Showing posts with label Theresa May. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theresa May. Show all posts

Friday, 14 December 2018

Mmuo Biafra, Igbo genocide, Britain, Brexit and retributive justice

(THERESA MAY“restore ... our self determination”) 
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

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 Ministers letter to Donald Tusk on the triggering of article 50gov.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 Mays 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 ObamaHosni 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 million and additional tens 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 million and the additional tens of thousands are 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 Jonesdrums; 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) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Tuesday, 28 August 2018

Two tales in a week in August that underscore the sheer hate and envy that drive the Fulani-led Nigeria state genocide against Igbo people

(Save-a-Soul Quintet of Biafran school girls from Regina Pacis Secondary School Onicha, southwest Biafra... wins global technovation contest, San Jose, United States, Thursday 9 August 2018)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

ON FRIDAY 10 August 2018, news comes through of the overnight stunning success of the great Save-a-Soul Quintet of Biafran school girls from Regina Pacis Secondary School,  Onicha, southwest Biafra, winning the 2018 global technovation contest held in San Jose, United States. Fifty million Biafrans at home and in the diaspora are catapaulted into a weekend of celebration as the Regina Pacis whiz kids Promise NnalueVivian OkoyeAdaeze OnuigboJessica Osita, and Nwabuaku Ossai became latest icons in the 52 years of the Biafra freedom movement.

Across the wall, in genocidist lair Nigeria, the news from San Jose is crushingly depressing … The state, as usual, is thrown into a frenzy as it decides what to do… how to react to yet another uplifting news feature on/about Biafra and Biafrans. As in the past, genocidist planners would come up with a response, usually more savage than before, in a day or two, a few days, but surely within a week…

ON FRIDAY 17 August in Owere, east Biafra, 50 miles away from Onicha, 2000 Igbo women embark on a peaceful freedom march. As the marchers approach the Owere city centre, a genocidist police detachment opens fire on them. Details of casualties and possible fatalities suffered by the women are still unknown but the génocidaires detained scores of survivors of the shooting for four days before they were released due to a follow up unrelenting campaign by the Biafran population.
(Biafran women on freedom march, Owere, east Biafra, Friday 17 August 2018)
(Biafran women freedom marchers, Owere, east Biafra, Friday 17 August 2018)
(Scores of Biafran women marchers in Owere, east Biafra: detained by Nigerian génocidaires)

Crux, collapse, legacy

AT the crux of this unparalled savagery by genocidist Nigeria, this malebogle, this poorest country on earth presently (according to the World Bank, https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1031088319654842369), is the engaging, crippling consequence of its genocide against Igbo people which has gone on since its launch date on 29 May 1966. Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo during phases I-III of the genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands of additional Igbo subsequently, phase-IV, 13 January 1970-present day…

Precisely, Nigeria has indeed collapsed as a state with few prospects for the future. Despite 52 years of genocide it has waged on the Igbo, including its 44 devastating months of comprehensive siege of Biafra by air, land and sea, 29 May 1966-
12 January 197o, Igbo people have demonstrated a greater creative drive towards constructing an advanced civilisation in Biafra than what Nigeria has all but wishes it could achieve in the past five decades.

THIS is the haunting legacy that Nigeria presents to Theresa May, prime minister of its Igbo genocide co-genocidist and suzerain state Britain, who arrives there tomorrow, Wednesday 29 August, for a fleeting visit.
(John Coltrane & Don Cherry, “Focus on sanity” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Cherry, pocket trumpet; Percy Heath, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 28 June/8 July 1960])
 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe


Tuesday, 8 May 2018

The contrast: US President Donald Trump unequivocally condemns the premeditated murder of Christians in Biafra and genocidist Nigeria by the Nigeria military/Boko Haram/Fulani militia whilst Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby remains conspicuously silent over this grave emergency

(Donald Trump ... president of the US: unequivocal condemnation of crime...)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

“If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.”
Albert Einstein

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Albert Einstein

AS I HAVE shown variously in recent essays (see, for instance, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Why Barack Hussein Obama must tell the world why he supported Igbo genocide”, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/on-30-march-2016-i-published-essay.html), 
the past 30 months represent the bloodiest stretch of the ongoing phase-IV of the Igbo genocide by Nigeria led by Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists whose regime is headed, currently, by Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest genocidist operatives engaged in this crime against humanity. 

Three thousand Igbo people have been murdered across Biafra in stepped up scorched earth campaigns by the Nigeria military and its adjunct Fulani militia and Boko Haram terrorists (latter 2 are part of the world’s 5 deadliest terrorist organisations presently) since Buhari came to power in March 2015, having been imposed as head of Nigeria’s regime by Barack Obama, the ex-US president of African descent, and David Cameron, ex-British prime minister. It should be stressed that at no time did the Obama presidency (White House, state department, US embassy in Nigeria) nor indeed Cameron’s/May’s (successor) British governments condemn these Igbo murders.
(Justin Welby ... archbishop of Canterbury: conspicuous silence...) 
SIXTY per cent of the 3000 murdered Igbo have occurred in Onicha and neighbouring towns and villages, southwest Biafra, which are all located in the Onicha diocese of the Anglican communion, part of the Church of England, one of this denomination’s largest population districts in the world. Ninety-six per cent of Igbo are Christians and about 45 per cent of these protestant and overwhelming majority Anglican.

Neither the Church of England nor its head, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who has known Muhammadu Buhari personally since the former
enjoyed an exponentially-lucrative post working for French oil company Elf Aquitaine in the early 1980s in the petroleum oil industry in Biafra’s Oshimili Delta, occupied by genocidist Nigeria, has condemned any of these Igbo slaughters since it began in November 2015 or offered public condolences to the aggrieved and traumatised Anglican communion congregants... Since 1 January 2018, the genocidists, spearheaded this time by the Fulani militia with logistical support from the parent military, have embarked on the attack of Tiv and Jukun peoples in the Benue valley northcentral Nigeria itself, majority of whom are Christians, murdering hundreds. These state-organised massacres have continued unabated.

Trump breaks this morbid silence of the states of the world

BESIDES Amnesty International which has twice published expansive reports on this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/blog-post_30.html), 
US President Donald Trump’s unreserved condemnation of this atrocity and the murder campaign in Nigeria’s northcentral region during his 30 April 2018 Washington joint-press conference with the visiting Buhari, is the first by not only a head of state but president of one of the foremost powers of the world:
We have had serious problems with Christians who are being murdered in Nigeria; We are going to be working on that problem very, very hard because we cannot allow that to happen … It’s a horrible story…

BIAFRANS and the peoples of the Benue valley in Nigeria are no doubt looking forward to the implementation of Trump’s response in terminating this genocidist Nigeria’s state-organised crime.
(John Coltrane Quintet, “The believer” {composer: McCoy Tyner} [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; Donald Bryd, trumpet; Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Louis Hayes, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Hackensack, NJ, US, 10 January 1958)
Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe




Wednesday, 29 March 2017

29 March 2017 and 29 May 1966 or Britain, Brexit, Igbo genocide, Biafra freedom

(THERESA MAY“restore ... our self determination”) 
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Background of contrasts

(Harold Wilson, British prime minister at the apogee of phase-III of Igbo genocide, 1968/1969, is totally unfazed as he informs Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator for relief to this British-led premeditated mass murder campaign that had comprehensively besieged and was bombarding Biafra for 44 months, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Fulani islamist/jihadist-led Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide [Roger MorrisUncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977: 122])

Brexit

TODAY, Wednesday 29 March 2017, at 1230 Hours British Summer Time, British Prime Minister Theresa May triggered off the so-called article 50 of the treaty of Lisbon, formally announcing British termination of its membership of the European Union following the country’s 23 June 2016 historic referendum decision. In this letter of termination to Donald Tusk, the EU president, May is adamant that Britain is leaving the union to  “restore ... our self determination” (“Prime Ministers 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). 

For Britain, a country that has spent the greater part of its 300 years of global conquest and occupation of states and peoples, constructing bogus and particularly ahistorical entities called “federations” to enhance its subjugation and expropriation drives (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Readings from Reading: Essays in African Politics, Genocide, Literature [Dakar and Reading: African Renaissance, 2011], especially pp. 1-6), its decision to desperately quit the EU agglomeration of states and peoples,  just after 44 years, cannot be lost on the individual or collective sensibilities of students and scholars and other keen observers of this subject of history.

Biafra is before Brexit

DEFINITELY, this is not lost on the Igbo people of Biafra of southwestcentral Africa who Britain and its amalgam of willing and ruthless pan-African constituent nations in the British-constructed Nigeria “federation” (including, particularly, the Fulani, Kanuri, Jawara, Hausa, Nupe, Bachama, Tiv, and Jukun of the north region and the Yoruba, Itsekiri and Edo of its west provinces) have been subjected to the longest, most expansive and monstrous genocide in contemporary history – since Sunday 29 May 1966

Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbo population during 44 months of phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) to preserve this Nigeria “federation”; Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” have murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo people since 13 January 1970, phase-IV, to preserve this Nigeria “federation”; as these lines are written, Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” are murdering more Igbo people to preserve this Nigeria “federation” ... 2000 Igbo have been murdered between October 2015 and presently by the Nigeria regime, currently headed by Muhammadu Buhari (imposed in power in March 2015 by former British Prime Minister Cameron and ex-US President Obama, himself an African American, the first African-descent president after 233 years of the US republic), a notoriously fiendish genocidist operative who has been centrally involved in the genocide since 1966 to preserve this Nigeria “federation”… 

THE Igbo genocide is the longest and one of the bloodiest genocides of contemporary history. On the record, no single nation or people in Africa has suffered this extent of a catastrophic state(s)’-premeditated and organised genocide in history as the Igbo.

Post-Brexit, Biafra freedom

Prime Minster May knows that she must terminate, at once, this horrendous British-led genocide against Igbo people, 3130 miles away. Igbo people expect that a post-Brexit Britain will have no choice but sit down with a free Biafran government and discuss, fully, the entire history of the Igbo genocide, 400 years of the enslavement of the people of Biafra and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Biafra, forced into the genocidist Nigeria “federation”. 

Britain will surely accept full responsibility for these crimes against humanity, apologise to Biafrans, and pay full reparations (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html).

NOW is the time.


(Eric Dolphy Septet plays “Naima”, John Coltrane’s classic composition [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Nathan Davis, tenor saxophone; Jacques Dieval, piano; Jacques B Hess, bass; Franco Manzecchi, drums; Jacky Bambou, percussion; recorded: ORTF radio broadcasts, Paris, France, 11 June 1964])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Sunday, 12 March 2017

Britain, Brexit, Igbo genocide, Biafra freedom


Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Background

(Harold Wilson, British prime minister at the apogee of phase-III of Igbo genocide, 1968/1969, is totally unfazed as he informs Clyde Ferguson, the United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra, that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger MorrisUncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977: 122)

Brexit

ACCORDING to multiple sources from news agencies,  newspapers and websites in Britain in the past 48 hours, Prime Minister Theresa May will this week be triggering off the so-called article 50 of the treaty of Lisbon, formally announcing British termination of its membership of the European Union following the country’s 23 June 2016 historic referendum decision.

For Britain, a country that has spent the greater part of its 300 years of global conquest and occupation of states and peoples, constructing bogus and particularly ahistorical entities called “federations” to enhance its subjugation and expropriation drives, its decision to desperately quit the EU agglomeration of states and peoples,  just after 44 years, cannot be lost on the individual or collective sensibilities of students and scholars and other keen observers of this subject of history.

DEFINITELY, this is not lost on the Igbo people of Biafra of southwestcentral Africa who Britain and its amalgam of willing and ruthless pan-African constituent nations in the British-constructed Nigeria “federation” (including, particularly, the Hausa-Fulani, Kanuri, Jawara, Nupe, Bachama and Jukun of the north region and the Yoruba, Itsekiri and Edo of its west provinces) have been subjected to the longest, most expansive and monstrous genocide in contemporary history since Sunday 29 May 1966. Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbo population in phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) to preserve this Nigeria “federation”; Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” have murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo people since, phase-IV, to preserve this Nigeria “federation”; as these lines are written, Britain and its pan-African allies in the Nigeria “federation” are murdering more Igbo people to preserve this Nigeria “federation”…

Post-Brexit, Biafra freedom

Definitely, Prime Minster May knows that she must terminate, at once, this horrendous British-led genocide against Igbo people, 3130 miles away. Igbo people expect that a post-Brexit Britain will have no choice but sit down with a free Biafran government and discuss fully the entire history of the Igbo genocide, the enslavement of the people of Biafra and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Biafra, forced into the genocidist Nigeria “federation”. 

Britain will surely accept full responsibility for these crimes against humanity, apologise to Biafrans, and pay full reparations (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html).

NOW is the time.
(Eric Dolphy Septet plays “Naima”, John Coltrane’s classic composition [personnel: Dolphy, bass clarinet; Donald Byrd, trumpet; Nathan Davis, tenor saxophone; Jacques Dieval, piano; Jacques B Hess, bass; Franco Manzecchi, drums; Jacky Bambou, percussion; recorded: ORTF radio broadcasts, Paris, France, 11 June 1964])
Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe



Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Theresa May and Biafra

(Theresa May: ... historic opportunity to end 50 years of the Igbo genocide)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

BRITISH Prime Minister Theresa May recently made a major declaration on the future of her country’s policy on foreign military intervention that mustn’t be crowded out in the current news cycle on the “furore” over entry limits/bans on travels to the United States. May had told a US Republican party assembly in Philadelphia (29 January 2017) that Britain would henceforth abandon foreign invasions which she categorised as “failed policies of the past”. May couldn’t be more insistent: “the days of Britain and America intervening in sovereign countries in an attempt to remake the world in our own image are over” (The Independent, London, 29 January 2017).

May’s declaration is indeed extraordinary – not, though, for her stated reasons of “failed policies of the past” (possible references to British-allied invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, quasi-intervention in Syria, complicit support for the April 2011 French invasion of Côte d’Ivoire and the latter’s invasions of a cluster of other so-called francophonie states of Africa particularly in the past two decades), important as these may be, but from a snap examination of a more expanded excursion into history.

Gargantuan wealth

It should be stressed that Britain added the prefix “great” to its name configuration to demonstrate its seemingly daunting triumph at expansive global conquest and occupation. Britain, the first truly effective West global power, employed the gargantuan wealth it acquired during the course of its late 17th century/early 18th century pre-eminent role in the enslavement and mass exportation of millions of African peoples from Africa to the Americas to consolidate its conquest of the Americas (especially the north/the Caribbean basin), embark on its conquest of India and other regions of Asia, embark on the subsequent pan-European (Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Germany and Italy) conquest and occupation of a (subsequently) weakened Africa, and lastly, but surely not least in importance, finance its 19th century industrial revolution which is the turning point in the development of West capitalism.

Britain’s success on this score cannot be exaggerated. This was a country which, prior to the mid-17th century, was still a “cultural and scientific backwater”, to quote the graphic description made by Christopher Hill, the eminent British historian who is an authority on this period of British history (Christopher Hill, “Lies about crimes”, The Guardian, London, 29 May 1989).  By the beginning of the 18th century, Britain had established virtual world monopoly in the seizure and transportation of millions of Africans from their homelands to the Americas after displacing the hitherto lead-roles therein by the Iberian states of Portugal and Spain. Britain used the enormous resources that accrued to it as a result to finance its burgeoning scientific and technological enterprises. Soon, as Hill further noted, Britain became the “centre of world science” (“Lies about crimes”).

 

Yet in that egregious overdrive by those in successive generations of British writers and scholars who proclaimed outright denial or sought to provide the requisite “intellectual” rationalisation for this crime against African peoples, Britain, in effect, emerged from this exercise with the unenviable position as the creator, cardinal codifier, and central publicist of European World racism as an ideology (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe, 2001, especially pp. 1-54).

 

Tony Blair’s “ethical foreign policy”

 

In December 2006, in apparent response to this sordid history of Britain to the peoples of Africa, Tony Blair, then British prime minister, observed in an article for the New Nation (the London-based weekly newspaper that appeals to a wide African peoples’ readership), that he felt “deep sorrow” for Britain’s central role in the European World’s enslavement of African peoples. This pronouncement was surely not good enough as Britain is the leading beneficiary of this crime. Blair should have apologised unreservedly to African peoples across the world for Britain’s role in a catastrophe that remains humanity’s most gruesome, most expansive, and most enduring. Blair should also have announced a comprehensive package of reparations paid to all surviving Africans in Africa, Europe, the Americas and elsewhere in the world for the crime.

 

Despite Blair’s feeble response to this scourge of history or precisely because of it, this prime minister pursued a policy on Africa, throughout his 11 years in office (1997-2007), that were largely variations on those definitive themes of 400 years of Britain’s appalling history towards the peoples of Africa. Blair advanced an aggressive programme of British arms sales to Africa which, by 2004, yielded phenomenal dividend to Britain’s treasury as it became the world’s premier arms exporter to Africa: in 1999 alone, Britain sold £65 million worth of arms to Africa; in 2000, the total was £150 million (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Ban arms sales to Africa – nothing else required”, openDemocracy, London, 14 June 2005) and by 2004, these sales had crossed the £1 billion threshold (Anthony Barnett, “UK arms sales to Africa reach £1 million mark”, The Guardian, London, 12 June 2005). Blair’s exports’ targets included Africa’s notorious genocide-states, especially Nigeria, the Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Furthermore, Britain sold arms to 10 out of 13 conflict-stricken countries on the continent during the epoch including states in east/central Africa then involved in the so-called Great Lakes’s War where London in fact sold arms to both sides of the principal protagonists (DRC, Rwanda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Uganda) which led Charles Onyango-Obbo, the east African journalist, to reflect, at the time, that “Britain is supporting both sides [in the war] – it just robs them of any moral authority and a lot of people rightly do despise the British government on this affair” (BBC News, “UK arming African countries”, London, 3 April 2000). That Blair actually categorised this foreign policy to Africa (and elsewhere in the South) as “ethical foreign policy” (“UK arming African countries”), underscored the staggering depth of contempt that his administration had for the peoples of this part of the world.

 

Back to Biafra

 

For Blair on Biafra, southwestcentral Africa, as should be expected from the bold strokes of his “ethical foreign policy” thrust to the rest of Africa, it was indeed business as usual… The Igbo genocide was now in its 30th year with phase-IV, begun on 13 January 1970, entering its 27th year. Britain had in league with its client state of Nigeria, beginning on 29 May 1966, launched the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. Britain had sought to “punish” Igbo people for their vanguard role in the campaign to terminate the British conquest and occupation of this region of Africa during the 1930s-October 1960. Britain and Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population during 44 subsequent months of the most devastating savagery not seen in Africa since Germany carried out the genocide of the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples in southwest Africa at the first decade of the 20th century. At the apogee of phases I-III of the Igbo genocide, 1968/1969, Harold Wilson, then British prime minister who coordinated the genocide from London, was fulsomely adamant about the objective of the slaughtering: “[I] would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger MorrisUncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977, p. 122). Such is the grotesquely expressed diminution of African life, made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide in Europe.

(Harold Wilson... : “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide)

In May 1999, in pursuant of his own contribution to the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, Tony Blair reached out to Olusegun Obasanjo, who had recently become head of regime in Nigeria, to establish close ties in which sales of British arms to Nigeria was going to play a dominant role. Obasanjo is a fiendish genocidist operative who led a brigade in south Biafra in mid-1968-January 1970 slaughtering tens of thousands of Igbo people. In June 1969, Obasanjo ordered his air force to shoot down a 3-person crew international Red Cross aircraft bringing urgent relief to the encircled, blockaded, and bombarded Igbo, and he later boasted remorselessly of this crime in his memoirs, aptly entitled My Command (Ibadan & London, 1980: 78-79).  True to type, Obasanjo resumed his murder campaign against the Igbo soon after taking office in regions across occupied Biafra. Other state and quasi-state agents especially in north Nigeria also joined in an expansive trail of organised waves of pogroms against diaspora Igbo populations at the time. According to a US justice department report, a total of 50,000 people were murdered in these campaigns between 1999 and 2004 (US Department of Justice, “Armed Conflicts Report – Nigeria”, Washington, DC, 25 February 2014, p. 1), Obasanjo regime’s first term, the overwhelming majority of them Igbo.

 

In March 2015, in yet another ritual bout of a British prime minister reaching out or employing the services of a “recycled” genocidist Nigerian trooper from the earlier phases of the genocide to continue the Igbo slaughter, the mantle now fell on David Cameron. Cameron imposed Muhammadu Buhari, one of the vilest Nigerian genocidist operatives throughout these 50 years of the Igbo genocide, as head of Nigeria regime. Buhari got involved in the genocide right from its launch on 29 May 1966 (four months before Cameron was born in England) and during the Nigerian expansive trail of the mass slaughter of Igbo military and civilians alike in north and west Nigeria regions from 29 July 1966-July 1967 to encapsulate phases I-II of the genocide timeframe. During phase-III of the genocide, the invasion of Biafra, July 1967-January 1970, Buhari was commander of a genocidist corps in north and northcentral Biafra, slaughtering to the hilt.  Just as the earlier Obasanjo regime mentioned, Buhari has carried out his own spate of murders of Igbo people across Biafra since taking power. His regime has murdered a total of 2000 Igbo between November 2015 and January 2017. Former US President Barack Obama, working collaboratively with Cameron, co-imposed Buhari as head of this regime. Obama is the first African-descent president of the US republic in 233 years of existence and his unflinching support for an African-led genocidist regime in Africa waging a genocide against an African people is surely an unconscionable, monumental tragedy of his presidential legacy (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html).

 

Theresa May’s opportunity, the Richard Gozney effect

 

Cameron resigned his prime minister’s position precipitously on 13 July 2016 after losing the “Brexit” referendum on British membership of the European Union. Theresa May has since become prime minister and is presented with an historic opportunity to confront and terminate the British central role in the ongoing Igbo genocide in Biafra. This genocide has gone on for 50 years. May must now reject that baton of the relay race-to-murder-Igbo people that has been passed down the track from Harold Wilson’s 10 Downing Street tenure.  

 

Thankfully, there is indeed a British official antecedent that May could find helpful as she plans to bring this gruesome catastrophe to an end. In December 2005, soon after the Olusegun Obasanjo regime forces had just carried out a stretch of murders of Igbo peaceful demonstrators in Owere, Umuahia and Aba (eastcentral Biafra) calling for the restoration of Biafra, Richard Gozney, then chief British representative in Nigeria came out openly and condemned the slaughtering unreservedly (The Vanguard, Lagos, 17 December 2005). This was and remains unprecedented from such a high profile British state official since 29 May 1966. 


Four salient features of the genocide must have weighed heavily on Gozney’s mind that prompted such a public demonstration: (1) 3.1 million Igbo people had been murdered earlier on in the genocide and tens of thousands in the subsequent decades (2) Harold Wilson’s recorded, blatant support for the genocide,  “[I] would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” is harrowing (3) Harold Wilson’s own admission in his memoirs that the Nigerian military, equipped zealously by Britain, expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to achieve its annhilative mission in Biafra than the amount used by the British armed forces  during the whole” of  the Second World War (Harold Wilson, Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, 1971, p. 630, added emphasis) is harrowing (4) Britain’s Lagos (Nigeria) diplomatic mission military advisor Robert Scott’s acknowledgement (at the height of the genocide, mid 1968- January 1970) that as the Nigerian genocidists unleashed their campaigns across Igbo cities, towns and villages, they were the “best defoliant agent known” (Sunday Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970) is harrowing. Grozney would also have observed the stunning Igbo resilience of the Biafra freedom movement and drew the unmistakeable conclusions of its indestructibility...

 

Maybe Britain and the rest of the world have waited all this while for this very introspective only daughter of a respected vicar in a rural parish in southeast England to become prime minister to end the Igbo genocide, this longest and most gruesome genocide of the contemporary world. All Theresa May requires is to announce to the world that Britain has terminated all support – military, political, diplomatic – for the prosecution of this genocide, apologise to Igbo people, pay reparations on behalf of the 3.1 million Igbo murdered during phases I-III of the genocide (29 may 1966-12 January 1970) and the tens of thousands murdered subsequently during its phase-IV (13 January 1970-present day), pay reparations to the survivors, and pay reparations to reconstruct the shattered  Biafra economy, Africa’s most enterprising economy prior to the genocide.

 

A May declaration terminating the genocide will bring this crime against humanity to an immediate end. Unquestionably.

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Vigil” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live, Comblain-la-Tour, Hamoir, Belgium, RTBF radio & television network, 1 August 1965])

References

 

Barnett, Anthony. “UK arms sales to Africa reach £1 million mark”. The Guardian, London, 12 June 2005.


BBC News. “UK arming African countries”.  3 April 2000.


Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. “‘African American son’, US foreign policy and Africa: A statement”. rethinkingafrica, 30 March 2016, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html, accessed 13 February 2017.


Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. “Igbo genocide, Britain and the United States”. rethinkingafrica, 4 October 2015, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html, accessed 10 February 2017.


Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. “Rights for Scots, Rights for the Igbo”. rethinkingafrica, 17 January 2012, http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html, accessed 12 February 2017.


Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. “Time for reflections”, openDemocracy, London, 22 December 2005.


Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. “Ban arms sales to Africa – nothing else required”. openDemocracy, London, 14 June 2005.


Ekwe-Ekwe, Herbert. African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe. Reading: African Renaissance, 2001.


Hill, Christopher. “Lies about crimes”. The Guardian, London, 29 May 1989.


Independent, The. London, 29 January 2017


Morris, Roger. Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy. London and New York: Quartet Books, 1977.


John Coltrane Quartet. “Vigil”. Live. Comblain-la-Tour, Hamoir, Belgium. RTBF radio & television network, 1 August 1965.


Obasanjo, Olusegun. My Command. Ibadan & London: Heinemann, 1980.


Sunday Telegraph. London, 11 January 1970.


US Department of Justice. “Armed Conflicts Report – Nigeria”. Washington, DC, 25 February 2014.


Vanguard, The. Lagos, 17 December 2005.


Wilson, Harold.  Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971.


Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe