Nchamere Nd'Igbo: The Pogrom, War And Starvation: Evidence Of Anti-Igbo Pogrom

In a three-part thriller that is sure to send historians about the Nigerian Civil War back to library shelves, the Military Governor of the... defunct Midwest Region, Major General David Akpode Ejoor, says military coups in Nigeria began right from independence in 1960. In this interview with BIMBO OGUNNAIKE and AZEEZ FOLURUNSHO, he shredded several claims and set-positions about the country's past and future. Firing from the hips, like a war veteran that he is, and in a no-holds-barred interview, Ejoor maintains that the political and military leaders of Igbo extraction had nursed the ambition of upturning the Nigerian political space because their leading light, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, emerged only as a nominal Governor-General while power resided in another geo-political zone. The concluding parts of the rare interview will be served you, dear readers, next Saturday and the week after. Excerpts: You appear to be more of an enigma to Nigerians, most of whom know very little about you...

By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe The Igbo and the east had already made a quasi-strategic withdrawal from the all-Nigeria mission they embarked upon in the 1940s/early 1950s as a result of the series of British counter-measures of the subsequent years, including especially London’s decision to hand over supreme political power to its anti-Nigerian liberation-client north region. The Igbo had spearheaded the liberation of Nigeria from formal British rule. The east was a booming economy, enjoying Africa’s highest growth rate. It was educationally and economically much more advanced than any other part of Nigeria. The east was on course to developing into a leading economic and industrial power in another decade, fulfilling a comprehensive socioecconomic transformation goal it had launched in 1954. By Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe It is important to note the striking disclaimer that Max Siollun makes right from the outset in his article on the Igbo genocide (“The Northern Counter-Coup Of 1966: The Full Story”) p...

By Emeka Eze “At present, we are enveloped in darkness…. Providence has done much for us in this contest, but we must do something for ourselves” (Gen. Washington to James Mchenry) Article 2 of the Vienna Declaration and programme of Action States, “ All peoples have the right of self determination, by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status, and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” The Article went further to say, “taking into account the particular situation of peoples under colonial or other forms of alien domination or foreign occupation, the world conference on Human Rights recognises the right of peoples to take any legitimate action… to realize their inalienable right of self determination” The excesses of this article are for meaningful development. All human rights instruments are for a common good. Where the common good is not forthcoming, the prevailing situation would be that of “violation” amounting to confusions and th...

Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe For 43 years, African peoples have waited patiently, sometimes in understandable despair, for this laudable news report from The Hague: the issuance of an arrest warrant, by the International Criminal Court, to apprehend the head of an African regime to stand trial for “war crimes and crimes against humanity”. Thanks to the work of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court’s indefatigable chief prosecutor, Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has the unenviable accolade as the first “head of state” in office to be so indicted. In the past six years, his regime has murdered 300,000 Darfuri (in west Sudan) and forced 2.5 million survivors into refugee camps in neighbouring Chad. Since 29 May 1966, when the north Nigerian political, religious and military establishment ordered its own janjaweed to attack Igbo population centres across the entire stretch of north Nigeria – killing, raping, looting, wasting and heralding the first phase of the Igbo genocide, the gruesome total of 15 million Afric...

By Akeem Soboyede Published: Thursday, 5 Mar 2009 “It will be a long, long, long time, possibly generations, before passions die out over the Nigerian Civil War.” — Prof. Wole Soyinka, The Man Died (1972) The ferocious conflict that pitched the Nigerian federation against the break-away Republic of Biafra ended in January 1970. But you wouldn’t know this if you followed the controversy ignited by statements recently credited to outgoing Nigerian Ambassador to the United States, retired Brigadier-General Oluwole Rotimi. First, a background. For some weeks, rumours had floated among Nigerians in the Washington, DC area that the relationship between Nigeria’s Foreign Minister, Ojo Maduekwe, and the man who heads the “crown jewel” of Nigerian missions abroad, the ambassador to the United States, was far from cordial. Rotimi had assumed his post only in April 2008; his boss, the Foreign Minister, was said to have a fondness for visiting the Washington, DC area. Protocol demanded that during...

By Anton Caragea The conflict in Caucasus has proven that the European Union is unfortunately still in need of a coherent foreign policy. In March 2003, after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, EU member states decided in Brussels that never again would they be caught wrong-footed by international events. The result of this decision was the creation of the post of EU High Representative on Foreign Policy and the naming of Javier Solana as the czar of EU foreign affairs. But the Caucasus conflict proves that EU is still uncertain about its role in European affairs. To craft a new status for the EU in the aftermath of this crisis, French President Nicolas Sarkozy requested an emergency meeting of EU leaders for September 1. It is time for Europe to keep its word and develop a coherent foreign policy. Such a bold initiative, however, requires a new agreement to replace the 1975 Helsinki Accords and address the new challenges to borders and sovereignty. For its September 1 meeting and after, t...

THE BRUTALITY OF NATIONS By Dan Jacobs. 383 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $22.95. Reviewed by Colin Campbell ANYONE who has followed the huge international aid operations that have been mounted in recent years in Ethiopia, Cambodia and other devastated countries must have noticed that these efforts keep running into technical and political obstacles, and that they raise other issues as well. Shipments of food and medicine always seem to arrive in such places too late. There aren't enough planes or trucks to deliver the stuff. Dozens of different aid agencies leap into the act, and it's only a matter of time before they start disagreeing passionately over just what the problem is and how to deal with it. Fortunately, these emergencies have generated a few important case studies, and one can read about the all-too-human world of several big emergency aid operations in appalling detail. Now ''The Brutality of Nations'' by Dan Jacobs has appeared, dealing with the ...