Revisiting the African Auschwitz: 
Biafra and the Hypocrisies of global Power Centres 

By Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh 

The International Criminal Court (ICC) recently filed ten charges of war crimes against the Sudanese President, Omar al Bashir, for allegedly presiding over a campaign of murder, rape, and mass deportation in Darfur. His rap sheet reads in part that he masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. In as much as the atrocities in Darfur demands our utmost condemnation and utmost efforts to bring the perpetrators to book, the actions of the ICC, although a step in the right direction really insults the memory of so many victims of genocide in Africa. For the first time in recent memory, the international community is trying to save itself from its history of hypocrisy, which has really tainted the integrity of the court.  

The Omar Bashir’s case calls the intendments and the historical amnesia of the ICC to question. If Bashir is found guilty, he should be granted his just recompense, but why only Omar Bashir? Is it not time, for the sake of the reconstruction of collective memory, that the ICC file charges to redress some of the worst cases of genocide in the African continent. If for nothing else, to cleanse the memory of atrocity and impunity painted across the face of African history. 

By extension:  

Why was Charles Taylor docked? Why try the criminals against humanity in Rwanda? What about Kosovo? Why was the Nurnberg trials of Nazi war criminals ever convoked? Was it convoked to redress a cosmic injustice or to give the victors the malicious glee of watching their enemies suffer for giving them such a hard time in defeating them or for daring to challenge them in the first place? Decency and justice would not support the gnawing suspicions, which the questions throw up. They all came to trial at the International Court of Justice, justice like their Nazi ancestors in crime were made to answer to their crimes in Nurnberg. These instances were courses of justice. Every war produces its share of criminals. But humanity in Nuremberg were unanimous in sending a clear message to all criminals against humanity and their wannabe compatriots, that such acts would no longer be tolerated on the score of manners and tribunes of justice. 

What about Biafra? 

What about this first field of genocide recorded in the history of post-independent black Africa? What about this African Auschwitz where mothers were systematically starved to death together with their kids? What about these people, whose civilian population Adekunle very rabidly massacred for fun? No one has been charged or brought before any courts of justice to answer for their crimes or roles in this attempt to annihilate a race. Should Obafemi Awolowo not be exhumed and brought to trial for the war crimes he engineered in Biafra? After all, Albert Speer, Hitler’s prodigious architect and munitions minister; one of the brains that powered Hitler’s war on Europe and the world, came on trial in Nurnberg. Gowon should never be pardoned. He should answer to his crimes and those committed at his command and under his watch in Biafra. Danjuma and the likes of them should come forward and face justice; after all, Sadaam Hussein has to hang for his pogrom against the Kurds. Why is Danjuma not hanging for being a war criminal? Adekunle, the Eichmann of Nigeria should be made even posthumously to account for his crimes against the Igbo people. He should answer for ordering and supervising the rape, pillage, plunder and murder of Igbo women, children and unarmed civilians, since women, children and unarmed civilians have never being targets in any war.  

All the officials who partook in the slaughter of Igbo civilians, women and children in any form or shape are cosmic criminals; cosmic in the sense that theirs were monumental crimes against humanity. Yet Ndiigbo are asked to look the other way and pretend that it did not happen. In the eyes of the victors, it never happened. They prefer it so. They would forever choose to revise history and embezzle memory to suit their denials and calm their corroded consciences. They would convoke every authority they can to enable forgetfulness and a whitewashing of history. Their concerted actions equal a Hitler in denial. They employ governmental power to erode their crimes from the attention span of the world. This is because it is a crime that cries to heaven for vengeance.  

Embarking on the annihilation of any race in obedience to any politics, religion or ideology whatsoever is a cosmic crime to the superlative degree. That was the sin in Hitler’s attempted erasure of Jewish life and history in Europe. That was the evil in Sadaam’s murder of his own people who disagreed with him. That is the iniquity in Stalin’s gulags, in the Kaytn Massacre; in Chinese slave, labour and death camps.  

Biafra remains a testament to the hypocrisy of global power centres and configuration. It is a blemish on the conscience of the world. In Biafra has the world shown how might is configured to right. In Biafra, the world allowed itself to be stampeded by British dominance, into looking away as Britain and her super-power allies conspired with the Nigerian Government in Lagos, to murder the Igbos, whom the British had a cause to hate, for their assertiveness. Some historical revisionists and wooden apologists have attempted to label this unprecedented human rights catastrophe as an internal affair. But their wooden apologetics is defeated by Rwanda, Kosovo and Liberia. These could equally be labelled as internal affairs. But the genocidares of Rwanda are answering for their actions at the International Tribunal in Dar es Salaam. The ethnic cleansers, war criminals, murderers and rapists of Bosnia are confronting justice and the responsibilities for their actions at the World Court in The Hague. But Biafra with its unprecedented opportunities to set an eternal precedent and redress an unforgivable wrong was swept under the carpet, at Africa’s and the world’s discomfiture. 

The disregard of Biafra and the refusal to do justice to the Biafran question paved the way for Rwanda and Liberia. Had the World powers guaranteed justice to Biafra, a precedent would have been set, which would have rendered the atrocious tragedy of Rwanda impossible. Biafra has endured this disregard for so long. But it is still possible to do justice. Justice mandates that crimes should never be dignified with a status of limitation. Crimes should be punished no matter for how long its perpetrators chose to evade justice. That was why Eichmann was sought out and brought to justice fifteen years after the first indictments were issued against the Nazi war criminals. The criminals against humanity, who made a killing fields off Biafran women and children should be exhumed and docked at The Hague or where convenience recommends. Their crimes should be finally allowed to find them out. The bones of murdered Biafran kids and women are crying for justice still 37 years after the end of the murderous process that dispatched them to death. 

This is very necessary because justice is not an exclusive property of victors. Justice is for all. It is ontologically configured to give to everyone his due. The only requirement for it to happen is that the right structures be created for it. This is the debt which the world owes the Biafran dead. Victory for the Nigerian murderers of Biafran women and children could only be attained by engineering and convoking a holocaust of Igbo civilian and non-combatant population. Their victory was only in inflicting genocide or annihilating a people whose only crime was the choice not to keep mute and die quietly when their erstwhile countrymen decided to choose them as cheap game to be hunted and slaughtered for their sport, like Adolf Hitler did to the European Jews. Igbo crimes consisted in choosing self-determination in place of a quiet surrender to extermination; in going it alone when their countrymen declared them personae non grata; in preferring liberty or death to a life of servitude and slavery; in the radical choice never to allow themselves be slaughtered like sheep, or herded into the extermination chambers of fiery Nigerian xenophobia; in deciding to confront a global armada and strategic alliances of racism and greed, which bore Africa ill; as well as their proxy and collaborators wearing black skins and Nigerian faces. 

Biafra must be revisited because the torch has passed to a new generation of Igbo sons, who have sworn never to forget, and who no longer accept the official global and Nigerian silence on the genocide in Biafra from 1967 to 1970. We are not preaching revenge. We are insisting on justice. And we are ready for the long haul, even if it takes eternity to do that. We are not peddling this to purchase pity. We are ventilating a tragedy which the world wants to forget.  

Biafra is the African Auschwitz. Auschwitz is one of history’s greatest crime scenes. Biafra equals it in ontology and depravity. In both instances, human dignity was violated to the superlative degree. Men were starved unto extinction. Their ownmost freedoms and fundamental rights were denied them. They were slaughtered like fowls just for the sadistic fun of the perpetrators. Biafra remains an indictment of global pretences and ethical posturings on human rights. If Nazi criminals deserve to pay for their crimes; why not the Nigerian officials and agents, who convoked a festival of atrocity in Eastern Nigeria between 1966 and 1970, under the cover of war. Nurnberg was a signature precedent that war is never a justification for crime. It is a statement that any attempt to configure or engineer the annihilation of any race is a crime against humanity, which the perpetrators must answer to. The passage of time or the forgetfulness of age must not be allowed to let such a wrong go un-redressed. Decent humanity should never allow itself the unaffordable luxury of acquiescing into historical amnesia as to grant criminals an undeserved freedom. The blood of the victims wails in incontrollable disappointment at the betrayal of their hopes for justice. They trusted their hopes in the decency of mankind. But the avaricious politics of Britain and her allies of roguery that underwrote that genocide have prevented the propitiation of their betrayed memories. The irresponsibility of power has betrayed justice in Biafra. And humanity and not only Ndiigbo have been the losers for it. Nigeria, nay Africa will continue to pay for that festering wrong that has gone un-redressed for decades. The blood of the slain is hovering over us like a calamitous cloud. The rains of woe will continue to assail our attempts at unity and progress until justice is done in Biafra.