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Showing posts with label Igbo genocide May 1966-January 1970. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Igbo genocide May 1966-January 1970. Show all posts
(commentary published soon after news of Akiolu’s Igbo murder-proclamation became public, 6 April 2015) Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe RILWAN AKIOLU, the oba or king of Lagos, genocidist Nigeria, has issued a proclamation to murder Igbo people domiciled in Lagos if they, the Igbo, do not vote for the king’s “preferred candidate” in the forthcoming Lagos region head of regime’s election. The king’s proclamation is published widely in the Nigeria media including Premium Times (Lagos), Vanguard (Lagos) and saharareporters.com (New York). According to saharareporters.com (6 April 2015), the “Oba of Lagos threatened Igbo during a meeting in his palace in downtown Lagos. The traditional king of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, told representatives of the Igbo during the meeting that if they refuse to vote for his preferred candidate Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressive Congress [the party the overwhelming majority of the Igbo electorate voted against in the Saturday 28 March 2015 ‘poll’ for ‘president’ in Nigeria: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a_6.html] they will die in the Lagos lagoon in 7 days”. Saharareporters.com’s report, on its website, includes an audio clip of Akiolu’s murder threats with haunting “cheers” and chants by courtiers in Yoruba: kabiyesi, kabiyesi – “the unquestionable one”, “the unquestionable one”…
Outrage, clinical precision, no agency
AKIOLU is a lawyer and was an assistant chief of the genocidist Nigeria police before his accession to the Lagos throne in 2003. He is respected if not revered by his Yoruba subjects. The world can and must stop Akiolu from carrying through his proclamation. Akiolu’s proclamation is a grim alert to the world, just coming a few days after islamist insurgents operating in a university college in Kenya murdered 147 African christianstudents, initially separated from their muslim counterparts. The world’s heads of state, heads of government, even heads of regime, the United Nations, statespersons, non-state/civil organisations, scholars, students, men and women of freedom and goodwill should today, now, register their unqualified outrage in response to this call by the Lagos hereditary monarch to murder the Igbo, based on the latter’s exercise of their choice in a seemingly democratic contest. Phone calls of protest should be made or emails sent at once to one’s nearest Nigeria consulate/embassy. Nigerian genocidist officials/operatives who not too unroutinely call openly for the mass murder of Igbo people over the decades have been so emboldened in their stock-in-trade especially since Nigeria secured unflinching backing from the British government at the onset of the Igbo genocide in 1966. To underscore the point, we should recall that it was to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that Nigeria’s genocidist trooper Olusegun Obasanjo turned to in June 1969 to “sort out” the world-wide revulsion that followed Obasanjo’s orders to his air force to shoot down over south Biafra the International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7, clearly marked, relief-carrying aircraft to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo, resulting in the catastrophic loss of the plane’s 3-person crew (Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command, Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980: 165).
FINALLY, back to the Igbo in Lagos and genocidist Akiolu... Millions of Igbo live in Lagos. Igbo experience in Nigeria since the 1945 Igbo pogrom in Jos (central region) has been that calls for the “murder of Igbo” by officials (religious, monarchial, other state operatives) have usually been carried out with almost clinical precision in orchestrated mass actions. Akiolu’s reference to the Lagos lagoon is therefore ominous because this is the bight where hundreds of Igbo slaughtered during phase-I of the Igbo genocide, especially after 29 July 1966, were dumped by their assailants.
Pointedly, Akiolu’s murder-proclamation comes in the wake of the expulsions of Igbo citizens from Lagos in recent years by Raji Fashola, the region’s head of regime, another lawyer, indeed a senior advocate of the Nigerian bar. AS I INDICATED during the Fashola expulsion (“Igbo deportation from Lagos” –see link below), the Igbo must leave Lagos and relocate to Biafra. No agency in Lagos nor in the wider Nigeria virulent political space can or is willing to safeguard Igbo security and wellbeing: (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Igbo deportation from Lagos”, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html).
(Herbie Hancock Quintet, “Little one” [personnel: Hancock, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewoods Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1965])
(Commentary published soon after news of Akiolu’s Igbo murder-proclamation became public, 6 April 2015) Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe RILWAN AKIOLU, the oba or king of Lagos, genocidist Nigeria, has issued a proclamation to murder Igbo people domiciled in Lagos if they, the Igbo, do not vote for the king’s “preferred candidate” in the forthcoming Lagos region governor’s election. The king’s proclamation is published widely in the Nigeria media including saharareporters.com (New York), Premium Times (Lagos) and Vanguard (Lagos). According to saharareporters.com (6 April 2015), the “Oba of Lagos threatened Igbo during a meeting in his palace in downtown Lagos. The traditional king of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, told representatives of the Igbo during the meeting that if they refuse to vote for his preferred candidate Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressive Congress [the party the overwhelming majority of the Igbo electorate voted against in the Saturday 28 March 2015 ‘poll’ for ‘president’ in Nigeria: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a_6.html] they will die in the Lagos lagoon in 7 days”. Saharareporters.com’s report, on its website, includes an audio clip of Akiolu’s murder threats with haunting “cheers” and chants by courtiers in Yoruba: kabiyesi, kabiyesi – “the unquestionable one”, “the unquestionable one”…
Outrage, clinical precision, no agency
Akiolu is a lawyer and was an assistant chief of the Nigeria police before his accession to the Lagos throne in 2003. He is respected if not revered by his Yoruba subjects. The world can and must stop Akiolu from carrying through his proclamation. Akiolu’s proclamation is a grim alert to the world, just coming a few days after islamist insurgents operating in a university college in Kenya murdered 147 African christianstudents, initially separated from their muslim counterparts. The world’s heads of state, heads of government, even heads of regime, the United Nations, statespersons, non-state/civil organisations, scholars, students, men and women of freedom and goodwill should today, now, register their unqualified outrage in response to this call by the Lagos hereditary monarch to murder the Igbo, based on the latter’s exercise of their choice in a seemingly democratic contest. Phone calls of protest should be made or emails sent at once to one’s nearest Nigeria consulate/embassy. Nigerian genocidist officials/operatives who not too unroutinely call openly for the mass murder of Igbo people over the decades have been so emboldened in their stock-in-trade especially since Nigeria secured unflinching backing from the British government at the onset of the Igbo genocide in 1966. To underscore the point, we should recall that it was to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that Nigeria’s genocidist trooper Olusegun Obasanjo turned to in June 1969 to “sort out” the world-wide revulsion that followed Obasanjo’s orders to his air force to shoot down over south Biafra the International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7, clearly marked, relief-carrying aircraft to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo, resulting in the catastrophic loss of the plane’s 3-person crew (Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command, Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980: 165).
FINALLY, back to the Igbo in Lagos and genocidist Akiolu... Millions of Igbo live in Lagos. Igbo experience in Nigeria since the 1945 Igbo pogrom in Jos (central region) has been that calls for the “murder of Igbo” by officials (religious, monarchial, other state operatives) have usually been carried out with almost clinical precision in orchestrated mass actions. Akiolu’s reference to the Lagos lagoon is therefore ominous because this is the bight where hundreds of Igbo slaughtered during phase-I of the Igbo genocide, especially after 29 July 1966, were dumped by their assailants.
Pointedly, Akiolu’s murder-proclamation comes in the wake of the expulsions of Igbo citizens from Lagos in recent years by Raji Fashola, the region’s governor, another lawyer, indeed a senior advocate of the Nigerian bar. As I indicated during the Fashola expulsion (“Igbo deportation from Lagos” –see link below), the Igbo must leave Lagos and relocate to Biafra. No agency in Lagos nor in the wider Nigeria virulent political space can or is willing to safeguard Igbo security and wellbeing: (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Igbo deportation from Lagos”, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html).
(Herbie Hancock Quintet, “Little one” [personnel: Hancock, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewoods Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1965])
(Commentary published soon after news of Akiolu’s Igbo murder-proclamation became public, 6 April 2015) Rilwan Akiolu, the oba or king of Lagos, Nigeria, has issued a proclamation to murder Igbo people domiciled in Lagos if they, the Igbo, do not vote for the king’s “preferred candidate” in the forthcoming Lagos region governor’s election. The king’s proclamation is published widely in the Nigeria media including saharareporters.com (New York), Premium Times (Lagos) and Vanguard (Lagos). According to saharareporters.com (6 April 2015), the “Oba of Lagos threatened Igbo during a meeting in his palace in downtown Lagos. The traditional king of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, told representatives of the Igbo during the meeting that if they refuse to vote for his preferred candidate, Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressive Congress [the party the overwhelming majority of the Igbo electorate voted against in the Saturday 28 March 2015 ‘poll’ for ‘president’ in Nigeria: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a_6.html] they will die in the Lagos lagoon in 7 days”. Saharareporters.com’s report, on its website, includes an audio clip of Akiolu’s murder threats with haunting “cheers” and chants by courtiers in Yoruba: kabiyesi, kabiyesi – “the unquestionable one”, “the unquestionable one”…
Outrage, clinical precision, no agency
Akiolu is a lawyer and was an assistant chief of the Nigeria police before his accession to the Lagos throne in 2003. He is respected if not revered by his subjects. The world can and must stop Akiolu from carrying through his proclamation. Akiolu’s proclamation is a grim alert to the world, just coming a few days after islamist insurgents operating in a university college in Kenya murdered 147 African christian students, initially separated from their muslim counterparts. The world’s heads of state, heads of government, the United Nations, statespersons, non-state/civil organisations, scholars, students, men and women of freedom and goodwill should today, now, register their unqualified outrage in response to this call by the Lagos hereditary monarch to murder the Igbo, based on the latter’s exercise of their choice in a seemingly democratic contest. Phone calls of protest should be made or emails sent at once to one’s nearest Nigeria consulate/embassy.
Millions of Igbo live in Lagos. Igbo experience in Nigeria since the 1945 Igbo pogrom in Jos (central region) has been that calls for the “murder of Igbo” by officials (religious, monarchial, other state operatives) have usually been carried out with almost clinical precision in orchestrated mass actions. Akiolu’s reference to the Lagos lagoon is therefore ominous because this is the bight where hundreds of Igbo slaughtered during phase-I of the Igbo genocide, especially after 29 July 1966, were dumped by their assailants.
Pointedly, Akiolu’s murder-proclamation comes in the wake of the expulsions of Igbo citizens from Lagos in recent years by Raji Fashola, the region’s governor, another lawyer, indeed a senior advocate of the Nigerian bar. As I indicated during the last expulsion, the Igbo must leave Lagos and relocate to Biafra. No agency in Lagos nor in the wider Nigeria virulent political space can or is willing to safeguard Igbo security and wellbeing: (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html)
(Herbie Hancock Quintet, “Little one” [personnel: Hancock, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewoods Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1965])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe Rilwan Akiolu, the oba or king of Lagos, Nigeria, has issued a proclamation to murder Igbo people domiciled in Lagos if they, the Igbo, do not vote for the king’s “preferred candidate” in the forthcoming Lagos region governor’s election. The king’s proclamation is published widely in the Nigeria media including saharareporters.com (New York), Premium Times (Lagos) and Vanguard (Lagos). According to saharareporters.com (6 April 2015), the “Oba of Lagos threatened Igbo during a meeting in his palace in downtown Lagos. The traditional king of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, told representatives of the Igbo during the meeting that if they refuse to vote for his preferred candidate, Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressive Congress [the party the overwhelming majority of the Igbo electorate voted against in the Saturday 28 March 2015 ‘poll’ for ‘president’ in Nigeria: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a_6.html] they will die in the Lagos lagoon in 7 days”. Saharareporters.com’s report, on its website, includes an audio clip of Akiolu’s murder threats with haunting “cheers” and chants by courtiers in Yoruba: kabiyesi, kabiyesi – “the unquestionable one”, “the unquestionable one”…
Outrage, clinical precision, no agency
Akiolu is a lawyer and was an assistant chief of the Nigeria police before his accession to the Lagos throne in 2003. He is respected if not revered by his subjects. The world can and must stop Akiolu from carrying through his proclamation. Akiolu’s proclamation is a grim alert to the world, just coming a few days after islamist insurgents operating in a university college in Kenya murdered 147 African christian students, initially separated from their muslim counterparts. The world’s heads of state, heads of government, the United Nations, statespersons, non-state/civil organisations, scholars, students, men and women of freedom and goodwill should today, now, register their unqualified outrage in response to this call by the Lagos hereditary monarch to murder the Igbo, based on the latter’s exercise of their choice in a seemingly democratic contest. Phone calls of protest should be made or emails sent at once to one’s nearest Nigeria consulate/embassy. Nigerian genocidist officials/operatives who not too unroutinely call openly for the mass murder of Igbo people over the decades have been so emboldened in their stock-in-trade especially since Nigeria secured unflinching backing from the British government at the onset of the Igbo genocide in 1966. To underscore the point, we should recall that it was to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that Nigeria’s genocidist trooper Olusegun Obasanjo turned to in June 1969 to “sort out” the world-wide revulsion that followed Obasanjo’s orders to his air force to shoot down over south Biafra the International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7, clearly marked, relief-carrying aircraft to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo, resulting in the catastrophic loss of the plane’s 3-person crew (Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command, Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980, p. 165.).
Finally, back to the Igbo in Lagos and genocidist Akiolu... Millions of Igbo live in Lagos. Igbo experience in Nigeria since the 1945 Igbo pogrom in Jos (central region) has been that calls for the “murder of Igbo” by officials (religious, monarchial, other state operatives) have usually been carried out with almost clinical precision in orchestrated mass actions. Akiolu’s reference to the Lagos lagoon is therefore ominous because this is the bight where hundreds of Igbo slaughtered during phase-I of the Igbo genocide, especially after 29 July 1966, were dumped by their assailants.
Pointedly, Akiolu’s murder-proclamation comes in the wake of the expulsions of Igbo citizens from Lagos in recent years by Raji Fashola, the region’s governor, another lawyer, indeed a senior advocate of the Nigerian bar. As I indicated during the last expulsion, the Igbo must leave Lagos and relocate to Igboland. No agency in Lagos nor in the wider Nigeria virulent political space can or is willing to safeguard Igbo security and wellbeing: (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html)
(Herbie Hancock Quintet, “Little one” [personnel: Hancock, piano; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewoods Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1965])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe Rilwan Akiolu, the oba
or king of Lagos, genocidist Nigeria, has issued a proclamation to murder Igbo people domiciled in
Lagos if they, the Igbo, do not vote for the king’s “preferred candidate” in
the forthcoming Lagos region governor’s election. The king’s proclamation is
published widely in the Nigeria media including saharareporters.com (New York), Premium
Times (Lagos) and Vanguard (Lagos).
According to saharareporters.com
(6 April 2015), the “Oba of Lagos threatened Igbo during a meeting in his
palace in downtown Lagos. The traditional king of Lagos, Rilwan Akiolu, told
representatives of the Igbo during the meeting that if they refuse to vote for
his preferred candidate, Akinwunmi Ambode of the All Progressive Congress [the
party the overwhelming majority of
the Igbo electorate voted against in
the Saturday 28 March 2015 ‘poll’ for ‘president’ in Nigeria: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a_6.html] they will die in
the Lagos lagoon in 7 days”. Saharareporters.com’s
report, on its website, includes an audio clip of Akiolu’s murder threats with
haunting “cheers” and chants by courtiers in Yoruba: kabiyesi, kabiyesi – “the
unquestionable one”, “the unquestionable one”…
Outrage, clinical precision, no agency
Akiolu is a lawyer and was an assistant chief of the Nigeria
police before his accession to the Lagos throne in 2003. He is respected if not
revered by his subjects. The world can and must stop Akiolu from carrying
through his proclamation. Akiolu’s proclamation is a grim alert to the world,
just coming a few days after islamist insurgents operating in a university
college in Kenya murdered 147 African christian students, initially separated
from their muslim counterparts. The world’s heads of state, heads of
government, the United Nations, statespersons, non-state/civil organisations, scholars,
students, men and women of freedom and goodwill should today, now, register their unqualified outrage
in response to this call by the Lagos hereditary monarch to murder the Igbo, based
on the latter’s exercise of their choice in a seemingly democratic contest. Phone
calls of protest should be made or emails sent at once to one’s nearest Nigeria
consulate/embassy. Nigerian genocidist officials/operatives who not too unroutinely call openly for the mass murder of Igbo people over the decades have been so emboldened in their stock-in-trade especially since Nigeria secured unflinching backing from the British government at the onset of the Igbo genocide in 1966. To underscore the point, we should recall that it was to British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that Nigeria’s genocidist trooper Olusegun Obasanjo turned to in June 1969 to “sort out” the world-wide revulsion that followed Obasanjo’s orders to his air force to shoot down over south Biafra the International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7, clearly marked, relief-carrying aircraft to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo, resulting in the catastrophic loss of the plane’s 3-person crew (Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command, Ibadan and London: Heinemann, 1980, p. 165.).
Finally, back to the Igbo in Lagos and genocidist Akiolu... Millions of Igbo live in Lagos. Igbo experience in Nigeria since
the 1945 Igbo pogrom in Jos (central region) has been that calls for the “murder of Igbo” by
officials (religious, monarchial, other state operatives) have usually been carried
out with almost clinical precision in orchestrated mass actions. Akiolu’s reference
to the Lagos lagoon is therefore ominous because this is the bight where
hundreds of Igbo slaughtered during phase-I of the Igbo genocide, especially
after 29 July 1966, were dumped by their assailants.
Pointedly, Akiolu’s murder-proclamation comes in the wake of
the expulsions of Igbo citizens from Lagos in recent years by Raji Fashola, the
region’s governor, another lawyer, indeed a senior advocate of the Nigerian bar.
As I indicated during the last expulsion, the Igbo must leave Lagos and
relocate to Igboland. No agency in Lagos nor in the wider Nigeria virulent political
space can or is willing to safeguard Igbo security and wellbeing: (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/igbo-deportation-from-lagos_2.html)
(Herbie Hancock Quintet,
“Little one” [personnel: Hancock, piano;
Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; George Coleman, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewoods
Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 March 1965])
Igbo tenacity, drive and relentless optimism to pursue and overcome life’s challenges were acutely an affront to both the sardauna of Sokoto (northwest Nigeria) and British occupation sensibilities in Nigeria. This sardauna interview (video below) must have been recorded in the late 1950s/early 1960s – definitely after both the 1945 and 1953 north Nigeria-organised pogroms against Igbo immigrant populations in Jos and Kano respectively. Hundreds of Igbo were murdered during the pogroms and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property were looted/destroyed at the time. Each pogrom was carried out because of the Igbo vanguard role in the restoration-of-independence movement to free Nigeria from the British conquest and occupation, begun in the 1930s. North Nigeria’s sociopolitical leaderships, effectively British regional clients, were opposed to the restoration of African freedom. No other leadership across the entire Southern World (Africa, Asia, the Caribbean/South America) has such an unenviable record during this unprecedented epoch of transglobal freedom charge. North Nigeria leaderships, indeed, were disposed to the continuing British occupation of Nigeria.
Enslaved spaces and replicas
As a result, the occupation regime did not apprehend or prosecute anyone for either the 1945 or 1953 pogroms and the outrages became the “dress rehearsals” for the 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 Igbo genocide when the Nigeria state (as a whole, involving other constituent nations including the Yoruba, the Edo and Urhobo of the west region) with full Britain involvement, and others, murdered 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population. Britain, nor in fact any of the other pan-European conquerors of Africa (France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Germany), did not create a Nigeria, or whatever names these “Berlin states” in Africa are called, as precursor for African emancipation. On the contrary, the Nigerias of Africa are more of replicas of the enslaved plantations of the Americas (in the previous epoch of nearly 400 years) to perpetuate European World control and exploitation of Africa and Africans in perpetuity.
The enslaved Igbo encountered this with unrelenting courage and defiance in the enslaved estates in the Americas (north, south and the Caribbean), as history shows, and wouldn’t have it either at home! The sardauna interview should be part of History/Politics 101 course on Africa because it does tell one, in a nutshell, the “fate” of the Igbo in Nigeria that north Nigeria, with firm support of Britain, had, carefully, contrived right back in the 1950s. Except the Igbo people have signed up for a concerted suicide, they surely cannot see their destiny emplaced in this space of certain death.
This has been the cardinal lesson of the Igbo genocide. Thankfully, some Igbo who were still not sure of the long term implications of the continuing Nigerian occupation of their homeland (since 12 January 1970) have had a baptism of enlightenment since the video of the sardauna interview went viral! Suddenly, historical records become opportunities for rare streams of conscientisation...
(This essay is a slightly amended
version of a study first published,
usafricaonline.com, July 2002,
and is reissued due to continuing demand)
The great Chinua Achebe once
described as the “cargo cult mentality” (Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, 1983: 9) the illusion, or rather the
delusion of many leaders of so-called developing countries who feel that
without sustained hard work, internally, their states could somehow achieve the
status of socio-political transformation that they had envisaged in many a
“development programme”.
This mentality manifests in the form
of a perpetual gaze across the seas, across the horizon, hoping/awaiting a
“fairy ship [to] dock in their harbour laden with every goody they have always
dreamed of possessing” (Achebe: 9). This gaze, as can be imagined, is
frustratingly a chore that triggers bewildering ranges of emotion: … When, for
instance, is this ship arriving? Where is it coming from? What will it contain
that will transform our existence? More loans? More aid packages? A
privatisation scheme? Oh! Is that the mast of the mysterious ship coming over
the horizon – at last? Oh yeah! The ship is already here… Good news: the
goodies are here, fellow countrymen (and women, presumably!). We are now
developed, We are a world power… No, not yet… We need the arrival of 3, 4, or 5
more of these ships to achieve this target. Oh dear! How long will this now
take? The time span for all these arrivals will be in the order of 10 years…
No, twice as long; sorry, to be more precise, 21 years… Therefore, my
administration needs another term, maybe two, perhaps three, to oversee these
arrivals, the offloading of the goodies, and the sustainable implementation of
this multisectoral development programme!
Spurious
developmentalism
To focus more specifically on the
Africa example, perhaps less humourously, the “cargo cult mentality” is
pointedly a perverse case right from the outset. African regimes in the late
1950s/1960s (baseline decades for the “restoration of African independence”
after centuries of the European conquest and occupation) uncritically keyed
into the Fraudulent Developmentalism music of the age which was trumpeted
noisily and widely by the Western World – led strategically by none other than
Britain and France, the core conqueror states of Africa (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, African Literature in Defence of History: An
Essay on Chinua Achebe, 2001: especially chap. 1). Thanks to the nauseating
naivety of these “leaderships”, Britain, France and other European World states
and institutions that had committed heinous crimes of conquest and occupation
in Africa for 500 years, were overnight “entrusted” with a role, the central
role for that matter, to embark upon Africa’s seeming project of societal
reconstruction in the wake of the holocaust.
South Korea, for instance, has
demonstrated that if the country’s leaderships in the late 1940s/1950s (after
the country’s liberation from Japanese conquest and occupation) had “allowed”
Japan to play a similar role in their reconstruction project as the Africa
example just cited, their society would not have been “endowed” with the
scientific know-how in the very short 50 years time lag to co-stage the recent
World Cup Football competition with Japan and with such comparable dazzling
technological finesse as the latter.
In Nigeria, in 1979, nearly a decade
after it had murdered 3.1 million Igbo people in the most devastating genocide
in Africa since the Herero genocide of the early 1900s, few in the country were
prepared for the extraordinary pronouncement of “optimism” on the country’s
future from the regime in power. There was no semblance of any
reconstructionary programme on the ground to support this claim. Olusegun
Obasanjo, then head of the country’s military junta, had, in effect, gazed across
the hallucinatory horizon of expectation embedded in the “cargo cult mentality”
and made the following prediction with all the certitude at his disposal:
“Nigeria will become one of the ten leading nations in the world by the end of
the century” (Achebe: 9).
Anything
but a world power...
Of course in 1999, 20 years later,
Nigeria was anything but a world power. This outcome is not because the country
lacked a resourceful population nor because it is deprived of an “enabling”
natural resource infrastructure to accomplish such a task. On the contrary,
many countries in history with a fraction of Nigeria’s staggering human and
natural resource capacity as at 1979, not to mention 1999, have achieved major
societal development in very limited timeframes. Presently, Malaysia, South
Korea and Taiwan are three examples that illustrate, acutely, this point. On
material resources, for instance, Nigeria, the world’s sixth largest petroleum
oil producer, had by 1999 earned the sum of US$300 billion from this product
after 40 years of exploitation and exports. Unfortunately, this revenue had by
and large been squandered by the country’s regimes of the epoch through their
legendary, institutionalised corruption and profligacy. They literally lurched
ravenously into the public purse in frenzy. Between 1972 (when Yakubu Gowon was
in power) and 1999 (end of the tenure of the Abdulsalami Abubakar
junta/beginning of the current Obasanjo regime), one fifth of this sum, or
US$60 billion, was looted personally by these furacious leaderships and
transferred to Western banks and other financial institutions. Elsewhere in the
economy, this was the infamous epoch of dubious contractual deals and dealing
that yielded enormously-inflated financial returns for thieving public functionaries:
the importation of everything from cement, sand, nails and rice to air (?),
champagne and lace, and the staging of innumerable feasts and festivals usually
dreamt up in a whiff! At some point in 1983, at the apogee of this scramble of
an economy, Nigeria’s entire external currency reserves were reduced
precariously to about US$2billion. Inevitably, this scramble has churned out
the directory of thenouveau
richeof millionaires and
even billionaires whose names and gory legacy make up the haunting epitaph of a
failed state. It is in this context that Edwin Madunagu’s description of this
shenanigan as the “political economy of state robbery” could not have been more
evocative.
It does not require emphasising that
with the judicious use of the gargantuan sum of US$300 billion (which few
comparable “independent” African countries have earned since the beginning of
the European conquest and occupation of the continent in the 15th century), not
only Nigeria but also the entire African World would have been radically
transformed beyond recognition. No one would dare equate “disaster,
degradation, desperation” with contemporary African existence as it is often
the norm in many a standard discourse. On this very “squandering of [the
peoples’] riches”, ignoring, for once the other striking features of the
kleptomania and maledictive incompetence of successive Nigerian regimes of the
era, all those who describe themselves or have been so described as Nigeria’s
heads of regime particularly in recent decades must be eternally ashamed of
themselves. They, as well as those intellectuals who surrounded them as aides
and advisors, do constitute the most vivid tragedy of Africa’s recent history.
They have frittered away the treasured trove of several generations of peoples.
Furthermore, they were and remain a monumental disappointment and disgrace to
millions of Africans elsewhere in the world.
Internal
logic
In effect, Nigeria’s regimes appear
to have ignored the salient feature of the development ethos, any development
ethos, that the engine of such an enterprise is anchored internally – right
there at the very locale of the projected activity. Or do they? Alas, the
“perpetual gaze across the seas” for socio-economic salvation serves these
regimes. It absolves them of any responsibilities to their long-suffering
peoples or so they imagine.
In the last three years of the
4-year term of his regime, Olusegun Obasanjo has been out of Nigeria at least
80 times on official trips. He has visited virtually every key country in
Europe, Asia, North America, South America/the Caribbean and, of course, Africa
during the period. As for his European and North American and Asian
destinations, he has been to Britain, France, Italy, Germany, the United States
and Japan more than twice. The average time duration for a trip is three days
and the average number of aides and other officials is 30 except in the North
American and European destinations when this figure is often doubled and at
times tripled and on some occasions even more.
With 80 overseas trips during
1999-2002, Obasanjo makes a foreign trip approximately every fortnight. He and
other regime spokespersons have repeatedly indicated that these junkets are
important for Nigeria to attract “foreign investment” and help seek some relief
or cancellation of Nigeria’s foreign “debt” of about US$30 billion. Each of
these visits costs Nigeria at least US$200,000 on the average and this sum
shoots up with the larger entourage that embarks on the North
America/Europe/Japan ventures. In total, Nigeria has spent minimally the sum of
US$16 million on these trips without any concrete returns especially on the
subject of investment or relief on Nigeria’s so-called debt to the West. Indeed
on the latter, Obasanjo stated openly during the March 2002 conference on
development in Mexico that Nigeria had failed to secure “a single cent of debt
relief… In the past three years, Nigeria has had to spend five billion dollars
in servicing its foreign debts, even though the same debts had been repaid two times
over”.
According to Jerry Gana, the
regime’s information minister, Nigeria’s annual “debt service of about [US]$1.5
billion is nine times our budget for health, and three times our budget for
education”. But it is Nigeria’s failure to attract meaningful foreign investment
(a miserly US$2.25 billion per year on the average in the next four years,
according to projected estimates by the London Economist Intelligence Unit) during the period and the direct link
of this failure to Obasanjo’s junkets which is most heart-rending. In an
interview recently with the LondonFinancial
Times, Obasanjo could not but admit: “In three years I went round the world
and did not get anything… I went round the countries in Europe, twice over, I
went to Japan, to America, to Canada and got good words… but no action at all”
(Financial Times, London, 9 April 2002).
Yet if Obasanjo continues his
current rate of travel overseas in the remaining 12 months of his regime, he
will make a further 30 trips with the whooping cost of US$6 million to
Nigeria’s forlorn economy. These visits should now be cancelled and the savings
invested in the collapsing primary schools of the country to enable millions of
Nigerian children have a better future than is presently the case. Those who
advise Obasanjo should for once show responsibility. So, by May 2003, the
Obasanjo regime would have spent US$22 million of scarce resources on four
years of travel in pursuit of an illusory but calamitous enterprise of “gazing
across the seas” for Western “goodies” to salvage an economy that his own
regime (twice: 1976-1979, 1999-expected May 2003) as well as others have
virtually destroyed in the past 40 years. The gross insensitivity of the
lifestyle that encapsulates these junkets at a time when the overwhelming majority
of Nigerians have been reduced to dire straits of existence is particularly
obscene.
Current key social statistics on
Nigeria are disastrous. Seventy per cent of the population of “120 million”
live below the poverty line of about US$1 a day and the country is one of the
20 poorest countries in the world. Forty eight million of the people or “about
40 per cent wallow […] in abject poverty” – to quote the very words of Obasanjo
himself in July 2000 (The Guardian,
Lagos, 2 July 2000). Even though the monthly minimum wage is a paltry US$75,
many public and private enterprises have routinely not paid their workers their
salaries. Millions are therefore owed several months of unpaid wages and
several sectors of the economy are more often than not strike-bound. Two months
ago, a group of Nigerian professionals known as “concerned professionals”
questioned the regime’s claims to have spent US$100 million on “poverty
alleviation” and US$500 million on the improvement of electricity supplies in
the past fiscal year. On the former, the organisation rightly observes that no
“dent in the poverty profile across the land” has occurred despite the huge
sums the regime supposedly spent nor has there been a change in the notorious
national electricity power supply. Very worryingly, the professionals conclude,
70 per cent of the regime’s budget allocation goes to recurrent expenditure and
the implication of this for the rest of the economy is predictably troubling:
“the cost of running government therefore crowds out the rest of the economy
even before the budget is implemented”.
Equally concerned, the country’s
senate’s public accounts committee has since published a critical report on
regime spending. It criticises the large size of the recurrent expenditure and
the regime’s concomitant “under-funding of capital provisions”. It also finds
serious discrepancies in the accounting of sequestrated funds from the overseas
bank accounts of Sani Abacha’s (an ex-head of regime) which had been returned
to the Nigeria treasury. The report was so compelling that moves were made in
the senate to begin impeachment proceedings on Obasanjo last month. These moves
soon floundered due to sustained pressure on key senators by Obasanjo. In the
cesspool that is politics in Nigeria, the media has been awash with news of
massive bribing of senators by the regime to halt the impeachment.
Never
expect progress and development...
It is evident that following the
failure of Obasanjo’s frantic and expensive overseas tours in the last three
years to secure both the ever illusory “dividend” of international investment
and “debt” relief for Nigeria, the regime head has now broadened the parameters
of the observation post from where to continue his existential “gaze across the
seas” – for the goodies to supposedly transform Nigeria! In other words,
Obasanjo has continentalised the quest for the illusion and the name given to
it couldn’t even mask its plasticity: NEPAD or New Partnership for Africa’s
Development. Just as Nigerians know, unmistakably, that NEPA (Nigeria
Electricity Power Authority), an acronym which in fact shares the same root
origins as NEPAD, really means Never Expect Power Always rather than any worthy
energy generating organisation, we will now show that NEPAD does instead mean
Never Expect Progress And Development.
Obasanjo and other African “leaders”
have promoted NEPAD as a “neo-Marshall Plan” reconstruction programme for
Africa. It envisages the “eradication” of poverty, sustained economic growth,
and development. “Good governance” is promised with qualitatively transformed
“leaderships”’ accountability and transparency towards both the population
(with regards the respect of their human rights) and the management of natural
resources, especially the critical revenues derived thereof. But, crucially,
the fulcrum of NEPAD’s own sustainability hinges on Africa’s declared
partnership with the leadership of the West World.
This “partnership”, a term we should
stress emanates from the African side of the bargain, operates or is actuated
in the format of a quid pro quo: African “leaders” embark on providing “good
governance” and the like to their people and the West would, in return,
“invest” in Africa. The amount of investment the leaders claim they require is
US$64 billion per annum. This will take the form of substantial “debt” relief
package for the continent where most countries spend about 70 per cent of total
annual export revenues in “debt”-servicing obligations currently. Africa is
also asking the West to cut vast agricultural subsidies that the latter pays
its farmers. These limit “fair competition” to the detriment of African farmers
who in the past 10 years have lost virtually all subsidies, thanks to the
eagerness of their states to implement IMF-World Bank directives of “structural
adjustment programmes”. Finally, African “leaders” want the West to cut the
high duties that African manufacturing exports are subjected to in the former’s
markets. If there is any of the unrelentingly statistical surveys churned out
on contemporary Africa by studies after studies, the latest from the World Bank
captures the severity of the Africa situation and its projected “hopelessness”.
According to the bank, about half of Africa’s population of nearly a billion
presently live on the “equivalent of [US]$1 a day or less”. More seriously, the
bank forecasts that the number of people within this poverty bracket will
increase by about 60 million in the next 15 years. For its African proponents,
NEPAD assumes that the West World is particularly concerned by the
ever-worsening condition of African socio-economic life.
Lectures and seminars For the West, on the contrary,
Nigeria, just like the rest of Africa, “works” – in the sense that the humanity
of this country (and continent) has not ceased to create wealth for the West in
spite of the obvious deterioration of local social existence. The European
World, it must never be forgotten, created and sustains the tragedy that is
present-day Africa. The principal beneficiary of this tragedy both in material
and philosophical terms remains the West. Africa has yet to recover from the
West’s half a millennium-long brazen conquest and occupation of Africa. The
West’s perpetration of the African holocaust during the period (the most
dehumanising and extensive in history) and its seizure and transfer to its
homeland of Africa’s immense wealth, ensured that it catapulted to an
unassailable global power where it has since remained (Ekwe-Ekwe: 2001: chap. 1). Despite the so-called
restoration of African independence, the West’s exploitation of Africa has
worsened, thanks to its implanted “Berlin-state” murderous contraption in the
continent and the lobotomised creatures that parade as African leaderships.
In the past 20 years, Africa has
consistently been a net-exporter of capital to the West, a trend that has been
accentuated by the debilitating consequences of Africa’s servicing of its
so-called debt to the West. In 1981, Africa recorded a net capital export of
US$5.3 billion to the West. In 1985, this transfer jumped to US$21.5 billion
and three years later it was US$36 billion or US$100 million per day. In 2000,
Africa’s net capital transfer to the coffers of the West stood at US$150
billion. (We should stress that these figures refer to 48 African countries
including Nigeria and do not include the national accounting of the five Arab
states of North Africa – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.)
It has taken 10 generations of West
governments to accomplish their control and exploitation of Africa, and no
future government there would voluntarily abandon such a lucrative harvest of
conquest. The West will always wish to exploit Africa. It does not have any
other choice, except, of course, it is stopped. For a typical Western
government therefore, including the present one whose majority of members were
ironically born on the eve of the African “restoration of independence” 50
years ago, the West’s continuing control of African resources does not cease to
be an ontological preoccupation. In emphasising that NEPAD is a “partnership”
between Africa and the West, the African regimes have essentially tried to
re-enact the Fraudulent Developmentalism of the 1950s/1960s. But everyone
knows, including the West particularly, that the African version is a desperate
one indeed. If Fraudulent Developmentalism I is a tragedy, Fraudulent
Developmentalism II, its sequel, is more of ahallucinationthan a farce in the sense of that
marxian negation (Ekwe-Ekwe: 2001: chap. 1)!
None of the West leaders who met
Obasanjo and the other African “leaders” during the June 2002 G-8 summitry in
Kananaskis, Canada, really thinks or feels that the latter are their partners
in the sense of themutual
pursuitof a commonly agreed
cause and outcome by two or more parties. West leaders, who strive and age
overnight in office as the continuing responsibility and accountability to
their electorate and population take their toll, are understandably
contemptuous of African “leaderships” who always appear rejuvenated, as if they
have walked out of cosmetic surgery every Friday lunch time! West leaders
therefore lecture these imposed heads-of-regimes-of-Africa anywhere and
anytime: “Respect the Human Rights of your people”; “Stop murdering your people
– you have slaughtered 15 million from Biafra to Darfur since you took over
power from us in 1960”; “You are corrupt, very corrupt! You steal your peoples’
money – Stop it! You must be transparent and Accountable!”; “Institute a bill
of rights, Respect the rule of law”; “Run free and fair elections! Don’t turn
your presidency into a life-long estate as we really don’t want you to deal
with our own next generation of leaders, our sons and daughters”…
There is of course nothing in these
apparent pro-African sentiments by Western leaders to suggest that the latter
really look forward to the day when they will deal with a democratic Africa
where its leaderships are accountable to their home publics. If that were to
occur, the West would cease to exercise the stranglehold it currently has on
the continent. No responsive leadership will play the overseer role which these
African regimes engage in.
What the West has obviously done (as
expressed above) is to appropriate the popular language of disgust against
African “leaders” across Africa. Even the innocence of African children has not
been spared the disastrous blunders and disgrace that African “leaderships”
have now come to represent to the eagle-eyed scrutiny of a global audience. Two
months ago, during the UN children’s summit in New York, Joseph Tamale, a 12
year old Ugandan delegate stunned the audience when he made the following
declaration on African “leaderships”: “When you get the money, you embezzle it,
you eat it”. The proceedings and outcome of the Kananaskis conference sum up
this contempt. The African “leaders” emerged from the proceedings with nothing
concrete to show from their hosts except promises of a modest increase in the
overall Western “aid budget” to Africa which had been in fact mooted earlier on
in the year during the Mexico conference on development.
The visiting African heads of regime
in Kananaskis had been noticeably unimpressed by the total sum of US$6 billion
involved which wouldn’t even be available till 2006! The West once again tabled
this dubious package at Kananaskis but this time round none of these African
“leaders” dared show their disenchantment. It was left to Phil Twyford, a
director of OXFAM (the British non-governmental organisation), to bellow with
anger: “We’re extremely disappointed… They’re offering peanuts to Africa – and
recycled peanuts at that”. There was no mention at all in the summit communiqué
on the vexed subjects of investment, “debt” cancellation or the opening up of
Western markets to African exports. On the latter, both the United States and
Canada had announced substantial increases in subsidies to their own farmers on
the eve of the summit, dashing any hopes of any concerted accommodation to the
African “leaders”’ so-called demands for access to these important Western
markets. For Messrs Obasanjo & Co, the humiliation at Kananaskis means a
return to the observation post – and the resumption of the gaze until the next
ripples of movement across the waves… Never Expect Progress And Development,
after all, has been what NEPAD has been all the while since its inception…
(Booker Little Sextet, “We speak” [personnel: Little, trumpet; Julian Priester, trombone; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; Don
Friedman, piano; Art Davis, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Nola’s Penthouse
Studios, New York, 17 March 1961])
“Berlin-states”can’t do it; African constituent nations are bases for transformation
In 1987, I held a wide-ranging
weekend interview in London with Abdulrahman Mohammed Babu, the eminent
Zanzibari public intellectual. On Africa-European World relations, I had asked
Babu what he thought was the essence of the West’s thinking on Africa at the
height of the IMF/World Bank-driven devastating “structural adjustment
programme” on the continent. His reply is deftly panoramic:
Quite simply, the West sees Africa
as the rural sector of Europe… to guarantee Africa’s historic role as the
supplier of cheap labour and raw materials to Europe… This remains the West’s
view of Africa. Definitely the West is hostile to Africa’s development. We
continue to fool ourselves if we think the contrary is the case. The West will
never develop Africa. Our under-development is dialectically linked to their
development. Europe is aware of this historical relationship and cannot do
otherwise.
Despite NEPAD, or precisely because
of the very assumptions on which NEPAD is frantically pursued presently by the
failed crop of the imposed heads-of-regime-of-Africa, nothing in the past 15
years since Babu’s observations gives cause to suggest that that definitive
trajectory of the West’s mission in Africa is about to change course. The more
pressing point to note, however, is that the immediate emergency that threatens
the very survival of African peoples is the “Berlin-state” encased in African
existence coupled with the pathetic bunch that masquerades here and there as
African leaderships but whose mission is to oversee this enthralling edifice.
African women and men will sooner, rather than later, abandon this fractured,
fracturing, conflictive, alienating and terror contraption. Africans must now
focus on real transformation – the revitalisation and consolidation of the
institutions of Africa’s constituent nations and polities, or what Okwuonicha
Nzegwu has described, succinctly, as the “indigenous spaces of real Africa”
(Nzegwu, Love, Motherhood and the African
Heritage: The legacy of Flora Nwapa, 2001: 41). In these institutions and
spaces of African civilisation lie the organic framework to ensure transparency,
probity, accountability, investment in people, humanised wealth creation,
respect for human rights and civil liberties, and a true commitment to
radically transform African existence. Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
“...
Of course I used my weapon, which was writing, to express my disapproval of the
[Biafran] ... war into which we were about to enter. These were people who’d
been abused, who’d undergone genocide, and who felt completely rejected by the
rest of the community, and therefore decided to break away and form a nation of
its own” –Wole Soyinka (emphasis
added), interviewed by Peter Godwin, Hay literary festival, Xalapa, Mexico, 12
October 2012.
Igbo tenacity, drive and relentless optimism to pursue and overcome life’s challenges were acutely an affront to both the sardauna of Sokoto (northwest Nigeria) and British occupation sensibilities in Nigeria. This sardauna interview (video below) must have been recorded in the late 1950s/early 1960s –
definitely after both the 1945 and 1953 north Nigeria-organised pogroms against Igbo immigrant populations in Jos and Kano respectively. Hundreds of Igbo were murdered during the pogroms and tens of thousands of pounds sterling worth of their property were looted/destroyed at the time. Each pogrom was carried out because of the Igbo vanguard role in the restoration-of-independence movement to free Nigeria from the British conquest and occupation, begun in the 1930s. North Nigeria’s sociopolitical leaderships, effectively British regional clients, were opposed to the restoration of African freedom. No other leadership across the entire Southern World (Africa, Asia, the Caribbean/South America) has such an unenviable record during this unprecedented epoch of transglobal freedom charge. North Nigeria leadership, indeed, were disposed to the continuing British occupation of Nigeria.
Enslaved spaces and replicas
As a result, the occupation regime did not apprehend or prosecute anyone for either the 1945 or 1953 pogroms and the outrages became the “dress rehearsals” for the 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 Igbo genocide when the Nigeria state (as a whole, involving other constituent nations including the Yoruba, the Edo and Urhobo of the west region) with full Britain involvement, and others, murdered 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population. Britain, nor in fact any of the other pan-European conquerors of Africa (France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Germany), did not create a Nigeria, or whatever names these “Berlin states” in Africa are called, as precursor for African emancipation. On the contrary, the Nigerias of Africa are more of replicas of the enslaved plantations of the Americas (in the previous epoch of nearly 400 years) to perpetuate European World control and exploitation of Africa and Africans in perpetuity.
The enslaved Igbo encountered this with unrelenting courage and defiance in the enslaved estates in the Americas (north, south and the Caribbean), as history shows, and wouldn’t have it either at home! The sardauna interview should be part of History/Politics 101 course on Africa because it does tell one, in a nutshell, the “fate” of the Igbo in Nigeria that north Nigeria, with firm support of Britain, had, carefully, contrived right back in the 1950s. Except the Igbo people have signed up for a concerted suicide, they surely cannot see their destiny emplaced in this space of certain death.
This has been the cardinal lesson of the Igbo genocide. Thankfully, some Igbo who were still not sure of the long term implications of the continuing Nigerian occupation of their homeland (since 12 January 1970) have had a baptism of enlightenment since the video of the sardauna interview went viral just recently! Suddenly, historical records become opportunities for rare streams of conscientisation...
Thankfully, for the interest of posterity, the Igbo genocide, perpetrated by the Nigeria state, is one of the most documented crimes against humanity. Leading university and public libraries across Europe (particularly in Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden) and North America have invaluable repositories of books, state papers (including, crucially, hitherto classified material now declassified as part of mandatory timeframe provisions and freedom-to-information legislations), church papers, human rights/anti-genocide/anti-war groups’ campaign papers, reports, photographs and interviews, Red Cross/other third sector papers, reports and photographs, newspaper/newsmagazine/radio/ television/video archives and sole individual depositories, some of which are classified as “anonymous contributors”.
These data variously include extensive coverage of news and analyses of varying features of the genocide between May 1966 and January 1970 as well as still photographs and reels and reels of film footage of the devastating impact of the genocidist’s “starvation weapon” attack on Igbo children and older people, the genocidist air force’s carpet bombings of Igbo population centres (especially refugee establishments, churches, shrines, schools, hospitals, markets, homes, farmlands and playgrounds) and the haunting photographs and associated material that capture the sheer savagery of the slaughter of 100,000 Igbo in north Nigeria towns and villages and elsewhere in parts of west Nigeria (especially Lagos and suburbs, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Oyo, Benin) during the first phase of the genocide in May to October 1966. A stream of these archival references has flowed steadily onto the youtube website as well as other internet outlets and much more material on the genocide will be available online in the months and years ahead. On the whole, these documentations are a treasure trove for the conscientious scholar and researcher on the genocide. For the would-be prosecutor of the perpetrators of this crime, they couldn’t have wished anything more for that crucial resource base to embark on their historic enterprise. A total of 3.1 million Igbo, or a quarter of the nation’s population at the time, were murdered in the genocide, the worst in Africa since the 19th century. On the morrow of 44 months of unrelenting slaughtering, Nigeria, the perpetrator, emerges as the undisputed obligatory haematophagous monster in this southwestcentral region of Africa. Its death-march on the Igbo and Igboland was soon relayed, tragically, across the continent – Uganda, the Congos, Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Darfur … resulting in the murder of additional 12 million Africans in the subsequent 40 years.
Quite auspiciously, the record of those who ordered/executed the Igbo genocide makes no pretences, offers no excuses, whatsoever, about the goal of their dreadful mission – such was the maniacal insouciance and rabid Igbophobia that propelled the project. The principal language used in the prosecution of the genocide was Hausa. Appropriately, the words of the ghoulish anthem of the genocide, published and broadcast on Kaduna radio and television throughout the duration of the crime, are in Hausa: Mu je mu kashe nyamiri/Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su/Mu chi mata su da yan mata su/Mu kwashe kaya su (English translation: “Let’s go kill the damned Igbo/Kill off their men and boys/Rape their wives and daughters/Cart off their property”).
The Hausa word for war is yaki. Whilst Hausa speakers would employ this word to refer to the involvement/combat services of their grandfathers, fathers, uncles, sons, brothers, other relatives and friends in “Boma” (reference to World War II Burma [contemporary Myanmar] military campaigns/others in southeast Asia, fighting for the British against the Japanese) or even in the post-1960s Africa-based “peace-keeping” military engagements in the Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, east Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Sudan, they rarely use yaki to describe the 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 mass murders of Igbo people. In Hausaspeak, the latter is either referred to as lokochi mu kashe nyamiri (English past tense: “when we murdered the damned Igbo”) or lokochi muna kashe nyamiri (English past continuous tense: “when we were murdering the damned Igbo”). Pointedly, this “lokochi” (when, time) conflates the timeframes that encapsulate the two phases of the genocide (29 May 1966-29 October 1967 and 6 July 1967-12 January 1970), a reminder, if one is required, for those who bizarrely, if not mischievously, wish to break this organic link.
Elsewhere, genocidist documentation on this crime is equally malevolent and brazenly vulgar. A study of the genocide-time/“post”-genocide era interviews, comments, broadcasts and writings on the campaign by key genocidist commanders, commandants and “theorists” and propagandists such as Benjamin Adekunle, Yakubu Danjuma, Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Hassan Katsina, Ibrahim Haruna, Oluwole Rotimi, Obafemi Awolowo, Anthony Enaharo and Allison Ayida underscores the trend. A brief review of Obasanjo’s contribution (published in his memoirs, My Command) that focuses on his May 1969 direct orders to his air force to destroy an international Red Cross aircraft, carrying relief supplies to the encircled and blockaded Igbo, is crucially appropriate.
Obasanjo had “challenged”, to quote his words, Captain Gbadomosi King (genocidist air force pilot), who he had known since 1966, to “produce results” in stopping further international relief flight deliveries to the Igbo. Within a week of his infamous challenge, 5 June 1969, Obasanjo recalls nostalgically, Gbadomosi King “redeemed his promise”. Gbadomosi King had shot down a clearly marked, in coming relief-bearing International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) DC-7 plane near Eket, south Biafra, with the loss of its 3-person crew.
Obasanjo’s perverse satisfaction over the aftermath of this horrendous crime is fiendish, chillingly revolting. He writes: “The effect of [this] singular achievement of the Air Force especially on 3 Marine Commando Division [the notorious unit Obasanjo, who later becomes Nigeria’s head of regime for 11 years, commanded] was profound. It raised morale of all service personnel, especially of the Air Force detachment concerned and the troops they supported in [my] 3 Marine Commando Division”.
Yet despite the huffing and puffing, the raving commanding brute is essentially a coward who lacks the courage to face up to a world totally outraged by his gruesome crime. Instead, Obasanjo, the quintessential Caliban, cringes into a stupor and beacons to his Prospero, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (as he, Obansanjo, indeed unashamedly acknowledges in his My Command) to “sort out” the raging international outcry generated by the destruction of the ICRC plane...
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).
