What the Igbo genocide is and isn’t…

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

QUITE appositely, we should begin by stating what the Igbo genocide is not. 

It is definitely not a “civil war” (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/the-oxymoron-civil-war-is-strange-beast.html); neither is it “Nigeria-Biafra ‘civil war’” nor “first ‘civil war’ in Africa” nor “forgotten genocide” nor “ignored genocide” nor “hidden genocide” nor indeed any of the other tracks of quaint, sanitising, obfuscating, occultating and misleading words and phraseologies bandied about here and there whose proponents, particularly in some sectors in academia, media, conference circuits/discussion platforms, more often than not aim to pursue a hardly disguised project of denialism of this crime against humanity.

Premeditated

ON THE contrary. The Igbo genocide is a premeditated mass slaughtering of Igbo people, as Igbo people, planned and executed by Britain, Nigeria’s suzerain state headed then by Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Nigeria, Britain’s client state in southwestcentral Africa, a Fulani islamist jihadist-led state, allied to a coterie of pan-African constituent nations in the “country” including, principally, Yoruba, Tiv, Edo, Urhobo, Jukun, Bachama, Nupe, Kanuri, Jarawa. 

At the apogee of phase-III of the genocide in 1968-1969, Wilson reminded the world, on record, of what was the end game of this dreadful mission he chiefly directed from the comfort of his residence and office at 10 Downing Street, London, 3000 miles from Biafra. Harold Wilson informed 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).

Very much in tune with this Wilsonian logic of Igbo mass slaughter, Benjamin Adekunle, a fiendish Nigeria genocidist commander in south Biafra told a news conference in August 1968, attended mostly by foreign journalists: “I want to prevent even one I[g]bo having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces march into the centre of I[g]bo territory, we shoot at everything, even at things that don’t move” (The Economist, London, 24 August 1968). 

Olusegun Obasanjo, an equally fiendish genocidist commander in south Biafra, specifically ordered his air force in June 1969 to shoot down any international relief-bearing aircraft flying urgently needed supplies to the encircled, besieged and bombarded Igbo. On the 5th of June, a week after Obasanjo’s infamous orders, Gbadamosi King of the Nigeria genocidist air force shot down a clearly marked, in coming relief-carrying International Committee of the Red Cross DC-7 plane near Eket, south Biafra, with the loss of its 3-person crew.

Obasanjo’s perverse satisfaction over the aftermath of this horrendous crime is chillingly revolting as he notes clearly in his memoirs, appropriately entitled My Command:

The effect of [this] singular achievement of the Air Force especially on 3 Marine Commando Division [the notorious unit Obasanjo, who later becomes Nigeria’s head of regime for 11 years, commanded] was profound. It raised morale of all service personnel, especially of the Air Force detachment concerned and the troops they supported in [my] 3 Marine Commando Division (Olusegun Obasanjo, My Command, 1981: 79).

THE principal language used in the prosecution of the genocide is Hausa. Appropriately, the words of the ghoulish anthem of the genocide, published and broadcast on Kaduna radio and television throughout the duration of phases I-III (May 1966-January 1970) of the crime, are in Hausa:

Mu je mu kashe nyamiri

Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su

Mu chi mata su da yan mata su

Mu kwashe kaya su

English translation

Let’s go kill the damned Igbo

Kill off their men and boys

Rape their wives and daughters

Cart off their property 

Elsewhere, Nigerian genocidist documentation on this crime is equally malevolent and brazenly vulgar. A study of the genocide-time/“post”-genocide era interviews, comments, broadcasts and writings on the campaign by key genocidist commanders, commandants and “theorists” and propagandists such as Yakubu Danjuma, Yakubu Gowon, Hassan Katsina, Ibrahim Haruna, Oluwole Rotimi, Obafemi Awolowo, Muhammadu Buhari,  Anthony Enaharo and Allison Ayida underscores the trend. 

Quite auspiciously, the record of those who ordered/executed the Igbo genocide makes no pretences, offers no excuses, whatsoever, about the goal of their annihilative mission – such was the maniacal insouciance and rabid Igbophobia that propelled the project. The génocidaires were not into obfuscating over any spheres associated with their studiously orchestrated goal. 

THE génocidaires stood firmly by the dictates of their assignment. Consequently, students and scholars of this genocide must always be on the alert to challenge anyone, subsequently, who wishes to deny, in any way, this crime of genocide against Igbo people in which its very lead génocidaires, as we have shown, have been openly and distinctly expressive about their mission.

Duo-states genocidists

As the evidence overwhelmingly shows, Britain is the principal agency in the perpetration of the Igbo genocide. Nowhere else in Africa nor indeed the Southern World, during the 1950s-1970s, does any of the seemingly departing European occupying-power in a conquered country effectuate the crime of genocide of a constituent people as a means of safeguarding its strategic interests subsequently as Britain’s sordid record in Nigeria shows. This genocide continues unabated since January 1970 (phase-IV of genocide) with tens of thousands of additional Igbo murdered across occupied Biafra and in Nigeria itself especially in the north region including those massacred by the Boko Haram terrorists and their Fulani militia cousin in the past seven years. 

NO OTHER PEOPLES IN AFRICA have suffered such an extensive and gruesome genocide and incalculable impoverishment in a century as the Igbo. Britain and its client genocide-prosecuting state Nigeria will surely account for this crime against humanity as both states are fully aware, being signatories to the relevant international treaties, that there are no statutes of limitation in international law in the pursuit, apprehension, prosecution and sentencing of individuals and institutions involved in committing genocide. Genocide is a crime against humanity.

The Igbo genocide is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. It inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. The genocide has been studied most expansively subsequently. World Igbo scholars have since pushed the parameters of their studies of the genocide unto the very frontiers of the underlying crucibles on which the European-constructed anti-African peoples “Berlin-State” of contemporary Africa are grounded. Thus, to understand the politics of this ongoing Igbo genocide  is to have an invaluable insight into the salient features and constitutive indices of politics across Africa in the past 51 years. The “Berlin-State” is a bane to African peoples’ existence and progress; it’s a neo-enslavement plantation emplacement formulated by Europe, particularly Britain and France (with their fatuous names – Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Guinea-B, Guinea-C, Guinea-E, whatever!) to perpetuate European World expropriation of legendary African resources in perpetuity. African peoples must exit this state at once to survive and transform their battered inheritances. They have no choice.

TRAGICALLY, Africans elsewhere remained largely silent on the gruesome events in Nigeria and so did not foresee the grave consequences of such indifference as subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan (latter three in the Sudan) and Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in other wars and conflicts in every geographical region of Africa during the period have demonstrated catastrophically: Liberia, Mali, Libya, Egypt, Côte d’Ivoire, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, southern Guinea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Central African Republic, Nigeria (Boko Haram insurgency in north, northcentral regions). The haunting killing fields have indeed stretched, almost inexorably, from Igboland, Biafra, to the rest of Africa…

Treasure trove

THANKFULLY, for the interest of posterity, the Igbo genocide, perpetrated by the duo Anglo-Nigeria states, is one of the most documented crimes against humanity. Nothing is “hidden”/“ignored” here! Leading university and public libraries across Europe (particularly in Britain, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Denmark and Sweden) and North America have invaluable repositories of books, state papers (including, crucially, hitherto classified material now declassified as part of mandatory timeframe provisions and freedom-to-information legislations), church papers, human rights/anti-genocide/anti-war groups’ campaign papers, reports, photographs and interviews, Red Cross/other third sector papers, reports and photographs, newspaper/newsmagazine/radio/ television/video archives and sole individual depositories, some of which are classified as “anonymous contributors”. 

These data variously include extensive coverage of news and analyses of varying features of the genocide between May 1966 and January 1970 (phases I-III of genocide) as well as still photographs and reels and reels of film footage of the devastating impact of the genocidist’s “starvation weapon” attack on Igbo children and older people, the genocidist air force’s carpet bombings of Igbo population centres (especially refugee establishments, churches, shrines, schools, hospitals, markets, homes, farmlands and playgrounds) and the haunting photographs and associated material that capture the sheer savagery of the slaughter of 100,000 Igbo in north Nigeria towns and villages and elsewhere in parts of west Nigeria (especially Lagos and suburbs, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Oyo, Benin) during phase-I of the genocide in May to October 1966. A stream of these archival references has flowed steadily onto the youtube website as well as other internet outlets and much more material on the genocide will be available online in the months and years ahead.

On the whole, these documentations are a treasure trove for the conscientious scholar and researcher on the genocide. For the would-be prosecutor of the perpetrators of this crime, they couldn’t have wished anything more for that crucial resource base to embark on their historic enterprise. A total of 3.1 million Igbo, or 25 per cent the nation’s population at the time, were murdered in the genocide, the worst in Africa since the 19th century. 

ON THE MORROW of 44 months of unrelenting slaughtering, Nigeria, the direct perpetrator-on-the-ground, emerges as the undisputed obligatory haematophagous monster in this southwestcentral region of Africa. Its death-march on the Igbo and Igboland was soon relayed, across Africa, as earlier indicated, resulting in the murder of additional 12 million Africans in the subsequent 40 years.

(George Russell Sextet here plays “Nardis”, a composition by 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])

*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe books on the Igbo genocide and Biafra include Readings from Reading: Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011), Biafra Revisited (2006) and African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe (2001)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Friday 19 May 2017 urgent news focus: Nigeria occupying genocidist brigade in Biafra attack a Biafra women’s conference meeting in Abiriba, east Biafra, stripping several women bare right in the hall of the assembly…

 

(Friday 19 May 2017: Some of the delegates gather soon after the horrendous assault by Nigeria genocidist brigade of the Biafra women’s conference meeting in Abiriba, east Biafra)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

IF EVER the world requires a reminder, this assault on Igbo women conference delegates in Abiriba underscores the definitive stride of the Hausa-Fulani islamist jihadist-led Nigeria/British suzerain state genocide against Igbo people. During phases I-III (29 May 1966-12 January 1970), the genocide anthem’s lyrics in Hausa language from its ghoulish sound track, broadcast on Kaduna radio and television state-run radio and television services, are hauntingly stark:

Mu je mu kashe nyamiri
Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su
Mu chi mata su da yan mata su
Mu kwashe kaya su

English translation

Let’s go kill the damned Igbo

Kill off their men and boys

Rape their wives and daughters

Cart off their property

POINTEDLY, the anthem’s mission and thus the genocide strike at the very heart of  Igboland gender relations for over a millennium – clearly what the Igbo sociologist Kemena Okonjo has described programmatically as Igbo dual-gender complementarity. This genocide’s annhilative goal is total: Igbo people – the Igbo female and the Igbo male. 

Alas, the genocide perpetrators do not as yet recognise the current, often noisy NGO-ish, easy-money churning, pointedly grandstanding a-historical discourses in the West World that flag off  “girl-child” vs “male-child” binaries in the attempt to engineer the humanity of especially African peoples for envisaged, suggestively catastrophic gender “re-ordering” schemas... For now, the duo Anglo-islamist Nigeria that has murdered Igbo people for the past 51 years, murdering 3.1 million and tens of thousands more, duly acknowledge a composite Igbo humanity and this is what they pursue and the Abiriba attack is encapsulated in that strategy... 

AS USUAL, the Biafran resistance recorded comprehensively all principal Nigerian genocidist troopers (including rank details and formations) who participated in the Abiriba outrage earlier today. These genocidists and their chief, Muhammadu Buhari,do know too clearly that there are no statute of limitations in international law in the apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of anyone or institution involved in the act of committing genocide. 

The Igbo will seek to prosecute all these troopers in Abiriba who attacked Igbo today, Friday 19 May 2017, as well as all those who have committed similar heinous crimes against the Igbo since the genocide was launched on Sunday 29 May 1966.

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

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Commanding the genocide against Igbo people...

The Nigerian state murdered 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men, a quarter of this nation’s population, during the genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. This genocide is still ongoing (phase-IV). Yakubu Gowon headed the junta that executed the genocide and Obafemi Awolowo, a lawyer, was his deputy, prime minister, the genocidist “chief theorist” for the campaign and head of the all-powerful finance ministry. Awolowo also programmed and inaugurated phase-IV of the genocide, in full speed currently, aimed to dismantle/degrade Igbo economy, pre-genocide Africa’s most dynamic and resourceful economy, in perpetuity. The ghoulish anthem of the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly in Hausa on Kaduna state-run radio (short wave band) and television throughout its 44 months’ duration, has the following blatantly-expressed gruesome lyrics for this crime’s tactical and strategic goals (and would have undoubtedly influenced similarly virulent genocidist broadcasters in Rwanda 30 years later): 

Mu je mu kashe nyamiri
Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su
Mu chi mata su da yan mata su
Mu kwashe kaya su
(English translation: Let’s go kill the damned Igbo/Kill off their men and boys/Rape their wives and daughters/Cart off their property)

Those responsible for the death of 3.1 million Igbo people must face trial for this crime against humanity. Thankfully, there is no statute of limitations in the prosecution of genocide in international law. If the Nigerian genocidists had been tried after 12 January 1970, Africa would probably have been spared the additional 12 million who have been murdered in subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan (all three in the Sudan) and Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in other wars in Africa. 

Finally, a genocide-state, such as Nigeria, has indeed no future as its raison d’être is nothing else but murder and murder and murder...



Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Commanding the Igbo genocide…

The Nigerian state murdered 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men, a quarter of this nation’s population, during the genocide of 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. This genocide is still ongoing (phase-IV). Yakubu Gowon headed the junta that executed the genocide and Obafemi Awolowo, a lawyer, was his deputy and genocidist “theorist” for the campaign and head of the all-powerful finance ministry. The ghoulish anthem of the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly in Hausa on Kaduna state-run radio (short wave band) and television throughout its 44 months’ duration has the following blatantly-expressed gruesome lyrics for this crime’s tactical and strategic goals: 

Mu je mu kashe nyamiri
Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su
Mu chi mata su da yan mata su
Mu kwashe kaya su
(English translation: Let’s go kill the damned Igbo/Kill off their men and boys/Rape their wives and daughters/Cart off their property)

Those responsible for the death of 3.1 million Igbo people must face trial for this crime against humanity. Thankfully, there is no statute of limitations in the prosecution of genocide in international law. If the Nigerian genocidists had been tried after 12 January 1970, Africa would probably have been spared the additional 12 million who have been murdered in subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, South Kordofan (all three in the Sudan) and Zaïre/Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in other wars in Africa. 

Finally, a genocide-state, such as Nigeria, has indeed no future as its raison d’être is nothing else but murder and murder and murder...