Hedge-notes for the denialists?

Less than 24 hours after the spectacular crash of that obligatory haematophagous monster at the London 30th Olympiad, with the ignominious tally of bronze medals=zero, silver medals=zero, gold medals=zero, two revanchist commentators, Y and Z, each representing two of the tripartite genocidist bloc that executed the Igbo genocide, beginning 46 years ago, had an unlikely reunion. Both must have felt so weighed down with grief by their country’s abysmal performance. Just one item dominated their grisly exchange: Which of their contributing constituencies murdered more of the total 3.1 million Igbo during the 44 months of extirpation? “We did!” thundered Z, “C’mon listen to me, little one! We started this slaughter. Yes, we, who own this place, launched it. Check the history! We slaughtered more Igbo than you ever could and did – beginning from our backyard, across our backyard, starting mid-morning on the 29th of that May, fourteen straight months before you stomached the courage to join us. Indeed, not before we warned your [genocidist] ‘theorist’ to open the uninterrupted slaughter-corridor to Biafra. Or – ”

“No! No! No! My dear frien’,” the incredulous Y got so riled up: “It was my people that deployed the real-slaughtering generals, the real-slaughtering generals across swathes of Biafra, especially its south, slaughtering and slaughtering and slaughtering the Igbo and devastating and devastating and devastating their prized land. It was our real-slaughtering generals, my dear frien’, who accomplished this task. OK? Please check the history. It is there! Will you? Maybe you reneged on our collective understanding to allow our great theorist to be president after the slaughter because you didn’t really appreciate the role of our real-slaughtering generals in the slaughter of the Igbo.” 

In April 2009, Nigeria was not invited to attend the London G-20 summit. Head of regime Umaru Yar’Adua mournfully noted his disappointment: “Today is a sad day for Nigeria as a country. This is because we are not invited to a meeting of the 20 world leaders. We have the population, we have the resources and we have the potential”. Predictably, Yar’Adua referred to those hackneyed, bogus indices (“population”, “resources”, “potential”) that every school child knows obfuscate the immanent fragility, infamy and hopelessness that chart the quagmire that is Nigeria. 

It is impossible to overstate that the Igbo genocide put paid to any Nigeria pretensions to transform itself to a serious state of global contention. Nigeria, which the Igbo had strategically led to liberate from 60 years of British occupation, collapsed, irremediably, on 29 May 1966. This is the date that interlocutor Z rightly referenced as the beginning of the genocide during the macabre reminiscences with Y. On this day, students, teachers, civil servants, community leaders, varying security personnel, clergy, alimajiri and the like in north Nigeria planned and descended on Igbo children, women and men domiciled in the region: murdering, raping, maiming, looting, destroying… The first phase of the genocide, the most gruesome and devastating in Africa not seen since the 1900s, was now underway. Starting on 6 July 1967, the Nigerians expanded their murdering zones of operation to liquidate the Igbo by attacking the entire stretch of Igboland – from Issele-Ukwu, Agbo, Anioma, Ugwuta and Onicha in the west to Ehuugbo, Aba and Umuahia to the east; from Nsukka and Eha Amuufu in the north to Igwe Ocha/Port Harcourt, Umu Ubani/Bonny and Igwe Nga/Opobo to the south. 

On the morrow of this pulverising season of slaughtering, the only tangible capability that the murderers have acquired is one to commit even more murders – nothing else … definitely, not the more challenging capacity to develop and transform its human potential and economy and, in turn, attract and merit the accolades and recognitions from peers elsewhere.

With such an unenviable legacy, it would indeed have been quite bizarre for anyone to expect this Malebolge to win anything “respectable” in the just concluded London games. Understandably, the world is eagerly looking forward to welcoming the elegant and focussed men and women athletes from these southwestcentral contours of Africa flying the indomitable flag of the Land of the Rising Sun in future Olympiads – with Rio, a tantalising marker?


Twitter @HerbertEkweEkwe