Nigeria and their Deceit...

British Assisted Genocide in Biafra

Those who take joy in the evil they do

The US, Igbo genocide, contemporary Africa

That August 1966 US support for Britain’s plans to expand the territorial reach of the Igbo genocide to Igboland, itself, was an invaluable endorsement for the British – coming from their closest ally since the end of World War II. Britain now had such a formidable diplomatic and political backing to wage a murder campaign to “punish” the Igbo which it had sought to engage in the previous 20 years but didn’t for reasons we have already reviewed here. One obvious consequence of the US endorsement was the viciousness if not savagery of the campaign. Key spokespersons of the genocidist regime in Lagos publicly stated the genocidal goals of the campaign with scarce inhibition throughout its entire stretch and subsequently. British officials, including Harold Wilson, the prime minister himself, were no more reticent in expressing what their mission goal was. Undoubtedly, the Nigeria genocide state became some haematophagous monster let loose on the Igbo and Igboland, slaughtering away to the hilt … And just in case anyone doubts the endgame of this mission, three shrilling, chilling proclamations, scripted with unmistakeable Stheno-precepts of obliterating intent from one of the Gorgons stalking the land, punctuate the scene as the following shows:

1. The ghoulish anthem of the genocide, broadcast uninterruptedly on state-owned Kaduna radio (shortwave transmission) and television and with editorial comments on the theme, regularly published in both state-owned New Nigerian (daily) newspaper and (Hausa) weekly Gaskiya Ta fi Kwabo during the period, has these lyrics in Hausa:

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 

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

2. Benjamin Adekunle, one of the most despicable of the genocidist commanders in south Igboland, makes the following statement to the media, including foreign representatives, in an August 1968 press conference: “I want to prevent even one I[g]bo having even one piece to eat before their capitulation. 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 don’t move” (The Economist [London], 24 August 1968).

(Benjamin Adekunle)
3a. Harold Wilson, prime minister of Britain, the key “centre”-world power that crucially supports the Igbo genocide militarily, diplomatically and politically right from conceptualisation to actualisation, informs Clyde Ferguson (United States state department special coordinator for relief to Biafra) that he, Harold Wilson, “would accept half a million dead Biafrans if that was what it took” the Nigeria genocidists to destroy the Igbo resistance to the genocide (Morris, 1977: 122). Wilson’s statement couldn’t haven more audaciously expressed, particularly coming from the prime minister of Britain to an official of his closest ally, the United States. This is indeed extraordinary… For the record, Wilson’s “a half a million dead Biafrans” represented 4.2 per cent of the Igbo population then; by the time that that phase of the genocide came to an end, 6-9 months after Wilson’s wish-declaration, 25 per cent of this nation’s population or 3.1 million Igbo people had been murdered by the genocidists. Harold Wilson’s “would accept a half a million dead Biafrans”-wish is not a declaration made by some dictator, some leader of a loony party, a fascist party or anything of that ilk; on the contrary, this is a declaration made by an elected politician, a politician in an advanced West democracy – the leader of the British Labour party, a party that prides itself for having attracted leading thinkers to its ranks in the post-World War II era. “[W]ould accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took”-wish is made by the prime minister of Britain; not the prime minister of some “peripheral”, inconsequential country but the prime minister of a “centre” state and power that was part of the victorious alliance that defeated a fascist global amalgam in a global war that ended barely 23 years earlier. This is a prime minister of a “centre” state and power, the sixth to occupy this exalted position since the end of the war, that was one of the key countries that worked on the panel that drafted the historic 1948 United Nations “Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide”, in the wake of the 1930s-1940s deplorable perpetration of the Jewish genocide in Europe. 6 million Jews were murdered then by Nazi Germany. It is to ensure that no human beings are ever subjected to what the Jews went through in central Europe and elsewhere that this genocide convention is rated as one of the key international documents of the new age. Britain is a signatory to the convention. Surely, Harold Wilson’s “would accept a half million dead Biafrans if that was what it took”-wish cannot fit into the hallowed pages of the 1948 United Nations “Convention on the prevention of the Crime of Genocide”. Absolutely not! On the contrary, Wilson’s is a mid-1960s declaration to wage a genocide on a people, the Igbo people, 3150 miles away in southwestcentral Africa, just 20 years after the Jewish genocide in Europe. In the end, rather than Wilson’s 500,000 “dead Biafrans”-wish, there were 3.1 million murdered Biafrans... The world must now know: How many others in Wilson’s cabinet identified with this genocidal position and policy on the Igbo? What was the nature of the debates on this subject? Were there voices of opposition within cabinet? Who were these voices and how did they try to alter both position and policy? An official in the foreign office in London at the time does acknowledge, without ambiguity, the genocidal plank of this administration’s policy especially on the issue of the dispatch of urgent relief to the encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo: “[my government’s position was designed to] show conspicuous zeal in relief while in fact letting the little buggers starve out” (Morris, 1977: 122; see also Michael Leapman, “While the Biafrans starved, the FO moaned about hacks”, The Independent on Sunday, London, 3 January 1999). How widespread did people in the broader Labour party know of Harold Wilson’s genocidal policy on the Igbo? How much of Wilson’s Igbo genocide drive did the official British Conservative party opposition aware of?

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3b. In May 1969, Olusegun Obasanjo, who had recently taken over the command of the Benjamin Adekunle-death squad, orders his air force to shoot down any Red Cross planes flying in urgently-needed relief supplies to the millions of surviving but encircled, blockaded and bombarded Igbo. Within a week of his infamous order, 5 June 1969, Obasanjo recalls, nostalgically, in his memoirs, aptly titled My Command (1981), genocidist air force pilot Gbadomosi King “redeem[s] his promise”, as Obasanjo puts it (Obasanjo, 1981: 79). Gbadomosi King shoots down a clearly marked, incoming relief-bearing International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) DC-7 aircraft near Eket, south Biafra, with the loss of its 3-person crew. Obasanjo’s perverse satisfaction over the aftermath of this crime is fiendish, grotesquely revolting. He writes: “The effect of [this] singular achievement of the Air Force especially on 3 Marine Commando Division [name of the death squad Obasanjo, who subsequently becomes head of Nigeria regime for 11 years, commands] was profound. It raised morale of all service personnel, especially of the Air Force detachment concerned and the troops they supported in [my] 3 Marine Commando Division” (Obasanjo: 79). The consequence of this act of terror across the world is, of course, the expression of revulsion. What does Obasanjo do in response? This is hugely revelatory. Olusegun Obasanjo appeals to Harold Wilson, the British prime minister, as Obasanjo, himself, scripts in his My Command (165), to “sort out” the raging international outcry generated by the destruction of the ICRC aircraft.

(Olusegun Obasanjo: “The effect of [this] singular achievement of the Air Force especially on 3 Marine Commando Division was profound. It raised morale of all service personnel...”)
For the Nigerian génocidaires, the fact that, at the end, they have Britain’s back is critical in the pursuit of their gruesome campaign. As for Britain, the unrelentingly brazen impunity equally displayed by its officials, including Prime Minister Wilson, is anchored on the confidence that they have the United States’s government back. It is worth noting that the texture of the vituperative declarations made by either side of the genocidist coalition is pointedly a variation on the central theme of this campaign: to murder Igbo people.