--If your view as expressed here is anything to go by, it means Ojukwu the warlord of Biafra and his battalion should equally be charged in a civilian court or ICC. It means the perpetrators of the first coup that toppled a constituted and democratically elected government of the time should be equally charged.With abundant evidences that we have read by the contributors to this debate, it is logically and morally overwhelming that Pa Awo and General Adekunle were innocent of any war crimes.The mischiefs of haters of truth cannot obliterate its flame.
Segun Ogungbemi Ph.DProfessor of PhilosophyAdekunle Ajasin UniversityAkungba-Akoko, Ondo StateNigeriaCellphone: 0803304137108024670952
On Sep 24, 2014, at 8:09 PM, Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com> wrote:The simple truth is that Benjamin Adekunle should have been brought before a civilized court, and charged under the Geneva convention for war crimes, and he should have spent the rest of his wretched life in a prison. Chief Awolowo also abetted the use of hunger in the blockade that starved civilian populations in a war which the federal government declared and waged against the East. He too stands guilty of war crimes. Achebe merely pointed out the facts. Those invested in erasing and revising the truths of that war are wrestling with time and the long memory of a violated people. It is impossible to silence people who can still point to mass graves that hold the bleached bones of their women, their children and young men who were victims of the war tactics of Benjamin Adekunle, and the policies that backed him. One or two conferences may not resolve these questions, but it will open up the pus-filled wound of history covered with bandaid, and allow the different sides of the narrative to confront the other, and perhaps ultimately find peace.
Obi Nwakanma
From: ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tribute: General Benjamin Adekunle
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 13:45:20 +0200
I doubt if such a conference would ever achieve anything good because some Nigerians have been narcotized with false ethnic love. Those ethnic warriors dwell in social environment where gossips and ordinary speculations work better than deep-rooted thinking and ideological philosophy. In their narcotized condition, the ethnic fascists are addicted to interpreting speeches of their opponents in the Nigerian civil war to convey meanings that were not intended by the speakers. I will corroborate my assertion with some examples.At the meeting of Western Leaders of Thought in Ibadan, May 1, 1967, Obafemi Awolowo said, "If the Eastern Region is allowed, by acts of omission, or commission, to secede from or opt out of Nigeria, then the Federation should be considered to be at an end and the Western Region should also opt out of it." Not only did that statement indicate clear opposition to disintegration of Nigeria, Awolowo took anti-secession step when on the 7th of May 1967, he led a four-man reconciliation delegation to Enugu to meet Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu and to persuade him not to cut the head as a solution to migraine. Ojukwu disdainfully treated Awolowo and his National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) and told them that their mission was an ill-conceived child. In spite of the self-explained statement of Awolowo on the 1st of May 1967, the grand Mandarin of ethno-fascism went on to interpret his statement as having agreed with Ojukwu that the Western Region would simultaneously secede from Nigeria and that Awolowo betrayed Ojukwu by not making West to secede.In Chinua Achebe's There was a Country (p. 233), he wrote, "A statement credited to Chief Obafemi Awolowo and echoed by his cohorts is the most callous and unfortunate: All is fair 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." Since Igbo civilians were unarmed and not fighting against the Federal forces, the objection to *feeding our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder* as credited to Awolowo could reasonably not have implied Igbo civilians but Biafran soldiers. However, the cause of Awolowo remarks in that regard was completely detached and expunged from public knowledge. Indeed Awolowo was reacting to reports that relief supplies sent to Biafra for civilians were being hijacked by the Biafran soldiers and did not reach the needy. Clearly, Awolowo did not object to sending food to civilian Biafrans but their soldiers. Yet, narcotized ethnic fascists continue till date to accuse Awolowo of refusing food to civilians in Biafra and thereby had committed genocide when Igbos starved to death in Ojukwu's concentration camps. These ethnic fascists should have read page 22 of Ojukwu's Ahiara Declaration of June 1, 1969, where he stated thus, "....even while we are engaged in a war of a national survival, even while the life of our nation hangs in the balance, we see some public servants, who throw huge parties to entertain their friends; who kill cows to christen their babies. We have members of the Armed Forces who carry on attack trade instead of fighting the enemy. We have traders who hoard essential goods and inflate prices thereby increasing the people's hardship." That was the situation in Biafra as observed By Ojukwu himself, 1 June 1969 when his country was afflicted with mass starvation.As for Adekunle's reaction to the international humanitarian organisations at that time, one must bear in mind that those organisations violated the international rules that regulated their activities. Nigeria had insisted according to international law that all humanitarian flights to Biafra should first land in Nigeria (Port-Harcourt) for inspection so as to guarantee that weapons were not being ferried to the rebels, but the humanitarian organisations ignored Federal government's request by flying direct to the rebel enclave. A month after Adekunle was relieved of his Command of the third Marine, a Red Cross marked aircraft that refused to land at Port-Harcourt for inspection on the order of the Nigerian Air Force was shot down and exposed for carrying arms and ammunitions and not civilian relief supplies in June 1969. Thus Adekunle was vindicated. The war finished 44 years ago and war propaganda must have ended then as well. That is what ethno-fascists have to understand!!
From: rexmarinus@hotmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tribute: General Benjamin Adekunle
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 19:56:51 +0000
God thinking Abdul Salau. Its long overdue.
Obi Nwakanma
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 14:30:15 -0500
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tribute: General Benjamin Adekunle
From: salauabdul@gmail.com
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comIgbo Studies Conference and Historical Society of Nigeria, and Professor Falola can organize such a conference. Professor Falola has experience organizing conferences in Africa this conference is needed. It must be open and must include scholars and writers with different point of view.On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 12:21 PM, John Mbaku <jmbaku@weber.edu> wrote:Perhaps, some university in Nigeria or other academic institution, can organize an academic conference on either the civil war (1967-1970) generally and provide a panel to rigorously look into the matters raised here, or actually have the entire conference devoted to an examination of the man and the role he played in the civil war, in particular, and the political economy of Nigeria, in general. I doubt that all this name-calling would sufficiently advance the discuss on General Benjamin Adesanya Maja Adekunle or any other Nigerian from history.On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 1:37 PM, Anunoby, Ogugua <AnunobyO@lincolnu.edu> wrote:If verifiable evidence is available and the request is for "authentic" evidence, the suspicion, respectfully, must be that the seeker of the latter evidence might be in some state of self-denial which by the way is the free available choice of the denier.
Many people all over the world do not believe that all is fair, proper, and right in war. There are also many who do. Everyone is free to believe as they please or choose. International law however is clear on the subject hence "war crimes" and war crime trials that follow.
"The truth is that Major Chude Sokei and Lieutenant Oguchi became pacifists only because the person they were supposed to kill, Dr Michael Ihenokura Okpara, was their tribesman."
Why anyone based on only blunt supposition will be categorically sure that what they claim to be the truth is, and nothing but the truth is beyond me.
It is a historical fact that Archbishop Makarios, Primate of the autocephalous Church of Cyprus and the first President of the Republic of Cyprus was officially visiting Premier Okpara in Enugu after the January 1966 Commonwealth Leaders Conference in Lagos that had just ended. The coup plotters broke into the Premier's Lodge (Okpara's official residence as premier) in Enugu as planned on the night of the coup. They found Okpara and Makarios at a meeting. The coup plotters' break-in at that time of the night in full military assault gear struck terror into Okpara and his honored guest. They left without Okpara because they knew that the Archbishop and President would be a credible witness to Okpara's abduction and planned assassination except of course they assassinated the Archbishop and President too. This is the late Archbishop and President's account of the event, at a formal, public, press conference that he addressed in Lagos, before his departure home.
One needs neither inspiration nor education to recognize that the above Sokei and Oguchi claim is most likely an invented narrative that falsely explains Okpara's escape from Igbo coup plotters given the assassinations in Ibadan, Kaduna and Lagos on the same night. It was most likely masterfully invented to justify the brutal murders of innocent Eastern Nigerians in military barracks, and in homes and streets of the then Northern and western Regions, in the months and years that followed
The events that led to the Nigeria-Biafra war were tragic but avoidable. The war was even more so. Dispassionate and honest conversations must continue to take place so that the events' lessons are learned and the events are not repeated.
oa
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Salimonu Kadiri
Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2014 8:42 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Tribute: General Benjamin Adekunle
I have requested the traducers of General Adekunle to provide authentic evidence to prove their claims that General Adekunle committed war crimes or genocide during the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970). Instead of acceding to my request, General Adekunle's traducers have been engaged in publishing innuendoes, outright lies and even forgeries just to smear the image of the revered General who advocated that the best way to stop unnecessary sufferings and deaths of our Igbo brethrens was a quick defeat of the rebel forces. Nigeria is a country where ineptitude and mediocrity are always rewarded while the truly talented, honest and patriots, like General Adekunle, are always disdained and disesteemed. Nevertheless, it is indecent and indecorum to fabricate stories out of ones imagination just because of the desire to discredit General Adekunle. General Adekunle did not cause or declare the civil war but as fate would have it he happened to one the three Divisional Commanders. In a war you have to kill and maim or be killed or be maimed. In war there is nothing like equilibrium where reactions is equal to action. This is best illustrated with what Okonkwo tells us in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart that if a man comes and defecates in your compound, the only manly thing to do is to take a stick and break his head. Breaking the head of a compound defecator is out of proportion with defecating. That is how it is in war. I hate war(s) and that is why I can never b
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