Nd'Igbo -- What's In A Date?

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

For the Igbo, prior to 29 May 1966, three important holidays were high up on their annual calendar: the Igbo National Day, the iri ji, or the New Yam Festival, and 1 October. The latter was the day of celebration for the restoration of independence for peoples in Nigeria after 60 years of the British conquest and occupation. Or, so were the thoughts predicated on this date’s designation…

Origins

The Igbo were arguably the one constituent nation in what was Nigeria, again prior to 29 May 1966, who understood, fully, the immense liberatory possibilities ushered in by 1 October and the interlocking challenges of the vast reconstructionary work required for state and societal transformation in the aftermath of foreign occupation. They had the most robust economy in the country in their east regional homeland, supplied the country with its leading writers, artists and scholars, supplied the country’s top universities with its vice-chancellors and leading professors and scientists, supplied the country with its first indigenous university (the prestigious university at Nsukka), supplied the country with its leading and most spirited pan-Africanists, supplied the country with its top diplomats, supplied the country’s leading 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. The commentator, Sabella Ogbobode Abidde, couldn’t have been more emphatic in summarising the thrust of the Igbo mission during the period:

The Igbo nation ha[s] attributes most other Nigerian nationalities can only dream of and are what most other nations [are] not. The Igbo made Nigeria better. Any wonder then that the Igbo can do without Nigeria; but Nigeria and her myriad nationalities cannot do without the Igbo? Take the Igbo out of the Nigeria equation … and Nigeria will be gasping for air.

Genocide

The Igbo’s break with Nigeria occurred catastrophically on 29 May 1966. On this day, leaders of the Hausa-Fulani north region (feudal overlords, muslim clergy, military, police, businesspeople, academia, civic servants, other public officials and patrons), who were long opposed to the liberation of Nigeria (there were no comparable clusters of political, cultural, ideational, religious, national or racial groupings anywhere else in the Southern World, during the epoch, which had a similar, unenviable disposition of hostility to emancipation from the European occupation of their lands as the Hausa-Fulani leadership), launched waves of premeditated genocidal attacks on Igbo migrant populations resident in the north. These attacks were later expanded to Igboland itself, boosted particularly by the robust participation in the slaughter by the Yoruba, Urhobo, and Edo nations of west Nigeria as well as others elsewhere in the country.

The Yoruba support for the genocide, for instance, was a squelching cadence of opportunism. The Yoruba had been outmatched by the Igbo spectacularly in the 1930s-1960s’ Igbo-Yoruba classic, competitive “preparatory drive” to develop the high-level humanpower and ancillary resources required to run the post-conquest state after the British departure. They therefore viewed the outbreak of the mid-1966’s Igbo mass killings as welcome season to “avenge” their “loss” during the great rivalry of those three decades, clutching unto any bomb or missile available to lob, remorselessly, into an Igbo home, Igbo school, Igbo shrine, Igbo church, Igbo hospital, Igbo office, Igbo market, Igbo farmland, Igbo factory/industrial enterprise, Igbo children’s playground, Igbo town hall, Igbo refugee centre … Benjamin Adekunle, one of the most fiendish of the genocidist commanders of the time had no qualms, whatsoever, in boasting about the goal of this horrendous mission when he told a 1968 press conference, attended by journalists including those from the international media:

… We shoot at everything that moves, and when our forces march into the centre of I[g]bo territory, we shoot at everything, even at things that do not move.

Between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970, Adekunle and his extended trail of genocidist hordes, starting from the sabon gari-killing fields’ launch pads that were Igbo homes and churches and offices and businesses in north Nigeria to the “centre of I[g]bo territory”, 400 miles to the south, did murder 3.1 million Igbo people – a haunting tally which indeed includes those slaughtered during the Adekunleist “everything that moves”-targeting, duly promised in the infamous press briefing. As for the outcome of the “things that do not move”-assault category, the genocidists were hardly off target. Their gratuitous destruction of the famed Igbo economic infrastructure, one of the most advanced in Africa of the era, is indescribably barbaric. This was followed, subsequently (post-January 1970), by the genocidists’ implementation of the most dehumanising raft of socioeconomic package of deprivation in occupied Igboland, not seen anywhere else in Africa. The brigandage includes the following: seizure of the multimillion Igbo capital asset in Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt and elsewhere; comprehensive sequestration of Igbo liquid asset in Nigeria (as of January 1970), bar the £20.00 (twenty pounds) doled out to the male surviving head of an Igbo family; exponential expropriation of the rich Igbo oil resources from the Abia, Delta, Imo and Rivers administrative regions; blanket policy of non-development of Igboland; aggressive degradation of socioeconomic life of Igboland (As if another empirical reminder is yet required to underscore this obviously grave situation at stake, I observe, as I write these lines, the following breaking news item flashing on my monitor from the Lagos Vanguard [Monday 16 November 2009]: “Journalists in … Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, [Enuuwgu] and Imo [central Igboland administrative regions] have threatened to embark on hunger strike to protest the bad conditions of federal roads [there]. They regretted that the failed roads [have] claimed many lives and property worth billions of naira.”); ignoring ever-expanding soil erosion/landslides and other pressing ecological emergencies particularly in northwest Igboland; continuing reinforcement of the overall state of siege of Igboland …

These latter measures, which inaugurated phase-III of the Igbo genocide, constitute one of the five acts of genocide explicitly defined in article 2 of the December 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: “deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life designed to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. We mustn’t fail to add, finally, that these measures were drafted and implemented largely by Yoruba economists and lawyers led by Obafemi Awolowo which included, ironically, Sam Aluko who, along with all members of his family, enjoyed the generosity of a political asylum in Igboland when his life was in serious danger during the vicious intra-Yoruba political violence of the early 1960s.

The Harold Wilson-led British government of the day underwrote this devastating stretch of genocide militarily, politically and diplomatically – from its early conceptualisation, liaising continuously with the Gowon-Mohammed-Danjuma genocidist cells of the Nigeria military at varying stages between January and May 1966, to the savage, spiralling aerial, naval and ground onslaughts on encircled Igbo population centres (the “shooting everything”-raging inferno) especially between March 1968 and January 1970. London’s strategic goal in supporting the genocide was to “punish” the Igbo for “daring” to spearhead the termination of the British occupation of Nigeria. This foundational genocide of (European) post-conquest Africa and the worst in 20th century Africa would probably not have occurred without British active involvement. It is inconceivable that a contemporary British government would continue to delay any much longer in offering its unreserved apology to the Igbo for Britain’s role in the execution of this genocide and pay reparations to the survivors.

29th day of May

29 May 1966 is undoubtedly the most tragic day in the annals of Igbo history. It was a day that the Igbo were subjected to an overwhelming violence and unremitting brutality by supposedly fellow countrymen and women. The atrocity was clinically organised, supervised and implemented by the very state that the Igbo had played such a crucial role to liberate from foreign conquest and occupation. This state, now violently taken over by murderous anti-African sociopolitical forces, had pointedly violated its most sacred tenet of responsibility to its Igbo citizens – provision of security. Instead of providing security to these citizens, the Nigerian state murdered 3.1 million of them. The anthem for the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly in Hausa on Kaduna radio and television throughout its duration, was unambiguously clear on the principal objective of this crime against humanity:

Mu je mu kashe nyamiri

Mu kashe maza su da yan maza su

Mu chi mata su da yan mata su
Mu kwashe kaya su

(translation: Let’s go kill the damned Igbo/Kill off their men and boys/Rape their wives and daughters/Cart off their property).

Yet, this 29th day of May 1966 is also the Igbo Day of Affirmation. The Igbo people resolved on this day, the day that marked the beginning of the genocide, to survive the catastrophe. This was the day the Igbo ceased to be Nigerians forever – right there on the grounds of those death camps in the sabon gari residential districts and offices and rail stations and coach stations and airports and churches and schools and markets and hospitals across north Nigeria. They created the state of Biafra in its place and tasked it to provide security to the Igbo and prevent Nigeria, a genocide state, from accomplishing its dreadful mission. The heuristic symbolism defined hitherto by 1 October shattered in the wake of this historic Igbo declaration. For the Igbo, the renouncement of Nigerian citizenship was the permanent Igbo indictment of a state that had risen thunderously to murder its people. The Igbo could not have survived the genocide if they still remained Nigerian. They rightly chose the former course of their fate and not the latter which they cast adrift. Consequently, Nigeria collapsed as a state with any serious prospects for the future. Despite the 4 murderous years of siege, the Igbo demonstrated a far greater creative drive towards constructing an advanced civilisation in Biafra than what Nigeria has all but wished it could achieve in the past 40 years. Nigeria gburu ochu; Nigeria mere alu. Surely, Nigeria couldn’t recover from committing this heinous crime – this crime against humanity.

29 May is therefore a beacon of the resilient spirit of human overcoming of the most desperate, unimaginably brutish forces. It is the new Igbo National Holiday. It is a day of meditation and remembrance in every Igbo household anywhere in the world for the 3.1 million murdered, gratitude and thanksgiving for those who survived, and the collective Igbo rededication to achieve the urgent goal of restoration of Igbo sovereignty.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Biafra Revisited (African Renaissance, 2006)

Igbo: Boycott Abuja, Lagos, Kano Airports

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

It is astonishing that despite the high calibre of Igbo intellectuals/other professionals in exile/diaspora, Igboland has still not been freed from the tottering genocide state that is Nigeria. Even if the expectation, for instance, is that this genocide state will eventually implode, the Igbo, who are at the pulverising end of its vicious existence, must actuate the historic quest for their freedom themselves. Nigeria murdered 3.1 million precious Igbo children, women and men between May 1966 and January 1970. Since then, thousands more have been murdered … Nigeria exists to murder Igbo people; nothing else. Any Igbo who still has some difficulties coming to terms with the genocidal immanence of the Nigerian state urgently needs a painstaking re-examination of Igbo history since 1945.

Contrary to sentiments expressed recently by some, a genocide state is not a candidate for “reforms” or any such outlandish gestures. A genocide state is dismantled in order to terminate its ontological being. Apart from murdering the Igbo, Nigeria also systematically degrades the socioeconomic landscape of Igboland. This stratagem is a cardinal feature of the genocide and, as we all are fully aware, it does not really matter if Nigeria is run by its military or “civilian” cadres. As a result of the ongoing genocide, a significant proportion of the constituency of the Igbo best and brightest has gone into exile … In effect, these Igbo intellectuals/other professionals particularly have their work clearly cut out; they can no longer continue to ignore their historic calling! They can’t just sequestrate themselves in the comfort zones of their academies/hospitals/clinics/other businesses overseas and expect that Igboland will be freed by default.

No such thing happens! On the contrary, history shows that intellectuals/professionals play key transformative roles during these great episodes of resistance and societal reconstructions. Igbo intellectuals/professionals must all work actively for the restoration of Igbo sovereignty and they must appropriate the vast arena of freedom and flexibility of operation that living outside hellish Nigeria affords them all. The genocide state pretty well understands the extraordinary range of this resource and opportunity that the exiled Igbo community currently commands. It is in this context that its recent vile detentions of Igbo bloggers Asiwe and Elendu is profoundly an important development, which the Igbo will ignore at their own peril. Unmistakeably, the genocidist conglomerate in Nigeria is giving notice to the world that it is monitoring the output of Igbo liberatory intellectual work overseas and will detain and torture any Igbo “suspect” who ventures through its degenerate territory. The Igbo response to this crank act of intimidation is of course non-convoluted but straightforward: now is the time to even step up and expand their work of freedom at all sites and spheres. No relenting in the least. Each and everyone of them must ask themselves the following question when they wake up at their varying time zones of domicile across the globe: “What am I going to do today during the course of my work in the classroom, in my laboratory, in my clinic, in my hospital, on my blog/website/newspaper/radio/television, in my office, in my businesses … to advance the cause of the restoration of Igbo sovereignty from the Nigerian occupation?” At the end of the working day, before retiring, some period of quiet reflection would also be useful: “What else could I have done to quicken the pace of Igbo freedom from Nigeria? I hope I didn’t do anything during the day to hinder the realisation of Igbo freedom from Nigeria …” In the meantime, they should saturate all the Human Rights offices in the town/region/state/country/continent where they live and elsewhere in the world with their note of condemnation of the illegal detentions of Asiwe and Elendu and call for their immediate and unconditional releases. Repeat this protest continuously until the two are freed. This is an immediate and urgent task. It should be noted that no regular columnists on any major Nigerian newspapers, including even those who are Igbo, have deemed it fit to write a commentary on the seizure of Asiwe and Elendu. Contrast this with the punishing bouts of editorial material that were churned out by all and sundry in the Nigerian media over Ayoteji Omatade’s maltreatment by British Airways and on that hyper-dramatised intra-regime traction surrounding the dismissal/“reassignment” of Nuhu Ribadu.

Civilisation

Igbo exiled/diaspora intellectuals/professionals should now embark on the boycott of Lagos, Abuja, Kano and other Nigerian airports/seaports/land border crossing points as a mark of Igbo national solidarity with the duo Asiwe and Elendu as well as for the personal safety and interests of all the individuals concerned. Instead, they should use the Igwe Ocha, Enugwu, Owere airports for their journey to Igboland. If any of these airports does not presently have an “international” landing facility, create one! The Igbo are Africa’s most travelled nation. As a result, they possess the financial muscle to dictate where their preferred airport(s) of disembarkation in west Africa should be sited – Asaba, Umuleri, Abakaleke, Akaeze... Within 90 days of a successful Igbo boycott of Nigerian airports, airline operators, who cannot cope with the expected catastrophic loss in revenue, will literally be falling over themselves to accede to the construction of as many airports in Igboland that the Igbo travelling public demands. Besides, an Igbo boycott of Nigerian airports will deny the genocidist treasury of millions of dollars in landing taxes and other expenses that annually accrue to it from Igbo travellers in transit.

The restoration of Igbo sovereignty is the most eagerly awaited event in the Africa of the new century. The Igbo can free themselves from Nigeria; yes, they can! It requires intelligence, bravery, determination and resilience. Everyone knows that the Igbo have no shortfalls of these attributes. Barack Obama’s recent US presidential historic victory, for example, scored spectacularly against all the odds of history, was strategically empowered by these fourfold resource engine. Igbo freedom therefore requires hard work; yes, they, the Igbo, work hard. Without Igbo tenacity, they would not have survived the 1966-1970 genocide. But for the genocide, the Igbo were on course to construct the China, Korea and India of Africa at a time very few political economists thought “China”, “Korea” and “India” were likely propositions within 30 years of the post-World War II epoch. Despite this tragic delay, the Igbo will ultimately construct an advanced civilisation in the aftermath of its freedom from Nigeria.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of Biafra Revisited (African Renaissance, 2006)