As in many post-colonies, the Socialist movement in Nigeria has failed due to the organic divorce of the movement from the struggles of the oppressed. Revolution is no longer seen as a practical necessity, largely because of the movement’s petty bourgeoisie class origins. To revive the movement, this class needs a deep and radicalising experience of privation and oppression out of which it can find no escape but revolution.
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.
All that remains for British PM Theresa May is to announce to the world that Britain has terminated all support – military, political, diplomatic – for the prosecution of the Igbo genocide, apologise to Igbo people, pay reparations on behalf of the 3.1 million Igbo murdered and the tens of thousands murdered subsequently, pay reparations to the survivors, and pay reparations to reconstruct the shattered nation of Biafra.