What the Igbo genocide is and what it isn’t
NOVANEWS
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Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe
The Igbo genocide is the foundational genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. It inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. The genocide has been studied most expansively. Thus, to understand the politics of the genocide and the politics of the “post”-Igbo genocide is to have an invaluable insight into the salient features and constitutive indices of politics across Africa in the past 51 years.
Quite appositely, we should begin by stating what the Igbo genocide is not. It is definitely not a “civil war” (Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe, “Igbo question, Biafra mission”, Pambazuka News, 23 March 2017); neither is it “Nigeria-Biafra ‘civil war’”; nor “first ‘civil war’ in Africa”; nor “forgotten genocide”; nor “ignored g...