Just like any other day in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the universe, and a world that stomps on the Hollywood Walk of Fame twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and three hundred and sixty five days in a year, sightseeing and appreciating the good things of life brought about by inspiration and the wisdom of humankind.
With a flexible schedule and as things happen, and with all the stuff in my head -- some mysterious voices -- the projects I carry on my shoulders keeping up with time, thinking that I have it all together and figured out, not knowing it’s a whole lot of bunch untouched; that kept piling up as I lay pretending to be unperturbed; that it’s all fine, when a caseload of stuff yet to be done, drives me crazy.
Now overwhelmed and all mixed up; looking more and more like going through stuff I have crossed in the past while shuffling. But again, I was only visualizing from what I had been encountering all these moments, I dabbled myself into something of a long, packed closet boxes, that now needs to be dusted off; going back to the past like starting all over again.
Like one of the days back in the day, I usually keep the tabs of the goings on within my schedules every popped out events I had imagined was worth the take for keeping up toward the scheme of things in making the surroundings one lives in, a place that should be known for what it produces, characterizing it as trademark and universally accepted.
It has been a year or something now I have not been that outgoing due to the circumstances I found myself in -- diverting my course of direction, devoting more time on projects I had thought should get going before not catching up anymore and wasting all the precious time that may not be regained again; coupled with a whole lot of writing assignments -- notes on the facts and logic about a complicated Nigerian national state, affairs of state of a jumbled and bellicose Igbo nation I have been weary of pointing out, an all time Igbo Diaspora life, the African Union and an organization without rhythm, African Americans I have encountered in Los Angeles and all around the United States.
Moreover, it also did not keep out my contribution to creation, knowing my value by way of growth doing scholarly work, helping folks at public institutions who needed me on a variety of their quest for knowledge, and meeting new people in a new era; going with the flow as filmmaker, actress and friend, Esosa Edosomwan would tell me.
In my own world, what I thought I had accomplished in this day and age of madness in a dramatically changed world I have been very slow catching up.
The times of turmoil and triumph-trending women in my life; experiences with Igbo professionals, accomplished scholars and intellectuals; my colleagues in the media and generally the entertainment landscape I never imagined in a lifetime would be so, as in thoughts, passion, and actively the way it streamed along to my liking.
Reflections and the streaming days of the playgrounds at Ruga Park, by 37 Barracks of the Ghana Army at Accra; the childhood buddies -- Eugene Onyeji, Theodore Onyeji, Edward Chukwumezie, Hillary Akabuilo, Chukwu Egbejimba, Ijeoma Egbejimba, Hellistus Eke, Fanmi “Polo” Ahmed, Oko Ahmed, Emmanuel Kudjo, John Kudjo, Zakary Ibrahim, Adamu Ibrahim, Manma Sani, John Satorji, Paapa, John Bull whose Mary Go Round crash got us all cracking up but with feelings for the spoiled brat who could not hang with us at the Kanda Estate playgrounds, the Adangbe friends, Akan friends, Ashanti friends, Hausa friends, Wangara friends, Tamale friends and friends too numerous to mention, including Said Usman whom I had bumped into some few months ago while on research work and he looking for an ideal place for recess before his routine prayers at the Mosque on Exposition and Vermont, just by the corridors of University of Southern California. Usman was the last guy I could have thought grew on the same block with me in Ghana, I would meet after all these years.
With all that interest, friends long lost I have found and friends long forgotten that found me in this new age of social networking -- Silas Onyeiwu Snr. (during our Lagos days of uncertainties and our future), Gordy Ekechukwu (our Lagos days of projected higher learning pursuits), Kendryx Alfadoh (colleague in disc-jockeying, rooftop dancing, pub-crawling and partying all around Eko), Emmanuel Okafor-Ize (my hangout guy at FESTAC Town who shovelled me around and showed me the way of Los Angeles upon my arrival), Pius Obasi Totti (from the high school days of NASCO and Ikeji Arondizuogu), Aloysius Duru (from high school to the days of invading my village and me paying back invading Umuowa in return, just for the girls), Tony Ike Okpara (from high school to bad bay image days in Los Angeles), Destiny Anorue (my little cousin who saw me last when I bid the village bye), my nephews Tobechukwu, Kelechi, Iwgebuike, Ezenwa, Chika, Chidera and Uchechi (who finally caught up with me and getting it straight, eventually, in the long run.
The hurdle, inspiration, motivation and getting orderly coming to terms with reality on life being what you make it.
And, of course, that little boy about to be six-years-old in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, held to his hand by his father while they walked down the street to Nima Roman Catholic School in what would be a journey to eternity, commencing his first day at school, learning every day of his life that he would be an obedient boy and become the youngest ever to receive the Holy Communion and Confirmed according to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. The little kid talked about in the Diocese -- Rev. Fr. Lobianco, Rev. Fr. Tonti, Sister Mary, Brother John, and Arch Bishop Joseph Bowers.
The little kid on his way to school on that morning of February 24, 1966, grabbed by soldiers of the Ghanaian Army. Not scared and having no clue what the siege was all about, the soldiers comforted him just by the barriers of Flagstaff House and Nima, telling him that Ghana has changed, heading toward a new order on a calculated operation for a better Ghana. Nkrumah’s regime had been toppled by the Emmanuel Kotoka-led military juntas (upcoming memoirs), and a new era in the nation’s history, which would lead to many, many inexplicable events -- the counter coup, Arthur-Yeboah, Ankrah, Afrifa -- and the Afrifa transition -- to the nation’s Second Republic taken away by Kofi Busia.
Life’s journey -- the trails, good, bad and ugly -- never ceases to be amazing, amusing and fascinating. It has been what kept humankind going, the inspiration and hope of getting it straight that the future is well abound, the expectations -- high and fortunate -- not to give up.
It is with these high expectations that humankind continues to explore, work very hard to meet these goals on the ideological bearings there is no substitute for hard work, which pays off, eventually.
So, as I sat down in my little study with heaps of junked literature, neglected newspapers and magazines needed to be dumped in the waste bin, clipped articles, abstracts from archives culled from libraries around my state and other channels open for learning and research work elsewhere in America, I venture into using what I have acquired by way of the endeavors to gather and provide, in order to appreciate and extend to others what had been given to me, which makes a better world that we live in today -- the gift of sharing.
Through the gift of sharing and things like that, I have approached many institutions noted for collaborative works on research, philanthropy, welfare and other related social programs, to stand by my worthy causes as the chain and community grows.
So, as it happened, I bumped into folks while snacking and freelancing at the Wilshire Corridor hangout around the Miracle Mile in Greater Los Angeles, meeting diversified folks and going through “L.A. Rebellion: Creating A New Black Cinema,” the ongoing project playing for about a month now and ends on December 17, 2011 with closing remarks and special presentation by Ben Caldwell of “Spaces Looking In Looking Out” taking place at the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum, in collaboration with the Pan African Film Festival; and also initiated by the Getty Foundation, bringing together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene with presenting sponsors -- bank of America, The Getty, Pacific Standard Time: Art In L.A. 1945-1980, The warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, California Council for the Humanities and the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.
What had captured my attention in this phenomenal epic project launched by UCLA School of Theater, Film And Television were: “Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification,” directed by Barbara McCullough; “Penintentiary,” directed by Jamaa Fanaka; “Sankofa,” directed by HaileGerima; “To Sleep With Anger,” directed by Charles Burnett, featuring Danny Glover; “Daughters of the Dust,” directed by Julie dash, about the story of descendants of escaped slaves living on the Southern coast of the U.S. in 1902 preparing for qa move to the mainland; “Bush Mama,” directed by Haile Gerima, inspired by seeing a Black woman in Chicago evicted in winter which he developed as his UCLA thesis, and many others.
“Penitentiary,” in particular, I had watched at the Roxy Cinema, Apapa-Lagos, upon its release, reading the movie’s preview in the Right On Magazine, way back when the movie premiered. Seeing it gain took me back to this Fanaka film, depicting prison as a microcosm of African Americans, seeing the prison system as a site of continual violent struggle against bot external (the prison itself) and internal (fellow prisoners) forces played out on the bodies of inmates, who are either sexually exploited or “beasts” (the exploiters).
As the historical event unveils at UCLA through December, the African American community, the African American Association of Journalists, scholars in film, television and the arts have focused on the need to bring forth the awareness of the history and origin of Black cinema, including the director of the project, Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak who had called it “seen the amazing expression of a unified and Utopian vision of a community and in “over three years getting to know the filmmakers, collecting their work.”
In one of my travels to see a couple of films at the event and while poking around the complexes before heading home I met South African born Razianna Myeni, Cassandra Pinson, Julius Baxter, Britney Johnson, Dee Dee Richardson and Ted Calloway who had just walked out seeing “Daydream Therapy,” directed by Bernard Nicolas while we sat on the balcony of one of the eateries talking about the festival over some coffee and light drinks, applauding Horak, the events director and Shannon Kelley, the events head of public programs for collectively coordinating with the filmmakers Haile Gerima, Zenaibu Irene Davis, Barbara McCullough, Charles Burnett, Fanaka, O. Fumilayo Makarah, Jaqueline Frazier, Billy Woodbury, Ben caldwell, Larry Clark, Julie dash, Carroll Parrott Blue, Allie Sharon Larkin, Alicia Dhanifu and many others, for the approach and allowing their works to be used at the festival.
Britney, who had been working on a documentary about inner city youths in South Central Los Angeles, simply put by Dr. Jan-Christopher Horak as “there are projects that take on a life of their own, as if reality suddenly asserts itself, grabbing an idea and shaking it so that it grows and grows,” which was the case when Britney took center stage in our round table discourse giving us a hint on one of the best documentary texts, pulling out from her bag Jack C Ellis and Betsy A. MClaine’s book “A New History Of Documentary Film,” in which every discussant (besides myself who’s yet to have a take on documentary films of sort), acknowledged Ellis and MClaine’s book being a guideline for those in documentaries and stuff of that nature.
Britney, who aspires to take her projects to the shores of Africa which would be part of her knowledge-based programs in the near future, with focus on Africa and its ever growing turmoil and cases of sad reality in the continent on varieties of complicated, ethno-cultural and religious issues and differences. As related, we begun to cite series of the continent’s problems from its precolonial state to its present day, in which, I, personally, have seen many unfold -- Ghana and Nigeria -- the many coups and counter coups I bear witness.
Within this very perspective, the troubled and unstable nature following independence of the number of nations in the continent and the purpose of that pursuit being able to rule on its own standard and based on its culture, I am compelled to ask, who are the Africans? How did they get there? How was it fabricated?
In reading Ali A. Mazrui’s “The Africans: A Triple Heritage,” with regards to the African question, I came across a passage of inquiring minds and the conduct by which the continent named Africa came into being, popping out the question, “Where is Africa”? and Mazrui’s explanation:
“It could be said that Africa invented man, that Semites invented God and that Europe invented the world, or rather the concept of the world. Archaeology indicates that man originated in Africa. The Semitic people gave us the great monotheisthic world religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Europe developed the concept of the world in the wake of its voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it even imposed its form of that concept on the outlook of peoples in other continents including Africans.”
And:
“ It is not possible to overestimate the enormous impact of Europe upon our perceptions of ourselves as Africans and upon our view of the universe...Even with regard to the size of the African continent, it is quite remarkable how far European ethnocentrism has influenced cartographic projections over the centuries.”
Mazrui would go on to be mad at African ancestors on considering the actual names of the different continents of the world. Mazrui, wondering about the political stupidity of Africa when other nations and continents had chosen its own name that conforms to the nature of their being, noting on the consequences and tragedy of the African continent and with a close look, may have provoked the ancestors and obviously could be seen all around “us” by which ancestral voice could be heard in the curse depicting neglect and abandonment:
“Warriors will fight scribes for the control of your institutions;
wild bush will conquer your road and pathways;
your land will yield less and less,
while your off-springs multiply;
your house will leak from the floods,
and your soil will crack from the drought;
your sons will refuse to pick up the hoe,
and prefer to wander in the wilderness;
you shall learn ways of cheating,
and you will poison the cola nuts you serve your own friends
Yes, things will fall apart...”
Of course, it all fell apart and the walls came tumbling down. Nkrumah predicted the fold, saw the debacle in and around the African continent which he forewarned in his earlier fear of a linkage between nuclear tests in the Sahara, racism in South Africa and recolonization of the entire continent; and astonishingly revealing from what he had said over fifty years ago. In April 1960, Nkrumah had addressed an international meeting in Accra on what he had seen with his two naked eyes in vision, which would be exploding sooner than later. Nkrumah said:
“Fellow Africans and friends, there are two threatening swords of Damocles hanging over the continent and we must remove them. These are nuclear tests in the Sahara by the French Government and the Apartheid policy of the Government of the Union of South Africa. It would be a great mistake to imagine that the achievement of political independence by certain areas of Africa will automatically mean the end of the struggle.”
In a statement made by the sage half a century ago and twenty-first century African continent, should it not be mind-boggling that Nkrumah who engineered the concept of a Pan African national state and had he been around today seeing the sorry state of the continent, would he not be worried and would he not be asking, what happened?
In Wole Soyinka’s “The Burden of Memory, The Muse of Forgiveness,” lectures the Nobel Laureate delivered as the inaugural for the Dubois Institute Macmillan Lecture Series at Howard University in April 1977 citing President Nelson Mandela’s open confrontation with African National Congress (AFC) on “its own dismal record of needless cruelty and abuse of human rights, especially in prisons and detention camps run by the movement within friendly front-line states,” when the legendary Mandela had launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human right abuses during the Apartheid era on which Mandela spent twenty-seven years in prison. The commission was established to heal the nation’s wounds through fact findings of the demons engaged in the human enterprise of unnatural taste, and to seek resolve by way of apologies and reparations.
And Soyinka had asked on such grounds, and in retrospect using the South African post-Apartheid model, if the same could be said of post-dictatorships in other African countries with its new democratic order, following in the foot steps of the Truth and reconciliation Commission. Soyinka writes:
“Would the Truth and Reconciliation ethic have been applicable, even thinkable in post-Acheampong Ghana? In post-Mobutu Zaire? Will it be adaptable in post-Abacha Nigeria? That circumstances make such a proceeding expedient is not to be denied, but we must not shy away from some questions: would it be just? And, more important, how does it implicate both the present and the future? The crimes that the African continent commits against her kind are of dimension and, unfortunately, of a nature that appears to constantly provoke memories of the historic wrongs inflicted on that continent by others.”
No question, I too had seen many documentaries, stories and newsreels of most atrocities in Africa by Africans. In my native land on which I have written extensively to near exhaustion on too many of the subjects. I weep each time I reflect to the atrocities, with the never ending question; Is humankind alert and would it happen again? Of, course, given the necessary circumstances, it would, and still happening, and would continue, over and over again while the world watch it unfold.
And my reaction to this had always been that when the unthinkable happens in a world that deliberately inflicts wounds on its own with the thought that at the end of every tragedy, there must be a moment of reconciliation. But what would reconcile what Elemi John Agbomi, in what he had told me not too long ago when I had interviewed him (this part not published) and narrating to me his experiences as a little boy in high school, then Government Secondary School, Afikpo, and how the federal Nigeria vandals invaded the land, sacking the place and cutting short his secondary education upon declaration of war by the vandals, thus firing the first shot. “Certainly, the Biafran War was a tragedy,” Agbomi would say. And what he had seen as a nation that deliberately ignored the ominous consequences of the pogrom and civil war, Agbomi begins to talk about his experiences during the war.
At barely fifteen years old when the vandals invaded and sacked his hometown of Adadama in what is now Cross River State, and while in refugee camp at a location near Mbano in what is now Imo State, he had been drafted and enlisted in the Biafran Army with badge number BA 30 400. He talked about all sorts of atrocities committed by the vandals upon arrival to any village or town they seem to have run down. Rape, looting, kidnapping was just the order. Agbomi, just young as to not knowing what had cut his education short, a full blown assault on his homeland and all the displaced persons he could not fathom how it came about “as people like “us” were all put together at one place (refugee camp) with rationing meals, not knowing when the next order will be made for evacuation as enemy attacks draws near and becomes imminent.” “Us” means Biafra, the Igbo speaking people (Ibibio, Kalabari, Efik, etc.)
Even with hunger and food rationing, some no doubt, at the camps, hopeless and having lost some of their relatives, held on, despite all the uncertainties, until the end of the war when he had felt liberation in a war torn eastern Region; and starting life anew, all over again, with a clean slate. But Agbomi’s eyewitness account of an Orwellian drama, did not stop, short of tales horrific in human nature -- the widespread raping of Igbo women, looting of properties, demolition and plundering of the Igbo nation by the vandals.
In Minna, then northern region of the fabricated Nigeria, and under the premiership of Ahmadu Bello, the Sarduana of Sokoto who ran the affairs of state and controlled the power block of the nation even though the central capital, Lagos, was the seat of government with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as prime minister on the platform of the Northern People Congress (NPC). Minna was another town of orgy revenge for the assassination of Balewa, Bello and other northern politicians who perished in the first military coup of 1966.
Michael Achebe Okongwu, only six years old, was in a Minna classroom as a primary school pupil when elements of the northern Islamic Jihadists, who were also hoodlums and nihilists, struck, invading the primary school where Okongwu attended, attacking every Eastern looking persons. In Okongwu’s classroom, where they were taking lessons from their teacher, a female and Yoruba by tribe, mistaken for Igbo, was brutally slain in the presence of her pupils by the nihilists who had been instructed to kill every Igbo. Even if the bare facts were known, almost no one understood the full intentions of the Hausa-Fulanis, including their Yoruba allies’ attempt to exterminate all Igbos. It was simply beyond the power of most peoples imagination. Okongwu, who now calls Southern California home, still cannot fathom the chaos, callousness, bigotry, hatred and ignorance of the premeditated pogrom of 1966 and 1967. In most times that we speak, and especially on the related pogrom and what he saw with his eyes as a little boy beginning the long walk and hauling, from Minna to Ogbunike and the continual assault by the vandals who violated every order, bombarding every enclave in Igboland, until vanquished, indicated there no such thing as one Nigeria. “I will never, ever forget,” Okongwu would always say.
Or the case of the late Egbebelu Ugobelu, born Samuel Obi, in Class 2, at the Nnamdi Azikiwe Grammar School, Abagana, when, also, the vandals invaded the land in the quest to wipe out the Igbo nation from the face of the earth through its war strategy of economic blockade, hunger, starvation and stone-walling. Growing up in Port Harcourt before admission to Nnamdi Azikiwe Grammar School for his secondary education, Pot Harcourt was an Igbo dominated town and had flourished with Igbo men of commerce and industry; higher education, academia and intellectuals.
During Gowon’s genocidal campaign against the Igbo nation, Ugobelu was enlisted in the Biafran Army and stationed at the Umuahia Brigade Command before Umuahia fell to the federal Nigeria vandals. The post-civil war would see him through National Grammar School, Nike, Enugu, completing secondary school and obtaining his West African School Certificate (WASC); employment at the Federal Ministry of Water Resources, Lagos; and selection for the “Crash Program” during the Murtala Mohammed-Olusegun Obasanjo-led military juntas’ projected courses, getting a shot at the United States and studying Accounting and Management Science before returning home and coming back to the shores of America four years later on the grounds of a failed state.
Ugobelu and I spoke uncountable times, and each time was about the pogrom, the civil war, Nd’Igbo and their place in history, and his experiences during the disturbances and conflicts that swallowed over two million people.
In his book, “Biafra War Revisited: A Concise And Accurate Account Of Events That Led To The Nigerian Civil War,” Ugobelu had suggestede “Biafra War,” on a title based on his notion that the war was “virtually” fought on Biafra. In many of our related discourses, he had thought I was one of the child soldiers, just from around my narratives of the northern Islamic nihilists and Gowon’s-led genocidal campaigns, until we had both begun to know each other very closely as we continued to learn from one another, detail by detail, what happened in the killing fields, the refugee camps, Obafemi Awolowo’s orchestrated “Economic Blockade,” the starvation to death of women, infants and children; and the aftermath of the projected pogrom --the horrific rape of Igbo women, and where many of the women (some tired, some reduced to animal and skeletal nature from being desperately starved), having no choice but to embrace the vandals, proclaimed liberators, to the chagrin of the survived Igbo men, who were too tired, poor, plundered and inhibited to take part in anything like that when the women were taken away, becoming the vandals’ stock.
And yet, after all these acts of human tragedy perpetrated on a people by the vandals, the Truth and Reconciliation commission created by the Olusegun Obasanjo-led regime in the Fourth Republic modelled after Mandela’s earlier commission in South Africa, under the chairmanship of Justice Chukwudifu Oputa was laughable and had no intention from its set up to investigate and find, arriving to conclusions acts of genocide committed by the blood thirsty cannibals. It is ironic, that most of these blood-lust vandals could not be asked to testify during the Oputa commission.
During Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Nigeria was already going through the hands of the despot, Sani Abacha. Soyinka’s W.E.B. Dubois’ Lecture at Howard University, particularly bent on the Truth and Reconciliation anticipating similar situation in his native country while on exile trooping the planet promoting his movement of democratic dispensation, and away from a country that had been ravaged by the despot Abacha, wishing it was the other way round. Abacha had wanted Soyinka dead or alive for inciting a pro-democracy movement that generated all the anger and frustration which was actually not concretely grounded because of its original base, and with that base, centered, on a section of the country that Abacha sought, to which they have been Abacha’s victims, and by which in the name of democracy, advocates for democracy joined without regard to the particular section being persecuted or looked for reasons behind the friction.
In “The Open Sore Of A Continent: A Personal Narrative Of The Nigerian Crisis,” Soyinka indeed lost every hope of a Nigeria that would one day become an entity again. However, I was not sure why the movement had assured itself of victory when most of the staunch advocates had already fled the country, and could not stay to have faced the consequences, for freedom and democracy does not come by a distant pen alone, but by proxy movements, relative activism and fighting in combat.
Many did not align with the movement on the grounds of its related, fractured foundation which had a lot to do with the interest it protected, and again, the generators of the movement were not viable and intact to have gathered enough following being one of the reasons the platform of the movement was not taken seriously, at all, until luck struck, leaving Abacha dead, and a swift transition that would usher in a fabricated Fourth Republic.
But Soyinka bent on the annulled “June 12,” 1993, election his cousin Moshood Abiola was allegedly said to have won in a landslide, suddenly to be reversed and cancelled by the Ibrahim Babangida-led military juntas on the grounds of election wuruwuru and magomago, rigging, which in a 180-degrees about face erupted a set of civil disobedience resulting to Gestapo-like regimes which inevitably chased the junta, Babangida out of power in a twist of transition through Ernest Shonekan, then civilian administrator, paving way for Abacha to usurp power which chased all the pro-democracy backers out of sight.
Soyinka, in series of his books, essays and lectures, had been about frustrated efforts and anger, on the continent in its leadership woes having no sense of purpose to have propelled the states to the forefront of democratic orderliness. And, like Soyinka, I, also, ask why a continent, first in natural resources, first in human capital, second most populous and second largest in the world could not utilize its overwhelmingly abundant natural resources and its unquestionable, enormous human capital to have formed a one, strong unified entity to have subdued colonial conquests of peoples and cultures, by all accounts?
And, angry Soyinka questioning the kind of country his native land was, lamented:
“In a world tormented by devastation from Bosnia to Rwanda, how do we define a nation: is it simply a condition of the collective mind, a passive, unquestioned habit of cohabitation? Or is what we think of as a nation a rigorous conclusion that derives from history? Is it geography, or is it a bond that transcends accidents of mountain, river, and valley? How do these varying definitions of nationhood impact the people who live under them?”
And, as developed, just like the African Union and its Organization of African Unity (OAU) parent could not take any serious measures in all the years the entire continent had problems fixing and putting all its loopholes together beginning from the first shot opening the doors for coup plots and assassinations of government officials and heads-of-state in the Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, etc. And, looking at South Africa and, Apartheid, why was OAU not able to form an army to liberate South Africa? Why could OAU not to have form an army to liberate the Congo from the mess well orchestrated by the West and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in savagely axing Patrice Lumumba? Why could OAU not swiftly to have reinstated Nkrumah in Ghana when the military juntas wrestled power from him? And why would OAU to have sat idly and watched Samuel Doe forcefully remove William Taubman from power in a bloody coup? And why would OAU do practically nothing when Tafawa Balewa and some of his cabinet members were kidnapped and shot execution style by a murderous gang of mutineers? And why would OAU, the most powerful union in the continent’s history allowed and endorsed the diabolical nature of the anti-Igbo pogrom, when Igbos were sought from place to place and murdered in the most brutal of circumstances? Why would OAU, upon Hassan Katsina and his northern Nigeria blood thirsty Islamic nihilists could not be stopped in its genocidal campaigns against the Igbo nation? Why in what had erupted in Sierra Leone, the chaotic civil war, OAU could not arrest the situation until a terribly, costly price had been paid? And, all in all, why could OAU not seize the moment to have stopped the Western Hemisphere’s consistent dominance of Africa through coercion and theft? And as the case goes on and on, and on, what is OAU/AU doing?
The Nigerian crisis and the rest in Africa during the sixties was very unique with a OAU that had no alternative, especially with the first military coup in Nigeria and all the stories that followed when Aguiyi Ironsi was flogged and murdered in what OAU could have stopped from spreading. Even when Joseph Akahan, according to Frederick Forsyth in his book, “Making Of An African Legend,” the northern nihilists under Akahan had concluded that its by the brutal murder of Ironsi that he (Akahan) and his group of mutineers at the Government House, Ibadan, agreed that it has been made even and there should be no more bloodletting, “balancing out” the act in allegedly what the top Igbo Military brass had begun, the “Igbo Coup.”
And never minding the fact that it had been made patently clear the first military coup was not an instigated Igbo coup from its plot, the mutineers would continue in their widespread wholesale massacre of Igbo personnel and military officers. The air force aide-de-camp who witnessed the brutal murder of Ironsi while fleeing into the bush and other slaughtering campaigns of the Igbos around the Ibadan area recorded the following account:
“At Lemauk Barracks, Ibadan, the commanding officer Col. Joe Akahan claimed at sunrise that he had known nothing of the midnight movements against General Ironsi. But it is unlikely that the troops, transport, arms and ammunition used for the siege of Government House were, removed without the C.O’s knowlede. At 10 A.M., Colonel Akahan called an officers’ conference, from which he himself stayed away. When the officers were assembled the Easterners were taken away to the squadron, then later to the taylor’s shop. At midnight, that night, thirty-six hand grenades were lobbed through the windows. The survivors inside were shot down. Eastern soldiers were then made to was the blood away, before being taken out and shot. The easterners in Ironsi’s retinue were also finished off. On the afternoon of the 30th, Colonel Akahan called together the northern soldiers and congratulated them, saying at the same time that there would be no more killing since events had been balanced making it even.”
Ironsi’s murder would be the key ignition to bring about the wanton killing of Igbos around the nation in a “premeditated and diabolical” act which continued apace through the Civil War until now, with an end not yet in sight. Despite Ironsi’s attempt in assuring the northern nihilists that he was for the stability of the country announcing the shuffle of the military governors and ordering the immediate transfer of several military units trading places with the Fourth Batallion in Ibadan and the First Batallion in Enugu, putting away fears of another possible coup, which would pave way for a unitary government he promulgated and was declined by the northern hoodlums and Vandals, and with too many blood in their hands, rounded Igbos, torturing them and killing all execution style.
Such would be the case and Nigeria would not be the same again. In Ghana, there were similar cases, too, but short of wholesale massacre, pogrom and civil war. The overthrow of Nkrumah in February 1966, by the Kotoka-led military juntas was followed two months later by the bloody assassination of Kotoka by a group of mutineers from the Ho, Volta Region Camp led by Moses Yeboah. In the Congo, similar events had occurred previously when Patrice Lumumba was captured and assassinated. Such had been the pattern; the assassination-coup-war dance in the 1960s Africa -- the aftermath of Independence.
Like Ironsi, whose story had never been told at length by those who were close to him and knew him very well, things like his life before the combat in Congo, his series of casual and not casual affairs, his increasingly heavy drinking days as told partly by some of the stories, while most of his counterparts elswhere in the continent whose tenure and era had been covered and written by close friends, relatives, haters, admirers and authors of varied flavors, I requested a copy of Ironsi’s biography “Ironside,” written by one of the nation’s finest journalists, Chuks Ilogbunam.
Ilogbunam, this past September 15, on wishing me well on my birthday told me that “Ironside” had been out of print, and that no immediate plans to continue since Ironsi’s story had been told in many ways, that he could embark on “second edition by next year”, and that the copy he had, had been worn out. Ilogbunam writes;
“I throway salute. Ironside sold out "centuries" ago. But if I locate a tattered copy anywhere, might just send it on to you. I chose not to do a reprint because about 10 books dealing with the same period have since appeared. It will make little sense, I think, to reprint without due scrutiny of alternative opinion. But I scarcely had the time the past five years to do anything connected to scholarship. Now that I am in some "freedom" I should redo Ironside for a second edition by next year. Regards.”
Iloegbunam, I will look forward to that second edition, and I do hope that more is yet to be known in what had been the most blood-soaked event in the entire continent where the major actors, some still alive, living in denial as if those innocents that perished was a mere political dance on which Igbos have to start all over again, which was the case in a Nigeria that had been doomed to fail.
But nevertheless, despite all the failed talks resulting to Gowon’s-led assault which shouldn’t have erupted in the first place had the Aburi Accord been respected and upheld, followed by related faile meetings, the British-Russia aided Nigerian vandals did not find the combat easy. Biafra fought. Against all odds, in what President Julius Nyerere had seen as worthy and on the principles of self-reliance, the government of Tanzania recognized Biafra as a Sovereign National State. That profound recognition was followed by Ivory Coast’s President Houphouet Boigny on May 08, 1968; President Omar Bongo of Gabon on May 14, 1968 and President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, May20, 1968.
Several other countries in and outside the continent had planned to join the league recognizing the new nation, but were dissuaded by a contingent led by former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Alfred Palmer, who had met with these country’s leaders and public intellectuals, charging that a Biafran recognition for sovereignty would not be proper at the moment for the ongoing conflict, which was upon Ojukwu’s Special Squad “S Brigade” invaded and captured the Mid-West, which sent shocking waves to the rest of the world.
The shocking waves resulted to the failed talks in Kampala, Uganda, when the Biafran delegation led by Justice Louis Mbanefo went back home on a breach of the peace talks. The Nigerian delegation which was obvious of deceit and betrayals was led by Anthony Enahoro the traitor, Aminu Kano and the three “Biafran renegades”--Dr. B.I. Ikpeme, Brigadier George Kuruba and Anthony Ukpabi Asika, with proposals meaning a ceasefire should be on the terms of the conqueror, mandated by a British-Russian support.
Thus a whole lot happened, a whole lot is still happening and a whole lot will be happening as time goes on. The question here is, what should be done? Evidently, the saga continues and the Story Never Ends For Igbo Writer In America!
Ambrose Ehirim
Notes: See;
Apologies, Reparations and the Path to Healing; Ambrose Ehirim, BNW/Igbonet/The Ambrose Ehirim Files, (2000)
L.A. Rebellion: Creating A New Black Cinema; UCLA School Of Theater, Film & Television. (2011)
The Burden Of Memory, The Muse Of Forgiveness; Wole Soyinka, Oxford University Press, New York: 1999
The Open Sore Of A Continent: A Personal Narrative Of The Nigerian Crisis; Wole Soyinka, W.E.B. Dubois Institute
The Africans: A Triple Heritage; Ali mazrui; Little Brown and Company; Boston: 1986
The Igbo Of South Eastern Nigeria: Victor C. Uchendu, Holt Reinhart and Winston, New York: 1966
Without Bitterness; Nwafor Oritzu, Creative Press, New York: 1944
Making Of An African Legend; Frederick Forsyth; Pen & Sword
