RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My review of Falola's book on Biafra

[Salimonu Kadiri]

I am yet to read "Writing The Nigeria-Biafra War" edited by Falola, therefore, I cannot comment on it. But since you, Biko Agozino, have read  and reviewed it in your "Objective History and Genocide Denialism" I regret to observe that even if the war music stopped over forty-six years ago, you still continue to dance like a deaf person as if the war music is still on. You wrote, "I have always wanted to read accounts of the Nigeria-Biafra war from the perspectives of Nigerian intellectuals on the side of Nigeria *during the gonocidal war* but this book will not quench that thirst. There is no contributor from the Northern part of Nigeria where *the genocide against the Igbo started and claimed an estimated 100, 000 lives .......... and then followed by the genocidal war in which about three million people were killed* through what Obafemi Awolowo unapologetically tried to justify with the assertion that starvation is a legitimate weapon of war." Who decided that there was genocide against the Igbo during the civil war and where and when was it decided? Every life is sacred to me and as such a murder of any person regardless of his/her ethnicity is already too much for me to bear. As for you, it appears murder is not a horrible crime if the quantity is not counted in thousands. Being a Professor it should not be a problem for you forty-six years after the end of the war to know the exact numbers of Igbo murdered in the North in 1966. Instead, you are marketing an estimated 100,000 Igbo killed in the North. What is the source of your information? In the foreword to the booklet, Pogrom, produced by the Eastern Region government, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, wrote that *more than 7,000 Igbo were killed in the North.* At Aburi conference in January 1967, Ojukwu said that 10,000 Igbo were killed in the North; while addressing his consultative assembly towards the end of May 1967, Ojukwu said that 30, 000 Igbo were killed in the North and in Ahiara Declaration of June 1, 1969, Ojukwu claimed that 50,000 Igbo were killed in the North between 29 May and October 3, 1966. Six months later, Ojukwu abandoned his soldiers and fled to Ivory Coast and his touted figure of 50, 000 Igbo killed in the North as contained in Ahiara Declaration remain unchanged. If I were not shy, I would have called you Professor of lie and mischievous propaganda because Ojukwu himself never went to the extent of saying that 100,000 Igbo were killed in the North in 1966.

 

The history reviewing Professor proceeded to incriminate Chief Obafemi Awolowo in a genocidal war in which, according to him, three million Igbo were killed which Awolowo justified with the assertion that 'starvation is a legitimate weapon of war.' When reports of mass starvation in Biafra broke out in 1968, Chief Awolowo asked about what had happened to all the food items sent as reliefs for civilians and he was told that relief supplies were being hijacked by Biafran Soldiers according to the report of the International Red Cross based in Biafra. It is in that light one should understand Awolowo's purported statement which has often been quoted out of context. Chinua Achebe wrote, "A statement credited to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: All is fare in war, and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don't see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder (There Was a Country, page 233.)." Although Awolowo's statement referred to not giving Biafran soldiers food so that they would be able to fight harder against Nigerian Soldiers, Professor Agozino and like minds has maliciously revised his statement to imply starving Igbo civilians to death. Regardless of what Awolowo might have said or not, Chinua Achebe revealed the following, "The diplomatic battles had reached a fever pitch by the middle of 1968. Gowon, under immense international pressure and bristling from the whirlwind of publicity about Biafra, decided to open up land routes for a supervised transport of relief. To the consternation of Gowon, Ojukwu opted out land routes in favour of increased airlifts of food from São Tomé by international relief agencies (page 211, There Was a Country)." In fact, Gowon's federal government did not object to airlifting of relief supplies to civilians in Biafra but demanded, according to international law, that all flights into Biafra should first land in Nigeria for inspection so as to ensure that no weapons were smuggled to the rebels. By rejecting Gowon's offer, Ojukwu was actually guilty of war crime by holding Igbo civilians under his regime as hostages. That Nigeria acted correctly, according to international law, can still be found in recent international politics. In May 2010, the Turkish Prime Minister (now President), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, decided to break Israeli sea blockade of the Gaza strip by sending a ship, Mavi Marmara, to deliver relief aids to the Palestinians in Gaza Strip. The Israeli boarded Mavi Marmara on 31st May 2010, and in the following encounter, 9 civilian crews were killed and 55 were seriously wounded. Turkey turned to the United Nations Security Council for sanction against Israel but the Council justified Israel's action against the blockade breaker, because Israel is under war against Palestine and as such has the right to inspect all shipments into Gaza Strip so as to ensure that no weapons were smuggled to the Palestinians. Till date, there is no starvation in Gaza Strip because vessels delivering relief supplies there subject themselves to Israeli's inspection before anchoring in Gaza Strip. It is true that people died of starvation in Biafra, but the fault was that of Ojukwu who rejected the inspection of relief supply transports into Biafra by Nigeria. Unless Nigerian Professors can come to terms with the simple fact that Ojukwu's refusal to allow Nigeria to inspect all cargoes before landing in Biafra was the cause of mass starvation, they will erroneously continue to think any book written about the civil war without admitting there was genocide against the Igbo is a denial of Igbo genocide.

S.Kadiri     
 

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Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2016 15:54:11 +0000
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My review of Falola's book on Biafra

Mass Literacy: ‘Objective’ History and Genocide Denialism

				Mass Literacy: ‘Objective’ History and Genocide Denialis...   By Biko Agozino
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Please follow the link above and feel free to leave a comment.

Biko

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[Biko Agozino]

Dear Kadiri,

You said that you are yet to read the book and my advice is that you should wait until you have read it before you write a rejoinder to my review. Reading is no longer prohibited to Africans the way it was during slavery. Read the book and then write your rejoinder. If you will not read, do not ask me to give your sources of published records that you will refuse to read.

Meanwhile, call me any number of names you like while you continue to deny the established fact that the Nigerian government killed millions upon millions of the Igbo during the war. If you are not outraged about genocidal killings, you will not be the first person to support crimes against humanity. Similarly, I am not the only one outraged by genocidal killings anywhere in the world. People with a conscience around the world share this outrage.

If you should change your mind and join progressive people to demand that the Nigerian state should atone for the evil done to the Igbo, again you will not be the first or the last to do so. Against all those who believe that Nigeria did nothing wrong, there will come a time when the Nigerian state will admit the wrongs done to the Igbo and offer reparations. So long as the state refuses to admit that killing millions of innocent Nigerians to protect the interests of a greedy elite was morally justifiable, for so long will the wanton destruction of the lives of innocent people continue in the country. People who have suffered less historic wrongs in Nigeria appear to have been offered some forms of reparations while the country elites remain in denial about the genocide against the Igbo.

Mr. Kadiri, you will not lose anything when Nigeria admits wrongdoing and attempts to atone for the genocide against your fellow Africans. Add your voice to the call for reparations if you value the lives of millions of your fellow citizens who were unjustifiably destroyed in a war of aggression.

Thank you for taking time to respond to my review.

Biko

[Biko Agozino]

'... was morally unjustifiable...' I stand corrected.

Biko

[O O]

Ironically an inopportune Freudian slip?

Would you please spell out what you mean by "progressive people"?

[Salimonu Kadiri]

Dear brother Professor Agozino,
As I have said earlier, I do not need to count bodies of murdered persons in thousands to condemn murder. I know the definition of genocide and in the case of Nigeria I would have recognised it if it had occurred before or during the war. Thus if I disagree with your stand that genocide was committed against the Igbo during the civil war, that does not imply that I am not outraged by "genocidal killings and that I am in support of crimes against humanity in general wherever they occur." Genocide is a very serious crime that one should not throw around anyhow and carelessly.

 

You accused me of continuing 'to deny the established fact that the Nigerian government killed millions upon millions of the Igbo during the war' but your established fact has only been mere statements of *more than or about three million Igbo killed in a genocidal war.* In the history of warfare, Nigeria is the only country in the world that invited a team of international observers to trail behind her troops in the war front to write and report on the conduct of the troops. The Observers, including the UN, wrote volumes of reports that exonerated Nigeria from acts of genocide against the Igbo. And not only that, at a press conference addressed by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in London on August 28, 1969, he told his audience, "Knowing that the accusation of genocide is palpably false, but bearing in mind the widespread killing of 1966, which must always hunt our memories, why should some people continue to fool our people to believe that they are slated for slaughter, when we know that they suffer mental anguish and physical agony as a result of their being homeless and their places of abode having been desolated by war and their lives rendered helpless?" Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe,  confirming that the accusation of genocide was palpably false was not a denial of genocide and I associate myself with his view.

 

Lieutenant Colonel Philip Efiong was a Deputy to Ojukwu but he blamed him for the unnecessary lost of lives caused by the avoidable civil war. Hear him, "Until the end of the war on 12 January 1970, the Biafran soldier fought an impossible war under conditions that were totally inhuman and uncalled for. It was the result of one man turning what was the people's will to fight a war of survival into a desperate and reckless attempt to achieve a personal ambition - even if it meant destroying the very people he purportedly was fighting to preserve (page 237, Nigeria and Biafra: My Story by Philip Efiong)." Admittedly, mass starvation destroyed many lives in Biafra because Ojukwu refused to accept food that passed through Nigeria and for me that was not genocide but mass suicide.

S.Kadiri    
 

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Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2016 18:11:08 +0000
From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - My review of Falola's book on Biafra