Below Is The Submission
On Persecution Of Christians,
Jews And Biafrans That Drove The
Nigerian
Presidency MAD. Tell Me If Anything
Contained In It Is A LIE.
Read on and judge for
yourselves.
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Briefing for US State
Department
Nigeria: A History Of Serial
Genocide And The Urgent Need For US Intervention
Being a Presentation by Mazi
Nnamdi Kanu and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to the U.S. State
Department in June 2019.
Abstract:
The purpose of this submission
is to formally bring to the attention of the Government of the United States,
the violent Islamization that is taking hold in Nigeria against Christians and
Jews, especially of Biafran extraction. As shall be demonstrated, this
Islamization is by both State and by non-State actors that enjoyed the
patronage and tacit support of the State. It is such that may lead to another
genocide that will offend the conscience of nations, including particularly the
United States, which possesses the singular capacity to intervene with lasting
solutions.
1.. Background History:
Nigeria is an oil-rich country
and a regional power in West Africa. It is a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual
country with a population of about 180 million people.
There are three major ethnic
groups, the Igbo (also known as Ibo), the Yoruba, and the Hausa-Fulani; and 250
other smaller ethnic groups. The Hausa-Fulani are predominantly Muslims, and
live in the Northern (Sahelian) part of Nigeria; the Yoruba who live in the
Southwest are split almost evenly between Muslims and Christians. Yoruba
Muslims profess a moderate form of Islam, as opposed to the more fundamentalist
Sunni practice observed in Northern Nigeria, and from which the Boko Haram and
Fulani herdsmen Islamic terrorists emanated. There is a small Shia minority
amongst the majority Sunni Muslims that are ruling Nigeria.
The Biafrans (the centerpiece
of this submission) inhabit the Southeastern part of Nigeria with a population
of over 70 million. About 50 million of them - the Igbos - speak the Igbo
language and are predominantly Christians, but with a rapidly growing Jewish
minority. Their land is blessed with human and mineral resources including
hydrocarbons. Biafrans are very commercially-inclined, industrious and are
given to scholarly and professional pursuits. They had an established
democratic institution even before colonization by the British. They are very
republican and egalitarian in nature, and coexisted peacefully with their
neighbours prior to colonization and their amalgamation with the rest of
Nigeria in 1914.
In 1966, soon after the world
commemorated the 21st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and made the
customary solemn declaration of ‘Never, Never Again’, Nigeria defiled that
season of reflection, commiseration and hope. Its military officers, the
police, Hausa-Fulani emirs, Muslim clerics and intellectuals, civil servants,
journalists, politicians and other public figures planned and executed the
Biafran (aka Igbo) genocide – the foundational genocide of post-European
conquest Africa. This is also Africa’s most devastating genocide of the 20th
century. A total of 3.1 million Igbo people were murdered between 29 May 1966
and 12 January 1970. And had Biafran not unilaterally declared its independence
in order to protect itself, the massacre would have been incalculable.
Most Biafrans, especially the
Igbos were slaughtered in their homes, offices, businesses, schools, colleges,
hospitals, markets, churches, shrines, farmlands, factories/industrial
enterprises, children’s playground, town halls, refugee centres, cars, lorries,
and at bus stations, railway stations, airports, etc.
In the end, the genocide was
enforced by Nigeria’s simultaneously pursued land, aerial and naval blockade
and bombardment of Biafraland, Africa’s highest population density region
outside the Nile Delta. In other words, even in their own heartland where they
had taken refuge, they were pursued and eventually subdued. The excuse then, as
it were, was that Nigeria was prosecuting a war of 'reunification'. On the
contrary, there is quantum evidence that the war was provoked in order to
accomplish the genocide that had begun against Biafrans - generally and Igbos -
particularly. The difference this time was to take it to their homeland where
they had fled and taken refuge under the defunct Republic of Biafra.
The following excerpt from
recently declassified US Embassy diplomatic dispatches of the era on the
pogroms and the war that followed states that:
"The North was minded to
use the war as a tool to reassert its dominance of national affairs. Mallam
Kagu, Damboa, Regional Editor of the Morning Post, told the American consul in
Kaduna: “No one should kid himself that this is a fight between the East and
the rest of Nigeria. It is a fight between the North and the Ibo.” He added
that the rebels would be flushed out of Enugu within six weeks. Lt. Colonel
Hassan Katsina went further to say with the level of enthusiasm among the
soldiers; it would be a matter of “only hours before Ojukwu and his men were
rounded up”.
“The northern section of the
Nigerian military was the best equipped in the country. To ensure the region’s
continued dominance, the British assigned most of the army and air force
resources to the North. It was only the Navy’s they could not transfer. All the
elite military schools were there. The headquarters of the infantry and
artillery corps were there. Kaduna alone was home to the headquarters of the
1st Division of the Nigerian Army, Defense Industries Corporation of Nigeria
(Army Depot), Air Force Training School and, Nigerian Defence Academy.
Maitama Sule, Minister of Mines
and Power in 1966, once told the story of how Muhammadu Ribadu, his counterpart
in Defence Ministry, went to the Nigerian Military School, Zaria, and the
British Commandant of the school told him many of the students could not
continue because they failed woefully. When Ribadu thumbed through the list,
Sule said, it was a Mohammed, an Ibrahim, a Yusuf or an Abdullahi. “You don’t
know what you are doing and because of this you cannot continue to head the
school,” an irate Ribadu was said to have told the commandant.
Shehu Musa Yar’Adua was one of
the students for whom the commandant was sacked. “You can see what Yar’Adua
later became in life. He became the vice president. This is the power of
forward planning,” Sule declared.
“Ten trucks of Nigerien
soldiers were seen being transported for service in the Nigerian Army from
Gusau to Kaduna and over 2,000 more waiting on Niger-Nigeria border for
transportation to Kaduna. The secret document went on: “1,000 Chadian soldiers
passed through Maiduguri en route Kaduna. These mercenary soldiers constituted
the “Sweepers.” The captured American teachers aptly observed that there were
soldiers regarded as fighting soldiers and there were other units that came
behind to conduct mass exterminations.
Major Alani, it was understood,
was trying to get as many civilians as possible into the bush before the
sweepers could arrive.
On the 5 October, when they
came, a lieutenant attempted to arrest the American teachers at St. Patrick’s
College and their non-Igbo refugees, who had hidden from retreating but still
vicious Biafran troops.
Captain Johnson quickly
summoned Major Alani. The lieutenant claimed to be acting for a “Major
Jordane,” but a check proved this as false. Alani sent the lieutenant and his
men away and posted a guard to the school until the staff and refugees left
Asaba. There were too many civilians to be executed that Captain Paul Ogbebor
and his men were asked to get rid of a group of several hundred Asaba citizens
rounded up on 7 October. Not wanting to risk insubordination, he marched the
contingent into the bush, told the people to run and had his men fire
harmlessly into the ground. Eyewitness accounts confirmed that he performed the
same life-saving deception in Ogwashi-Uku.
“However, other civilian
contingents the sweepers rounded up were shot behind the Catholic Mission and
their bodies thrown into the Niger River. This incident and many others were
reported to Colonel Arthur Halligan, the US military attaché in Nigeria at that
time, the document concluded." End quote.
Earlier on in 1945 and 1953,
the Hausa-Fulani political leadership had carried out two premeditated pogroms
on Igbo immigrant populations in Jos and Kano in opposition to the Igbo
vanguard role in the struggle for the restoration of Nigerian independence from
British conquest. Hundreds of Igbos were murdered on each occasion and their
property looted or destroyed. Neither in Kano nor Jos did the regime apprehend
or prosecute anyone for these massacres and destruction. Tragically, these
pogroms turned out as ‘dress rehearsals’ for the 1966-1970 genocide that was to
later claim millions.
The perpetrators, who
subsequently seized and pillaged the rich Nigerian oil and gas economy, got off
free from any form of sanctions for what are, unquestionably, crimes against
humanity. Suffice to say that it’s the same people that have controlled the
government of Nigeria since then, including Mr. Buhari - the current President.
There was an extensive coverage
of the Igbo genocide in the international media throughout its duration. The
United Nations though never condemned this atrocity unequivocally. U Thant, its
secretary-general, consistently maintained that it was a ‘Nigerian internal
affair’. The United Nations could have stopped this genocide. In the wake of
the Jewish genocide of the 1930s-1940s during which 6 million Jews were
murdered by Nazi Germany, Africa was, with hindsight, most cruelly unlucky to
have been the ‘testing ground’ for the presumed global community’s resolve to
fight genocide subsequently, particularly after the 1948 historic United
Nations declaration on this crime against humanity.
Only a few would have failed to
note that U Thant’s reference to ‘internal’ was staggeringly disingenuous as
genocide, as was demonstrated devastatingly 20-30 years earlier on in Europe,
would of course occur within some territoriality (‘internal’) where the
perpetrator exercises a permanent or temporary sociopolitical control as a
State actor.
To make matters worse, a senior
British foreign office official was adamant that his government’s position on
international relief supply effort to the encircled and bombarded Igbo was to
‘show conspicuous zeal in relief while in fact letting the little buggers
starve out’. (See: Roger Morris, Uncertain Greatness: Henry Kissinger &
American Foreign Policy (London & New York: Quartet Books, 1977), p. 122.
See also Michael Leapman, ‘While the Biafrans starved, the FO moaned with
hacks’, The Independent on Sunday (London), 3 January 1999).
Robert Melson, a foreigner, a
Holocaust survivor and a Nigerian expert who witnessed what happened between
1967 -1970. In his book, 'Revolution and genocide', Melson states that: "I
could not help but make the connection between their experience and my own.
Biafrans were being killed purely for their identity: it was as if the
twenty-some years after the Second World War had been compressed into a few
minutes. The Holocaust monster was on the prowl again, and it was no use trying
to escape its implications in Africa or elsewhere".
If the Rome Statute had then
existed, Nigeria’s head of the Federal Military Government, Yakubu Gowon, his
commanders and several others would have been prosecuted for genocide and
crimes against humanity for orchestrating the destruction of Biafrans in whole
or in substantial part because of their ethnicity
2. The Present Era:
We are aware of the propaganda emanating
from the Nigerian government and Northern Nigerian Islamic fundamentalists
aligned with the government that the neo-Biafran struggle for
self-determination is an ethnic backlash against President Mohamadu Buhari just
because he is an Hausa-Fulani Muslim. We state unequivocally that this is false
and petty. The truth is that the post-War struggle peaked in mid-2015 when Mr
Buhari systematically embarked on his Jihadist policies, coupled with his open
toleration of Fulani herdsmen terrorists that had simultaneously commenced an
intense ethnic cleansing of Christians, including Biafrans. This was also
immediately following a well-publicized comment by Mr Buhari (during his
campaign for the presidency) that ‘an attack against Boko Haram is an attack against
northern Nigerian muslims’. Little wonder then that Boko Haram terrorism has
peaked to new highs since Buhari’s Presidency.
In the face of Mr Buhari’s
anti-Christian posturing and his complicit inaction to reign-in on herdsmen and
Boko Haram terrorists, Biafrans responded by organizing themselves under a
group named the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a
devout Jewish adherent of dual Nigerian and British citizenship.
It is to be noted that Kanu was
borne in 1967 and thus never participated in the war of 1967 -1970. So, he
couldn't have been driven by a sense of loss, revenge or bitterness; but by,
instead, a sense that his people are being mistreated badly and are verging in
again becoming the victims of another genocide. Majority of Biafrans share the
same view, even so quietly because of fear of retribution by the Nigerian
government or other non-State Islamic groups in alliance with the government.
Kanu, who employed non-violent
means was nonetheless harassed, arrested, tortured, jailed without trial; and
according to credible accounts, was offered gratification to abandon the
struggle but he refused. His tribulations is but one of such levied by the
Buhari-led administration against thousands of Biafrans, all because their
ethnicity and religion and for possessing a political opinion (self
determination) which the government of Nigeria is intent on suppressing through
a punishment of some sort.
Amnesty International reports
that since the advent of the Buhari administration in 2015 till now, Nigerian
government has killed more than 300 Biafrans and wounded many more while they
held peaceful protests against the killings and for self-determination. Amnesty
International says that many of those pro-Biafra protesters were shot and
killed in their sleep and others while they gathered in churches to pray. Many
of the protesters were shot and killed from behind while they tried to escape.
According to the Report titled
- NIGERIA: SHADOW REPORT TO THE AFRICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN AND PEOPLES’
RIGHTS, 62ND ORDINARY SESSION: 25 APRIL- 09 MAY 2018, it is stated that:
"In the southeast, the military was deployed to respond to a series of
protests, marches and gatherings by members and supporters of Indigenous People
of Biafra (IPOB ), who are seeking the creation of an independent Biafran
state. Between August 2015 and October 2016, security forces killed at least
150 IPOB members and supporters during non-violent gatherings. Amnesty
International documented 11 incidents, including one where at least 60 people
were killed in May 2016 when the security forces opened fire on IPOB supporters
in various locations in the southeast and another in September 2017, where
security forces killed at least 12 IPOB supporters in Umuahia, Abia state. The
Federal authorities banned IPOB in 2017".
Country Reports released by the
US State Department between the current period in review (2016 - 2018)
confirmed much of these, particularly the Nigerian government’s declaration of
IPOB as a terrorist organization in September 2017, which shocked the
conscience of the international community, especially as President Buhari had
fought against declaring Boko Haram a terrorist organization and scoffs at the
global view that Fulani herdsmen terrorists militia is the fourth deadliest in
the world.
As you are reading this, the
massacre by Fulani herdsmen Islamic terrorists is on-going. We continue to bury
our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters every week, and
every month. We have watched our daughters and wives publicly raped and
butchered. People have been burnt alive.
President Buhari has made
Nigeria the most dangerous country in the world for Christians, most especially
Biafrans. Hundreds of thousands are routinely plundered, tortured, or killed
with impunity by Nigerian security forces controlled and populated by Buhari's
tribesmen; often in collaboration with Fulani herdsmen Islamist terrorist
group. The US Presidential Commission on International Religious Freedom has
recommended listing Nigeria as a country of concern because of its religious
oppressions. Vice President Mike Pence has voiced acute chagrin over the
genocidal persecution of Christians in Nigeria. United States sales or
transfers of weapons to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram are diverted to killing and
terrorizing largely Christian Biafrans.�
President Buhari is undoubtedly
promoting radical Islam in Nigeria. He has joined the Organization of Islamic
Countries (OIC) and is presently planning a publicly-funded OIC Islamist Film Festival
in a secular Nigeria. He has endorsed Sharia law in twelve northern Nigerian
states. He has treated Boko Haram with kid gloves, releasing from detention
hundreds arrested by the previous administrations and gave them financial
inducements and directed their Nass recruitment into the Nigerian army. He has
appointed radical Muslims to head every Nigerian security agency. He is an ally
of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism under United
States law; and he has generally pursued policies that put Nigeria at odds with
US national interest since he came to office.
�President
Buhari is conducting a genocidal campaign against tens of millions of Biafrans,
including mass killings, torture, and the destruction of Christian schools,
hospitals, and churches. He has wrongly branded and terrorized the Indigenous
People of Biafra (IPOB) to retaliate against peaceful demonstrations favoring
the restoration of Biafran independence that was cruelly extinguished by a
genocidal military campaign Buhari partly led between 1967 and 1970. He has concocted treason charges against IPOB
leader Nnamdi Kanu to crush Biafran self-determination, despite the fact that
self-determination is legal under Nigerian law. Mr. Buhari’s demonic rule is
convulsing Nigeria and creating new safe havens for radical Islamic terrorists.
Just recently, former President
Obasanjo publicly stated that there is an agenda to Islamize and ‘Fulanize’
Nigeria. And a few days later, former Christian military leaders of Nigeria
filed a petition before the British Parliament pointedly accusing Mr Buhari of
pursuing jihad to Islamize Nigeria. The sole umbrella organization of
Christians in Nigeria - the Christian Association of Nigeria - has lately
expressed similar fears.
3. Conclusion:
Biafrans constitute a distinct
“nationality” within Nigeria. Approximately 60 million Biafrans reside in
Nigeria, the majority in the five Biafran states in the southeast: Imo, Abia,
Anambra, Enugu, and Ebonyi, with a sizable number residing in Delta, Rivers,
Akwa Ibom and Cross River States.
Biafra enjoyed sovereignty
before Great Britain commenced colonial rule over Nigeria. Prior to British
colonization in 1906, Biafrans enjoyed decentralized self-government. In 1900,
the British government assumed responsibility for the Royal Niger Company’s
territories, and formed the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, the Southern
Protectorate and the Lagos Colony Protectorate territories 1914 witnessed the
amalgamation of Nigeria into three administrative areas: the crown colony of Lagos and the
Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria, altogether called Nigeria.
In 1960, Britain ended its
colonization of Nigeria without reference to the Biafrans or any other peoples
of Nigeria entitled to self-determination.
The Nigeria Independence Act established Nigerian territorial boundaries
not by popular referendum or other reliable manifestations of
self-determination of peoples, but according to the Nigeria’s Orders in
Council, 1954 to 1960. Britain’s failure to offer Biafrans the right to
self-determination violated the United Nations General Assembly Declaration on
the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples adopted on 14
December 1960. Paragraph 5 of the Declaration required that immediate steps be
taken by the colonial power “to transfer all powers to the peoples of those
[colonized] territories…in accordance with their freely expressed will and
desire…in order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom.”
The 1970 Declaration on
Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation
among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations emphasized
that, “By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of
peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the
right freely to determine without external interference their political
status….”.
The people of Biafra—recognized
as distinct by British colonial authorities—were never provided an opportunity
to vote for complete independence and freedom from the rest of Nigeria according
to their freely expressed will and desire.
They were never consulted on the subject when Nigeria became independent
in 1960. Further, the 1960 Constitution
of Nigeria was never approved by the people of Biafra in a referendum or
otherwise. And neither has any
subsequent Nigerian Constitution, including the current version decreed by a
military dictator in 1999.�
After independence, Nigeria
soon became a ‘house of horrors’ for Biafrans. Deprived of their right to
self-determination, they were left to the tender mercies of the Hausa-Fulani of
the North and the largely Muslim Yoruba of the South in a unitary state
unsuited for Nigeria’s diverse tribal, ethnic, and religious groupings. The
gruesome 1967-1970 Biafran War was emblematic. It featured ethnic-based
massacres and starvation of up to 2 million Biafrans by the Government of
Nigeria. At the war’s conclusion, Mr. Gowon (who led Nigeria) trumpeted, “No
victor, no vanquished.” The words proved a cruel hoax. Biafrans have been
marginalized, persecuted, and subjected to a Northern military political yoke
ever since; and there is no end in sight as the current President Nr Buhari has
ratcheted up on it, all with his burgeoning jihad.
The Indigenous People of Biafra
and its leader Nnamdi Kanu have taken up the tasks of ensuring the survival of
Biafrans while pursuing a legal pathway to the restoration of Biafra.
4.. Prayers:
On the basis of the foregoing,
we respectfully request that the State Department recommend, among other
things, denying weapons sales or transfers to Nigeria under the Leahy
Amendment; listing Nigerians complicit in persecuting Christian Biafrans under
the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act; and supporting a United
Nations organized and conducted Referendum on restoring Biafran independence.
We would be grateful for an
opportunity to continue this engagement and to meet with the US Congress and
White House officials to discuss our conviction that the interests of the
United States in protecting Biafran Christians, defeating radical Islam, and
preventing instability in West Africa would be enhanced by adjusting or
altering current bilateral relations with Nigeria based on the foregoing.
Respectfully Submitted by
Indigenous People Of Biafra
(IPOB)
____________
Nnamdi Kanu, Leader
