
genocide by Germany in Europe in which 6 million Jews were murdered.
Furthermore, Harold Wilson’s “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that
was what it took”-declaration became the defining template of the diminution of
African life which formed the context of Nigeria’s continuation of the Igbo
genocide beyond 12 January 1970, further genocide in Rwanda (1994),
Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo (variously, since the late 1990s) and
Darfur/Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan (all in Sudan since 2003) and in other
wars on the continent. A total of 15 million Africans have been murdered across the continent in
these genocides and other wars since Nigeria launched the Igbo genocide in May
1966. In this all-Africa cataclysmic outcome, Harold Wilson and his Nigerian
génocidaires have operationalised that gripping insight of historian Chancellor
Williams’s of the critical role that the African, themself, plays in their own
subjugation by the pan-European World:
Now the shadows
lengthened. The Europeans had also been busily building up and training strong
African armies. Africans trained to hate, kill and conquer Africans. Blood of
Africans was to sprinkle and further darken the pages of their history …
Indeed, Africa was conquered
for the Europeans by the Africans [themselves], and thereafter kept under
[conquest] control by African police and African soldiers...(Chancellor
Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization, Chicago: Third World,
new edition, 1995, p. 218)
“Massa”, “boys”, genocide
Pointedly, one of those principal commanding
operatives who beckoned to the Wilson-“a half million dead Biafrans”-target 50
years ago is none other than Muhammadu Buhari who presently directs this phase
(IV) of Nigeria’s licence to murder Igbo people. During the Wilson phase,
Buhari was commander of a genocidist corps operating in north and northcentral
Biafra, slaughtering to the hilt. Another monstrous commander of that phase,
Olusegun Obasanjo, whose genocidist brigade operated in south Biafra slaughtering
and laying waste to towns and villages and towns and villages on its trail and
who, in June 1969, ordered his air force to shoot down an international Red
Cross aircraft flying in urgently needed relief supplies to the encircled, blockaded
and bombarded Igbo, has vociferously supported Buhari’s current death mission
on Igbo people. Just as Obasanjo had gloated over his Igbo genocidist campaigns
of the 1960s and the destruction of that relief plane in his memoirs (My
Command, Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980), emphasising the firm support
the genocidists enjoyed from Britain (My Command, p. 165, passim),
Obasanjo has recently used newspaper and television interviews in Nigeria to propagate
this phase-IV of Nigeria’s “Murder-Igbo” licence.
(O Obusonjo: one of the most notorious operatives of the Igbo genocide)
Yet if this Buhari-Obasanjo swaggering duo Nigerian
genocidists and others in their haematophagous lair of Nigeria were European, having
participated in the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990s, for instance, murdering
a European people, they would have since been tried and sentenced to a long, life
imprisonment term by a The Hague court. No one murders Europeans and struts around on the world stage as the Obasanjos and Buharis of Africa... But it must be stressed here that “massa”
is not really in this business of ensuring global silence on Nigeria’s
atrocities in Biafra in order to protect
its genocidist “boys” in Nigeria from censure; no, to the contrary, “massa” doesn’t
really relish in such transcontinental solidarity but will speedily dispose of
the “boys” as the momentum of the march of the Biafran restoration-of-independence
movement gathers pace. What has instead been the preoccupation of “massa”, all
the while, is to shield itself, Britain,
from international censure as the principal driving force in the execution of
the Igbo genocide in these past 50 years. As I have shown in several studies
(see, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings
from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature, 2011, and Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe,
Longest genocide – since 29 May 1966,
forthcoming), Britain has played this instrumental role in the Igbo
genocide militarily, politically, diplomatically. As these lines are written, Saturday
30 January 2015, the world must be reminded that it is with British weapons largely
that Nigerian genocidists employ to murder Igbo people at will in occupied
Biafra. As always, the Nigerian “boys” on the ground are confident that they
have their “massa”’s back, 2961 miles away in Europe, in “upholding” this crime
against humanity.
Postscript
Recently,
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party and first minister of
Scotland, announced that if Britain were to vote to leave the European Union in
a forthcoming referendum, this outcome “could trigger” another referendum in
Scotland itself (BBC, London, 26 January
2016) demanding the restoration of
Scottish independence. As in the 2014 Scottish voting process (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html), no Scottish
voter, for or against restoration-of-independence at the Forth Bridge, outside Edinburgh, or in Glasgow, Inverness, Aye, Aberdeen, Stranraer, Edinburgh, Arbroath,
Wick,anywhere in this country, would ever be shot at or harmed in any way by the
British police/military/MI5/whatever in exercising this inalienable right,
guaranteed by the United Nations, to decide on this crucial testament of freedom.
Britain (as
well as Nigeria) is a signatory to the UN declaration on the rights of peoples
to self-determination. Britain will surely explain to the wider world much
sooner than later why it accepts the rights of 5 million Scots to exercise this freedom
which could cause the collapse of a union of 310 years but is unrelentingly instrumental
in waging a 50-year-old genocide campaign against 50 million Igbo people, 3150 miles away
in southwestcentral Africa, who equally want their own freedom.
For all
those concerned in the Igbo genocide, there is no statute of limitations in
international law in the apprehension, prosecution and punishment of persons or
institutions involved in the crime of genocide, a crucial feature of justice underscored
just recently with the news that a 95-year-old suspect operative in the Nazi
Germany genocide machine against the Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland, in 1944,
will go on trial next month, February 2016 (CNN,
Atlanta, 19 January 2016), for this crime committed 72 years ago.
Igbo seek and will achieve justice for the perpetration of this crime
against its people. Igbo seek and will achieve the restoration of Biafra.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
