Shut Down This Occupation

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe

Last week, MASSOB called on Igbo people to shut down Nigeria’s monstrous occupation of Igboland. Thanks to MASSOB’s month-long exhortation, Igbo people across their great land embarked on a crucial phase of the liberatory journey of defiance of the occupation and a resolute commitment to free themselves thereof. All of Igboland, despite the desperately reinforced intimidatory presence of fanged-footed occupation troops and armour, answered the call whether they were at work, in transit, in the closet of their homes or elsewhere – from the captivating rolling hills and plains of the Nsukka/Eha-Amufu north to the majestic Igbo Atlantic coast of Opobo/Umu-Ubani/Igwe Ocha of the south; from the luscious serenity of the Ugwuta/Onicha/Anioma west to the evocative, meandering Ebonyi/Cross banks that encapsulate the Abakaleke/Ehugbo/Umuahia east panhandle. The Igbo diaspora in Nigeria, west Africa, elsewhere in Africa and the rest of the world were in steadfast communion with the fortunes and expectations of the homeland. On the eve of the launch, an Abakaleke-based businessperson appropriately summarised the strategic goal of 50 million people since 29 May 1966: “We believe in Biafra … we [will] have our freedom.”

MASSOB’s historic mission is stated succinctly and unambiguously: the restoration of Igbo independence. Igbo independence from Nigeria was born during the course of the savagery of the most gruesome genocide in Africa of the 20th century which began on 29 May 1966. 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, Nigeria has sought tenaciously to specialise on the first three in its sustained and targeted policy of violence on the Igbo people: (a) “killing members of the group”, (b) “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group” and (c) “deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life designed to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970, 3.1 million Igbo people, a quarter of the nation’s population then, were murdered by the Nigerian state and its allies. No key institutions of the state were exempt from this crime against humanity: the military, police, politicians/public figures, academia, media, Hausa-Fulani emirs, muslim clergy… The following constituent nations of Nigeria, among others, allied themselves most willingly to the perpetration of this genocide: Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba/Oduduwa, Urhobo, Kanuri, Bini, Jukun, Ishan, Angas, Sura, Berom, Gwari, Idoma, Itsekiri, Nupe, Bachama, Igala, Tiv, Yergam, Jarawa-Kogi. The lyrics below in Hausa, sung against the backdrop of a fiendish cacophony of orchestration, was the haunting signature tune for the countrywide mass recruitment of genocidist operatives that the Gowon/Awolowo regime ordered and deployed to hate, rape, murder, pillage the Igbo... The tune was broadcast repeatedly on Nigerian state-owned radio and television throughout the duration of the genocide:

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

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

Britain, which, until just lately, occupied Nigeria for 60 years and was viscerally riled by the Igbo audacious spearhead of the liberation of Nigeria during the 1940s-1950s, played a central role with the Nigerians in the planning and execution of the genocide right from the outset. The erstwhile Soviet Union and its own key allies as well as the Arab World supported this vicious campaign of murder – all allied to the British strategic goal on the Igbo and Igboland in a rare pact of a triad of otherwise ideological and political adversaries. This development singularly shattered one of the key sites of certainties in post-World War II politics of international alliances.

Rising Sun

Since the presumed cessation of the genocide in January 1970, Igboland has been occupied by Nigeria. MASSOB’s meteoric ascent to the stratospheric heights of Igbo liberatory politics in the past decade has been actuated by its advanced studies of the neurosis that goes by the name “Nigeria” and the movement’s rigorous reading of contemporary international politics, which unprecedently favours freedom of peoples. MASSOB understands that the grave crisis that the Igbo face in Nigeria is occupation – not “marginalisation”, that favourite mantra religiously propagated by the “nku ukwa” planks of contemporary Igbo politics and those of less critical frames of analysis on the subject. MASSOB has indeed made a strategic break with the pulverising “nku ukwa” politics of greed and opportunism that has been the hallmark of the dominant trends in Igbo politics in the post-genocide epoch. A particularly nauseating streak of this orientation occurred only recently when a grouping of self-appointed Igbo “envoys” met the very suzerain of Nigeriana genocide, indolence and retrogression “on behalf of the Igbo”. Of course none of the “envoys” on this doomed mission dared confront the potentate of the slaughter of 3.1 million Igbo. Not one “envoy” asked the chieftain why Igbo businessperson Kingsley Mbagwu Onuoha was murdered in Kaduna in early July 2008 – on the eve of this outrageous “summit”. Why didn’t the Igbo “summiteers” call off this misguided exercise in the memory of Onuoha – and the rest of the illustrious 3.1 million? Having bounced themselves ultimately into the parley’s infamous hall of shame, none of them could proclaim most assuredly to the awaiting suzerain: “The Igbo are a free people. We freed Nigeria from the British when you and your people were trenchantly opposed to this historic enterprise. We are not Nigerians. We ceased to be Nigerians forever on 29 May 1966 when Nigeria embarked on the genocide of Igbo people. Your state murdered 3.1 million Igbo between 29 May 1966 and 12 January 1970. Since then, your state has murdered several thousands more and has imposed on the Igbo and Igboland the most dehumanising raft of socioeconomic package of deprivation not seen anywhere else in Africa. The genocide savagely goes on… On our way to this conference, Kingsley Mbagwu Onuoha was murdered in Kaduna. Have you arrested Onuoha’s murderers? Will they face justice? What justice? Do you realise that all Nigeria’s genocidist officials, including heads of regime, who have since 1966 been responsible for the planning and execution of varying facets of the Igbo genocide will duly be prosecuted in international criminal courts? They will be tried for committing crimes against humanity. Nigeria’s occupation of Igboland emasculates Igbo creative genius. We will end your occupation of Igboland. Your forces must leave Igboland. Yes, your forces will surely leave Igboland.”

“Nku Ukwa” undoubtedly serves the occupation most profoundly. It is at once a tactical and strategic weapon in the occupation’s arsenal. Its aim is principally to disorient the Igbo resistance through two principal ploys. First, it is the ideology of the occupation in precisely what it does not communicate about its grave mission but on ecstatically flashing the mirage of crumbs for the picking that individualised Igbo incorporation in the genocide portends. Secondly, “nku ukwa” is the channel to recruit Igbo personnel at varying levers of public life to help police the occupation. To ensure its success, the personnel is billed to operate within a constricted, debilitating de-Igboisationist/anti-Igboisationist construct. Thus the seemingly mindless hostility to Igbo interests intensely nurtured and implemented in the careers of Udenwa, Egwu, Orji Uzo Kalu, Maduekwe, Okereke-Onyiuke, Orji, Ezekwesili, Odili, Ichie Onwuchekwa, Mbadinuju, Nzeribe, Uba, Uba, Chimaroke Nnamani, Soludo, Okonjo-Iweala, etc., etc., not only underscores the gravity of this emergency but represents the benchmark on which the occupation evaluates Igbo participation in any spheres of public affairs in contemporary Nigeria. This is key to Nigeria’s blanket policy of non-development/degradation of socioeconomic life of Igboland since 1970 – a programme that the world recognises as a cardinal feature of genocide, detailed in one of the acts of the crime in the 1948 UN convention we cited earlier: “deliberately inflicting upon the group conditions of life designed to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. The tragic irony of “nku ukwa” is that those depraved crumbs picked by Igbo personnel for their services to the genocide and the occupation come largely from the gargantuan financial resources that Nigeria expropriates daily from occupied Igbo oilfields in the Delta, Rivers, Imo and Abia regions.

If some Igbo incorporation into the prosecuting schema of the Nigerian occupation is crucial for the sustenance of the aggression, then the collective Igbo riposte to this is distinctly unproblematic: “Don’t be a participant in your own subjugation. Be resilient. Remain a free Igbo.” Despite “nku ukwa” or indeed because of “nku ukwa”, the Igbo hold the trump cards for their freedom from Nigeria. Nigeria knows this especially as it trots along to its likely implosion. The Igbo people-Nigeria balance of forces currently is decisively in favour of Igbo freedom. Igbo freedom will herald the much-awaited process of the dismantling of the constellation of genocidal and kakistocratic states embedded in post-European conquest Africa of which Nigeria is a key example. The Igbo are poised to shut down the occupation. They will shut down this occupation. Now is the time.

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is leading scholar of the Igbo Genocide 1966-1970