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Showing posts with label 3.1m Igbo murdered. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3.1m Igbo murdered. Show all posts
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe EVEN IF THE Igbo are not subjected to the cataclysmic genocide of 29 May 1966-present day, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which suzerain state Britain and its Fulani islamist/jihadist-led Nigeria client state have murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of Igbo population (phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and the dual-genocidists’ additional murder of tens of thousands of Igbo during phase-IV of the genocide (13 January 1970-present day) which includes the current stretch’s blitzkriegesque offensive (since November 2015) that the notorious Muhammadu Buhari regime (imposed in office by ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama, first African-descent president of the United States in 233 years of the founding of the republic, and David Cameron, ex-British prime minister) and its adjunct duo Boko Haram and Fulani militia (erroneously tagged “Fulani herdspeople” in the media in Nigeria) forces (presently, 2 of the world’s 5 deadliest terrorist groups) are waging in occupied Biafra, they, the Igbo, just like any other peoples, have the right to declare themselves free from Nigeria or indeed from any other state in Africa they find themselves domiciled if they so wish. This was precisely why the Igbo didn’t have to offer some justification for its 30 year-old vanguard role (1930s-October 1960) in formally terminating 76 years of the British conquest and occupation of Nigeria, not even to the north region Fulani islamist/jihadist political establishment, strategic ally of the occupation opposed to African peoples’ liberation and progenitor of the prevailing dominant retrogressive regime forces in Nigeria. IT MUST be continuously stressed, if need be, that no comparable political forces anywhere else in the South World (Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, central and south America), during this epoch, wanted their lands occupied indefinitely by any of the rampaging conqueror pan-European states (Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) as the Fulani islamist/jihadists, this ferociously anti-African peoples’ assemblage. This was why the British aptly “rewarded” them with the responsibility of “overseer”, beginning 1 October 1960, to protect Britain’s vast expropriatory economic interests in Nigeria in perpetuity as well as wage a 53-year-old genocide against the Igbo, one of the most enterprising and transformative peoples in Africa. The glaring catastrophe that is Nigeria becomes hugely intelligible in the context of this history (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966, [2019]).
BESIDES, the compositional aftermath of the (European)conqueror/conquered/conquest-state of Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, the Sudan, the Congo-B, the Congo-K, Guinea-B, Guinea-C, Guinea-E, whatever!) cannot be the basis of the restoration-of-independence for the peoples as this historic right to freedom affirmation rests incontrovertibly on the hitherto conquered constituent African nation or people – Igbo, Bakongo, Wolof, Luo, Wagogo, Buganda, Ibibio, Darfuri, Gĩkũyũ, Herero, Ndebele, Efik, Akan, Bakongo, Gur, Ijo, Punu, Ovambo, Bamileke... Freedom train; not “agitators” THIS RIGHT to freedom for a people, for all peoples, isinalienable. As I have demonstrated severally elsewhere (see, for instance, Ekwe-Ekwe, 2019), it is the state, any state, that is transient; definitely, not the people(s) except, of course, they, such as the Igbo, are a target or programmed for genocide by some state/s (Britain and Nigeria in this specific case) or some other agency. No one, no people, therefore, has to offer a reason for being free, for freedom. So, the rather perfunctory remark, “agitating for Biafra”, “Biafra agitators”, often made by some commentators to highlight the current historic drive of the Biafra freedom movement is, ironically, an assault on the very essence of this freedom. One doesn’t “agitate” for freedom; they, instead, proclaim it: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”.
(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])
******Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe WHAT IS NIGERIA?This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist and kakistocratic state, currently led by Fulani islamist/jihadists whose homeland is in the Futa Djallon highlands of northwest Africa, 1500 miles away. Nigeria was created by Britain in the early 1900s after the latter’s conquest and occupation of the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, stretching to the Atlantic coast, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf by its Fulani confederate. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, if one uses any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic variable, year in, year out. Igbo genocide: Africa’s age of pestilence Nigeria inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadfulmid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded toBiafra. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the mid 1930s-October 1960. IN THIS foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocideagainst the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa between 1904-1907. BESIDES Britain, Nigeriawas supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources: principallythe Soviet Union, German Democratic Republic, Egypt, Syria, theSudan,Algeria,Saudi Arabia,Chad,Niger, Guinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars inAfricacarried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.
Phase-IV ... and abhorrent legacy of US’s first African-descent president On 13 January 1970, 49 years ago to the day, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigerialaunched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders have continued, unabated, to this day, as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV:
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html)
SINCE imposing jihadist-genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html) particularly in his last two years in office. Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US and elsewhere in the Americas during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against the Igbo, an African people in this continent of his fathers, is an incalculable tragedy, this presidential legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 3000 Igbo have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces, Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria ever condemned any of these murders. It had been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016). Breakthrough THE IGBO will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import of this development.
(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be”[personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 6 June 1968])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe I HAVE argued variously that without the ferociously pursued British military, diplomatic and political support to its client Fulani islamist/jihadist-controlled Nigeria state in southwestcentral Africa, right from the outset, the Igbo genocide, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, would probably not have occurred (see, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Rights for Scots, Rights for the Igbo”, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html). Definitely, the Nigerians would not have embarked on the third phase of the genocide, the direct invasion of Biafra, beginning on 6 July 1967, without receiving firm support for the operation from Britain. Colonel Robert Scott, who was a British military advisor on the invasion, later broke ranks with his employer, to acknowledge, gravely, that as the Nigerians unleashed their attacks on Biafran towns and villages, they were the “best defoliant agent known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970). 3 million Igbo people were slaughtered during the course of the 30-month stretch of invasion, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, phase-III of the gnocide
Resilience despite catastrophe Earlier on, 100,000 Igbo had been murdered by the genocidists in waves after waves of meticulously-coordinated savage campaigns across the entire north region of Nigeria as well as in parts of the country’s Yoruba/west, Lagos and midwest regions during phases I and II of the slaughter – 29 May 1966-5 July 1967. Two million Igbo survived and escaped from these killing fields and returned to the east. Such a sudden influx of displaced people was a major task that confronted the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu government in Enuugwu. The resources of the east had been stretched extensively between 29 May 1966 and December 1966 after it allocated £3 million in emergency funding for the expansion of housing units, office space, schools, and recreation facilities to cope with the returnees. Thanks to the region’s booming economy and the remarkable intervention of its esteemed extended-family system in “absorbing” a high proportion of the welfare needs of the returnees, the east was able to avert what was potentially a major humanitarian catastrophe. Unlike the distressful imagery often associated with comparable emergencies in contemporary Africa, there was no outside aid involved in this extraordinarily resourceful and successful resettlement programme – not from the Organisation of African Unity, not from the United Nations, and not least from the Yakubu Gowon military junta in Lagos that had itself coordinated the genocide on the ground from the end of July 1966. Biafrans and the rest of the African World must be proud of this thrust of resilience.
IT WAS against this background of the brazen brutalisation of Igbo people by fellow compatriots that the head of neighbouring Ghana’s military administration, General Joseph Ankrah, invited Ojukwu, Gowon and the rest of the members of Nigeria’s pre-Igbo genocide governing military council to Aburi, Ghana, in January 1967 to discuss the Nigerian débâcle. Just prior to the Aburi invitation (the previous month, December 1966), Ojukwu had turned down a British-sponsored “conference of mediation” that would involve all the members of the same council on board a British naval frigate anchored off Lagos in which the British would chair. The east governor could not accept the presumption of “neutrality” or “even-handedness” inherent in London’s invitation to host such a summit, considering Britain’s activist role in the Igbo genocide since the weeks and months leading to the outbreak in May 1966, especially its work with the Gowon-Muhammed-Danjuma genocidist cells in the military and the north emirs, as well as with staff and students at the Ahmadu Bello University, the epicentre of the planning and execution of the genocide. Furthermore, Ojukwu, the historian, could not have ignored the lessons of a similar event in the 19th century, 1887. Then, King Jaja of Igwe Nga (Opobo), an Igbo nationalist monarch opposed to British territorial aggression and expansionism along the Atlantic coast of Igboland, was kidnapped by the British navy and exiled to St Vincent, the Caribbean (where he eventually died), after accepting, in good faith, a British offer of “peace talks” on board a British vessel berthed off the Igwe Nga shores, the Bight of Biafra.
Extraordinary The Aburi African-led and controlled diplomatic initiative and resultant summit are indeed extraordinary, the likes of which we haven’t seen on the African political scene since. After two days of talks, 4-5 January 1967, the delegates achieved an exceptional degree of agreement, in spite of the genocide of the previous seven months. A brief examination of the key points of the agreement underscores our conclusion. Two areas require comment. First, the resolution that focuses on the renouncement of force and the importation of arms: (1) “renounce the use of force as a means of settling the present crisis in Nigeria” (2) “agree that there should be no more importation of arms and ammunition until normalcy [is] restored”. Second, the provisions that deal with the ruling military council of which Gowon had declared himself “supreme commander” since he seized power (29 July 1966) during the course of the genocide and the reorganisation of the army. Four articles are relevant here: (1) “military is to be governed by the Supreme Military Council” (2) “creation of area command corresponding with the existing region and under the charge of an area commander” (3) “during the period of the military government, military governors will have control over their area commands on matters of internal security” (4) “agree that any decision affecting the whole country must be determined by the Supreme Military Council and where a meeting is not possible such a matter must be referred to military governors for comment and concurrence”.
Jackie McLean Sextet, “Appointment in Ghana” [personnel: McLean, alto saxophone; Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Tina Brooks, tenor saxophone; Kenny Drew, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Art Taylor, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 1 September 1960])
Peer-review: “cleverest”, “compulsive-logic”
IN EFFECT, the Aburi decision to transfer the constitutional responsibility of the Nigeria military from the position of the supreme commander to the supreme military council extensively limited the executive (and “legislature”) powers of the position of “supreme commander and head of state” which Gowon had exercised in the previous seven months of the genocide (these powers were originally contained in General Aguyi-Ironsi’s January 1966 decree no.1 which had made the occupant of that office, and not the SMC, the principal person in charge of decision making in the country). In future, following the Aburi accord, “any decision affecting the whole country must be decided by the Supreme Military Council” (added emphasis) – namely, the eight members that made up the body gathered in Ghana including, pointedly, the military governors of the regions of which Ojukwu, the only member that had refused to recognise genocidist Gowon in that position, was one.
It is of immense significance that this provision on the new powers of the SMC also states that “where a meeting [of the SMC] is not possible such a matter must be referred to military governors for comment and concurrence” (added emphasis). This referral procedure was aimed evidently at meeting Ojukwu’s contention, repeatedly stated throughout the meeting, that he would not attend any meetings in Nigeria where the Nigerian military, which had played the central role in the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, was positioned and operating. Ojukwu had in fact converted the Aburi gathering into a peer-review session, unprecedented in recent African history. Here at Aburi, an African leader bluntly told his colleagues, who only 18 months earlier would have all shared the conviviality of an officers’ mess or one of the other’s residence to wine and dine, that he had no confidence in them and the troops they commanded because they had been involved in the perpetration of a genocide that claimed the lives of 100,000 Africans within nine months. This was indeed an historic rendezvous. It would take another 40 years for the world at large to increasingly begin to lecture African leaders to openly condemn crimes committed by one of their own (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Nigeria does not deserve UN Security Council”,
http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.com.br/2010/10/nigeria-does-not-deserve-un-security.html) Back to Aburi (1967), Ojukwu had laid bare, for the crucial reckoning of African history, the apposite moral and juridical dilemma surrounding the status of lead-genocidist commander Yakubu Gowon. Ojukwu had insisted at the talks that Gowon must neither be seen nor aided by his peers to appropriatethe position and the powers invested in Nigeria’s top political and military leadership after his perpetration of the mass murder of tens of thousands of Igbo people and the murder of General Aguyi-Ironsi, the commander-in-chief, under whom Gowon served as chief of army staff. Ojukwu’s reply to a question about Gowon’s status, posed by Mobalaji Johnson (governor of Lagos), was undoubtedly the turning point at Aburi. It led to the challenge and dramatic reconfiguration of Gowon’s acquired position and powers that he had exercised so ruthlessly since 29 July 1966. Astonishingly, this outcome was approved and signed by all the eight principal participants at the meeting, including Gowon himself! – Colonel* Adebayo, west region governor; Colonel Ejoor, midwest region governor; Colonel Gowon, head of the genocidist forces in control of Lagos/west/north regions; Major Johnson, Lagos region governor; Colonel Katsina, north region governor; Colonel Ojukwu, east governor; Mr Salem, head of police, and Commodore Wey, head of navy. Following objections that Ojukwu had earlier made during the proceedings to one of the participants who referred to Gowon as “supreme commander”, Johnson had asked: “Is there a government in Nigeria today? Is there a central government in Nigeria today?” Ojukwu: “That question is such a simple one that anybody who has been listening to what I have been saying would know that I do not see a central government in Nigeria today. [Following the genocide] Nigeria resolved itself into three areas – Lagos, West and North area; the Mid-West area; and the East area”. OJUKWU was in effect highlighting the territorial reach and distribution of the Gowon-controlled genocidist forces across the country – Lagos/west-north regions where they occupied, and the east and midwest regions, which were still free of their presence. In the light of Aburi, Gowon’s overall control of the Lagos/west/north regions had in fact come under question. With the newly acquired powers of individual governors on the supreme military council at the expense of those hitherto wielded by Gowon, it followed, for instance, that the governors of Lagos, west and north (where the Gowonist forces were entrenched) would in future be expected to exercise greater powers of control in their respective regions than Gowon. IF AN audio-recorded transcript of the entire deliberations of the Aburi conference did not exist today** as a treasured historic document, it would have been extremely difficult to appreciate Ojukwu’s phenomenal success in persuading the rest of the participants to accept an extensively decentralised structural solution to Nigeria’s crisis after the devastating first and second phases of genocide, looting, and the displacement of 2 million Igbo people. That Gowon, himself, appended his signature to this Ojukwu prepared text at a gathering that had, as a result of these developments, clipped his powers so extensively, was not just because the east governor was the “cleverest … the only one who understood the real issues” (quoted in Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command [Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980] p. 10), as writer Walter Schwarz has observed, or that the rest of the conferees were “too unserious[ly] minded to meet with Ojukwu’s compulsive logic” (ThisWeek, Lagos, 13 July 1987, p. 23), as Joe Garba, a leading genocidist officer in the Gowonist forces and Nigeria’s foreign minister in the 1970s, has noted. On the contrary, Gowon and each of the other Nigerian leaders at Aburi (Adebayo, Ejoor, Johnson, Katsina, Salem, Wey – all of whom, bar Ojukwu, had recognised Gowon as “supreme commander and head of state” since end of July 1966) signed this remarkable document because they were each and collectively in awe of the frankness and rectitude of Ojukwu’s strictures of them for executing such a despicable act of genocide against Igbo people during the course of 1966.
Britain, Yoruba, and them all OVERNIGHT, the outcome of the Aburi discourses radically altered the contours of the political landscape of Nigeria. The centralising features of Aguyi-Ironsi’s decree no. 34 dispensation of the previous year, since adopted by the Gowon junta, despite the irony, had been abandoned. More importantly, though, the powers of the regions vis-à-vis the centre had become more enhanced – much more than at any time in Nigeria’s history, even including the epoch of the feverishly-pursued British occupation’s “regionalisation drive” of the 1950s. Aburi had in effect inaugurated an extensively decentralised constitutional solution to the Nigerian impasse, to the consternation of the British, who had followed the talks with nervousness, the north, the military, and the central, essentially Yoruba(now)-run bureaucratic establishment in Lagos. Obafemi Awolowo, the Yoruba leader, would later join the opposition to Aburi when offered the princely position of deputy to Gowon’s genocide prosecution-cabinet, effectively regime prime-minister, and head of the powerful finance ministry and “chief theorist” of the genocide campaign.
(Obafemi Awolowo: ... genocidist “chief theorist” and head of finance ministry)
BRITAIN rejected the Aburi outcome out of hand and began to pressurise Gowon, who for two days during the Ghana conference was out of reach from his British intelligence minders for the first time in almost a year, to renege on it. Britain was therefore pleased when the north and other interest groups in Nigeria joined in the opposition against the accord.
(Yakubu Gowon: ... head of genocidist forces who signed the Aburi accords thanks to Ojukwu’s “compulsive logic”)
(Yakubu Gowon:renages on the Aburi accord which he had signed, willingly, in the Ghana summit just a few days back in Nigeria in direct response to the Wilson government’s own trenchant opposition to the agreement)
Gowon’s ultimate renegation of an accord that he signed, willingly, in Ghana, in the presence of all the other seven members of the Nigerian governing military council, their five secretaries, and General Ankrah, their host, was a reminder, if ever such an evidence was sought, of who, eventually called the shots at the crucial junctures of the course of the Igbo genocide: Britain. Such was the British disappointment of Gowon’s performance in Aburi that they ensured that Gowon would in future no longer be “exposed” to Ojukwu or any of these Igbo with “compulsive logic”. Subsequently, the often more “coherent” spokespersons who tried to put across some “form of explanation” of the Anglo/Nigerian position on the Igbo genocide, especially in Britain where there was a groundswell popular opposition to the slaughter, were from a hired pool of consultants of ex-British conquest administrators who had worked in Nigeria.
(Harold Wilson: ... British prime minister furiously opposed to the Aburi accords and lead advocate of the “final solution” to the “Igbo Question” ... Just 18 months after Aburi, Wilson would insist on record: “[I] would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide.)
SO, the Aburi critics launched a chorus of fierce opposition on the accord, forcing the Gowon junta to renege on the agreement a few days after returning to Nigeria from Ghana. The groups felt that Gowon and the rest of the non-east delegation at Aburi had capitulated to Ojukwu’s uncompromising censure of his former colleagues’ involvement in the Igbo genocide. As a consequence, notes the critics, Ojukwu had out-manoeuvred fellow conferees in accepting as de jure the increasingly autonomous political direction which the east had embarked upon in the wake of the genocide, in addition to according this same status to the other regions of Nigeria – a move that further eclipsed Gowon’s powers as “head of state”. But for the east, the implementation of the Aburi agreement was the minimal condition for maintaining further political links with Nigeria: “It was Aburi or a clean break with Nigeria”. In a radio broadcast in Enuugwu in February 1967, Ojukwu gave notice that the east would begin to implement the Aburi agreement as from the end of March (1967) even if Gowon and the rest of the accord’s signatories did not do so. Gowon responded by threatening to attack the east if it went ahead to implement the agreement. Ironically, Gowon’s threat was itself a clear violation of one of the key articles of the accord, which pronounced unambiguously: “renounce[d] the use of force as a means of settling the Nigerian crisis”. Ojukwu nonetheless went ahead to implement the Aburi accord after 31 March. This move further enhanced the virtually autonomous position that the east had had in relation to the rest of the country since especially October 1966. For his part, Gowon imposed a total economic blockade of the east. Effectively, this was the prelude to his forces’ invasion, the expansion of the territorial reach of their yearlong genocidal campaign on the Igbo to Igboland, Biafra, itself. Phase-III THIS “final solution” of the “Igbo Question” had become the proffered one since sought by the British and their Nigerian genocidist allies – particularly Fulani, Yoruba, Hausa, Edo, Kanuri, Urhobo, Tiv, Nupe, Jukun and Bachama. And they soon unleashed a cataclysmic surge of violence in Biafra, the most gruesome and expansive in Africa, in which 3 million Igbo children, women and men or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by 12 January 1970.
++++++++++++++++++++++
*All military rank references here to the Aburi conference participants are statuses achieved and recognised prior to the outbreak of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966.
**There are persistent indications that the east conference staff may have additionally filmed the Aburi meetings and their tape(s) are lodged safely in some archives.
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe ON 18 NOVEMBER 1949, 21 coal miners at the Iva Valley colliery, Enuugwu, Biafra,were shot dead by the British occupation police in response to the miners’ peaceful, popular protest for a pay increase, improvement in working and safety mine provisions, and support for the ongoing restoration-of-independence movement, begun in the 1930s and spearheaded by the Igbo, to terminate 64 years of Britain’s conquest of the constellation of states and peoples of this southwestcentral region of Africa. The murder of the coal miners constituted a new
front in Britain’s 100 years war against Igboland and the variegated frames
of Igbo resistance to it that parallel the very stretch of the British
occupation of the states and peoples of this region of Africa it tagged “Nigeria”: especially the 1880s-1914 Ekumeku wars and resistance in
Anioma, west Igboland, west of the Oshimiri River; the 1901-1902 war against
the Aru in northeastcentral Igboland; the 1929 Ogu umu nwanyi Igbo/Igbo women’s resistance in Aba/Igbo eastcentral region.
The Enuugwu massacre, in addition to the organised pogroms against Igbo people in June 1945 (Jos, northcentral Nigeria) and May 1953 (Kano, north Nigeria) by the Fulani islamist/jihadist political leadership of north Nigeria, on the ground strategic client of the occupation, were dreadful precursors to the Igbo genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 (phases I-III) – in which Britain and Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, in the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. Cameron, Buhari, Obama THE dual genocidist states have murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo during the course of phase-IV of the genocide (launched on 13 Janauary 1970 and continuing) including the 3000 murdered by the current Muhammadu Buhari regime in Abuja since October 2015. Instrumentally, Buhari, one of the surviving vilest génocidaire-operatives who was an early recruit to this genocide campaign 52 years ago, was imposed on Nigeria as head of regime in March 2015 by the then British Prime Minister David Cameron and ex-US President Barack Obama, the first African-descent president of the United States in 233 years of the founding of the republic. Obama’s support for the Igbo genocide is the abhorrent legacy of his presidency.
(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])
AS PART of today’s commemoration of ChristopherOkigbo’s birthday, re-thinkingafrica reissues the 3-part video recording of Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s paper presentation to the Christopher Okigbo International Conference, Harvard University, 22 September 2007, entitled “Okigbo, the Africa state, genocide and the peoples”
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe EVEN IF THE Igbo are not subjected to
the cataclysmic genocide of 29 May 1966-present day, this
foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which suzerain Britain
and its Fulani Nigeria client state have murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of Igbo population (phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and
the dual-genocidists’ additional murder of tens of thousands of Igbo during
phase-IV of the genocide (13 January 1970-present day) which includes the current
stretch’s blitzkriegesque
offensive (since May 2015) that the Muhammadu Buhari regime (imposed in office by Barack Obama, the African-descent ex-US president, and David Cameron, ex-British prime minister) and its adjunct duo
Boko Haram and Fulani militia (erroneously tagged “Fulani herdspeople” in
the media in Nigeria) forces are waging in occupied Biafra, they, the Igbo, just like any other peoples, have the right to declare themselves
free from Nigeria or indeed from any other state in Africa they find themselves
domiciled if they so wish. This was precisely why the Igbo didn’t have to offer some justification for its 30 year-old vanguard role (1930s-October 1960) in formally terminating 76 years of the British conquest and occupation of Nigeria, not even to the north region Fulani Arabised-islamist/jihadist political establishment, strategic ally of the occupation opposed to African peoples liberation and progenitor of the prevailing dominant retrogressive regime forces in Nigeria. IT MUST be continuously stressed, if need be, that no comparable political forces anywhere else in the South World (Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas), during this epoch, wanted their lands occupied indefinitely by any of the rampaging conqueror pan-European states (Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) as the Fulani islamist/jihadists, this ferociously anti-African peoples assemblage. This was why the British aptly “rewarded” them with the responsibility of “overseer”, beginning 1 October 1960, to protect Britain’s vast expropriatory economic interests in Nigeria in perpetuity as well as wage a 52-year-old genocide against the Igbo, one of the most enterprising and progressive peoples in Africa. The glaring catastrophe that is Nigeria becomes hugely intelligible in the context of this history (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra Revisited, 2006).
BESIDES, the compositional aftermath of the (European)conqueror/conquered/conquest-state of Africa (Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, the Sudan, the Congo-B, the Congo-K, Guinea-B, Guinea-C, Guinea-E, whatever!) cannot be the basis of the restoration-of-independence for the peoples as this historic right to freedom affirmation rests incontrovertibly on the hitherto conquered constituent African nation or people – Igbo, Bakongo, Wolof, Luo, Ibibio, Darfuri, Gĩkũyũ, Herero, Ndebele, Efik, Akan, Bakongo, Gur, Ijo, Punu, Ovambo, Bamileke... Freedom train, not “agitators” THIS RIGHT to freedom for a people, for all peoples, isinalienable. As I have demonstrated severally elsewhere, it is the state, any state, that is transient; definitely, not the people(s) except, of course, they, such as the Igbo, are a target or programmed for genocide by some state/s (Britain and Nigeria in this specific case) or some other agency. No one, no people, therefore, has to offer a reason for being free, for freedom. So, the rather perfunctory remarks, “agitating for Biafra”, “Biafra agitators”, often made by some commentators to highlight the current historic drive of the Biafra freedom movement is, ironically, an assault on the very essence of this freedom. One doesn’t “agitate” for freedom; they, instead, proclaim it: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”.
(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe WHAT IS NIGERIA?This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist state, currently occupied by Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists whose Fulani affiliate hegemons came from their home in the Futa Djallon highlands of northwest Africa, 1500 miles away. Nigeria was created by Britain in the early 1900s after the latter’s conquest and occupation of the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, stretching to the Atlantic coast, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Hausa-Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf by its Hausa-Fulani confederates. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, using any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic variable, year in, year out. Igbo genocide: Age of pestilence Nigeria inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadfulmid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded toBiafra. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the 1930s-1960. IN THIS foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocideagainst the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa between 1904-1907 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/blog-post_23.html). BESIDES Britain, Nigeriawas supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources: principallythe Soviet Union,German Democratic Republic, Egypt,Syria, theSudan,Algeria,Saudi Arabia,Chad,Niger, Guinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars inAfricacarried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.
Phase-IV ... and legacy of US’s first African-descent president ON 13 January 1970, 48 years ago to the day, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigerialaunched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders have continued, unabated, to this day, as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV:
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html)
Since imposing jihadist-genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html) particularly in his last two years in office. Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against an African people in this continent of his fathers is an incalculable tragedy, a legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 3000 Igbo have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces, Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist organisations. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy in Nigeria ever condemned any of these murders. It had been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016). Breakthrough THE IGBO will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import of this development.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Untitled original 90314” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])
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).
