Obi,
"Emma Okocha has written an incredible book - a witness account of the massacre of the entire Asaba male population in 1968. It is called Blood on the Niger. Okocha's entire male linneage - his father and members of his family were wiped out. He was the lone survivor in his family and bears the emotional scar to this day. The story of the Asaba killings in which the Nigerian Army lined up every male - from child to man - and executed them with the intention of erasing the male bloodline in Asaba, cannot go by another name, except you deny that the incident took place. Meanwhile, if you think Asaba was an isolated case, I'd refer you to the Investigator's report by the Ghanian jurist, Dr Thomas Mensah for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the International Committee on the Investigation of Crimes of Genocide in 1969. Dr. Mensah traveled to Nigeria in December 1968 and March 1969. In his report, Dr. Mensah acknolwdged that there is "a 'prima facie case of genocide" and indeed concluded with this weighty statement: "I am of the opinion that in many of the cases cited to me, hatred of the Biafrans and a wish to exterminate them was a foremost motivational factor" in that war and in events leading to it."
The man who supervised the massacre in Asaba was Murtala Muhammed; that criminal's name now adorns an international airport of ours and his face is on our currency, morbid reminders of the men that have raped and pillaged us for decades. Obi, if you don't believe me, here is what one Obi Nwakanma said here in his column the Orbit in the Vanguard titled Revisiting the Asaba Massacres.
"The account of what happened in Asaba is well documented in Emma Okocha's Blood on the Niger. It is also the subject of my poem, The Horsemen, an elegy to that era.
But to put it quite simply, the troops under Murtala Muhammed and the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, both of whom also ironically met death on the same day in 1976, supervised the killing of the adult males of Asaba.
They had ordered them to dance at the town square, separated the men from the women, and killed them.
Ironically, one of those killed was Sydney Asiodu, a potential Olympic medalist and undergraduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His brother, Philip Asiodu was then a super permanent secretary in Gowon's administration in Lagos.
Even then, Asaba was only one of the places where the Nigerian military committed war crimes of such horrendous magnitude during that war, and have sought to cover it up and even erase them."
Toyin makes me really sad. I never really thought someone like him would have these kinds of odious views. I am shaken to my roots. I am also baffled that folks truly believe this man does not have all the data he needs to draw his conclusions about Biafra/the Nigerian civil war/Nigeria blah blah blah. He is about 50 years old, he knows what he is doing and no amount of back-pedaling on his part will change that. I will never forget the day he made certain assumptions about the ethnicity of me and a few others elsewhere and called us Igbo and Biafra fanatics. I felt like I had just been a victim of ethnic cleansing. Coming from someone I admired it was ... something.
- Ikhide
The man who supervised the massacre in Asaba was Murtala Muhammed; that criminal's name now adorns an international airport of ours and his face is on our currency, morbid reminders of the men that have raped and pillaged us for decades. Obi, if you don't believe me, here is what one Obi Nwakanma said here in his column the Orbit in the Vanguard titled Revisiting the Asaba Massacres.
"The account of what happened in Asaba is well documented in Emma Okocha's Blood on the Niger. It is also the subject of my poem, The Horsemen, an elegy to that era.
But to put it quite simply, the troops under Murtala Muhammed and the late Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo, both of whom also ironically met death on the same day in 1976, supervised the killing of the adult males of Asaba.
They had ordered them to dance at the town square, separated the men from the women, and killed them.
Ironically, one of those killed was Sydney Asiodu, a potential Olympic medalist and undergraduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His brother, Philip Asiodu was then a super permanent secretary in Gowon's administration in Lagos.
Even then, Asaba was only one of the places where the Nigerian military committed war crimes of such horrendous magnitude during that war, and have sought to cover it up and even erase them."
Toyin makes me really sad. I never really thought someone like him would have these kinds of odious views. I am shaken to my roots. I am also baffled that folks truly believe this man does not have all the data he needs to draw his conclusions about Biafra/the Nigerian civil war/Nigeria blah blah blah. He is about 50 years old, he knows what he is doing and no amount of back-pedaling on his part will change that. I will never forget the day he made certain assumptions about the ethnicity of me and a few others elsewhere and called us Igbo and Biafra fanatics. I felt like I had just been a victim of ethnic cleansing. Coming from someone I admired it was ... something.
- Ikhide
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