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.
Influential surgeon, one of the pioneers of open-heart surgery, founder of Chicago’s Provident Hospital in 1891 that plays a crucial role in African American health provision and care in the region during the epoch Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
Asante-descent leading African freedom proponent during African enslavement in the United States, sailor, successful and expansive businessperson, owner of a shipping conglomerate, founder of schools and promoter of educational opportunities for African Americans as well as others, actively involved in the early 19th century’s African American and African British return-to-Sierra Leone projects Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe
One of the most outstanding leaders of the freedom movement in history
(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])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe WHAT IS NIGERIA?This is Africa’s most notorious genocidist state. It was created by Britain in the early 1900s after its conquest and occupation of the constellation of states of nations and peoples in the southwestcentral region of Africa including the republican Igbo states to the east, the west monarchical Edo and Yoruba state configurations and the expansionary militarist Arabo-islamist Hausa-Fulani feudal principalities to the north. A hundred years on, genocidist Nigeria remains a British client-state, run on its behalf by its Hausa-Fulani confederates. It exists principally to serve Britain and this local overseer conglomerate and continues to offer Britain outlandishly excellent returns, using any conceivable socioeconomic/geostrategic
variable, year in, year out. Igbo genocide: Age of pestilence Nigeria inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence – starting from that dreadfulmid-morning of Sunday 29 May 1966when it embarked on the studiously-organised mass murder of its Igbo population domiciled in north Nigeria and later elsewhere in the country and subsequently expanded toBiafra. Britain, under the premiership of Harold Wilson, coordinated the genocide to “punish” the Igbo for this nation’s vanguard role in leading the campaign to terminate the British occupation during the course of the 1930s-1960. In this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, Anglo-Nigeria murdered 3.1 million Igbo people or 25 per cent of the Igbo population in 44 months, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. Africa had not witnessed the unspeakable barbarity and range of such slaughtering of a people for 60 years; definitely, not since the German-organised genocideagainst the Herero, Nama and Berg Damara peoples of southwest Africa between 1904-1907 (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/blog-post_23.html). Besides Britain, Nigeriawas supported in the execution of the Igbo genocide by a range of (now) collapsed states and failed/failing states which provided it with critical military, financial, political and diplomatic resources: principallythe Soviet Union,German Democratic Republic, Egypt,Syria, theSudan,Algeria,Saudi Arabia,Chad,Niger, Guinea-Conakry. Since 12 January 1970, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocides and other wars inAfricacarried out by similarly ruthless African regimes (especially in Rwanda, the Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo) and their foreign allies, including France.
Phase-IV On 13 January 1970, 47 years ago to the day, evidently not content with the appalling magnitude and consequences of its death campaign, Nigerialaunched phase-IV of the genocide which now focused on degrading/dismantling the surviving frames of the (pre-genocide robust) Biafran economy, pulverised during phases-I-III of the previous 44 months, a programme intertwined gruesomely by spates and stretches of pogroms in which thousands of additional Igbo have been murdered. These murders have continued, unabated, to this day, as catalogued in the following link, especially from sub-title phase-IV: http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/phase-i-sunday-29-may-1966-30-march.html
Since imposing genocidist trooper Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s head of regime in March 2015 in a collaborative deal with David Cameron, former British prime minister, the outgoing US President Barack Obama has actively supported this phase of the Igbo genocide (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-this-piece-is.html). Being the first African-descent president in the US of 233 years of history and given the scourging dehumnisation of the African humanity in the US during the stretch of this period, Obama’s support of this raging genocide against an African people in this continent of his fathers is an incalculable tragedy, a legacy of catastrophic proportions. Since Buhari was installed in power, 2000 Igbo
have been murdered by his genocidist military and his two other adjunct forces,
Boko Haram and Fulani militia – two of the world’s five deadliest terrorist
organisations. Neither Obama’s White House nor his state department nor his embassy
in Nigeria has ever condemned any of these murders. It has been left to the audacious outreach of the London-based Amnesty International to shatter the deafening silence emanating from the Obama presidency on this ongoing genocide (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafra-activists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/, accessed 23 November 2016). Breakthrough The Igbo will overcome this genocide, despite the horrendous assault and its evidently hydra-headed drive. They possess the resilience to survive and triumph over this ordeal. They surely will. This Igbo resistance to the genocide is arguably the most defining struggle underway in Africa currently. The breakthrough of the Biafra freedom movement, very much on the cards, is of immense epochal consequence for Biafrans and the future direction of Africa. One cannot exaggerate the import
of this development.
(John Coltrane Quartet, “Dusk-Dawn” [personnel: Coltrane, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, NJ, US, 16 June 1965])
Okee nwanyi mmadu, first African (continental) woman published novelist – Efuru, 1966, and, soon after,Idu, which she begins to work on at the onset of the Igbo genocide (mid-1966) and later publishes in 1970; her landmark works as well as those of sociologistKamene Okonjo’s open up the expanse of possibilities in Igbo Women/African World Studies within which the scholarship, artistry and writings of subsequent generations of intellectuals, working worldwide, have flourished immensely
(Alice Coltrane Quintet, “Mantra” [personnel: Coltrane, piano; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone (heard on the right channel and takes the second saxophone solo); Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone (takes the first saxophone solo and heard on the left channel); Ron Carter, bass; Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studio, Dix Hills, New York, US, 26 January 1970])
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).
