Igbo people don’t have to justify their current freedom mission; no one ever does

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

EVEN IF THE Igbo are not subjected to the cataclysmic genocide of 29 May 1966-present day, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which suzerain state Britain and its Fulani islamist/jihadist-led Nigeria client state have murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of Igbo population (phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and the dual-genocidists’ additional murder of tens of thousands of Igbo during phase-IV of the genocide (13 January 1970-present day) which includes the current stretch’s blitzkriegesque offensive (since November 2015) that the notorious Muhammadu Buhari regime (imposed in office by ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama, first African-descent president of the United States in 233 years of the founding of the republic, and David Cameron, ex-British prime minister) and its adjunct duo Boko Haram and Fulani militia (erroneously tagged  “Fulani herdspeople” in the media in Nigeria) forces (presently, 2 of the world’s 5 deadliest terrorist groups) are waging in occupied Biafra, they, the Igbo,  just like any other peoples, have the right to declare themselves free from Nigeria or indeed from any other state in Africa they find themselves domiciled if they so wish.

This was precisely why the Igbo didn’t have to offer some justification for its 30 year-old vanguard role (1930s-October 1960) in formally terminating 76 years of the British conquest and occupation of Nigeria, not even to the north region Fulani islamist/jihadist political establishment, strategic ally of the occupation opposed to African peoples’ liberation and progenitor of the prevailing dominant retrogressive regime forces in Nigeria. 

IT MUST  be continuously stressed, if need be, that no comparable political forces anywhere else in the South World (Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Caribbean, central and south America), during this epoch, wanted their lands occupied indefinitely by any of the rampaging conqueror pan-European states (Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) as the Fulani islamist/jihadists, this ferociously anti-African peoples’ assemblage. This was why the British aptly “rewarded” them with the responsibility of “overseer”, beginning 1 October 1960, to protect Britain’s vast expropriatory economic interests in Nigeria in perpetuity as well as wage a 53-year-old genocide against the Igbo, one of the most enterprising and transformative peoples in Africa. The glaring catastrophe that is Nigeria becomes hugely intelligible in the context of this history (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966, [2019]).

BESIDES, the compositional aftermath of the (European)conqueror/conquered/conquest-state of Africa (Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, the Sudan, the Congo-B, the Congo-K, Guinea-B, Guinea-C, Guinea-E, whatever!) cannot be the basis of the restoration-of-independence for the peoples as this historic right to freedom affirmation rests incontrovertibly on the hitherto conquered constituent African nation or people – Igbo, Bakongo, Wolof, Luo, Wagogo, Buganda, Ibibio, Darfuri, Gĩkũyũ, Herero, Ndebele, Efik, Akan, Bakongo, Gur, Ijo, Punu, Ovambo, Bamileke...

Freedom train; not “agitators”

THIS RIGHT to freedom for a people, for all peoples, is inalienable. As I have demonstrated severally elsewhere (see, for instance, Ekwe-Ekwe, 2019), it is the state, any state, that is transient; definitely, not the people(s) except, of course, they, such as the Igbo, are a target or programmed for genocide by some state/s (Britain and Nigeria in this specific case) or some other agency. No one, no people, therefore, has to offer a reason for being free, for freedom. 

So, the rather perfunctory remark, “agitating for Biafra”, “Biafra agitators”, often made by some commentators to highlight the current historic drive of the Biafra freedom movement is, ironically, an assault on the very essence of this freedom. One doesn’t “agitate” for freedom; they, instead, proclaim it: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”.

(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])

******Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

88th birthday of Christopher Okigbo

(Born 16 August 1930, Ojoto, Biafra)

Africa’s most influential and celebrated poet

AS PART of today’s commemoration of Christopher Okigbo’s birthday, re-thinkingafrica reissues the 3-part video recording of Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s paper presentation to the Christopher Okigbo International Conference, Harvard University, 22 September 2007, entitled “Okigbo, the Africa state, genocide and the peoples”

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Igbo people don’t have to justify their current freedom mission; no one ever does

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

EVEN IF THE Igbo are not subjected to the cataclysmic genocide of 29 May 1966-present day, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which suzerain Britain and its Fulani Nigeria client state have murdered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of Igbo population (phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and the dual-genocidists’ additional murder of tens of thousands of Igbo during phase-IV of the genocide (13 January 1970-present day) which includes the current stretch’s blitzkriegesque offensive (since May 2015) that the Muhammadu Buhari regime (imposed in office by Barack Obama, the African-descent ex-US president, and David Cameron, ex-British prime minister) and its adjunct duo Boko Haram and Fulani militia (erroneously tagged  “Fulani herdspeople” in the media in Nigeria) forces are waging in occupied Biafra, they, the Igbo,  just like any other peoples, have the right to declare themselves free from Nigeria or indeed from any other state in Africa they find themselves domiciled if they so wish.

This was precisely why the Igbo didn’t have to offer some justification for its 30 year-old vanguard role (1930s-October 1960) in formally terminating 76 years of the British conquest and occupation of Nigeria, not even to the north region Fulani Arabised-islamist/jihadist political establishment, strategic ally of the occupation opposed to African peoples liberation and progenitor of the prevailing dominant retrogressive regime forces in Nigeria. 

IT MUST  be continuously stressed, if need be, that no comparable political forces anywhere else in the South World (Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas), during this epoch, wanted their lands occupied indefinitely by any of the rampaging conqueror pan-European states (Britain, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain) as the Fulani islamist/jihadists, this ferociously anti-African peoples assemblage. This was why the British aptly “rewarded” them with the responsibility of “overseer”, beginning 1 October 1960, to protect Britain’s vast expropriatory economic interests in Nigeria in perpetuity as well as wage a 52-year-old genocide against the Igbo, one of the most enterprising and progressive peoples in Africa. The glaring catastrophe that is Nigeria becomes hugely intelligible in the context of this history (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra Revisited, 2006).

BESIDES, the compositional aftermath of the (European)conqueror/conquered/conquest-state of Africa (Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, the Sudan, the Congo-B, the Congo-K, Guinea-B, Guinea-C, Guinea-E, whatever!) cannot be the basis of the restoration-of-independence for the peoples as this historic right to freedom affirmation rests incontrovertibly on the hitherto conquered constituent African nation or people – Igbo, Bakongo, Wolof, Luo, Ibibio, Darfuri, Gĩkũyũ, Herero, Ndebele, Efik, Akan, Bakongo, Gur, Ijo, Punu, Ovambo, Bamileke...

Freedom train, not “agitators”

THIS RIGHT to freedom for a people, for all peoples, is inalienable. As I have demonstrated severally elsewhere, it is the state, any state, that is transient; definitely, not the people(s) except, of course, they, such as the Igbo, are a target or programmed for genocide by some state/s (Britain and Nigeria in this specific case) or some other agency. No one, no people, therefore, has to offer a reason for being free, for freedom. 

So, the rather perfunctory remarks, “agitating for Biafra”, “Biafra agitators”, often made by some commentators to highlight the current historic drive of the Biafra freedom movement is, ironically, an assault on the very essence of this freedom. One doesn’t “agitate” for freedom; they, instead, proclaim it: “I am because I am free; I am free because I am”.

(Sonny Rollins Trio, “The freedom suite” [personnel: Rollins, tenor saxophone; Oscar Pettiford, bass; Max Roach, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, US, 7 March 1958])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Surely, there is no hierarchisation of evil – unconscionably contrasting responses to Nigeria genocidist military outrage in Biafra and the Myanmar military operation on Rohingya people in Myanmar’s Rakhine region

(Biafra)

(Myanmar)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THERE HAS BEEN a commendable worldwide criticism of the Myanmar military for its operation in the country’s southwest Rakhine region where the Rohingya people, predominantly muslim, live. Nearly 400,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the increasing violence.

In contrast, the world has remained unconscionably silent over the Nigeria genocidist military campaign in (occupied) Biafra where it has murdered 2000 Biafrans since October 2015. The Nigeria state, created by Britain, is headed by Hausa-Fulani/islamists and its military engaged in the genocide in Biafra is led by a phalanx of senior islamist operatives. In the past week alone, hundreds of Biafrans have been murdered in scorched-earth operations mounted by the Nigerians who have laid siege on all Biafran cities and towns (including especially Enuugwu, Onicha, Asaba, Oka, Aba, Orlu, Okigwe, Owere, Igwe Ocha, Abakeleke, Umuahia, Owere, Afaraukwu-Ibeku) in response to the Biafra freedom, restoration-of-independence movement. The Biafra freedom movement is totally peaceful, the most peaceful of its kind in Africa and one of the very few anywhere in the South World.

World stop Igbo genocide now

The world must now wake up from its inexcusable slumber over the Igbo genocide and condemn genocidist Nigeria unreservedly. This condemnation must also extend to Britain, the co-genocidist state in this crime right from its original launch date on 29 May 1966, which is the principal exporter of the array of weapons the Nigerian enforcers employ in their slaughter of the Igbo. In this case, it is indeed not without significance that the current phase of the genocide (beginning Sunday 10 September 2017) was mounted shortly after the July/August 2017 visits to Nigeria by Tony Blair (a former British prime minister) and Boris Johnson (current British foreign secretary).  

THE WORLD must at once stop the Igbo genocide and the occupation of Biafra and support the Biafra freedom movement’s programmed process of a referendum to determine the democratic choice of 50 million Biafrans. All those involved in this crime against humanity, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa, must be arraigned and prosecuted forthwith in designated international courts. The genocidists murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of the population during phases I-III of the crime, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, and tens of thousands of additional Igbo during phase-IV which has been ongoing since its launch date on 13 January 1970. The whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, are presently unknown since the genocidists stormed his Afaraukwu-Ibeku (east Biafra) family home yesterday (Thursday 14 September 2017), murdering a yet undisclosed number of relatives and others therein and abducting his parents.

(George Russell Sextet, “Nardis” {composer: Miles Davis} [personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, 8 May 1961])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

As a genocidist Nigeria occupation military unit attacks Nnamdi Kano’s family home in Afaraukwu-Ibeku, east Biafra, murdering 3 people and wounding scores of others, Sunday 10 September 2017 pm, a reminder of the epitaph of this cesspool of a state created by Britain and called “Nigeria” and run on its behalf by a kakistocratic amalgam led by Hausa-Fulani/islamists

Nigeria: frighteningly degenerative slump politically, economically, intellectually, socially, morally, spiritually

(Mal Waldron Quartet, “Hymn from the inferno” [personnel: Waldron, piano; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Cecil McBee, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: Vanguard Studios, New York, US, 15 August 1981]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Igbo genocide: reflecting on a gripping irony of our times

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IF THE executioner Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led genocidist regime on the ground in Nigeria that has carried out the Igbo genocide with such fiendishness these past five decades were European and not African, there would have been a thundering outrage and expansive campaign against the perpetrator (“racist”, “fascist”, “exclusivist”, “supremacist”, “occupationist”, “imperialist”…) mounted across the rest of the world, particularly from the African World. Yet the Igbo genocide and other Africa state/estate-horrendous crimes against African peoples and nations are distinct empirical determinants of those haunting lines sketched in historian Chancellor Williams’s commanding insight of Africa’s devastating history as shown here:

Now the shadows lengthened. The Europeans had also been busily building up and training strong African armies. Africans trained to hate, kill and conquer Africans. Blood of Africans was to sprinkle and further darken the pages of their history … Indeed, Africa was conquered for the Europeans by the Africans [themselves], and thereafter kept under [conquest] control by African police and African soldiers. Very little European blood was ever spilled. (Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: The Great Issue of a Race between 4500BC and 2000AD [Chicago: Third World, new edition, 1995: p. 218])

(George Russell Sextet, “Nardis” {composer: Miles Davis} [personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; recorded: Riverside Records, New York, 8 May 1961])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

FWD: Genocidist Nigeria continues its murdering trail in Biafra...

TODAY, it is Ekwulobia, west Biafra – genocidist occupation military, including navy detachments (Ekwulobia is neither on the Biafra coast nor by a strategic river course in Biafra!), open fire on peaceful, defenceless population of the Biafra freedom movement, murdering at least one and wounding several ... detailed casualty figures are still coming in... In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, genocidist Nigeria has continued its unrelenting murder of Igbo people, thanks to its embedded support from its co-genocidist and suzerain state Britain...

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

87th birthday of Christopher Okigbo

(Born 16 August 1930, Ojoto, Biafra)

Africa’s most influential and celebrated poet

AS PART of today’s commemoration of Okigbo’s birthday, re-thinkingafrica reissues the 3-part video recording of Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s paper presentation to the Christopher Okigbo International Conference, Harvard University, 22 September 2007, entitled “Okigbo, the Africa state, genocide and the peoples”

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

The British proconsul or Britain’s chief representative to genocidist Nigeria

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Few now fail to observe the unassailable ascent of the Biafra freedom movement. The convulsive desperation being exhibited presently by the British chief representative to genocidist Nigeria in speech after speech in this “country” of Britain’s denouncing Igbo/other African peoples’ rights to self-determination speaks volumes of British acknowledgement, however belated, 51 years later, that neither it nor its client co-genocidist state Nigeria can stop the triumph of Biafra freedom. No one else can. The Igbo are gone! Gone! Free!

Some would probably argue that the chief representative’s rantings, condemning African peoples’ inalienable rights to freedom whilst on the ground in the “foreign land” of their posting as a “diplomat”, is “not diplomatic”. This representative would retort, and correctly so, that their position in Nigeria is far beyond that of the “conventional diplomat” but that of a proconsul – from suzerain state Britain.

“Driving seats” of freedom

Two major unfolding events in Britain itself and the perceived, related consequences that these could have on the politics of the ongoing Igbo genocide waged by both Britain and Nigeria account for this proconsul’s unrestrained utterances on African freedom and feeling of bitterness: (1) Scotland’s (nation and state positioned at north region of Britain) quest for restoration-of-independence from Britain after 310 years of union and (2) British departure from the European Union after 44 years of union. Both “unions”, it must be stressed, were consummated because of the voluntary wish or disposition of each of the constituent members/parties. 

As I have shown elsewhere 
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-
scots-rights-for-igbo.html), Scotland is a very unlikely candidate to wish to leave the British Union given the exponential benefits that it has derived from the association for three centuries but the Scots insist that they want to exercise their inalienable right to freedom, a right recognised by the United Nations as a right for all peoples. Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish first minister couldn’t be clearer on this goal of the Scottish mission: “Our dream is for Scotland to become independent … To be in the driving seat of our own destiny, to shape our own future”. In her own 29 May 2017 letter to EU President Donald Tusk formally triggering British exit from the EU, British Prime Minister Theresa May unequivocally strikes the chord of freedom: “[we are leaving the EU] to restore our self-determination”.

Both Sturgeon and May declarations on freedom are at the core of the historic Igbo freedom resolve made on 29 May 1966, 51 years earlier, to exit from the British-created Nigeria conquest-“federation” in response to the Anglo-Nigeria launch of the Igbo genocide, this foundational genocide of post-(European conquest) Africa. Both genocidist states’ collaborators murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, during phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and have subsequently murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo during phase-IV of the crime which continues to this day.

In the wake of Brexit and the Scots’ restoration-of-independence drive, such high-profile and most unprecedented manifestations of freedom for the peoples not seen recently within Britain, the British government has no confidence at all that its clients in Nigeria can adequately articulate the seeming complexity of explaining to African peoples in Nigeria why their “country” should be waging a 50-year-old genocide against Igbo people, an African people, for demanding to be free to be in the “driving seat of [their] destiny, to shape [their] own future”, “to restore [their] self-determination”, just as the Scots and the other constituent peoples in contemporary Britain so wish. 

That task of explaining has been assigned to its chief representative in Nigeria and the outcome is the staggering racist vituperation voiced by the envoy and covered in the media in Nigeria. Reading through the vitriol, it appears that the proconsul is not only actively waging this phase of the Igbo genocide but is also confronting the Igbo all over again as in the enslaved plantation estates of Virginia, the Carolinas and elsewhere in southern United States and in Jamaica and Barbados and Saint Domingue of the Caribbean after not too many centuries since... The hostility to African freedom can indeed be devastating to the psyche of its assailant(s)… A Fanonian diagnosis here couldn’t be more instructive. 

Genesis

British chief representatives in genocidist Nigeria as proconsul did not, of course, emerge with the recent dramatic developments of Scottish freedom and Brexit. Nigeria, it cannot be exaggerated, belongs to Britain; Nigeria is Britain’s (for a more expansive range of discourse on this theme, see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Igbo genocide, Britain and the United States”, http://re-
thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html).

Right from the outset, beginning of the Igbo genocide in May 1966, the resident British chief representative, Francis Cumming-Bruce, was proconsul liaising unabashedly with Yakubu Gowon-Yakubu Danjuma-Murtala Mohammed genocidist cells in the Nigeria military and civilian genocidist operatives who were on their premeditated goal raging and murdering any and all Igbo in their sights. During phase-III of the genocide (6 July 1967-12 January 1970), some ex-British conquest administrators/officials who had worked in Nigeria and were back home were often tagged as more “coherent spokespersons” who “rationalised” the genocide than the official Nigerian genocidist spokespersons especially Tony Enaharo, Alison Ayida, Murtala Mohammed, Obafemi Awolowo. The British Broadcasting Corporation, that state broadcaster, particularly its World Service channel, was nothing short of being the external radio station for the prosecuting Nigeria genocidist junta in Lagos. This service was much more robust in its “rationalisation” of the genocide (“one Nigeria”, “territorial integrity”, “inviolability of colonial-set frontiers”, “indissolubility of colonial-set borders”, “rebels”, “unacceptable precedence for rest of Africa”, “secessionist!”, “secessionist!”, “secessionist!”…) than the rambling, ramshackle Voice of Nigeria. 

We should note that neither the BBC nor any major broadcaster, news agency, webcaster and the like in the European World/West would dare use any or a variation of the epithets in the parenthesis above employed to demonise Igbo freedom in commentaries/discussion on the Scottish freedom movement or those of the English, Welsh or Irish peoples of the British Isles or indeed that of Catalonian people in Spain currently on course.

Biafra mission

Biafrans have an opportunity to begin to build a new civilisation where human life, fundamentally, is sacrosanct. This salient feature cannot be overstressed. Nigeria has been, for the Igbo, a haematophagous quagmire throughout its history especially since 1945 when the first organised pogrom against Igbo immigrants in Jos (northcentral Nigeria) executed by the Hausa-Fulani/islamist north took place under the very watch of the British occupation regime. Hundreds of Igbo were murdered and their homes and other property looted or destroyed. This pogrom was followed by yet another in Kano (further north) in 1953, executed by the same assailants, again under the watch of the British occupation. These dual-pogroms became the prelude,  the “dress rehearsals” to the concerted launch of the Igbo genocide by Anglo-Nigeria on 29 May 1966. In neither the Jos nor Kano pogroms did the British prosecute anyone involved in the Igbo massacres. Those writing the scores of the Biafra freedom symphony are aware of these crucial interlocking features of this devastatingly tragic history of Igbo people. 

The Biafran freedom mission is therefore not geared to begin to construct a state that is merely post-genocide or post post-conquest/post post-“colonial” state of Africa – in other words, cancelling out here and there, in some mechanical venture, that which was Nigeria, arguably “Berlin-state” Africa’s most notorious state. Instead, Biafra is a realisation, a profound reclamation of that which makes us all human and part of humanity. Biafra is a beacon of the tenacity of the spirit of human overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginable brutish forces. Biafra is a haven of creativity, humanism, and progress, in the wake of the gruesome and expansive Igbo genocide.

(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 29 January 1968]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

FWD: Why the Igbo British electorate should not vote for the British Labour party on the Thursday 8 June 2017 general elections because of the central role played by Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour party and prime minister, in the prosecution of the Igbo genocide during phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970). By not voting Labour, Igbo British electors are solemnly remembering the 3.1 million murdered during the genocide and also showing solidarity to the survivors including themselves and their children and others. No British Labour leader/leadership subsequently, since January 1970 has ever condemned Harold Wilson's/Labour party's role in the waging of this foundational genocide of post(European)conquest Africa. On this 51st anniversary of the launch of the genocide, the Igbo British voter has an historic opportunity to take a position on this crucial subject of their history: Don't vote Labour

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

*****The Harold Wilson-led British government of the day oversaw and underwrote this devastating stretch of genocide militarily, politically and diplomatically – from its early conceptualisation, liaising continuously with the Gowon-Mohammed-Danjuma genocidist cells of the Nigeria military at varying stages between January and May 1966, to the savage, spiralling aerial, naval and ground onslaughts on encircled Igbo population centres (the “shooting everything”-raging inferno) especially between March 1968 and January 1970. Harold Wilson chiefly coordinated the genocide from the comfort of his No. 10 Downing Street, London, offices and residence. London’s strategic goal in supporting the genocide was to “punish” the Igbo for “daring” to spearhead the termination of the British occupation of Nigeria. Harold Wilson was adamant that he “would accept” the death of “a half a million” Igbo “if that was what it took”[9] the Nigeria genocidists to accomplish their ghastly mission. This Wilson-declaration on the Igbo genocide, this Wilsonian logic of mass slaughtering of the Igbo, was in fact more gruesome than those made by some of the most vociferous Nigerian genocidist commanders and propagandists operating on the ground during the genocide, including the Adekunle-Obasanjo duo already referred to. Pointedly, the Wilsonian logic became the litmus test to calibrate the annhilative threshold on the Igbo genocide.

SUCH WAS the grotesquely expressed diminution of African life made by a supposedly leading politician of the world of the 1960s and head of the British government that was one of the countries that actually drafted and a signatory of the 1948 United Nations’ “Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide” – barely 20 years after the deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide. As the final tally of 3.1 million Igbo murdered demonstrates, 2.6 million more than Wilson’s “would accept” the death of “a half a million” Igbo “if that was what it took”, Harold Wilson probably had the perverse satisfaction that his on-the-ground Nigeria genocidists did perform far in excess of his  set, grim annhilative threshold … (essay details at link below):

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/blog-post_29.html

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Biafra – finalising the orchestration of the victory symphony

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

FEW NOW FAIL to observe the unassailable ascent of the Biafra freedom movement. The convulsive desperation being exhibited by the British chief representative to genocidist Nigeria presently in speech after speech in this “country” of Britain’s denouncing Igbo/other African peoples’ rights to self-determination speaks volumes of British acknowledgement, however belated, 51 years later, that neither it nor its client co-genocidist state Nigeria can stop the triumph of Biafra freedom. No one else can. The Igbo are gone! Gone! Free!

Some would probably argue that the chief representative’s rantings, condemning African peoples’ inalienable rights to freedom whilst on the ground in the “foreign land” of their posting as a “diplomat”, is “not diplomatic”. This representative would retort, and correctly so, that their position in Nigeria is far beyond that of the “conventional diplomat” but that of a proconsul – from suzerain state Britain.

“Driving seats” of freedom

Two major unfolding events in Britain itself and the perceived, related consequences that these could have on the politics of the ongoing Igbo genocide waged by both Britain and Nigeria account for this proconsul’s unrestrained utterances on African freedom and feeling of bitterness: (1) Scotland’s (nation and state positioned at north region of Britain) quest for restoration-of-independence from Britain after 310 years of union and (2) British departure from the European Union after 44 years of union. Both “unions”, it must be stressed, were consummated because of the voluntary wish or disposition of each of the constituent members/parties. As I have shown elsewhere (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-
scots-rights-for-igbo.html), Scotland is a very unlikely candidate to wish to leave the British Union given the exponential benefits that it has derived from the association for three centuries but the Scots insist that they want to exercise their inalienable right to freedom, a right recognised by the United Nations as a right for all peoples. Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish first minister couldn’t be clearer on this goal of the Scottish mission: “Our dream is for Scotland to become independent … To be in the driving seat of our own destiny, to shape our own future”. In her own 29 May 2017 letter to EU President Donald Tusk formally triggering British exit from the EU, British Prime Minister Theresa May unequivocally strikes the chord of freedom: “[we are leaving the EU] to restore our self-determination”.

Both Sturgeon and May declarations on freedom are at the core of the historic Igbo freedom resolve made on 29 May 1966, 51 years ago, to exit from the British-created Nigeria conquest-“federation” in response to the Anglo-Nigeria launch of the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European conquest) Africa. Both genocidist states’ collaborators murdered 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population, during phases I-III of the genocide (29 May 1966-12 January 1970) and have subsequently murdered tens of thousands of additional Igbo during phase-IV of the crime which continues to this day.

In the wake of Brexit and the Scots’ restoration-of-independence drive, such high-profile and most unprecedented manifestations of freedom for the peoples not seen recently within Britain, the British government has no confidence at all that its clients in Nigeria can adequately articulate the seeming complexity of explaining to African peoples in Nigeria why their “country” should be waging a 50-year-old genocide against Igbo people, an African people, for demanding to be free to be in the “driving seat of [their] destiny, to shape [their] own future”, “to restore [their] self-determination”, just as the Scots and the other constituent peoples in contemporary Britain so wish. That task of explaining has been assigned to its chief representative in Nigeria and the outcome is the staggering racist vituperation covered in the media in Nigeria. Reading through the vitriol, it appears that the proconsul is not only actively waging this phase of the Igbo genocide but is also confronting the Igbo all over again in the enslaved estates of Virginia, the Carolinas and elsewhere in southern United States and in Jamaica and Saint Domingue of the Caribbean after not too many centuries since... The hostility to African freedom can indeed be devastating to the psyche of its assailant(s)…

British chief representatives in genocidist Nigeria as proconsul did not, of course, emerge with the recent dramatic developments of Scottish freedom and Brexit. Nigeria, it cannot be exaggerated, belongs to Britain; Nigeria is Britain’s (for a more expansive range of discourse on this theme, see Herbert Ekwe-
Ekwe, “Igbo genocide, Britain and the United States”, http://re-
thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-conquerors-concord-in.html). Right from the outset, beginning of the Igbo genocide in May 1966, the resident British chief representative, Francis Cumming-Bruce, was proconsul liaising unabashedly with Yakubu Gowon and other Nigerian military and civilian genocidist operatives who were on their premeditated goal raging and murdering any and all Igbo in their sights. During phase-III of the genocide (6 July 1967-12 January 1970), some ex-British conquest administrators/officials who had worked in Nigeria and were back home were often tagged as more “coherent spokespersons” who “rationalised” the genocide than the official Nigerian genocidist spokespersons especially Tony Enaharo, Alison Ayida, Murtala Mohammed, Obafemi Awolowo. The British Broadcasting Corporation, particularly its World Service channel, was nothing short of being the external radio station for the prosecuting Nigeria genocidist junta in Lagos. This service was much more robust in its “rationalisation” of the genocide (“one Nigeria”, “territorial integrity”, “inviolability of colonial-set frontiers”, “indissolubility of colonial-set borders”, “rebels”, “unacceptable precedence for rest of Africa”, “secessionist!”, “secessionist!”, “secessionist!”…) than the rambling, ramshackle Voice of Nigeria. We should note that neither the BBC nor any major broadcaster, news agency, webcaster and the like in the European World/West would dare use any or a variation of the epithets in the parenthesis above employed to demonise Igbo freedom in commentaries/discussion on the Scottish freedom movement or those of the English, Welsh or Irish peoples of the British Isles currently on course.

Biafra mission

Biafrans have an opportunity to begin to build a new civilisation where human life, fundamentally, is sacrosanct. This salient feature cannot be overstressed. Nigeria has been, for the Igbo, a haematophagous quagmire throughout its history. Those writing the scores of the Biafra freedom symphony are aware of this. The Biafran freedom mission is therefore not to begin to construct a state that is merely post-genocide or post post-conquest/post post-“colonial” state of Africa – in other words, cancelling out here and there, in some mechanical venture, that which was Nigeria, arguably “Berlin-state” Africa’s most notorious state.  Instead, Biafra is a realisation, a profound reclamation of that which makes us all human and part of humanity. Biafra is a beacon of the tenacity of the spirit of human overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginable brutish forces. Biafra is a haven of creativity, humanism, and progress, in the wake of the gruesome Igbo genocide.

(Alice Coltrane Quartet, “Lord, help me to be” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone;  Jimmy Garrison, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 29 January 1968]) 

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Germany to recognise the 1904-1908 genocide of Herero and Nama peoples; Britain can no longer continue to delay its own formal recognition of the central role it played with its Nigeria client state in perpetrating the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, during which these dual genocidists of the age murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or one-quarter of this nation’s population

(Angela Merkel: Germany’s formal recognition of the Herero and Nama genocides which it carried out a century ago...)

FWD: Justin Huggler, “Germany to recognise Herero genocide and apologise to Namibia”, Telegraph, London, Wednesday 14 July 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/14/germany-to-recognise-herero-genocide-and-apologise-to-namibia/ (accessed 14 July 2014)

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Weapons of genocide – British arms to Nigeria to wage genocide against Igbo people: An overview

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

The world turns and the world changes,

But one thing does not change.

In all my years, one thing does not change,

However you disguise it, this thing does not change:

The perpetual struggle between Good and Evil.

(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”, 1934)

Instrument

Britain, under the primeministership of Harold Wilson, plays an instrumental role in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide – politically, diplomatically and militarily.

Without this entrenched British role, there probably would not have been the Igbo genocide… In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Nigeria and its British principal ally murder 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population during the course of 44 months…

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

1. Early December 1967: Britain supplies  six Saladin armoured personnel carriers (APCs), 30 Saracen APCs along with 2,000 machine guns for them, anti-tank guns and 9 million rounds of ammunition to Nigeria genocidist military…*****

2. By the end of December 1967:  Britain approves export of 1,050 bayonets, 700 grenades, 1,950 rifles with grenade launchers, 15,000 lbs of explosives and two helicopters to Nigeria genocidist military…

3. In the first half of 1968: Britain approves export of 15 million rounds of ammunition, 21,000 mortar bombs, 42,500 Howitzer rounds, 12 Oerlikon guns, 3 Bofors guns, 500 submachine guns, 12 Saladins with guns and spare parts, 30 Saracens and spare parts, 800 bayonets, 4,000 rifles and two other helicopters to Nigeria genocidist military…

4. November 1968: Britain agrees that 5 million more rounds of ammunition, 40,000 more mortar bombs and 2,000 rifles, six Saladins and 20,000 rounds of ammunition for them, and stepped up monthly supplies of ammunition, amounting to a total of 15 million rounds additional to those already agreed, should be sent to Nigeria genocidist military…

5. 1968: The recent deal meant that Britain had supplied 36 million rounds of ammunition in the last few months alone. 

6. By the end of 1968:  Britain had sold £9 million worth of arms, £6 million of which was spent on small arms, to genocidist Nigeria military …

7. March 1969: Britain approves export of 19 million rounds of ammunition, 10,000 grenades and 39,000 mortar bombs to Nigeria genocidist military…

8. August 1969: Britain dispatches two senior RAF officers to Nigeria to advise the genocidists on their air terror campaign…

9. December 1969: Even as the Nigeria genocidist military is about to overrun the Igbo resistance, Michael Stewart, British foreign secretary, is calling for more British military supplies to the campaign, especially armoured cars…

Annhilative register

As the slaughter of the Igbo intensifies, particularly in the catastrophic months of 1968-1969, Harold Wilson 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 Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122).

As the final tally of the murder of the Igbo demonstrates, Harold Wilson probably has the perverted satisfaction of having his “boys”, the Nigerian subalterns, perform far in excess of their “massa”’s grim target, a subject coldly stated in Wilson’s own memoirs where he notes that the Nigerian military, equipped zealously by Britain as highlighted above, expends 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: 630, added emphasis).

And on this very annhilative feature, Colonel Robert Scott, military advisor in the British diplomatic mission in Nigeria, during the period, acknowledges, equally gravely, that as Nigerian genocidist military forces unleash their attacks on Biafran cities, towns and villages, they are the “best defoliant agent known” (Daily Telegraph, London, 11 January 1970). Chillingly dreadful but not surprising.

History: asymmetrical alliance?

In an age so obsessed with crass revisionism such is the dread by quite a few states across the world to face up to the treasure trove of incalculable atrocities they committed in history, including more recent history, that they have dabbled in constructing brazenly false, farcical or sanitised narratives to suit the exigencies of contemporary times especially on their records on human rights and crossnational relations. In the example of Britain and the genocidist state that is Nigeria, which has been the focus of this essay, it should be recalled that 50 years before the current global focus on islamist terrorism, Britain had formed a strategic alliance with the islamist Hausa-Fulani north Nigeria religiopolitical leadership, a vociferously anti-African but obsequiously Arabist national grouping opposed to the restoration of African independence (in Nigeria) from the British conquest and occupation which the Igbo had led for 30 years, beginning in the 1930s. As a result, Britain planned to hand over power to the islamists as condition for “termination” of its Nigeria occupation in return for the latter to preserve its vast economic assets and interests in Nigeria in perpetuity. 

Earlier on, the Hausa-Fulani islamists had carried out two premeditated pogroms against Igbo immigrant populations in Jos (northcentral Nigeria) and Kano (north Nigeria) in 1945 and 1953 respectively, both occurring during the epoch of formal British occupation. No perpetrators of these crimes were ever prosecuted by the British. These pogroms ultimately became the  “dress rehearsals”  for the Anglo-Nigerian perpetration of the Igbo genocide, beginning on 29 May 1966, in which 3.1 million Igbo were murdered. In 2009, these same islamists would inaugurate the Boko Haram terrorist organisation, a west Africa region affiliate of the Islamic state caliphate and the world’s most ruthless terrorists (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/institute-for-economics-peace-global.html). 

Alas, in what would probably appear to some as an asymmetrical alliance in the pressing international politics of  today, Britain is allied to a US-led military coalition fighting against the Islamic state (IS), the parent, overarching Sunni islamist-centred caliphate headquartered in the Middle East, whilst simultaneously allied strategically to the north Nigeria Sunni islamist leadership from where Boko Haram, IS’s west Africa key ally, is drawn. 

Despite Boko Haram’s rampaging murder of thousands of Africans in north/northcentral Nigeria and elsewhere, embarked upon after its 2009 inception, it is instructive to note that it wasn’t until November 2012, three years later, soon after the organisation murdered two Europeans near Sokoto (northwest Nigeria), that Britain designated it a “terrorist group”.

*****Reference to compendium (1-9) of British arms dispatch to genocidist Nigeria: Mark Curtis, “Nigeria’s war over Biafra, 1967-70”, markcurtis.wordpress.com

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (forthcoming, May 2016)

(Wayne Shorter Septet, “The all seeing eye” [personnel: Shorter, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Grachan Moncur III, trombone, James Spaulding, alto saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Joe Chambers, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliff, NJ,US, 15 October 1965)

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