USA Africa Dialogue Series - ON THE QUESTION OF AN ANTI-BIAFRA GENOCIDE

Emmanuel,

Can you provide evidence of the existence of an anti-Biafra genocide?

The idea is repeated in various sources without any effort at justification.

It would be useful to first define the meaning of the term "genocide" and describe how it applies to the Biafran experience.

While its important to acknowledge the devastation suffered by Biafra for a number of reasons, ranging from poor strategy on the part of her leaders to war crimes directed against her citizens, it is vital to place that suffering in context.

I await evidence of genocide against Biafrans and Igbos, not all of whom were within Biafra proper during the war. 

All Ikhide has done is  picked up some idea on the anti-Jewish Holocaust and flung it indiscriminately  at the Biafra story. His claim to   outrage then works as a means of   shielding  himself from the more demanding  task of proving his point. 

I am yet to find evidence that justifies the idea of an anti-Biafra and anti-Igbo genocide

The anti-Jewish Holocaust might not be particularly useful as a template for comparison in proving the occurrence of an anti-Biafra/anti-Igbo genocide because there is a world of difference between the Jewish Holocaust and the Biafran experience. 

The occurrence of the anti-Jewish Holocaust carried out by the Nazis is indisputable on account of the incontrovertible, concrete  historical evidence of the planning and execution of a policy of exterminating Jews carried out with horrific efficiency in Germany and Eastern Europe.

The extermination program was an official, openly declared policy of the Nazi regime, the official designation of the policy being    "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question".

It operated in three major stages carried out  from the 1930s to war's end in the 1940s :

1. Identification and isolation of Jews

2. Rounding up and transporting Jews to extermination  camps. These camps are well known and have become historical monuments: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Majdanek, Sobibor, among others.The people who ran these camps are known and some have been brought to trial, particularly notorious among them being Joseph Mengele, the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz, who decided which prisoners were to be gassed to death immediately and those whose  deaths were to be delayed.He is also described as using  the prisoners, including children,  for horrible scientific experiments. 

3. The prisoners were stripped of their valuables, either killed immediately or saved for later death. This death could come through random selection at the whims of the camp commandant, through a precise process of selecting people for gassing, or through starvation, exhuastion, illness or overwork. 

The gas chambers still exist as part of the historical monuments the concentration camps have become.

Can anyone point to anything comparable to justify the claims of an anti-Biafra genocide? 

Even if it is argued that Nigeria did not operate at the Nazi level of efficiency, can anyone point to a policy consistently executed or carried out at random but constantly directed at the extermination of Biafrans and particularly Igbos?

The historical records and the scholarship on the war are often not consulted, it seems, by a significant number of those who make pronouncements about it. This has led to a proliferation of myth over history.

thanks

toyin

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dr. Emmanuel Franklyne <Ogbunwezeh@yahoo.com>
Date: 2 January 2012 11:06
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Economist: The disposable academic Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>

Ikhide,

You have said it all. Toyin Adepoju and other closet Nazis like him are still in denial. Biafra would forever remain Nigeria's albatross. The ghosts of Biafra are yet to be propitiated. And the wicked denials of the Toyin Adepoju's of this world are reasons why Nigeria will remain the graveyard of progress; a country that murders its best and canonizes its rogues. 

Sent from my iPhone

On 01.01.2012, at 18:47, Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com> wrote:

"Dont you want to adress the opinion that the much quoted notion of anti-Igbo genocide before and during the war  is a farce concoted by Biafran propaganda  on the ashes, misery and mutilation  of Biafrans and particularly Igbos, whom the Biafran leadership and Ojukwu, in particular, sacrificed  to an unnecessary and unwinnable war, sustaining that war even when victory was clearly  impossible,  manufacturing the genocide fear to keep Biafrans in the  war, eventually  fleeing to safety in exile  even though he had promised not to leave his people, leaving them at a desperate time,  with no options,  leaving  Efiong to negotiate  surrender without any initiative from Ojukwu, who was now incommunicado?'

- Toyin Adepoju

Wow. And there are Nazis who claim the holocaust never happened. You won't see me engaging them in "intellectual dialogue." Nonsense. You are on you own here, Toyin; I totally and irrevocably dissociate myself from any and all hateful views like the above. Please keep my name out of it.

- Ikhide

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From: toyin adepoju <toyin.adepoju@googlemail.com>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, January 1, 2012 9:52 AM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - The Economist: The disposable academic Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

Ikhide,

In the name of God, what have I done to deserve being described so : "I only engage in honest conversations; and it is clear to me that from your conduct here and elsewhere that you are not interested in one."

In this discussion on this group, I have called you out to defend your views on Nigerian education and Biafra. 

You wrote  of Nigerian education and Biafra in the following words:

"Upon the death of Dim Ojukwu, many of us donned the flag of Biafra. One young Nigerian reached out to me on chat and asked what the flag was about. I told him. He asked me to tell him more about Biafra. I asked him how old he was. 35 years old. A man born in Nigeria in the 70's told me that very very little of Biafra was taught him in school. How can that be, I asked? Then he told me about the horrors of life as a "student" in the pretend classrooms of Nigeria from primary to tertiary. I have the entire transcript and one day when I have the time I shall fictionalize it and share with the world the war that our intellectuals have wreaked on our children."

In those words, you do the following

1. You describe the idea that "very little of Biafra" was taught to your 35 year old interlocutor, born in Nigeria in the 70s, as indication of what you describe as "the horrors of life as a "student" in the pretend classrooms of Nigeria from primary to tertiary".

You thereby imply that Nigerian education from the 70s, when your interlocutor was born, to the present, is best understood in terms of ""the horrors of life as a "student" in the pretend classrooms of Nigeria from primary to tertiary".

Have I misquoted you? No.

Everyone here can read and judge for themselves. 

I am asking you to justify this assertion. 

To justify this assertion, you need to demonstrate why you think the kind of education about Biafra you espouse should be a touchstone for assessing Nigerian education. 

Does everyone of your age group share that opinion, making it unnecessary to defend and justify it? 

Did you yourself not argue that history is perceived from various perspectives? Is it not vital that holders of these perspectives need to defend their views by presenting their rationale for holding those views? 

It is salutary, that, for you, like many others " The passing of Dim Ojukwu was for me and many an opportunity to reflect on an era."

What are your reflections?

Various people have expressed theirs. Yakubu Gowon, the Nigerian Head of State during the war, whose differences with Ojukwu played a key role in the crises before and during the war  has expressed his, motivated by  Ojukwu's transition.  Max Siollun, Nigerian history scholar, has done the same, which one can see if one Googles his name. 

Over the years, Ojukwu reappraisals  have been prominent on Nigerian centred online communities and in books on the war.  The names of people like Ikenna Anokute on Nigerian and Igbo centred groups and Edruezzi on Nairaland are significant in this debate.  Chief Ralph Uwechue, President of Ohanaeze, the  Pan-Igbo organisation, a person who describes himself as at the centre of events in Biafra  as events unfolded in those fateful days, not to talk of Philip Efiong, Alexander Madiebo, Ojukwu's fellow Biafran commanders, have all written books on the subject. 

 Joseph  Achuzia, one of the most  prominent  figures in the Biafran military, who was part of events from the gestation to the dissolution of Biafra, has  expressed his views on the meaning of Biafra,  before and recently. Some other Igbos have expressed disagreement with Achuzia  on the meaning of Biafra. Interestingly and ironically, Oguchi Nwocha's  article critical of the  perspective on Biafra of Achuzia, a war scarred veteran of that war, who was in Biafra from the beginning to the end with his Caucasian wife and their son, describing himself as using desperate methods to mobilize his men to fight in the face of apathy arising from the awareness of imminent collapse in the midst of horrific suffering, a stance contributing to his war time nickname as " Hannibal Air-Raid Achiuzia" described as serving seven years in prison at war's end for his role in the war,   is titled "Educating Achuzie on the Biafran Dream." 

Biafra means  different things to different people, even among  Igbos, who are the centre of its legacy.

What does it mean to you? 

In the discussions on Biafra on Ederi, which you allude to, you lamented the failure  of people to claim and own the Biafra story. 

What is the character  of your own ownership and claim on Biafra?

Is Biafra of such questionable value that you cannot stand up and present your views in this marketplace of opinions?

  Dont you want to counter those, including Igbos in Biafra and Igbos after Biafra, who see Biafra as  a misadventure  and a power hungry venture driven largely by Ojukwu? 

Dont you want to adress the opinion that the much quoted notion of anti-Igbo genocide before and during the war  is a farce concoted by Biafran propaganda  on the ashes, misery and mutilation  of Biafrans and particularly Igbos, whom the Biafran leadership and Ojukwu, in particular, sacrificed  to an unnecessary and unwinnable war, sustaining that war even when victory was clearly  impossible,  manufacturing the genocide fear to keep Biafrans in the  war, eventually  fleeing to safety in exile &nbs

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