Vanguard on the move

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

BEGINNING in the early 1930s to October 1960, the Igbo nation played the vanguard role in the campaign for restoration-of-independence to terminate 100 years of the British conquest and occupation of the multiplicity of states and peoples of southwestcentral Africa region which the conqueror contemptuously tagged “Nigeria” – the “n*****” area/land.

Britain responded with the genocide of the Igbo and employed its Fulani/islamist clients on the ground, inveterately anti-African who hitherto opposed the restoration-of-independence drive, to enforce this mass murder. The genocidists slaughtered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population during the course of 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Tens of thousands additional Igbo have been murdered subsequently. 

THE Igbo have not only survived the genocide but are now in the vanguard to construct Biafra, an African peoples-centred state, that at once effectuates African control of its destiny not seen for centuries and the collapse of the Anglo/European World anti-African “Berlin-states” or constellation of EuroConqueror league states dotted across Africa such as the “Nigerias”.

(John Coltrane, Ascension {edition II} [personnel – solo sequence –: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, Dewey Johnson, trumpet, Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; John Tchicai, alto saxophone; Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; Marion Brown, alto saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano;  Art Davis, bass; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 28 June 1965]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Vanguard on the move

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

BEGINNING in the early 1930s to October 1960, the Igbo nation played the vanguard role in the campaign for restoration-of-independence to terminate 100 years of the British conquest and occupation of the multiplicity of states and peoples of southwestcentral Africa region which the conqueror contemptuously tagged “Nigeria”. Britain responded with the genocide of the Igbo and employed its Hausa-Fulani/islamist clients on the ground, inveterately anti-African who hitherto opposed the restoration-of-independence drive, to enforce this mass murder. The genocidists slaughtered 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of the Igbo population during the course of 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Tens of thousands additional Igbo have been murdered subsequently. 

THE Igbo have not only survived the genocide but are now in the vanguard to construct Biafra, an African peoples-centred state, that at once effectuates African control of its destiny not seen for centuries and the collapse of the Anglo/European World anti-African “Berlin-states” dotted across Africa such as the “Nigerias”.

(John Coltrane, Ascension [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone, Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Dewey Johnson, trumpet; John Tchicai, alto saxophone; Marion Brown, alto saxophone; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Archie Shepp, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano;  Art Davis, bass; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 28 June 1965]) 

Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe

Lest we forget: The Igbo, vanguard outreaches, Nigeria – circ. 1934-29 May 1966

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

THE IGBO WERE ONE of the very few constituent nations in what was Nigeria, prior to 29 May 1966 – launch date of the Igbo genocide carried out by Nigeria and Britain, who understood, fully, the immense liberatory possibilities ushered in by 1 October 1960 (presumed, scheduled date of termination of 100 years of the British conquest and occupation of these southwestcentral states and peoples of Africa) and the interlocking challenges of the vast reconstructionary work required for state and societal transformation in the aftermath of foreign occupation.

Vanguard
The Igbo had the most robust economy in the country in their east region homeland, supplied the country with its leading writers, artists and scholars, supplied the country’s top universities with its vice-chancellors (president/rector) and leading professors and scientists, supplied the country with its first indigenous university (the prestigious university at Nsukka where, at its Enuugwu medical school, the first open-heart surgery in southwestcentral Africa was successfully performed on 1 February 1974), supplied the country with its leading and most spirited African World theorists, philosophers and practitioners, supplied the country with its top diplomats, supplied the country’s leading secondary schools/high schools with its head teachers and administrators, supplied the country with its top bureaucrats, supplied the country with its leading businesspeople, supplied the country with an educated, top-rated professional officers-corps for its military and police forces, supplied the country with its leading sportspersons, essentially and effectively worked the country’s rail, postal, telegraphic, power, shipping and aviation services to quality standards not seen since in Nigeria … And they were surely aware of the vicissitudes engendered by this historic age precisely because the Igbo nation played the vanguardist role in the freeing of Nigeria from Britain, beginning from the mid-1930s.

It is precisely in response to this defining Igbo role in this very strategic region of Africa that the Anglo-Nigeria empire struck back most gruesomely with the genocide, begun on Sunday 29 May 1966.

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

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe