State-G out of the tourney – as usually expected

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe 

Kingsley Kanu, “The Queen should put pressure on the Nigerian government to respect the people of Biafra”, The Independent, London, Monday 16 April 2018

(British Queen Elizabeth II)

Kingsley Kanu*****

IT HAPPENED on the afternoon of 14 September last year, 2017.

I had come back to visit my family home in Biafra a few weeks earlier from Germany, where I now live. I call it Biafra because Biafra is my country, not Nigeria.

My mother and father, my older brother Nnamdi Kanu and I were in the house, along with friends. It was my son’s thirteenth birthday. I had just been on the phone congratulating him when the first gas canisters were thrown over the fence followed by gunfire. It was 4pm. The house was surrounded by Nigerian soldiers.

I found it hard to breathe. Everyone was panicking. I was witnessing a full on military attack on my parents’ home. I saw a soldier jump over the high fence that surrounds our house and open our main gate. He started shooting at the young men inside. That was when I realised if I didn’t escape now I would die.

There were soldiers and guns everywhere. How I got out only heaven knows. I remember I had to jump two walls. There was sporadic firing from the soldiers and one of the people who tried to follow me, a good family friend, was killed. My youngest brother, Emmanuel, had left a few minutes before and was only a few metres away. Since that afternoon, I’ve heard nothing from my mother and father and my brother Nnamdi.

THE ONLY explanation for my family being targeted by the Nigerian government is that we believe in an independent Biafra. People may remember the Biafran War fifty years ago. For a few years, between 1967 and 1970 we were a free state. I was born during the war in December 1969. My family had to leave our home in Umuahia to escape the invasion by the Nigerian army then. My mother was pregnant with me and it was no longer safe. There was fighting just behind our house. 

Biafran people were shot and bombed and starved to death; millions of them. Our experience was genocide. My parents lost most of their relatives.

SO I GREW up in an occupied country, an unhappy country. We were forced to be part of a state manufactured by colonial rule: Nigeria. I remember my father, like everyone else, was given the equivalent of £20 in recompense, to start again.

But despite everything, we had a very happy childhood and a loving family life. My older brother Nnamdi and I did everything together. We were about the same height, so we even shared clothes and shoes. He took care of me as a younger brother and guided me. My father traded in farm produce. Now he is a traditional ruler. People look up to him. They trust him.

When I was younger I knew I couldn’t stay in Biafra. Since the mid-’70s our culture, our history, our people had been all but erased. My brother and I needed to do something to help people to remember and we couldn’t do it there.

I moved to Germany sixteen years ago and raised a family. He moved to London and began the online Radio Biafra, broadcasting in English and Igbo, the language of Biafra, stories about our country, music, commentary and news. The Nigerian government has wanted to shut this down since it first broadcast in 2010.

NNAMDI also started our organisation, Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, seeking peaceful ways to bring about self-determination and independence for Biafra through democracy. We are a young organisation. Many of our members are too young to remember the war, but we are passionate that we will see an independent Biafra and a free Biafran people in our lifetimes.

Many Biafrans have been killed or detained before, during and after the 14th September 2017. There have been peaceful protests to commemorate the war where the security services have just opened fire on us.

AS FAR AS we are concerned, the government of Mohammadu Buhari is determined to stifle the independence movement. This week, President Buhari will meet the Queen at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The Queen needs to know that, if my experience is anything to go by, Buhari’s government will resort to the most serious human rights violations in order to gag the people of Biafra.

 *****Kingsley Kanu who lives in Germany is younger brother of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of Indigenous People of Biafra

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Mission of Biafra freedom movement restated

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IGBO SURVIVAL from the catastrophe of the genocide by the Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadist-controlled Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain is one of the preeminently celebratory outcomes of recent history. The Igbo are primed to deploy their phenomenal resilience from this history as they embark on the expansive reconstructionary endeavour to transform their Biafra homeland into a haven of creativity, humanism and progress, in the wake of the genocide. 

Despite the genocide and occupation, Biafra controls one of Africa’s best-developed multidisciplinary humanpower conglomeration of assets which will be invaluable in the mission ahead. Additionally, Biafra will be tapping into an epoch of immense possibilities in Africa – an Africa that, since 1981, contrary to the sophistry of the indolent, propagandist media and certain sectors of academia, has been a net-exporter of capital to the West World and elsewhere, gargantuan resources that should never leave Africa but retained therein solely for the peoples who have created this wealth, and an Africa whose millions of émigirés in the West World and elsewhere are now net-exporters of capital back to Africa through the latter’s remittances year in, year out (see Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Rethinking the state in Africa ... Whose state is it?”, 

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/rethinking-state-in-africa-whose-state.html).

 

Biafra flowers of rebirth

BIAFRANS have an opportunity to begin to build a new civilisation where human life, African life, fundamentally, is sacrosanct. This salient feature cannot be overstressed. Nigeria has been, for the Igbo, a haematophagous quagmire throughout its history beginning in 1945 with the Igbo pogrom in Jos (northcentral region) by the same Hausa-Fulani/islamist jihadists, duly overseen by the British occupation. A “next time” Igbo pogrom was executed in Kano (north region), in 1953, by the same jihadists and again overseen by the British occupation – “dress rehearsals” for the Igbo genocide which the dual-genocidists would embark upon on 29 May 1966, slaughtering 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in the subsequent 44 months of sheer savagery.

Those writing the scores of the Biafra freedom symphony are aware of this quest to celebrate the sanctity of African life. 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, “Berlin-state” Africa’s most notorious. 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. 

Biafran reconstruction at once signals to the rest of the constituent peoples and nations enveloped in the European-created “Berlin-states” of death, immiseration, desolation and hopelessness that freedom and transformation, right there in Africa, are achievable goals – that African peoples can build, reconstruct, embark on all possibilities of working for themselves and appropriating the fruits of their labour from their land and on their own terms... 

THE WORLD must now know that Biafra flowers innumerable Biafras of rebirth not seen in Africa for 500 years – since the Europe World launched what irrepressible historian Walter Rodney has categorised, aptly, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972).

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Song of praise” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 17 May 1965])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Catalonia decides: Restoration-of-independence

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

CATALONIA, a population of 7.5 million and situated in the northeast region of Spain, has formally declared its restoration-of-independence. This follows a referendum on 1 October 2017 in which 90.90 per cent of Catalans voted “yes” for restoration-of-independence. Until now, Catalan has been part of Spain for centuries. Catalonia is the 25th new state to emerge in Europe since 1991. The last one, in 2008, is Kosovo, with a population of 1.8 million which is less than that of the Fegge district of Onicha, the great market town on the Oshimili River of southwest Biafra, southwestcentral Africa.

The right to self-determination is for every people. It is inalienable and is guaranteed by the United Nations. No people, anywhere on earth, is exempt from exercising this right as the Catalans have just demonstrated. This is why the slogan that proclaims such gibberish as “indivisibility”/“indissolubility”/“indestructibility” of a state, any state, is not really worth the paper it is written on except of course it is an embedded code by a slaughtering horde for the plot of the next genocide or the reinforcement of an ongoing genocide – as indeed the world has witnessed most tragically across several regions in Africa since Nigeria’s launch of the Igbo genocide on 29 May 1966. A grisly total of 15.1 million Africans have been murdered by a number of these states and their allies in the genocides of the Igbo (29 May 1966-present day), Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo (variously since 2003) and Darfur/Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan (all in the Sudan – since 2003), and in other wars in west, north, northcentral, east and southern Africa during the epoch.

Support for British conquest and occupation of Nigeria indefinitely...

FOR THE RECORD, it mustn’t be forgotten that the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led leadership in Nigeria which ritually trumpets the “ind”-threesome slogan (above) to preface its next planned massacre of the Igbo in occupied Biafra or in Nigeria supported continuing British occupation of the conquest-state called Nigeria during the course of 30 momentous years (1930s-October 1960) by opposing the Igbo-led restoration-of-independence movement for the freeing of the constituent African nations and peoples from the British occupation. There were no comparable examples of such a staggering anti-freedom position anywhere else in the Southern World during the epoch. Britain duly “rewarded” the islamist leadership perpetual control of Nigeria as a prop to transfer the latter’s retrograde view of this conquest-state to some  “post”-conquest variation on a theme which, in itself, guarantees British suzerainty over Nigeria indefinitely. This is a cardinal feature that constitutes the tragedy called Nigeria today.

As everyone should know, the states that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of its November 1884-February 1885 Berlin conqueror-conference on the latter, cannot provide the fundamental needs of Africans.  This “Berlin-state”, with its bumbling ahistorical name (Nigeria, Niger, Guinea, the Sudan, Chad, whatever!), cannot lead Africans to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the tragic history of centuries of catastrophic occupation. Such change was and never is the mission of this state but an instrument to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest. Essentially, the “Berlin-state” still serves the interests of its creators and those of the ruthless cabal of African-overseers which polices the dire straits of existence that is the lot of Africans currently.

Not-gift

AS IN BERLIN and indeed in Madrid, as the Catalans have shown, the state is not a gift from the gods. On the contrary, the state is a relationship painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings on planet earth to pursue aspirations and interests envisioned by these same human beings within a shared historical and geographical articulation. The African humanity is presently gripped in a grave crisis for survival. Surely, it is aware of this emergency and it is now time that it abandoned the contrived “Berlin-state” in order to survive. This state is a bane of African existence. African nations, namely the Igbo, Ijo, Acholi, Wolof, Yao, Ibibio, Asante, Tonga, Baganda, Mende, Bakongo, Gĩkũyũ, Bambara, Luba, Luo, etc., etc, remain the basis for the regeneration of Africa’s development. These nations are the sites of the continent’s intellectual and other cultural creativity.

Peoples endure; states are indeed transient
States, in the end, are transient as the following attests... Whatever happened to Czarist Russia, Austro-Hungarian empire, the Ottoman empire, the British empire, French Indo-China, Portuguese empire, Spanish empire and, more latterly, the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Treaty states, Josip Broz Tito’s Yugoslavia? Each and everyone of these no longer exists. Gone! Each of them collapsed, somewhere, along their march in history… 

WHAT happened to the constituent peoples in these states that no longer exist? These constituent peoples exist in innumerable new states with names beginning with and from “A” to “Z”. Why did the Polish state disappear from the world map for 123 years (yes, one hundred and twenty-three years!) until its reappearance in 1918? Answer: Gobbled up by predator states, chiefly Czarist Russia. What happened to the Polish people during this century and twenty-three years of varying conquest and occupation? The Poles survived, bidding their time for the restoration of their independence. What would happen to the United Kingdom if the Scots vote “yes” in another referendum for independence? The United Kingdom would cease to exist as the world has known it as a “union” incorporating Scotland since 1707 if a simple majority of the 5 million Scottish people decides on such an outcome. 

In history, therefore, states have actually been transient formations. It is to human beings that survival belongs, provided no genocidist hotchpotch plans to wipe out a targeted group of them as Nigeria is geared, presently, in its long-stretched campaign against Igbo people of Biafra…

SURELY, the 50 million Biafrans, in their own referendum soon, will join the Catalans in this people’s march of freedom.

(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

1st anniversary of International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law publication on a spate of murders of Igbo people in Biafra by genocidist Nigeria occupation forces covering the period May 2016-September 2016

THIS REPORT (at link below) on the stretch of pogroms of Igbo people across Biafra by genocidist Nigeria’s Hausa-Fulani/islamists-led military occurred between May 2016 and September 2016 (not May 2017 and September 2017) was issued by the International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law human rights group on 22 September 2016. The cataclysmic tenor of this genocide is clearly evident for any conscientious genocide student who observes that just changing the May and September designated dates here to 2017 – in other words focussing on current times, automatically brings forth a template of unchanging geographical arena for the perpetration of this crime against humanity but with worse deleterious outcomes.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe)

http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/fwd-international-society-for-civil.html

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

This season of referendums for restoration-of-independence for the peoples of the world - Africa, Europe, Middle East...

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE 50 MILLION Igbo people will soon know the definitive date of their historic referendum for the restoration-of-independence, 51 years after the Anglo/nigerianá launch of the genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by the duo-genocidist states during phases I-III of the genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Tens of thousands additional Igbo have been murdered, subsequently, since the genocidists embarked on phase-IV of the slaughter on 13 January 1970.

The Igbo will join the Kurds in Iraq who have announced 25 September 2017 as their referendum date and the people of Catalonia in Spain who have called theirs on 1 October 2017.

THE straightforward choice for the Igbo referendum is as follows: Do you want Biafra or Nigeria

(McCoy Tyner Quartet,  “Blues on the corner” [personnel: Tyner, piano; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Ron Carter, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 April 1967])

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FWD: International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law sends out emergency alert to the world on another genocidist Nigeria planned massacre across Biafra – to be carried out on Friday 23 September 2016

[reposted as in the original, issued on Thursday 22 September 2016]

SAFETY AND SECURITY ALERT FOR CITIZENS OF SOUTHEAST AND SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA: Exposing Planned Massacre Of Innocent Citizens By Army Using Anti Sit-At-Home As Cover

(Onitsha Nigeria, 22^nd of September 2016)-It has come to the notice of International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law that the Nigerian Security Forces particularly the Nigerian Army, are at it again. Our extensive investigations clearly indicate that ahead of tomorrow’s [FRIDAY 23 SEPTMBER 2016] Sit-At-Home protest organized by leading Pro Biafra groups particularly the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB); there are heavy deployment of soldiers in all nooks and crannies of the Southeast and the South-South parts of Nigeria; with the Southeast being the worst affected.

By close-source and open-source information available to us, the most affected States are Anambra and Abia; followed by Imo, Ebonyi and Enugu. In the South-south are Rivers, Delta, Akwa Ibom and Cross River States. Most affected cities now under siege are Onitsha and Aba. Others are Owerri, Enugu, Umuahia, Abakiliki, Asaba, Okigwe, Nnewi and Nkpor. As at this morning, there are heavy presence of soldiers in major areas of Onitsha and Aba.

As a matter of fact, we saw passersby retiring home from work and trade being frog-jumped and whipped by soldiers at Upper Iweka and Onitsha Niger Bridge areas of Onitsha in the evening of yesterday. Before now, there had been frightening number of military check-points mounted along major Federal and State Roads and other strategic junctions and intersections in the Southeast part of Nigeria. Most of these soldiers are of northern Muslim extractions with entrenched culture of ethnic bias and hatred.

Further reports have it that more reinforcements will be moved from the 82^nd Division of the Nigerian Army in Enugu between 10am today and 5am tomorrow morning to Onitsha, Aba, Umuahia, Port Harcourt and Abakiliki. 

Some road users have also informed Intersociety of long military convoys moving towards Onitsha, Aba, etc, from the Enugu 82^nd Division of the Nigerian Army.

Totality of these is that Southeast is under siege despite total absence of non-State actor security threats. It alarms and worries us at Intersociety as why an indoor-protest will warrant such State obsessive and crude security reactions. Which is why we held and still hold correctly that the flooding of the Southeast and the South-south; particularly the Southeast with battalions of soldiers is for the purpose of repeating the May 30, 2016 Mayhem at Nkpor. It is recalled that dozens of innocent citizens numbering as much as 110 were massacred in hours and scores of others terminally injured by Nigerian Army, after which most of their bodies were picked and later buried in 15 mass graves inside Onitsha Army Barracks.

The most shocking and horrible part of it is that scores of those shot and killed were passersby, onlookers, artisans working in their work places; traders trading in their provision stores and citizens returning from early church services. For instance, three innocent citizens returning from their early morning mass service at St Edmunds Catholic Church along Umuoji Road, Nkpor were among those shot and killed; after which their bodies were picked and taken away by soldiers till date.

 Though most members of the public including leading Christian bodies have since adjusted their programs for tomorrow in compliance with the Indoor or Sit-At-Home protest appeal, but the Nigerian Army has further aided same unprofessionally and crudely, by creating security panics and atmosphere most likely to result in mass murder or massacre of innocent members of the public; claiming that those shot and killed are those caught armed and enforcing sit-at-home or forcing people going about their lawful businesses back to their homes. These the Security Forces particularly soldiers will label “violent/armed IPOB or MASSOB Members”.

That is to say that the Nigerian Security Forces particularly the Nigerian Army have endangered any form of public movement tomorrow in the Southeast and the South-south parts of Nigeria, particularly in the cities of Onitsha, Asaba, Enugu, Nkpor, Umuahia, Owerri, Abakiliki, Nnewi, Aba, Port Harcourt and so on.

It is therefore too risky and death-prone for road users including traders, civil servants, school children, artisans, okada, keke and commercial bus drivers, etc to leave their homes tomorrow particularly in the Southeast part of Nigeria and South-south cities of Asaba, Port Harcourt, Uyo, etc. This is because they can get killed individually or in group by soldiers and their bodies taking away and bury secretly in mass graves. This is more so when most of the soldiers being drafted are serial ethnic cleansers and hate killers.

To avoid innocent members of the public being massacred by soldiers, navy and police personnel on their way to markets, offices, workstations, vehicular terminals and schools, all civil members of the public are called upon to stay off roads tomorrow and avoid risking their safety and lives. This passionate appeal should respectfully be fully complied with and acted upon and disseminated in all cities of the Southeast and the South-south parts of Nigeria.

Signed:

Emeka Umeagbalasi, BSc Criminology & Sec. Studies; MSc (c), Peace & Conflict Studies

Board Chairman, International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law-INTERSOCIETY

Mobile Line: +2348174090052

Email: info@intersociety-ng.org

Website: www.intersociety-ng.org

Obianuju Igboeli,  LLB, BL; LLM (c)

Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Program

Mobile Line: +2348034186332

Chinwe Umeche, LLB, BL

Mobile Line: +2347013238673

Head, Democracy & Good Governance Program

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe 

Haiti is more African than many “countries” in Africa; Haiti is definitely more African than a Nigeria

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THERE ARE are 120 million African Brazilians or 57 per cent of Brazil’s current total population of 210 million. As a result, there are more Africans who live in Brazil than any other (continental) African “country”, including Nigeria, despite the latter’s “187 million”-population claim which most people know is bogus.

Shenanigans

SINCE the early 1950s when the British occupation regime in Nigeria concocted that historic untruth that the north Nigeria region was “50 per cent of [Nigeria’s] population without any census” (added emphasis), to quote the startling acknowledgement of the infamous deed 50 years later by Harold Smith, a British conquest administrator who was then deployed in capital Lagos where he worked on the programme (see Harold Smith, “How the British undermined democracy in Africa”, Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, Biafra Revisited, 2006: 41), all subsequent countrywide organised censuses and outcomes in Nigeria have been grossly fraudulent.

Equally, according to Smith, the British rigged the all-important 1959 pre-restoration-of-independence Nigeria election in favour of the north region. This was to ensure that this obsequiously pro-British Hausa-Fulani islamist leadership of the “country”, opposed to the restoration of African freedom, was placed as overseers by the seemingly departing British occupation to safeguard Britain’s assumed strategic and economic interests in Nigeria in perpetuity – regardless of the quest of unfettered African independence which the Igbo constituent nation in the east had pursued with rigour since the 1930s. Even the north region’s essentially continue-British occupation-party, the so-called Northern People’s Congress, was conceptualised and inaugurated by the British themselves, as Harold Smith duly recalls. In effect, this north Nigeria region has the unenviable accolade across the entire Southern World (Africa, Asia, the Caribbean/Central America, South America) of being home to one of the few peoples who wanted the occupation of their lands indefinitely by Britain, a premier pan-European power of global conquest since the 15th century CE.

Genocide

YET these shenanigans of cooked census figures and rigged election returns were not considered by the British to be conclusively an ironclad guarantee to continue its hegemonic control of Nigeria ad infinitum. They thought, additionally, that they had to guarantee this control through some “blood covenant” enacted with their north Nigeria region islamist clients (now in supreme leadership position in Nigeria, thanks to the British diktat!) in which the Igbo or the “talented people”, as Jeremy Paxman describes them in his Empire: What Ruling the World did to the British (London: Viking, 2011: 272), who led the 30-year-old campaign to terminate the British conquest, to the mutual discomfiture of Britain and north Nigeria, were subjected to a gruesome genocide. The Anglo-Nigeria dual perpetrators of the genocide murdered 3.1 million Igbo between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970 (phases I-III).

This is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa and its horrendous slaughtering score represents 25 per cent of the Igbo population at the time. This genocide, phase-IV, continues presently. Earlier on in 1945 and 1953, under the very nose of the British occupation, the north Nigeria region carried out premeditated pogroms against Igbo people domiciled in the north cities of Jos and Kano (respectively), murdering hundreds of the immigrants and looting/destroying hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of their homes and other property. No perpetrator of these pogroms were ever prosecuted by the British. In retrospect, leading scholars of the Igbo genocide now designate the Jos and Kano pogroms as effectively “dress rehearsals” for the genocide itself.

DNA, raison d’être, interpellation

TRUE to its haunting DNA signature, genocidist Nigeria emerges from these decades of the Igbo killing fields as arguably the most notorious Africa-emplaced anti-African peoples state in contemporary history. Two seemingly empirically contrasting foreign policy outreaches by this state are highly illustrative of the ways and means the driving kernel that constitutes its raison d’être are interpellated in the architectural ground zero of the Igbo pogroms-genocide, 1945-2016. First, in 1986, despite the numerical minority of muslims in Nigeria compared to its overwhelmingly majority populations of christians, indigenous African religions and others, not to mention that the state proclaims itself  “secular” in its constitution, the islamist head of regime got the “country” admitted, secretly, into the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. There were no public discussions or debates in Nigeria whatsoever on this application. The OIC 57-state membership stretches across four continents including Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.

Second, in May 2016, Nigeria plays a central role in the working sessions of the African Union to block the application of Haiti to become a full member of the African Union on the grounds that, quoting an article in its constitution, membership to the organisation is only open to “African [continental] states”. Quite extraordinarily, or so it appears, the same Nigeria which smuggled itself into the transnational and transcontinental OIC 30 years ago, actively intervenes to deny Haiti AU membership because the latter is located in the Caribbean even though 95 per cent of its 10 million population are African. 

Not surprisingly, the north region islamist Nigeria leadership clearly prioritises and privileges its islamic antecedents and affinities over any African sensibilities or indeed correspondences. But even more profoundly challenging for this retrograde leadership, Haiti, which has retained the premier flagship of the African World resistance to 500 years of the pan-European tyranny of enslavement, conquest, occupation and immiseration, and quest for freedom, is precisely what islamist north Nigeria region is not and does not wish to be nor ever countenance as we have shown here. Most urgently, Haiti reminds Nigeria of Igbo people, Biafra, which it and suzerain state Britain have sought to destroy during the course of one-half century. Haiti is therefore more of an African state than a Nigeria and the following sketch underscores the saliency of this Haitian heritage.

Freedom Saint Domingue!

FRENCH-occupied Haiti, or Saint Domingue, was the wealthiest African-enslaved territory of the Americas – the “greatest individual market” at the apogee of the quadcontinental outlay (Africa, Europe, North America, South America) and the Caribbean 18th century pan-European enslavement of the African humanity. Haiti accounted for two-thirds of French foreign trade at the time. In 1791, the enslaved Africans of Saint Domingue, “The Black Jacobins”, as CLR James, the celebrated African Caribbean scholar would describe them in such searing irony and sardonicism in his 1938-published classic of the same title on the subject, embarked on an historic uprising to free themselves. They were led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, himself enslaved, who had begun the armed mobilisation of tens of thousands of Africans in 1789. After 13 years of campaign which included a range of epic battles, the Africans “defeated in turn the local whites and the soldiers of the French monarchy, a Spanish invasion, a British expedition of some 60,000 men, and a French expedition of similar size under [Napoleon] Bonaparte’s brother-in-law [General Charles Leclerc]”, CLR James, Black Jacobins, 1980: ix.

The transformation of enslaved Africans, as James notes perceptively in his study, “trembling in hundreds before a single white man … into a people able to organise themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day … is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement” (James, 1980: ix). Following the African victory in 1803, they proclaimed and established their republic of Haiti on 1 January 1804. France, in turn, 213 years later, has yet to recover from the catastrophic damage to its psyche elicited by its defeat in Saint Domingue. As a result, in its relationship with Africans, wherever this occurs in the world, France feels that it is still fighting Toussaint L’Ouverture and his formidable forces all over again and again… Furthermore, Saint Domingue is gravely etched indelibly in French consciousness as the precursor to the catalogue of crushing French military defeats in the subsequent 150 years of its history.

Reconfiguring the African World 

Haiti, with its illustrious history, will surely be playing a more prominent role in a future African World assemblage of peoples and states – not the currently constricted and contrived AU. It is indeed an inexcusable tragedy and an indictment of contemporary Africa that a Nigeria (strategically allied to extracontinental power Britain) that has spent the past 50 years trying to destroy Igbo people, an African people,  is a member of an organisation that goes by the name African Union. Nigeria should have been expelled, boycotted, ostracised from the councils of African public relations, including the OAU/preceding body, since after its Sunday 29 May 1966 launch date of the Igbo genocide... Surely, the AU is not fit for purpose.

CONSEQUENTLY, the envisaged vastly peoples’-focused African World organisation will learn the lessons of this sordid history and will therefore energetically admit African peoples (and states) wherever they are emplaced in the world particularly those millions across the Americas. It will be instrumental in launching and implementing transformative societal wellbeing initiatives that will be of immense benefits to peoples across this crucial geography created by a cataclysmic history of centuries of conquest. Alas, a free Biafra, freed from genocidist Nigeria and suzerain Britain, is well placed to contribute its own richly resourced quota in the construction of this enterprising African World.

(John Coltrane Quintet, “Brasilia” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Reggie Workman, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: live, The Village Vanguard, New York, US, 1 November 1961])

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

FWD: International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety) UPDATED report on the Biafran Heroes Day/Day of Independence massacres (published: Tuesday 14 June 2016)

International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety), “Biafran Heroes Day massacre: The murdered buried in pieces must be exhumed and rested in peace”

The leadership of International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety) wishes to inform all Nigerians and international watchers that we have totally been vindicated concerning our special publication of June 6, 2016; titled: “How Over 90 Biafran Heroes Day Activists Were Massacred By Security Forces & Buried In Military Cemetery Inside Onitsha Army Barracks”. The link to the special publication under reference is: (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/international-society-for-civil.html)

Our vindication follows the failure of the trio of the Nigerian Army, the Nigeria Police Force and the government of Anambra State, which played leading murderous roles in the genocidal massacre to statistically and correctly deny or contradict findings of ours contained in the special publication.

Today marks 8 days after the release of the special publication, yet the three killer establishment including the Buhari’s administration, have maintained “a conspiracy of silence” or silence of the graveyard, till date. The special publication has commendably received a very wide publicity in leading local and international media, particularly the online and social media.

Biafran Heroes Day massacre: The facts

The findings of ours under reference have not only rattled and unsettled the three killer establishments including the federal government of Nigeria, but have also shamed them locally and internationally by exposing and rubbishing their cooked up basket-load of lies. The government of Anambra State, on its part, has embarked on failed damage control and shedding of crocodile tears. Another aspect of our research findings following our special publication under reference is that the named killer authorities decided to run riot on Nigeria’s traditional media with a basket-load of lies over their genocidal acts in the genocide; the moment they realized that their butchery acts have led to the death of over 120 innocent and unarmed citizens and injuring of dozens of others in less than eight hours.

Following this, a basket-load of lies was let loose; stigmatizing and criminalizing the event organizers and their supporters as well as mangling and suppressing casualty figures with reckless abandon. The government of Anambra State, for instance, on its part, lied unpardonably by claiming that no single activist was killed and that the unarmed and innocent Biafran Heroes Day celebrants were armed with guns with which they opened fire at the security forces and that other arms recovered from them included dynamites, machetes, and Biafran flags.

The army and the police also corroborated the false claims of the government of Anambra State, leading to issuance of another violent order by retiring IGP Solomon Arase, ordering for disarming of armed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) as well as the Nigerian Army, which claimed it acted within the ambit of the rules of engagement, self-defense and use of force.

In all these, lies of unpardonable and alarming proportions were cooked up with intents to pollute the public minds and cover-up their genocidal acts. But for our effective application of investigative analytical method and microscopic evidencing, leading to exposition of the genocidal atrocities under reference particularly the high casualty figures and their secret mass burial; the government of Anambra State, the Nigerian Army, the Nigeria Police Force and the federal government of Nigeria would have succeeded in contaminating the minds of Nigerian public and the international watchers with their lies using a gagged section of the Nigerian media.

The most heinous of the genocidal atrocities committed by the three killer establishments was the brazen denial to the effect that no innocent citizen lost his or her life in the genocidal massacre; whereas above 120 deaths were recorded and above 130 deadly injured citizens were affected. The second heinous part of it all was the coordinated unlawful evacuation of dozens of corpses of the murdered activists and their secret mass burial inside Onitsha Military Barracks cemetery. Totality of these is geared towards cover-up or erasing of traces of criminal culpability of the perpetrators.

Governor Willie Obiano’s crocodile tears

It is therefore shocking and saddening that the same Governor Willie Obiano that went gaga in feeding the whole world with the above named basket-load of lies and labeling of Biafran Heroes Day celebrants as “miscreants and hoodlums”; leading to their mass murder, has suddenly turned around to shed crocodile tears and pretentiously apologetic. He had during his visit at Nkpor, following the special report of ours under reference, promised to “offset the hospital bills of the wounded”.

This is after soldiers and SARS under his security watch, had invaded a number of hospitals including the Nnewi Teaching Hospital and abducted the wounded in their hospital beds; forcing most of the 130 citizens with gunshot wounds in other hospitals in Anambra State as well as Asaba in Delta State to flee their hospital beds and escaped to neighboring States.

It further saddens our heart that the governor who was laboriously elected by the People of Anambra State in November 2013 to protect them and ensure their welfare in accordance with Section 14 (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution, has turned against his people and even worsened their security and welfare. Rather than rising to the occasion to protect his people against the rampaging dictatorial administration of Gen Muhammadu Buhari and its murderous uniformed men, Governor Willie Obiano has joined forces with sworn enemies of his own people.

Today, he is a “king governor” and governor of the elites, while the masses who got him elected are abandoned with their lives, liberties and social values including ethnic identities and rights to bury their murdered loved ones turned to shreds and given away to rampaging ethnic cleansers.

It is on record that out of over 200 innocent and unarmed citizens; mostly in their 20s and 30s, killed in the Southeast and the South-south parts of Nigeria by the Army, the Police and other security forces between August 30, 2015 and May 30, 2016; a period of nine months, following nonviolent and peaceful assemblies organized by self determination activists and campaigners; 160 of them were killed in Onitsha under the violent security watch of Governor Willie Obiano. The 160 dead activists include four citizens killed in Awka on August 30, 2015, over 13 killed in Onitsha on December 2, 2015, over nine killed in Onitsha on December 17, 2015 and over 120 massacred in Onitsha and Asaba on May 30, 2016 as well as 10 others or more found dumped in the mortuary by soldiers and those that died later in hospitals including four that died at the Multicare Hospital at Nkpor. Over 36 of those killed were killed in Aba, Abia State on January 18 and 29, 2016 and February 9, 2016.

We, therefore, consider Governor Willie Obiano’s promise to “offset the hospital bills of the wounded” in the genocidal massacre of May 30, 2016 as a fraud, ill-conceived and grave insult to those himself and others violently departed as well as those who were terminally wounded. This is because the same governor under whose security watch and authorization soldiers went on rampage, invading hospitals and abducting the wounded in their emergency beds, leading to desertion of all but few whose relations are yet to ascertain their whereabouts or afraid to do same; is the same governor “pledging to offset their hospital bills”. At Nkpor Crown Hospital where he reportedly visited, all the gunshot victims on admission, except two dead activists yet to be identified by their families, have long been hurriedly discharged by their families. Mere pledge to offset the hospital bills of the wounded is nothing but “medicine after death” and desperate moves to panel-beat a second term gubernatorial ambition; which is why we regarded the governor’s grossly belated assuaging moves as “failed damage control and shedding of crocodile tears”.

Recommendations

Now that our special publication and its thoroughly investigated contents have forced the government of Anambra State through Governor Willie Obiano to probate and reprobate, there are two frontal ways to remedy the genocidal massacre under reference; local and international ways. Locally, on account of our expository publication, which has forced the killer establishments to the point of dumbness and apologies of the graveyard; the Government of Anambra State must formally and boldly come out publicly to admit and explain fully its roles in the genocidal massacre. These include how much it spent in funding the genocidal operation through its JTF, the total number of innocent and unarmed citizens that were killed, why they were killed, which provisions of the 1999 Constitution and regional and international conventions empower their killers to kill them, how and why their remains were unlawfully gathered from genocidal scenes by the State Government funded JTF and under what condition they were kept before their secret mass burial in Onitsha Army Cemetery, and why and how they were given secret mass burial inside the Onitsha Army Barracks in the noon of Wednesday, June 1, 2016.

The government of Anambra State must also tell the whole world the constitutional basis or otherwise upon which its JTF operatives including soldiers and SARS invaded hospitals where the wounded are receiving emergency medical attentions and got them abducted and taken to undisclosed locations. Nigerians and international watchers must be informed too, of the number of them that were shot dead or forced to die on the process and where they were buried. There are reports of abduction by soldiers and SARS operatives of innocent and unarmed citizens in their homes in late night raids and invasions with some, if not many not seen till date. The general public must be told where they were buried? Was it only automatic weapons with live bullets that were deadly used by soldiers, SARS operatives and police personnel in the genocidal massacre or were raw acid substances and machetes used against innocent and unarmed Biafran Heroes Day celebrants by soldiers, SARS and other security forces?

The government of Anambra State must also recant all the lies it told against the organizers and supporters of the Biafran Heroes Day Anniversary to the effect that “they were armed with guns, shot at security forces, killed two police officers, found armed with dynamites and machetes and that nobody died on the side of the celebrants”. Totality of these constitutes “true gubernatorial repentance, confession and apology”. Shedding of crocodile tears is never good enough and roundly rejected!

Further, all the over 90 corpses of murdered Biafran Heroes Day celebrants secretly buried in a military cemetery inside Onitsha Army Barracks in the noon of Wednesday, June 1, 2016, must be publicly exhumed by the government of Anambra State, demographically and pathologically identified and medically investigated. This should be followed up by placement of government radio and television announcements on government owned stations like ABS TV & Radio, local, national and international NTA as well as privately owned TVs and Radios including Channels TV, AIT, Silver Bird, Galaxy and Minaj TVs, as well as Blaze, Purity and Odenigbo Radios, etc. Such adverts should also be placed on leading newspapers and leading online media as well as government written announcements to be announced in churches, markets and town unions.

The government announcement will contain a call to members of the public and interest groups to send the names and pictures and bio-data of their missing dead relations, recovered dead bodies as well as those shot and wounded by soldiers and other security forces in the genocidal massacre that took place in Nkpor, Onitsha and Asaba between the early morning and late night of May 30, 2016. The government of Anambra State must also designate easily accessible and secured points of contact for collection and verification of such names and pictures as well as ensuring hurdle and threats-free atmosphere for their family members and friends so as to ensure maximum cooperation and responses.

The remains of those murdered by the government of Anambra State and its JTF must be released to their families and in the case of those beyond scientific or pathological identifications; their families must be allowed to go home with sands or earth mud extracted from the secret mass burial sites inside Onitsha Army Barracks.

Each of the families of the 120 murdered activists must paid an initial compensation of N5 million; while each of the families of the 130 wounded citizens must be paid an initial compensation of N2 million cheque. After all these, the government of Anambra State through Governor Willie Obiano must tender unreserved written apology to the Igbo race, the people of Niger Delta, members of the deceased and the wounded families, the IPOB, MASSOB, the BIM, etc and all Nigerians and international watchers. The written apology must be placed on leading government and private media outfits: audio, audio visual, paper and online media.

It is our further recommendation to federal government of Nigeria and the Government of Anambra State to put plans in place to relocate the Onitsha Army Barracks and conversion of the land or space to “Freedom Square” for democratic free speeches and peaceful assemblies to be dedicated to all those innocent and unarmed citizens murdered since August 30th 2015 as well as to the peoples of Southeast and South-south Nigeria.

As for those who played leading murderous roles in the genocidal massacre particularly Col Issah M. Abdullahi (Commander, Onitsha Military Cantonment), Major C.O. Ibrahim (operational commander of the genocidal massacre), CP Hosea Karma (CP, Anambra State Command), DCP Makama (2i/c, Anambra State Police Command), DCP J.M. Kokomo (DC, OPS, Anambra State Police Command) and the State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Tony Nnacheta, etc, they should be administratively dismissed from their duties and charged to court for murder, conspiracy for murder, attempted murder and related others.

If the Federal Government continues to refuse to make the named heads of security forces to account for their heinous crimes as it did in the case of other perpetrators, we shall be left with no other choice than to conclude that “the Federal Government has again, failed woefully under the international law’s “Principle of Complimentarity”; by being unwilling and unable to bring its perpetrators to justice; thereby providing sufficient grounds for international criminal justice including ICC interventions or sufficient resort to other regional and international remedies under the ECOWAS, AU or UN Systems.

The manifest unwillingness and inability of the Federal Government of Nigeria under reference has already made the likes of President Muhammadu Buhari, Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai (COAS), Mr. Solomon Arase (Retiring IGP), CP Hosea Habila (CP, Abia State), Lt Col Sidi Kazim Umar Sidi (Commander, 144 Battalion of the Nigerian Army in Abia State) and ACP Peter Nwagbara (Aba Area Commander) the ICC bound and international criminal justice fugitives; with the test case of them all being retiring IGP Solomon Arase, who leaves the NPF on 21^st of June 2016. We deeply pity him and his post retirement life. This is because there is no longer impunity and immunity for regime atrocities and no hiding place for their perpetrators.

Signed:

For: International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law

Emeka Umeagbalasi, Board Chairman

Mobile Line: +2348174090052

Email: info@intersociety-ng.org, emekaumeagbalasi@yahoo.co.uk

Barr Obianuju Igboeli, Head, Civil Liberties & Rule of Law Program
Mobile Line: +2348034186332

Barr Chinwe Umeche, Head, Democracy & Good Governance Program
Mobile Line: +2347013238673
Website: www.intersociety-ng.org

(Duke Ellington and his Orchestra plays “Blood count”, a composition by Billy Strayhorn [personnel: Ellington, piano; Cootie Williams, trumpet; Cat Anderson, trumpet; Herbie Jones, trumpet; Clark Terry, fluegelhorn; Lawrence Brown, trombone; Buster Cooper, trombone; Chuck Connors, bass trombone; Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone; Russell Procope, alto saxophone; Paul Gonsalves, tenor saxophone; Harry Carney, baritone saxophone; Aaron Bell, bass; Steve Little, drums; recorded: RCA Studio A, New York, US, 28 August 1967/15 November 1967])

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