Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe SPARK of enduring Biafran creative
energy! Celebrated cultural and literary critic and executive editor of The Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria, beginning
February 1983, when he embarks on the radical
transformation of the focus and scope and
qualitative threshold of journalism practicenot seen in Africa’s
southwestcentral region in 50 years – since the edifying
standard set for post-(European)conquest Africa journalism by Nnamdi Azikiwe,
political scientist, academic, poet, journalist, multiform entrepreneur, leader
in Igbo vanguard role in the drive for restoration of
independence for the African peoples and states in this region (mid-1930s-October
1960) which the British conquest and occupation had contemptuously called “Nigeria”…
BIAFRA is on the way back to
continue the liberatory project disrupted so viciously by this longest genocide
in contemporary history: to teach basic lessons on resolve and competence, to
overcome challenges, to exercise transformative initiatives, to affirm life, African
life, as sacrosanct, particularly given 52 years of Fulani
islamist/jihadist-controlled genocidist Nigeria and its (especially) Yoruba/Edo/Hausa/Urhobo/Nupe/Edo/Tiv allies’ programmed
savagery to destroy the lives of 50 million Igbo people.
(Max Roach Quartet, “Speak, Brother, Speak!” [sides I and II; personnel: Roach, drums; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Mal Waldron, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; recorded live, The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, US, 27 October 1962])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
(Born 22 June 1963, Asaba, Biafra: onye amuma ndiigbo)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe FOOTBALLER, sports administrator, journalist, freedom exponent, onye amuma ndiigbo, the courageous 4-year-old who, at the third month of phase-III of the Igbo genocide, survives the Saturday 7 October 1967 mass execution of 700 Igbo boys and men by a genocidist Nigeria military brigade commanded by Murtala Mohammed and Ibrahim Haruna and Ibrahim Taiwo in Asaba, twin Oshimili River port, during which most of his family and other relatives are murdered; author of Blood on the Niger (TriAtlantic Books, 2006), compulsory reference in the study of the Igbo genocide, carried out by the Hausa-Fulani/islamist-led Nigeria and its suzerain state Britain, which meticulously catalogues the savagery and aftermath of the Asaba execution.
Hundreds of other Igbo boys and men are also slaughtered by the Mohammed-Haruna-Taiwo brigade in several other towns and villages in this Anioma region of Biafra, west of the Oshimili, as Okafor Udoka has shown (Okafor Udoka, “Lest we forget the genocide of Asaba”, Skytrend News, 6 October 2014). Ifeanyi Uriah, now 63, another survivor of the Asaba execution, recalls, in an interview with Udoka, the haunting memory of 7 October 1967:
I cannot tell this story without tears in my eyes … They [genocidist brigade] ordered everyone to come out to the [Asaba] town square … They were honest with us. They told us they were going to kill us. They took us to the mounted machine guns. Then it dawned on us that it was true. I was standing with my older brother at the edge of the crowd. He was holding my hand. He had always taken care of me. We shared the same bed. He was the first to be dragged away by the soldiers. He let go of my hand and pushed me into the crowd. He was shot in the back. I could see the blood gushing from his back. He was the first victim of the massacre. Then all hell let loose. I lost count of time. To this day, I live with the smell of the blood of my brethren that night. Even the heavens wept for the victims of this holocaust. Finally the bullets stopped (Udoka: 2014).
*****NIGERIA and BRITAIN murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of Igbopopulation during the three phases of the genocide – 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. This genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa and the most gruesome and expansive genocide of contemporary history, inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence, and its phase-IV, launched on 13 January 1970 in which tens of thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered, continues till this day.
The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. The world can stop this ongoing genocide. To understand the politics of the Igbo genocide and the politics of the “post”-Igbo genocide is to have an invaluable insight into the salient features and constitutive indices of politics across Africa in the past 50 years.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Alabama” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Jazz Casual [Ralph Gleason], National Educational Television, KQED Studios, San Francisco, US, 1 November 1963])
Many newspapers in
genocidist Nigeria have been reporting the latest in a stretch of the now routinized
murder outrages that any of the tripartite wings of the state’s notorious killing
machine (military, Boko Haram, Fulani militia) unleashes on the people in occupied Biafra.
Barely 48 hours
after US Secretary of State John Kerry engaged that inveterate amalgam of Hausa-Fulani
islamist north region Nigeria leadership in a 2-day tripartite summitry (23-24
August 2016) in Sokoto and Abuja – with Sa’ad Abubakar, head of Sokoto
caliphate, Muhammadu Buhari, head of genocidist regime, and the heads of north region’s
19 administrative provinces, the Fulani militia struck ghastly in Ndiagu,
northcentral Biafra.
Existential In yet another bout
of savagery that maps out its trajectory in Biafra, underscoring its ultimate existential
objective to destroy Igbo people, the militia disembowelled an Igbo woman (name
not yet published), six months into her pregnancy, and hacked to death Lazarus
Nwafor, a 26 year-old student from a local seminary. (The very grisly, distressing
still-pictures that carry this savagery have accompanied the story in the
Nigeria media and are trending online.) The Fulani militia is an affiliate and
cousin of Boko Haram, the world’s most ruthless terrorist organisation, a far
greater murdering outfit than ISIS, as the Institute of Economics and Peace is
keen to stress (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index-increase/6947200, accessed 17 November 2015).
Reminder
The world hardly
requires reminding that both US President Barack Obama and ex-British Prime Minister
David Cameron imposed Muhammadu Buhari as head of regime of genocidist Nigeria
in March 2015. Both individuals are hopefully now aware of the Ndiagu savagery
and the world will once again observe if they, and their associates, will break
the now entrenched Anglo-US states’ catastrophic roles in the ongoing Igbo
genocide, this most gruesome and foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html).
(George Russell Sextet, “Thoughts” [personnel: Russell, piano; Don Ellis, trumpet; Dave Baker, trombone; Eric Dolphy, bass clarinet; Steve Swallow, bass; Joe Hunt, drums; recorded Riverside Record, New York, US, 28 May 1961])
“Every people should be originators of their own
destiny”
(Martin Delany, 19th century African American freedom
nationalist and writer)
Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
(TS Eliot, “Choruses from the Rock”, 1934)
The Muhammadu Buhari islamist regime in Nigeria
has effectively turned Biafra into a free-fire zone where its genocidist
occupying troops can pick and choose where
and when to murder the next Igbo
child, woman or man. Since October 2015, particularly, genocidist commanders
have roamed brazenly, ceaselessly and sadistically across Biafra with troopers pinpointing
population layouts for the next targeted firing range: Onicha … Igwe Ocha …
Asaba … Oka … Enuugwu … Aba … Igwe Ocha … Asaba … Enuugwu … Igwe Ocha … Onicha …
To ensure that all conceivable spheres of this savage
ritual are exhausted, the genocidists have also employed their Boko Haram and Fulani
militants’ adjunct terrorists in this slaughtering spree. Buhari authorised the
Boko Haram massacre of Uzo-Uwani, north Biafra, on Monday 25 April 2016 in
which 200 Biafrans asleep in their beds were murdered (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/uzo-uwani-herbertekwe-ekwe-in.html). Earlier on in January (5th,
2016), Fulani militants abducted and
murdered Akaeze Ofulue III, the obi or king of Ubulu-Ukwu, southwest Biafra,
west of the Oshimili River.
On Friday 5 May 2016, the troopers wrestled the
relay baton of death from their Boko Haram surrogate in Uzo-Uwani and returned
to Aba, 100 miles to the south, for yet another free firing stop-over at the
commercial city, murdering 3-8 Biafrans this time… The last time they free-fired
Aba was 9 February 2016. On that occasion, a genocidist brigade murdered 22
Biafrans.
Silence
Both the British and US governments which
imposed Buhari in power in March 2015 have remained deafeningly silent over this
slaughtering in Biafra (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html), a policy dictated principally to shield themselves from
obvious censure from both domestic and international opinion for their appalling
complicity. The British state broadcaster, the BBC, which broadcasts to southwestcentral
Africa intensely, and has supported the Igbo genocide campaign throughout the
past 50 years (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/bbc-nationalists-or-secessionists.html), is also studiously quiet over the catastrophe. Nowhere else on
earth, in 2016, are any peoples murdered so monstrously with scant responses of
revulsion from the rest of the world especially from the chanceries of those chiefly
responsible for propping up this most ruthless genocidist regime in Africa.
Acknowledgement
As they keep mute on this raging savagery, it
appears that both Cameron and Obama administrations and the BBC are reconciled
to the awareness that the Biafrans do not consider themselves some doomed sitting
ducks awaiting their dreadful enemies to ultimately decide their fate. After
all, self-defence, as most people know, is at once a natural right and a right guaranteed
in the universal declaration of human rights to which Britain, the US, and
indeed genocidist Nigeria are all signatories.
(John Coltrane Sextet, “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost”, part-I of the five-part suite Meditations [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, percussion, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone, tambourine, bells; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; Rashied Ali, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 23 November 1965])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
