81st birthday of Emmanuel Obiechina

(Born 20 September 1933, Nkpo, Igboland)

Pioneering and distinguished scholar of the historic Onicha (Oshimiri Delta) market literature genre and versatile literary critic and author

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

58th birthday of Steve Coleman

(Born 20 September 1956, Chicago, US)

Intensely creative alto saxophonist and composer who categorises his music (as well as that of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and other masters) as “spontaneous composition”

(Dave Holland Quintet, “Blues for CM” – featuring Steve Coleman [personnel: Holland, bass; Kenny Wheeler, trumpet; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Coleman, alto saxophone; Marvin “Smithy” Smith, drums; recorded: ECM, New York, US, February 1987]) 

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Why the Scot referendum is a turning point

The Scots have voted 55 per cent to 45 per cent to reject restoration-of-independence in their Thursday 18 September 2014 referendum. The Scots must be commended for voting democratically to decide their future in the outcome they have chosen. Thankfully, this process of democratic participation and affirmation on the crucial question of a people to exercise their right to decide for freedom is not restricted to Scottish history and geography but is indeed universal (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html). 

Many across the world have rightly acknowledged that this recent Scottish process is a turning point. The genie is out of the bottle. Many more of these freedom referendums will surely follow across the globe, but especially in Africa. Even if a people ends up saying “No” to restoration-of-independence, as the Scots have demonstrated, they would have had the right, inalienable, to make that decision – themselves.

 (John Coltrane Quartet, “The last blues” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 10 June 1965])

 Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

63rd birthday of Ben Carson

(Born 18 September 1951, Detroit, US)

Distinguished neurosurgeon, academic, and author of several books of inspiration including the bestselling Gifted Hands (2009), his autobiography

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

92nd birthday of Agostinho Neto

(Born 17 September 1922, ĺcolo e Bengo, Angola)

Physician, poet, co-founder of Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) and first African president of Angola, November 1975, after the people’s victory terminating 400 years of the Portuguese conquest and occupation

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Thoughts on the survivor-victor

No people who survives genocide is a “loser”: Armenians, Berg Damara, Boulangui, Darfuri, Herero, Igbo, Jews, Kongo, Luba, Mangbetu-Azande, Mongo, Nama, Tutsi... Someone or a people that survives genocide is at once a survivor and victor, hence that stunning incantation of the triumph of life itself on the morrow of overcoming the slaughter: “Happy Survival”! 

Foundation

In the case of the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970, the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa in which Nigeria murders 3.1 million Igbo (one-quarter of this nation’s population), the agency that has consistently acknowledged this fact of the survivor-victor, throughout this dreadful epoch, is, pointedly, none other than Nigeria – the key perpetrator of this crime itself. Whatever else explains why Nigeria segues almost effortlessly to a new phase of its campaign, as early as 13 January 1970, to coincide with that Igbo celebratory life-invocation-of- “Happy Survival” that they proclaimed to the whole world:

(a) new vistas of charging murder trails, since, targeting and slaughtering tens of thousands of Igbo domiciled particularly in the geographies of north Nigeria but also elsewhere in the country with the murder-machine now morphed into Boko Haram   

(b) enhanced disarticulation/degradation/dismantling of Igboland economy and programmed “marginalisation” of the well-known contending assets of Igbo intellectual/politico-economic-cultural establishment – a crucial plank of the overarching goal of the Nigeria occupation

(c) unrelentingly fiendish valorisation of the genocide by genocidist “theorists”/ commanders/commandants/heads-of-regime including the Saturday 13 September 2014 outrageous, fulsome “eulogisation” of septic génocidaire Benjamin Adekunle by head-of-regime Goodluck Jonathan

(d) just as Adekunle, a Boko Haram-forebear, both organically and operationally, since 29 May 1966, those who currently execute Boko Haram’s slaughtering on the ground can look forward to being candidates for future bouts of “eulogisation” by a Jonathan or some other successor Nigeria head-of-regime

(John Coltrane Quartet, “Living space” [personnel: Coltrane, soprano saxophone, McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])

We are here

Yet despite the desperation and savagery of genocidist Nigeria, the Igbo refuse to go under. Igbo will never go under, thanks to the resilience of the survivor-victor. In dazzling contrast, the world presently watches, unmistakeably, as Nigeria trots along to an ignominious collapse, having run the course of its bloody trail in history. Consequently, for the Igbo, they have their work cut out as they embark on constructing a new civilisation in their new state in the aftermath of Nigeria. They don’t only have to negate, in its entirety, that which was Nigeria, but subvert the very ideational crucible which inaugurated this pulverising nightmare 129 years ago.  

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

125th birthday of Claude McKay

(Born 15 September 1889, Nairne Castle, Clarendon, Jamaica)

One of the leading intellectuals of the 1920s-1930s Harlem Renaissance – prolific poet, novelist, autobiographer, essayist, journalist, whose works include “If We Must Die” (1919), Harlem Shadows (1922), Home to Harlem (1928),  Banjo (1929), A Long Way from Home (1937),  Harlem (1940), My Green Hills of Jamaica (1979) and Amiable With Big Teeth (the eagerly awaited new novel from a 1941 McKay manuscript discovered in 2009 [68 years later!] in Columbia University archives)

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe