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.
GIVEN THE CRITICAL links between the salient
features of the politics of the genocidist anti-African peoples’ Fulani-led islamist jihadists and their loyal pan-African constituent nations’ allies of Yoruba and Jukun and Urhobo and Hausa and Edo and Nupe and Jawara and Tiv and Bachama and Kanuri’s mutually shared frenzied escapades of 50 years of looting and pillaging the immense wealth of Biafra, their follow-up blanket occupation of Biafra since 13 January 1970 (jointly employing that notorious “Nigeria” imprimatur in the process), and the overarching architecture of these 50
years of a genocidal campaign, begun on 29 May 1966, few now doubt that the
Igbo termination of the occupation is at once the resumption of their
disrupted historic freedom march from Nigeria and the implementation of an expansive
socioeconomic programme of reconstruction unprecedented in this southwestcenral
region of Africa.
IF THIS is the case, one does not need an “Igbo presidency” in Nigeria to achieve this freedom goal as some Igbo
commentators as well as a few others have, at times, contended, but quite
uncritically. Just recently, according to reports in the media in Nigeria, even
raging génocidaire trooper Olusegun
Obasanjo has waded into this perverse advocacy, “supporting [sic] Igbo
presidency in 2019” (Vanguard, Lagos, 25 January 2017). This very development
is tellingly dreadful. Obasanjo is one of the most notorious operatives of
the Igbo genocide during phases I-III, 29 May 1966-12 January 1970. At its
apogee, 1968/1969, an Obasanjo-led brigade, operating in the outstretched south
Biafra, had converted this panhandle into a veritable killing field in which it
slaughtered tens of thousands of Igbo people –
“… everything that moves … we shoot at
everything, even at things that don’t move”, as
this brigade’s previous commander, the equally notorious Benjamin Adekunle,
had so grimly proffered (The Economist, London 24 August 1968). The skies of Biafra were neither spared from
this “shoot-at-everything” monstrosity by the
Obasanjo death squad. In June 1969, Obasanjo ordered his
air force to shoot down a 3-person crew international Red
Cross aircraft bringing urgent relief to the encircled, blockaded, and
bombarded Igbo, and he later boasted fiendishly of this crime in his memoirs, aptly
entitled My Command (Ibadan & London, 1980: 78-79).
It is anyone’s guess, 50 years on, what indeed
a surviving Igbo-descent president in a Nigeria is supposed to
be working on in their role as “president of Nigeria” as prescribed
by precisely none other than one of the most loathsome of the architects and
operatives of this genocide.
Inexorable logic & repulsive legacy
IT CANNOT be overstressed that no “Igbo presidency”
in Nigeria, not even one reinforced with an all-Igbo personnel in
the key cabinet military/police/“security”-positions can halt this ongoing
genocide by Nigeria and its British suzerain state. This campaign has now
acquired an inexorable logic to its being. The Nigeria military and its adjunct
forces, especially Boko Haram and the Fulani militia, now strategise and
coordinate the prosecution of the genocide as the world has seen particularly
since Muhammadu Buhari, yet another génocidaire, was imposed head of regime in March 2015 by ex-British Prime Minister David Cameron and ex-US President Barack Hussein Obama, the first African-descent president of the United States, 233 years after the founding of the republic. Buhari has murdered 2000 Igbo people since this imposition. Barack Hussein Obama’s support for the Igbo genocide is the abhorrent legacy of his presidency which formally ended a week ago.
What the emergence of Boko Haram and its Fulani
militia cousin (part of the five most deadly terrorist organisations in the
world presently, according to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and
Peace [Melissa Clarke, “Globally, terrorism is on the rise – but little of it occurs in Western countries”, ABC News, 17 November 2015, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-11-17/global-terrorism-index-increase/6947200, accessed 17 November 2015]), has demonstrated in Nigeria is that each of the (now) tripartite-prosecuting
agency of the Igbo genocide has become very much decentred, very much
motivated, very much engagingly virulent. The typical Boko Haram
suicide-operating cell is a handful-strength, in single digits, and none in the
group knows any of the others until they meet at the designated, targeted site
of operation – in which they, invariably, are not expected to survive! If any
survives, the person, of course, becomes a member of a new cell of hitherto
unknown members and the cycle goes on... A Fulani militia cell, employing this
decentred operational flexibility, carries out its terror outrage accompanied by a herd of cattle as cover... An army, air force, navy, so-called DSS
(“department of state services”)/other terror service units based anywhere
in occupied Biafra can organise a murder onslaught anytime on the occupied
population without waiting for “direct authorisation” from the
genocidist high command back in Abuja, Nigeria...
Inalienable
Proir to this amalgamation of genocidist forces in Nigeria, still on the “Igbo presidency”, we mustn’t forget that Nigeria was under the leadership
of an Igbo general when the genocide began on 29 May 1966. Thus, “Igbo presidency” offers no route to the Igbo halting the genocide, one of the
strategic goals of the Biafra freedom movement. None whatsoever. THE ROUTE REMAINS Igbo
freedom from Nigeria. This is an inalienable Igbo right with or without the genocide as I have
argued severally. If the Scots, for instance, one-tenth of the Igbo population
and without a genocide antecedent would wish to leave a union they
have largely been exponential beneficiaries for 300 years (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe,
“Rights for Scots, Rights for the Igbo”, (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rights-for-scots-rights-for-igbo.html), the Igbo, surely, don’t require any
agonisingly turgid historical nor sociological treatise to wish to leave
Nigeria.
Resolution
GENOCIDIST Nigeria does know that the Igbo are not Nigerian. The Igbo are from Biafra. The
Igbo are Biafran. Whilst the Igbo worked extraordinarily hard by playing thevanguardrole in the liberation of Nigeria
from the British conquest (beginning from the mid-1930s to October 1960), the Igbo ceased to be
Nigerian onSunday 29 May 1966. This is the day
Nigeria launched the Igbo genocide. Consequently, Nigeria became a raging tragedy – one of the five deadliest human-made tragedies in African World history. The Igbo renouncement of their Nigerian
citizenship is the irrevocable Igbo indictment on a state that embarked on the
destruction of 3.1 million Igbo people, 25 per cent of this nation’s population
at the time. Tens of thousands of additional Igbo have subsequently been murdered during phase-IV of the genocide which the Nigerians launched on 13 January 1970. The genocide continues unabated. The only future a genocide-state has is that those murdered by it
or others apprehensive that it could extend its murderous heritage on them
abandon it – nothing else. In the specific Nigeria case, that epitome of
its savagery, presidency nigeriãna,
is at once repudiated for what it is worth. IT IS this possibility of a transformative future of Africa that the Obasanjos and the Adekunles and the Buharis and
others in the genocidist lair and war outposts on the continent responsible for
the murder of 15 million African peoples in the past 50 years dread most
profoundly. Ascent Biafrans have sinceabandonedgenocidist Nigeria
and are on their way torestore their
sovereigntyin their Biafran
homeland as their resilient and confident freedom movement breathtakingly demonstrates
currently. Its outcome on the African scene is of immense epochal consequence,
the likes of which we haven’t seen.
THE BIAFRA FLAG is on the ascent. There can
never be a reversal. This will be
one of the most outstanding breakthroughs of the freedom movement of the age.
(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Spectrum” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe’s books on the Igbo genocide and Biafra include Readings from Reading:
Essays on African Politics, Genocide, Literature (2011), Biafra Revisited
(2006) and African Literature in Defence of History: An essay on Chinua Achebe
(2001)
Poet, linguist, historian, academic, journalist and authorof the seminalThey Came Before Columbus (1976) which explores thousands of years of African relationship with the peoples of the Americas, prior to the European invasion and occupation of these west continents beginning in the 15th century CE
AWARD-WINNING tenor saxophonist and bandleader and versatile composer including jazz standards “I remember Clifford”, “Blues march”, “Whisper not”, “Stablemates”, “Are you real?” and “Along came Betty” and scores for films on television (including Mission: Impossible, Ironside, M*A*S*H)
(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Whisper not” [personnel: Blakey, drums; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Golson, tenor saxophone; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; recorded: live, L’Olympia, Paris, France, 22 November 1958 & 17 December 1958])
(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Blues march” [personnel: Blakey, drums; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Golson, tenor saxophone; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; recorded: Van Gelder Studios, Hackensack, NJ, US, 30 October 1958])
(Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, “Moanin’” [personnel and recording dates as in “Blues march” above])
(Harold Wilson:“would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took...”)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe BRITISH SUPPORT FOR the perpetration of the Igbo genocide, this foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, 29 May 1966-Present Day,
is driven principally by one factor: to “punish” Igbo people for playing the
vanguard role in the mid 1930s-October 1960 to terminate 100 years of Britain’s conquest and occupation of the constellation of states and peoples of this southwestcentral region of Africa that it calls Nigeria. At the apogee of the genocide, 1968/1969,
British Prime Minister Harold Wilson is adamant: “[I] would
accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” Nigeria to
destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy, 1977: 122).
Harold Wilson probably had the perverted satisfaction of having
his Nigerian genocidist subalterns on the ground in SWC Africa,
3140 miles away from Britain, perform
far in excess of their “massa”’s grim
target by murdering 3.1 million Igbo instead – an outcome coldly recounted in
Wilson’sownmemoirs where he
notes that the Nigerian génocidaires, equipped zealously by Britain,
expended more small arms ammunition in its campaign to achieve its annihilative
mission in Biafra than the amount used by the British armed
forces “during
the whole” of
the Second World War (Harold Wilson, Labour Government, 1964-1970: A Personal Record, 1971: 630, added
emphasis).
(New York Art Quartet plays “Mohawk”, a composition by Charlie Parker [personnel: John Tchicai, alto saxophone; Roswell Rudd, trombone; Reggie Workman, bass; Milford Graves, drums; recorded: Nippon Phonogram, New York, US, 16 July 1965])
Historian, writer, activist archivist on sources and resources on African history in the Americas and Europe, 1900-1938, and seminal contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, beginning in 1919, with New York public library’s Schomburg Center for research in African American culture named in his honour
(Schomburg Center, New York)
(Andrew Hill Sextet, “Spectrum” [personnel: Hill, piano; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Richard Davis, bass; Tony Williams, drums; recorded: Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, US, 21 March 1964])
As the dreadful milestones (below) show, the European World-conqueror/conquest state in Africa, right from the outset, in the wake of the notorious November 1884-February 1885 Berlin conference, is at once an occupying and genocide state. The lead conqueror-powers – Belgium, Germany, Britainand France, in that chronological order, would directly or indirectly (e.g. French military brigade based and operating in Rwanda, 1994) perpetrate genocide in which millions of constituent peoples in Africa are murdered in designated countries in eastcentral, south and southwestcentral regions of the continent they occupy or quasi-occupy during the course of 139 years, 1878-2017. Gory “boys” of empires In the cases of Nigeria, Rwanda, the Sudan, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning with Nigeria’s inaugural launch of the Igbo genocide on 29 May 1966 in which it murders 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population during 44 subsequent months, the African/African-Arabised-islamist “inheritors” of this conquest-genocide state (latter variant applicable especially to Nigeria and the Sudan), or the “boys” of their respective Europe-based suzerain “massas”, essentially take over as the primary-agent executors of genocide in contemporary Africa. These “boys” of empires – the Yakubu Gowons, the Olusegun Obusonjos, the Mobutu Sese Sekos, the Obafemi Awolowos, the Mohammed Shuas, the Idi Amins, the Muhammadu Buharis, the Jean-Bédel Bokassas, the Benjamin Adekunles, the Omar al-Bashirs, the Gbadamosi Kings, the Murtala Mohammeds, the Hissène Habrés, the Ibrahim Taiwos, etc., etc, have sought zealously and ruthlessly to compete with their “massas” to keep the slaughtering thresholds of these stretches of genocide in Africa at the optimal level. So, in these past 50 years, i.e. since 29 May 1966, these gruesome “boys” of empires have murdered 15 million African peoples in genocides and other wars across Africa. These “boys” will continue to murder Africans as fiendishly as ever for the dual, shared, interests of theirs and their “massas” until they are stopped by the very peoples in their slaughtering trail. African agency Indeed, they will be stopped by none other than an African agency on the African ground. This agency must dismantle the extant “Berlin-state”, the “curse” in Africa as historian Basil Davidson has succinctly described it, precisely that terror lever that the empires employ to not only expropriate Africa’s gargantuan wealth day in, day out, but, more intrinsically, murder Africans. In the current epoch, the disciplined and focussed Biafran freedom movement articulates the urgency of this agency. As I have argued elsewhere (http://re-thinkingafrica.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/herbert-ekwe-ekwe-it-is-indeed-striking.html ), the imperative of the Biafra mission, given the catastrophe of the agelong revolving genocides unleashed by the empires of Europe on the peoples of Africa, is to construct a civilisation where African life, human life, is fundamentally sacrosant.
Haunting milestones: 1878-2017
(1) 1878-1908: King Leopold II-led Belgian monarchy/state-organised genocide of constituent peoples in the Congo basin of central Africa (2,442,240 sq km landmass, 80 times the size of Belgium) – 13 million African constituent peoples murdered (see, especially, multiple research by historian and linguist Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem– particularly his Histoire générale du Congo: De l'héritage ancien à la République Démocratique [Paris: Duculot, 1998], p. 344)
(2) 1904-1907: German state-organised genocide of Herero people in Namibia – 65,000 out of 80,000 Herero murdered or 80 per cent of the total Herero population wiped out
(3) 1904-1907: German state-organised genocide of Nama people in Namibia – 10,000 Nama were murdered or 50 per cent of the Nama population destroyed (4) 29 May 1966-12 January 1970 (phases I-III): Nigeria state-organised genocide of Igbo people, foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa, supported, centrally, by Britain (diplomatically, politically, militarily) – 3.1 million Igbo or one-quarter of this nation’s population murdered, representing highest number in genocide fatality of a constituent nation or people in Africa during these past 138 years
(5) 13 January 1970-Present Day (phase-IV): Nigeria state-organised/Boko Haram/Fulani Militia genocide of Igbo people (the duo Nigeria genocidist state allies here, actively since early 2000s)– tens of thousands of Igbo murdered (Boko Haram is presently deadliest terrorist group in the world– has murdered more people in southwestcentral Africa than those murdered by ISIS in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere, according to the New York’s Institute for Economics & Peace study, “Global Terror Index 2015”, November 2015; Fulani Militia, or so-called Fulani herdspeople as often tagged in the media in Nigeria, is also a subject of focus in this study)
(6) 1994: Rwanda state-organised genocide of Tutsi people, with a French military brigade stationed in the country during the period implicated in the perpetration of this crime – 800,000 Tutsi murdered
(7) Since mid-1990s: Democratic Republic of the Congo/contiguous states/proxy states-facilitated/organised genocide of African constituent peoples in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – 8 million constituent African peoples murdered
(8) 2003-2oo6: The Sudan state-organised genocide of Darfuri people – 300,000 Darfuri murdered
(9) Since 2006: The Sudan state-organised genocide of African constituent peoples in the south of the country (NubaMountains, South Kordofan, Blue Nile) – tens of thousands of African constituent peoples murdered
(Charles Mingus Sextet, “Passions of a man” [personnel: Mingus, piano, vocals; Jimmy Knepper, trombone; Rahssan Roland Kirk, flute, siren, tenor saxophone, manzello, strich; Booker Ervin, tenor saxophone; Doug Watkins, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; recorded: Atlantic Studios, New York, US, 6 November 1961])
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).
