Mmuo Biafra intervenes! British establishment’s extraordinary indictment of its lead client-state in Africa and the world: Nigeria is a “fantastically corrupt” country

(David Cameron)

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Speaking at a reception with a number of top British establishment figures (captured on camera – see video below) which noticeably include head of state Queen Elizabeth II, parliamentary speaker Bercow, archbishop of Canterbury Welby and former justice secretary Grayling, David Cameron, British prime minister, pronounces: “We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain … Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”. We must note, though, that despite Cameron’s affirmation or rather because of it, Nigeria works exponentially for Britain. On 29 May 1966, just 5 months before David Cameron was born, Britain, under prime minister Harold Wilson, supported Nigeria militarily, diplomatically and politically as it launched the genocide against Igbo people. 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population were murdered during the course of 44 dreadful months. This is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa and the most gruesome campaign of extermination of a people in African history. This genocide continues today. It is led by Muhammadu Buhari, a genocidist trooper right from the outset 50 years ago, and the islamist head of the Nigeria regime currently visiting London on a so-called corruption summit. The genocide is supported fully by Cameron, just as his 1960s’ predecessor. 

“Punishment”, capital net-exporters, cavalier

Britain waged the genocide against the Igbo as “punishment” for the vanguard role Igbo people played between the mid-1930s and October 1960 to terminate 75 years of its conquest and occupation of Nigeria and emerged as the effective suzerain-state power over Nigeria subsequently, safeguarding its vast economic and strategic interests in this southwestcentral Africa region. Besides, kakistocratic Nigeria, in addition to the other “Berlin-states” dotted across Africa, “corrupt” or not, have consistently been net-exporters of capital to Britain and the rest of the West since 1981. At least the gargantuan sum of US$400 billion has been transferred in this track of transaction during the period which is tagged “legitimate” by its recipients. Except African peoples in these “Berlin-states” embark at once on freeing themselves from this quagmire of existence in states essentially constructed to serve the European World in perpetuity, a westerner born in 2016 would conceivably, in another 50 years, update David Cameron’s assured, champagne-sipping breathtaking performance on the subject but this time around with even more cavalier and pompous disposition than what was on display earlier on in the day...

(David Cameron in conversation ... Nigeria: “fantastically corrupt...”)

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Africa 2015 – Freedom and restoration(s)

Freedom is human right. This right is inalienable. Freedom could, conceivably, mean different things to different people. In this epoch of febrile quest for freedom from the collapsing and collapsed “Berlin-states” of subjugation implanted in Africa, any African peoples who, for instance, wishes to chart a future based on the precepts of their forebears in the 12th century Contemporary Era (CE) or even way back, to, say, 8th century Before Contemporary Era (BCE), has the right to pursue this goal. Equally, any African peoples who believes that their aspirations lie in working through the immense challenges of the 21st century CE and projecting targets of creativity and transformations subsequently, must exercise this right.

As everyone knows, the “Berlin-states” that Europe created in Africa, in the aftermath of that infamous Berlin conference on conquest (November 1884-February 1885), cannot lead Africans to the reconstructive changes they deeply yearn for after the tragic history of centuries of occupation. Such change was and never is the mission of these states but instruments to expropriate and despoil Africa by the conquest.  As in Berlin, thankfully, states are not a gift from the gods but relationships painstakingly formulated and constructed by groups of human beings here on earth to pursue aspirations and interests envisioned by these same human beings.

Civilisation

To achieve the goal(s) of any of these stipulated paths does not therefore require anyone to embark on murdering someone else or have themselves murdered in the process. Since Nigeria’s launch of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, fifteen million Africans have been murdered in genocides and other wars in Africa.

For the future survival of the African humanity, let no more die for the path to their envisaged civilisation or, in other words, howsoever this civilisation a people chooses is construed. It, surely, can be attained and sustained without committing a crime, particularly genocide – heinous crime against humanity.

(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

2013 – time for reflections

In a seemingly paradoxical vein, 2013 begins on an optimistic note for Africa. Even though more states in Africa failed in 2012 than the previous year and yet more will fail or indeed collapse in this new year
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/africas-berlin-states-of-dysfunction.html),
it is to the next dual indices of crucial data on the continent that the immense possibilities of African restorative and reconstructionary quests are typecast – Africa remains, since 1981, a net-capital exporter to the Western World
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/salute-to-those-who-make-difference.html) and African émigrés in Europe, the Americas, Asia and elsewhere presently constitute the primary exporters of capital to Africa itself (Ibid.). In a sentence: The African humanity currently generates, overwhelmingly, the capital resource that at once sustains its very existence and is intriguingly exported to the Western World. It is precisely the same humanity that those who benefit immeasurably from this conundrum (over several decades and are guaranteed to benefit indefinitely from it, except this is stopped by Africans) have consistently portrayed, quite perversely, as a “charity case”. Surely, this historic big lie of characterisation can no longer be sustained. Africa is endowed with the human resource and capital resource (in all its calibration and manifestation) to build advanced civilisations provided Africans abandon the prevailing “Berlin-states” of dysfunction that they have been forced into by the West’s creators
(http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/african-population-food-and-future_22.html).

Just in case there are any constituent nations in Africa who still wish to be “boxed in” in these states, they are very welcome to their preferred choice but should be honourable and democratically disposed not to obstruct those who will embark on this inalienable right to flight of freedom. 2012 is a reminder, if we indeed needed one, that the blueprint for African transformation will neither be scripted nor actuated in a London, Paris, Brussels, Washington or New York, or even in a Beijing or Delhi as some fanciful commentaries have appeared to contend. The answer remains firmly lodged in Africa. So, the dynamic of Africa state failure, cited earlier, is nothing else but symptomatic of that defining truism of contemporary Africa: for the fundamental interests of African peoples, the post-(European)conquest state is not fit for purpose
(http://www.tensoesmundiais.net/index.php/tm/article/view/249/307).  

Breakthrough!

2013 will particularly be a year of intense reflections across Africa on the continent’s genocidal regimes. This year marks the 47th anniversary of the beginning of the Igbo genocide, during which the Nigeria state slaughtered 3.1 million Igbo children, women and men – a quarter of the total Igbo population at the time – between 29 May 1966-12 January1970. This is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. Africans elsewhere remained largely silent on the gruesome events in Nigeria but did not foresee the grave consequences of such indifference as 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 every geographical region of Africa during the period have demonstrated catastrophically.  Just as the Nigerian operatives of mass murder appeared to have got away without censure from the rest of Africa, other genocidal and brutal African regimes soon followed in Nigeria’s footpath, murdering those additional 12 million people in their countries considered “undesirables” or “opponents”. These 12 million murdered in the latter bloodbaths would probably have been saved if Africans had intervened robustly to stop the initial genocide against the Igbo people.

Chinua Achebe’s memoirs on the Igbo genocide, There was a Country, is the most important book published in 2012 on and for Africa. It is a priceless gift to a much-beleaguered people, a compulsory reference to our understanding of Africa of the last 47 years – this turbulent age of pestilence. Just a few months before his 28th birthday, in 1958, Achebe writes Things Fall Apart, the classic restorative narrative of African affirmation which subverts the European conqueror’s frantic efforts to construct a historiography of African-memory erasure in the wake of a devastating conquest. Fifty-four years later, just a couple of months before his 82nd birthday, in 2012, the literary interventionist genius publishes There was a Country, an indefatigable reminder to an oft-complacent world of the Igbo genocide and the incredible survival of Igbo people. 

Forty-seven years and 15 million murders on, Africans finally realise that there cannot be any meaningful advancement without abandoning the post-conquest state, essentially a genocide-state. This state is the bane of African existence and progress. Africans on the ground are working tirelessly to build extensively decentralised new states that ensure full democratic aspiration, participation and representation for constituent nations and the individual. It is in the longer-term interest of the rest of the world, especially in the West, to support African transformations initiated by its peoples rather than the “helmspersons”/“helmsconstituent nations” ostensibly entrenched in the hierarchical architecture that maps the typical continent’s genocide-state.