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DISTINGUISHED Biafra restoration-of-independence centred scholar: poet, essayist, dramatist
– Cotyledons (1988), Inflorescence: Selected Poems, 1977-1988
(1989), Hangmen Also Die (1989), Gold, frankincense, and myrrh:
A play (1989), The other side of the mask: a play (1999), The
fronded circle: a play (1999), Why
I Don’t Like Philip Larkin and Other Poems (2005)
(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])
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Consequences” – 4th movement in First Meditations {for Quartet} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 2 November 1965])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s recently published books on the Igbo genocide and Biafra are The longest genocide – since 29 May
1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson
Okwuonicha, Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
BEGINNING in the early 1930s to October 1960, the Igbo nation played the vanguard role in the campaign for restoration-of-independence to terminate 100 years of the British conquest and occupation of the multiplicity of states and peoples of southwestcentral Africa region which the conqueror regime contemptuously tagged “Nigeria” – the “n*****” area/land, the egregious racist epithet Britain responded with the genocide of the Igbo and employed its Fulani islamist/jihadist client on the ground, inveterately anti-African who hitherto opposed the restoration-of-independence drive, and the Fulani’s enduringly loyal pan-African constituent nations’ allies in Nigeria (particularly Yoruba, Jukun, Tiv, Urhobo, Hausa, Edo, Jawara, Nupe, Kanuri, Bachama) to execute this unprecedented mass murder of a people in contemporary Africa history most brazenly. The genocidists slaughtered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population during the course of 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, phases I-III. Tens of thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered subsequently, 13 January 1970-present day, phase-IV, as the genocide continues in its 53rd year. IGBO PEOPLE have not only survived the genocide but are now in the vanguard to construct Biafra, an African peoples-centred state, that at once effectuates an African people’s control of its destiny not seen for centuries in Africa and the collapse of the Anglo/European World anti-African “Berlin-states” or constellation of EuroConqueror league states dotted across Africa such as that evidently bubonic encampment of doom the British labelled “Nigeria”.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Sun ship” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Impulse!, New York, US, 26 August 1965])
******Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s latest books on the Igbo genocide and Biafra are The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
(Ndi akwukwo: Chizobam Stephany Ugboaja [left] and Chukwuemeka
Favour Alozie [right] with Emeka Ihedioha [centre], administrator of Imo region,
east Biafra, who has commendably awarded university scholarships to both top
students)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
DESPITE the ongoing Igbo genocide,
the longest and most gruesome in contemporary history, executed on the ground in
Biafra by the Nigeria military and its duo-terrorist adjuncts Fulani militia
and Boko Haram (2 of the 5 deadliest terrorist organisations in the world
presently), despite the occupation of Biafra by Nigeria since 13 January 1970, despite
Nigeria’s state of siege imposed over all of Biafra since 13 January 1970,
despite Britain’s instrumentalist coordinating role of this genocide by
successive governments since Harold Wilson’s in May 1966, very hardworking
Igbo students have consistently exercised a stellar performance over Nigerian
students in all key categories of the education enterprise – from infant/primary to
university/other tertiary. Assets In this 2019 West Africa School
Certificate Examination, Chizobam Stephany Ugboaja (Jesuit Memorial
College, Igwe Ocha, south Biafra) and Chukwuemeka Favour Alozie (Marist Brothers Juniorate, Uturu, east Biafra) came first and second, respectively, out of the total 1.6 million
students examined. Ugboaja scored an “A1” or “distinction” in each of the nine
subjects she entered for while Alozie scored eight “A1”s from his own nine
subjects. IGBO youths constitute one ofAfrica’s
best-developed multidisciplinary humanpower conglomeration of assets.
Igbo people can’t wait for the restoration of the independence of Biafra to
open up continents of creativity and transformation for its young people that will have tremendous impact across the African World and the rest of humanity.
(JohnColtrane Quartet, “Equinox” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Steve Davis, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 26 October 1960])
*****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, Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
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])
THE BIAFRA freedom movement surely dictates the terms of the freedom of the people of Biafra from Nigeria despite the savagery of the feudal Fulani islamist/jihadist-led genocidist Nigeria occupation and the overseeing ruthlessness on the ground by that league of quislings-of-occupation alternatively known as heads of regime of the administrative regions. The movement insists on a referendum: nothing else, including bogus regime-elections, to democratically secure the next crucial phase of the restoration-of-independence process.
(Nnamdi Kanu: ... leader of Indigenous People of Biafra and freedom broadcaster, Radio Biafra)
“Election” exercises in occupied Biafra have in the past been distinctively fraudulent and immensely contradictory as the Fulani lead-occupiers with no tradition of democratic discourse or engagement whatsoever in its own culture or brutish history of terror, conquests, occupations, expropriations, decadence and genocide, not to mention genocidist Nigeria itself which has had no credible election throughout its history, would bizarrely posit to organise elections in (occupied) Igboland that has enjoyed an advanced republican democratic tradition for over 1000 years. THUS, for the Igbo in occupied Biafra or in the diaspora in Nigeria, the way forward couldn’t be clearer: boycott all “elections” organised by genocidist Nigeriaincluding, particularly, the Saturday 16 February 2019 so-called poll. Besides, “election” time in Nigeria is time-of-death. It is also time-of-destruction, time-of-desolation, time-of-waste, time-to-waste... Genocidist operative and one time head-of-regime Olusegun Obasanjo captures the characterisation of this season most vividly, if not horridly, in a February 2007 proclamation at Abeokuta, west Nigeria: “it’s do or die” (all-africa.com, 11 February 2007), a haunting disposition echoed readily by co-genocidist Muhammadu Buhari who paints a characteristically morbid portrait of“dog-and-the-baboon-would-all-be-soaked-in-blood” (The Vanguard, Lagos, 15 May 2012) to attest to the extent of violence he would unleash during this appointed time-of-death.
Biafrans do freedom... Biafran people don’t do “it’s do or die” nor “soaked-in-blood”. Tufia kwa!
EITHER of these is predictably genocidist Nigerian stuff – as Biafrans have known, most devastatingly, in the past 53 years, with 3.1 million of their people murdered, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands others additionally murdered since, 13 January 1970-present day, by this most gruesome band of murderers in African history since the 1908 end of the 30 years of genocide of African peoples of the Congo Basin, executed by Belgian King Leopold II/Belgian state during which the latter murdered 13 million Africans (Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem,Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique, Paris: Duculot, 1998, p. 344).
Biafrans, on the contrary, do freedom. Freedom is inalienable. One does not ask for it; one takes it! The 50 million Igbo know they have to take their freedom as they head to the referendum to proclaim this liberatory choice. This is the choice the rest of the world awaits eagerly.
“Ofe okazi day”
THE freedom movement, true to form in its assured peaceful trajectory, has already designated the Saturday 16 February 2018 day boycott call of the “poll” the “ofe okazi day”, after a local delicacy – essentially asking the population to stay firmly home with loved ones throughout the day and enjoy a scrumptious dinner and don’t partake in the desperate occupation’s strategy to prolong its murderous stay which is now clearly unsustainable.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Pursuance” {part-III of A Love Supreme suite} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 9 December 1964])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since
29 May 1966 (2019)
(1 February 1974:operation performed, Nsukka University Teaching Hospital, Enuugwu, Biafra)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe FIRST OPEN heart-surgery in Biafra/anywhere else in southwestcentral Africa including genocidist Nigeria,was performed at the Nsukka University Teaching Hospital, Enuugwu, Biafra, on 1 February 1974 – four years and just over a month to the day after the formal end of phase-III (beginning of phase-IV) of the 44-month long Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa perpetrated by the Fulani islamist/jihadist-led Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain in which 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered. The surgeons who worked on the surgery included CH Anyanwu, DC Nwafor, FA Udekwu and M Yacoub. In the subsequent 26 years, i.e., by 2000, a total of 102 (one hundred and two) open heart-surgeries were carried out at the Enuugwu centre.
Ethic and drive FORTY-FIVE years since the first surgery, Africa and the rest of the world cannot wait for the triumph of the Biafra freedom movement to witness the exponential expansion of the stretch of such creative and transformational energy by Biafrans –an African people building and reconstructing on their land and on their own terms, a disposition which squarely repudiates those outrageous British presumptions on African peoples given Britain’s role as the principal architect and codifier of anti-African racism as an ideology (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe, 2001, especially pp. 1-54) and whose involvement in the Igbo genocide is to “punish” the Igbo for the latter’s vanguard role in terminating the British conquest and occupation of the states and peoples of this southwestcentral Africa region. It can’t be overstated that one of the insistent
factors that has fuelled the Igbo genocide in these past 53 years is the mutually
shared British and Fulani Nigeria islamist leadership’s trenchant
aversion to the well-known Igbo hardworking ethic and
entrepreneurial drive. Consequently, this dual attribute
of ethic and drive has transformed Igbo people to presently control one of Africa’s best-developed multidisciplinary
humanpower conglomeration of assets which will surely be deployed in building
Biafra. BIAFRA is dedicated to furthering and
nurturing the resilience of its people and to enable them pursue their highest
creative endeavours. This state continuously strives to remove all limitations
in the paths of its people to create and transform. Biafra primes its people to flourish.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Sun ship” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Impulse!, New York, US, 26 August 1965])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)
BIAFRANS have an historic opportunity to embark on the construction of a new
civilisation where human life, African
life, fundamentally, is sacrosanct. This salient feature cannot
be overstressed.
For Igbo people, Nigeria has for long been a
haematophagousquagmire in their history,beginning in the 1945 Igbo pogrom in Jos (northcentral region) carried out by the Fulani islamist/jihadists, duly overseen by the British conqueror-occupying
regime. A “next time” Igbo pogrom was executed in Kano (north
region), in 1953, by the same Fulani islamist/jihadists and again overseen
by the British occupation – “dress rehearsals” for the Igbo
genocide which the dual-genocidistsand the
expanded league of pan-African perpetrators (particularly, Yoruba,
Kanuri, Edo, Tiv, Gwari, Nupe, Jukun) would embark upon on 29 May 1966,
slaughtering 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in the
subsequent 44 months of sheer savagery, phases I-III of the genocide. Phase-IV
of the genocide has continued since, with the murder of additional tens of
thousands Igbo people.
Mission
THE Biafra freedom mission is therefore not to
begin to construct a state that is merely post-genocide or post
post-conquest (post post-“colonial”) state of Africa; in other
words, cancelling out here and there, in some mechanical venture, that
which was Nigeria, “Berlin-state” Africa’s most notoriously
anti-human.
Instead, Biafra is a realisation,
a profound reclamation of that which makes us all human and part of
humanity. Biafra is a beacon of the tenacity of the spirit of
human overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginable brutish forces.
THE restoration-of-independence of Biafra at once signals to the rest
of the constituent peoples and nations enveloped in the
European-created “Berlin-states” of death, immiseration, desolation
and hopelessness that freedom and transformation, right
there in Africa, are achievable goals – that African peoples can build, reconstruct, embark on all possibilities of
working for themselves and appropriating the fruits of their
labour from their land and on their own terms...
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Attaining” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Impulse!, New York, US, 26 August 1965])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is author of the recently published The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019)
THERE IS DEFINITELY no subject in these past 52 years, i.e., since the 29 May 1966 Anglo-Nigeria launch date of the Igbo genocide, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, in which the critical institutions of the British state (including, particularly, academia, media, church) have all converged, unproblematically, to support as the perpetration of the Igbo genocide. Igbo independence is in fact anathema to Britain (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html). Without this robust British involvement, the field/on-the-ground Fulani islamist/jihadist-led génocidaires in Nigeria, this brazenly indolent and sleazy anti-African peoples’ grouping immanently obsequious to the diktats of its bature overlords, cannot continue to commit this crime against humanity much longer – definitely, not beyond a few weeks. The restoration of Igbo independence will surely inaugurate a strategic reordering of Biafra-Britain relations across the board which will have far-reaching consequences on the rest of the African World and elsewhere.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Sun ship” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Impulse!, New York, US, 26 August 1965])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
SUCCESSIVE British governments since 29 May 1966, beginning with the one led by Harold “[W]ould-accept-half-a-million-dead-Biafrans-if-that-was-what-it-[T]ook”
Wilson, have, in strategic alliance with the coterie of African constituent nations
in Nigeria (particularly Fulani, Yoruba, Kanuri, Urhobo, Bachama, Tiv, Hausa, Nupe, Edo) waged the
Igbo genocide most unrelentingly, most gruesomely…
Comeuppance?
The current British government is tellingly
incapable to negotiate a simple exit from the European Union
(organisation Britain joined voluntarily, not forced into, in 1973) as demanded by the majority
“yes”-voters of the country’s June 2016 referendum. For Britain, the humiliating narrative that characterises these Brexit talks in Brussels is palpable. Despite Prime
Minister Theresa May’s ringing pledge that Brexit is the British decision to “restore ... our self-determination” (“Prime Minister’s letter to Donald Tusk on the triggering of article 50”, gov.uk, 29 March 2017, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50/prime-ministers-letter-to-donald-tusk-triggering-article-50, accessed 29 March 2017), the EU
is offering Britain “exit terms” from the league that are structurally not
dissimilar from that infamous Lancaster House fake-independence/fraudulent freedom template that Britain
foisted on African restoration-of-independence movements in its occupied states
across the continent – from the Sudan/Ghana (mid-1950s) to Zimbabwe (late 1979/early 1980). It is precisely this unlikely equivalence of two seemingly unrelated tracks of
history that has prompted Boris Johnson, ex-British foreign secretary, ex-mayor
of London, journalist, and essayist who has often relished in his writings demonising peoples (particularly Africans) conquered over the last 350 years by Britain, to now proclaim, so ironically, that the current “Brexit deal” from the EU
reduces Britain to a “vassalage, satrapy, colony” (Andrew Woodcock, “Boris Johnson: Theresa May’s Brexit plan makes UK a ‘colony’”, The Scotsman, Edinburgh, 26 July 2018, https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/boris-johnson-theresa-may-s-brexit-plan-makes-uk-a-colony-1-4774271, accessed 28 July 2018)!
HAS the comeuppance that has vividly struck
a number of the countries besides, obviously, Nigeria (e.g. Soviet Union, Egypt, Algeria, the Sudan, Cameroon, German Democratic Republic, Guinea-Conakry, Syria) and several lead génocidaires (e.g. Obafemi Awolowo,
Harold Wilson, Hafez al-Assad,Muhammadu
Buhari, Barack Hussein Obama, Hosni Mubarak,Muhammadu
Shuwa,Ahmadou
Ahidjo,Ibrahim Taiwo,David Cameron,Olusegun Obasanjo, Murtala
Muhammed) who have been involved in the murder of Igbo people these past 52
years finally hit Britain?
Biafran freedom and justice
If ever there was any doubt, the evidence, so
far, demonstrates the contrary – namely, that no one, no agency, murders 3.1
millionand additionaltens of thousands of Igbo children, women and men (including the 3000 murdered so far since November 2015 by fiendish génocidaire Muhammadu Buhari who was imposed in office by ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama, the first African descent president in 233 years of the founding of the United States republic) in
this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa and
walks away free... Apart from the now 50 million Igbo survivors,
the 3.1 millionand
the additional tens of thousandsare individually and
collectively involved in the current historic Biafran resilient quest for freedom and
justice...
AND Biafra will get this freedom and justice. Undoubtedly.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Consequences” – 4th movement in First Meditations {for Quartet} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 2 November 1965])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018) and author of Readings from Reading: Essays in African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011)
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).
