My attention has been drawn to the Presidency’s Press Statement dated 21 July,2020 on the spate of attacks and killings in Southern Kaduna which was signed by Mallam Garba Shehu, a Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Publicity.

The Presidency insinuates that the killings of its citizens, (the people the President swore to protect) by bandits is a “revenge”.One would have ignored this deliberate plan at cover up of the heinous atrocities meted systematically on Southern Kaduna people but the insensitivity and factual inaccuracies which have been repeated many times, especially at the Presidency level lend themselves to an urgency to put the facts straight and square to avoid a misleading of citizens and the international community moreso as the words of the president are deemed declaratory.

First, the Presidency must accept that it has failed woefully in its primary duty of protection of lives and properties. Sadly, it is also failing to demonstrate empathy as a basic instinct required in the art of governance especially in troubled times.

The citizens in Southern Kaduna in particular and other parts of the country whose lives have been cut short and who did not have to die deserve the President’s empathy and acknowledgement for gross failing and not an attempt to cover up the atrocities of the killers through the spinning of conspiracy theories or statements that appear to justify criminality. The Presidency’s statement is most unfortunate under a democratic dispensation that should hold and fulfill the promise of how inviolable and sacred human life is .

The recent past has shown a consistent attempt by official quarters at situating the narrative of the attacks by marauders on defenseless citizens as ‘ethnic’, ‘religious’ and now as ‘reprisals’ without evidential basis. Quite clearly this has trivialized attacks that show a pattern and system that lend themselves to genocidal descriptions.

It is high time the government deviates from this path and deploy security and justice machineries to arrest and prosecute those behind the killings and insecurity in Southern Kaduna as a measure to enforce civility and to permanently secure the lives of the people.

The deliberate attempt by the Presidency to cover up the atrocities on the people of Southern Kaduna, is most unfortunate, stands condemned in the strongest terms and must stop forthwith.

For the Presidency to conclude that “the problem in Southern Kaduna is an evil combination of politically-motivated banditry, revenge killings and mutual violence by criminal gangs acting on ethnic and religious grounds,” suggests that the killers of their citizens are not unknown.

It is disturbing and unimaginable that despite the “comprehensive security deployments, including the Army, Special Forces of both the Army and the Air Force, surveillance aircrafts by the Air Force and mobile police units that are on the ground on a 24-hour basis to forestall criminality and keep the peace” as alluded to by the Presidency, that these bandits still carry out the killings without the state’s resistance. How would the government explain the killings in Zangon Kataf during a state government imposed 24-hour curfew?

Garba Shehu and his co-travelers need not be reminded that the first duty of every president is the security and protection of the citizens of the country irrespective of their inclination. It is, indeed, the whole duty of the president. The Presidency must know that one of the indicators of a failed state is the failure of the government to provide security.

I appeal to the people in Southern Kaduna to exercise restraint, be law abiding and cooperate with security agencies. I urge Mr. President to rise up to his code of honour and the oath he swore to protect the lives of the people in Southern Kaduna because Southern Kaduna lives matter.

Barr. Sunday Marshall Katung
House Of Representatives Member.
2015-2019.

.

From Kate Henshaw’s fb page:

Every right thinking Niger Deltan should be on the streets protesting. No one should be allowed to enter that edifice of fraud called the NDDC office. We should occupy that building.

Everyone who has ever been Director, Chairman or member of board of NDDC should be besieged. We should keep vigil on their houses, send them text messages, demand answers from them, question the source of their wealth, ask them deep questions about their integrity. We should demand that they be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted.

They didn’t only steal ‘NDDC money’, they stole the development of the region, they stole the future of a people. By their corruption, they stole education and made countless Niger Deltans illiterate, they stole healthcare and killed countless children, they stole money meant for generating employment and made millions jobless. They stole money for road construction and caused the death of our people through accidents.

These are murderers. They have killed this region and its people. This is the time to call out these heartless thieves.

See the list of criminality below:

This views shouldn’t be strictly mine… it should be the view of every Niger Deltan, every Nigerian.

Please share let’s #EndNDDCCorruption

Notes on Corruption in NDDC

• “People were treating the place (NDDC) as an ATM, where you just walk in there to go and pluck money and go away” -Godswill Akpabio

• “NDDC has 12,000 abandoned projects in the Niger Delta” -Godswill Akpabio

• “There is no way NDDC road can last (for) even two years” -Godswill Akpabio

• NDDC owes over N2 trillion to contractors- Godswill Akpabio

• The Federal Government owes NDDC N1trillion in 10 years- NDDC Management

• “N2.5billion budgeted by NDDC for desilting and clearing of water hyacinths inflated to N65billion”- Senate Public Accounts Committee

• “A particular NDDC contract was awarded 55 times”- Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• Over 55 NDDC Interim Payment Certificate issued for a contract awarded in a particular state- Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• Fake photographs of completed jobs are submitted for NDDC payments. Sometimes the same photos are submitted for different projects -Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• “People collect contracts for the same roads from the state government, from FERMA and then they come to NDDC and collect the same road project”- Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• $70million of NDDC money was stored in a commercial bank since 2006- Godswill Akpabio

• N170 million NDDC funds abandoned in a bank for years- Godswill Akpabio

• Some banks deliberately withhold money belonging to NDDC- Godswill Akpabio

• NDDC pays N300 million annually as rent for its office space while its headquarter building started 23 years ago is uncompleted- Godswill Akpabio

• NDDC pays fee of N1billion monthly to a consultant that collects money from International Oil Companies (IOCs), on its behalf- Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• NDDC gave N4.3billion cash grants to NGOs, 90% of which were not registered- Godswill Akpabio

• Past NDDC management awarded 1,921 ‘emergency contracts’ at N1.070 trillion in seven months, against an annual budget of about N400 billion- NDDC Interim Management Committee

• NDDC contracts worth over N67billion were never executed- House of Representatives Committee

• NDDC made excess payments of N5.8 billion to contractors- House of Representatives Committee

• NDDC awarded a N34million consultancy for ‘Reputation Management’- Kolawole Johnson

• N641million was paid to consultants for ‘Media Support for Forensic Audit’. Johnson Kolawole

• Payment for contracts are routinely channeled into the private accounts of NDDC staff’- Johnson Kolawole

• Money meant for NDDC contracts were paid into the private account of Bureau d’ Change Operators- Johnson Kolawole

• NDDC leadership paid funds meant for student scholarships into private bank accounts’ -Johnson Kolawole

• ‘No Forensic Audit on NDDC is currently going on’- Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• Contracts are given to unregistered companies and companies still undergoing registration – Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• “Godswill Akpabio asked me to award N5billion contract for the supply of materials that were already in the NDDC Warehouse”- Former Acting MD Joi Nunieh

• 60 Percent of NDDC Contracts are awarded to National Assembly Members- Godswill Akpabio Minister of Niger Delta Affairs

• While the Probe Panel was still sitting, another fraudulent payment of N691 million was made by the NDDC- House of Reps Probe Panel

• NDDC had up to 311 accounts in various banks- Godswill Akpabio Minister of Niger Delta Affairs
• In one day, NDDC made multiple transactions of N49milion out of the Commission’s account. Godswill Akpabio Minister of Niger Delta Affairs
• NDDC spent N1.5 billion for staff as ‘COVID-19 relief funds’. Kemebradikumo Pondei head of NDDC IMC

By Bola Bolawole

[email protected] 0807 552 5533

I considered three other titles before settling for the one above: Banditry and not corruption; brood of vipers; and a nest of bandits. A nest of killers was how the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, described the then ruling party, the PDP, after the assassination of sitting Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige, a crime which remains unresolved and unpunished to this day. Can we say in good and clear conscience that no one in the ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration – or in the succeeding administrations – knew who or what killed Bola Ige? Brood of vipers was how Jesus Christ described the Pharisees and Sadducees of his time – hypocrites and perniciously evil people who, like our Nigerian leaders, placed a heavy burden on the people but never touched it with a finger!

Ordinarily, I never wanted to comment on the trending Magu/Malami circus show but for my teeming supporters who felt I should. Why carry on my head the war of hegemony between the Fulani and Kanuri wings of banditry – both political and military? Many think what we have are cases of corruption; I beg to differ! It is even worse than the “direct looting” that the ex-EFCC boss, Nuhu Ribadu, alluded to during his own tenure. Bandits are on rampage and they are deploying both their military and political wings to fight dirty.

In the First Republic, there was the corruption of the “ten percenters” as described by Major Kaduna Nzeogwu; those who made Nigeria look big for nothing in the eyes of the international community. Yakubu Gowon’s era was when profligacy became a virtue. Corrupt elements like the Federal Commissioner, JS Tarka, dared the anti-corruption crusader, Godwin Daboh, who himself was reported as the epitome of corruption! The story is also told of how the head of the regime that ousted Gowon had looted the Benin branch of the Central Bank during the civil war.

Corruption is as old as Nigeria – perhaps, even older! But what we have today are not just corrupt elements but bandits in full-flight. We are under the siege of full-blown banditry. The political wing of the bandits are to be found in the political parties; in political offices; in Ministries, Departments and agencies of government; and in the three arms as well as the three tiers of government. The military wing is made up of terrorists such as Boko Haram, the Fulani and other murderous herdsmen; the kidnappers, cultist groups, enforcers, etc.

The Jonathan administration was corrupt – but that was corruption. Today, we have bandits and banditry. Comparing Jonathan with Buhari is like comparing sleep with death. We had corrupt elements in Jonathan’s government. We have bandits in Buhari’s. Thieves have honour; bandits do not! From Independence up to the time of Jonathan, we witnessed the corruption perpetrated by thieves, graduating along the line from the petty thieves of the First Republic to the grandiose thieves of the Jonathan era. But under Buhari we have witnessed corruption perpetrated by bandits, the scope and magnitude of which beggars belief.

Insecurity whacked the Jonathan administration – but that was insecurity. Today, we have a total breakdown of law and order; a state of anarchy; what Thomas Hobbes described as a state of nature of the war of one against all and where life was nasty, brutish and short. Life has lost its value under Buhari and living its allure. We witnessed the disruption of State services; kidnappings and threats to the corporate existence of this country under Jonathan – but now we have a country hanging by the cliff; dangerously close to Chinua Achebe’s lamentations of “there was once a country”! Bandits have taken over the land and no part of the country is spared. Even the FCT Abuja, the seat of power, is not safe; the president himself being forced on many occasions to hide within his Aso Villa fortress to keep safe!

Remember the Egbusu Boys? Remember the Niger Delta militants? They hyped militancy, sabotaged State facilities and kidnapped for ransom. Remember the North accusing them of not having a monopoly of violence and that their resource-control agitation was a ploy to make the government ungovernable for their man, President Umaru Yar’Adua? Remember them threatening retaliation? Threats have now become reality. Yesterday we had agitations; today, we have full-blown banditry. What are we having tomorrow?

The bandits are within and without. They are two sides of the same coin. Six and half-a-dozen! They both complement. The bandits within and the bandits outside respectively open the door for each other. The bandits within, in the humongous resources they siphon, deny the State of the resources needed to crush the bandits without and, in the process, strengthens the bandits without and elongates their expiry date. The continued existence of the bandits without is, in turn, used to legitimise the continuation in office of the bandits within and their rapacious banditry. We have heard, ad nauseam, narratives of how the political wing of banditry sabotages efforts to crush the military wing of banditry. Only fools believe that the Nigerian Armed Forces cannot crush Boko Haram or decisively deal with the murderous herdsmen.

The bandits within will never see the need for the defeat of the bandits without. They work in cahoots. Their core objectives are similar. They sustain one another. They exist and live for each other. It is, rub my back and I rub your back – and they both smile to the bank, even as they believe that they are inching closer towards the realization of their objectives. We are tired of the many stories of sabotage of the war efforts against the bandits without master-minded by the bandits within.

Witness the uproar and all the conspiracy theories that have attended the killing of Combat Flight Officer Tolulope Arotile. Rather than douse tension, the so-called “findings” of the Nigeria Air Force and their hasty conclusion that there was no foul play, raised more questions. Calls for change of guards among security chiefs have serially been ignored. It is not in the interest of the bandits within to defeat the bandits without.

We have never seen anything like this banditry – in the quantum of funds being stolen by single individuals; this is more than stealing or looting; this is sheer banditry! Bandits are on rampage! The savagery of this political class of bandits equates the savagery of their military wing, i.e. Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, etc. Birds of a feather! Such bestiality, such impunity, such audacity, such effrontery, and such comprehensive destruction all over the place!

On Mount Carmel when Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, corruption would have meant a part of the sacrificial animal getting missing – but banditry is when the whole animal, the stones used for the altar, the ditch dug around it, the water poured on the ditch, the altar itself, the sacrifice and everything around it got licked by the fire that fell from heaven, leaving nothing and no trace of anything! That is the magnitude of the sheer banditry taking place under Buhari.

Prepare for the Apocalypse! The Doom’s Day is here! The bandits are clear in their heart what they want. They said it loud and clear, again and again, that Nigeria is their inheritance bestowed on them but their fore-bears! In their opinion – even if warped – Nigerians are a conquered people and the conquerors are on the field stripping the conquered of the spoils of war.

Look at the appointments made all over the place by the political wings of the Fulani and Kanuri banditry! Look at all the projects going to the North – even Katsina or Daura alone! Tell me who got the lion share of the palliatives rolled out by the FG during this pandemic. And tell me who is going to land the lion share of the jobs the FG is rolling out. They use parameters that deepen both our disadvantage and their own advantage. That way, they keep getting the upper hand, thereby widening the gulf between us and them. After eight years of being in power, should we still be scared stiff that power may remain in the same North? Tell me, were roles reversed; can the South contemplate such hara-kiri?

In both the political and military wings of banditry, the Fulani come first while the Kanuri come a close second. They cooperate but also compete amongst themselves. Have they read Nkem Nwankwo’s “My Mercedes is bigger than yours”? When you talk of the NDDC or the other sundry financial heist linked to the long-suffering Hausa and other ethnic groups paying servile obeisance to the Fulani and the Kanuri, what they get, and which they disturb our peace with, are crumbs and fat bones. They are junior partners; nay, errand boys and girls, in the ongoing banditry ravaging the land.

As worrisome as the present situation is, my real fear, however, is about what is to come. Tell today’s bandits: It gets worse here; it doesn’t get better. It pours here; it doesn’t just rain! Like they told the Niger Delta militants, no one has a monopoly of violence! The clouds are gathering! What we are yet to see is master to what we have seen already!

Sonnie Ekwowusi argues that the rule of law is the bedrock upon which our society lays its claim to civilisation

Somehow the refrain or the singsong, “Black lives Matter” has sunk into popular consciousness. It is now fashionable to appreciate and even discuss the sacredness and dignity of the lives of blacks in reminiscent of the barbaric murder of George Floyd. At the restart of the English Premier League all the 22 players on the soccer pitch were spotted, at least in the first week of the League, adorning jerseys with the bold inscription “Black lives matter” on their back in honour of the murdered Floyd, and, I guess, as a demonstration of solidarity against racism and inequality.

Unfortunately the police are undeterred. It is unconvinced that the lives of black men matter let alone be preserved. On or around 13th July 2020, another police officer was caught by camera kneeling on the neck of another Afro-American in the course of an arrest in Pennsylvania, U.SA. And just last week, the London Police Force suspended a London police officer pending an investigation after a footage emerged alleging that he knelt on the head and neck of a black suspect.

The victim allegedly started screaming, “Get off me … get off my neck”. Back home in Nigeria last week, the embattled former acting Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), Ms. Joi Nunieh would have either been brutalized or forcefully abducted by the police if not for the timely intervention of Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State. As early as 4.30 a.m. the battle-ready policemen had besieged Nunieh’s residence in order to gain entrance. If Governor Wike had not swiftly arrived at the scene they would have accomplished their mission without any police warrant, charge and trial and conviction of Ms. Nunieh. Were Nunieh, an ordinary citizen without contact with anybody in the corridors of power, the policemen laying siege to her residence would have succeeded in illegally brutalizing or abducting her.

So no lessons learnt from barbaric murder of George Floyd? I think so. We are still at the mercy of the police both home and abroad. You may be aware that the brutality and barbarity with which George Floyd was murdered are negligible compared to the gruesome police extra-judicial executions and police brutality in Nigeria. Extra-judicial executions by the Nigeria Police are well documented by the Amnesty International. The Amnesty International has also documented reports on how innocent civilians in Nigerians are habitually being extorted, raped, tortured, and killed by police officers who are members of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). Permit me to briefly narrate one particular event of my professional life which you may find repugnant. Many years ago, I went to the Bode Police Station, Surulere, Lagos for something I cannot readily remember now.

No sooner had I climbed up the back stairs to meet a desk officer on duty than I saw a young man hanging upside down inside one of the dirty police cubicles. Blood was already gushing out and clotting on his nostrils. His face had turned red. He was gasping for breath. I spontaneously opened my mouth wide and began shouting to the hearing of everyone, “Release him! What did he do!”, “You want to kill someone”. Immediately the police officer standing in front of the victim quickly untied the victim and assisted him to stand in an upright position, thus enabling him to breathe properly. The officer obeyed because he sensed I was poised to do physically battle with the police for hanging a suspect upside down in order to suffocate him to death.

The rule of law ought to reign supreme over arbitrary and capricious exercise of police power. The fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens including the constitutional rights of criminal suspects, detainees and even criminal convicts are clearly stipulated in our 1999 Constitution. Every citizen is presumed innocent until proved guilty by a court of law of competent jurisdiction. Suspicion, no matter how probable or grounded, cannot secure a criminal conviction. A police officer or any law enforcement agents, in a bid to detect crime or apprehend an offender, may stop any citizen for a search or questioning, but on the condition that he first identifies himself as a police officer by stating his names, police station and the grounds for the questioning or the search.

If the police man fails to sufficiently identify himself as aforesaid, then the citizen is not obliged to submit himself for a search or questioning. Any person who is arrested or detained shall have the right to remain silent or avoid answering any question from the police until after consultation with his legal practitioner of his own choice. Also any person who is arrested or detained shall be informed in writing within 24 hours in the language in which he understands of the facts and grounds for his arrests or detention. And where a person has been arrested either for the purpose of charging him to court or upon reasonable commission of an offence, such a person must be charged to court within a reasonable time not exceeding 48 hours failure for which he should be granted bail pending appeal.

This is the law in Nigeria. I have recently acquired a copy of Chief Frank Agbedo’s latest magnum opus with the alluring title, Casebook on Human Rights Litigation in Nigeria. The well-printed human rights book that runs up to 1090 pages focuses, inter alia, on cases on police brutality and ground-breaking innovations in human rights and public-interest litigations in Nigeria. With grandiloquent landmark legal cases and locus classicus illustrations, the learned author carefully marshaled out in his aforesaid book the new revolutionary trends in the enforcement of fundamental human rights and public interest litigations in Nigeria. For example, the author cited the case of Abacha V Fawehinmi and other cases establishing that the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights was adopted by Nigeria in 1983 and thenceforth had been incorporated into our domestic law.

Consequently, the law of locus standi in Nigeria has changed. Citing the case of Mrs. Ganiat Amope Dilly V Inspector General of Police and others, the learned author established that locus standi is now given a very expansive interpretation in contrast to the narrow interpretation given to it by the Supreme Court in Abraham Adesanya v. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Gani Fawehinmi V Halilu Akilu. Today an applicant does not have to first establish that he had directly suffered any personal wrong before initiating an action under the Fundamental Human Rights (Enforcement Procedure) Rules 2009.

The import of this revolutionary change is that aggrieved persons now have unimpeded access to court to seek remedy. Amid the reign of police brutality and executive lawlessness, the rule of law still remains the bulwark of our democracy. A democracy bereft of the rule of law is heading for anarchy. This is because regard for the rule of law is the bedrock upon which our society lays its claim to civilization.

•Biko Agozino

Senior colleagues in Africana Studies have been asking me to explain if it is true that Africans sold their own people during the Trans Atlantic slavery as alleged by Henry Louis Gates in his BBC series, Wonders of the African World.

This renewed interest follows the historical fiction by a Nigerian writer, Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani, who published a story in New Yorker, ‘My Great-Grandfather – the Nigerian Slave Trader’ and another on the BBC website, ‘My Nigerian Great-Grand Father Sold Slaves’. The BBC presented her as a ‘journalist’ to legitimise her invented stories but she is better known as a novelist who makes things up.

I blogged a response to her New Yorker article but I was told off for going soft on her supposedly because she is a fellow Igbo. Here is my slightly tougher but hopefully shorter response to her imaginary BBC story: For full disclosure, Adaobi advertised on her own website that while growing up in the 1980s, she had the strange saboteur dream of becoming a CIA or KGB agent presumably to work against the interests of Africa. She may still be looking for such jobs by writing eagerly like a character witness for European enslavers of Africans against the pending legal writ for reparative justice by people of African descent.

First of all, she keeps calling her notorious great-grandfather a famous Nigerian but he pre-existed the invention of Nigeria by the British. Secondly, Africans were not slaves but kidnapped people being trafficked. She is not a historian, so I will not go hard on her.

Adaobi correctly translated the Igbo word, ohu as slave but being neither a sociologist nor an anthropologist nor a historian, she did not know that the context and contents of igba ohu or slavery in ancient Africa were nothing like chattel slavery. As a matter of fact, there was no slave mode of production in Africa, said Rodney in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. That was why Amanyanabo Jo Jo Ubani, King Jaja, could rise to be King of Opobo and Joseph became Prime Minister in Kemet. They were servants or odibo and not slaves or ohu.

Adaobi may also be right that some cruel families like hers insisted on burying their dead patriarchs with living human beings but that was never part of Igbo culture. During the World Court case over the disputed Bakassi peninsula that was allegedly ceded to Cameroon earlier by Nigeria to blockade and starve the Igbo in Biafra, a Calabar ruler, Obong of Calabar, was a witness for Nigeria around the year 2005. He told the court that there was a similarity in the culture of the Efik of Nigeria and the Bakassi of Cameroon who were one people, in his view, because they buried their King or Obong with four human heads. Nigeria promptly lost the dispute to Cameroon who may have rebutted that such barbarity was not allowed in Cameroon. Neither is it part of the radically democratic Igbo culture where all heads are equal and the Igbo say that they know no king!

I responded in detail when Adaobi displayed ignorance about Igbo language and mistranslated her family name in an earlier version of her historical fiction for the New Yorker. The proverbs that she mistranslated for the BBC would say servants or odibo and not ohu, when referring to the ability of servants to learn from the instruction of sons by fathers.

The Igbo may say that a man who owns no servant owns himself since inwe onwe is self-ownership or freedom. Yes, the word slave means ohu in Igbo but the Efik still call civil servants the white man’s slave or ntop mbakara while the Igbo call them those who do the white man’s work or ndi olu bekee. Even when the word ohu is used to warn children about slave-traders, everybody knows that Europeans warn their children that there is a monster or bogeyman under every bed ready to devour naughty children but it is the pervert uncles, priests, and parents that the children should beware.YOU MAY LIKE

If Adaobi’s great-grand father was a slave trader, then he was obviously a lumpen scum bag who must have been shunned by the masses that resisted the kidnappers whom she said that her great-grand father hired to go and kidnap people from distant places for sale by him. That may have been why the colonisers made him their paramount chief and tax collector, a deplorable role that led Igbo women to declare war against colonialism in 1929 and force the abolition of Warrant Chiefs among the Igbo who still believe that all heads are equal and boast that the Igbo know no king. Notice that Adaobi ignorantly reported that her great-grand father did not appear to have an extended family, friends, age-grade members, in-laws, or community supporters that rallied around him when his possessions, including 10 wives and slaves, were seized by the colonisers who only returned them when he showed the certificate issued to him as a trader by the Royal Niger Company. He was surely a sad lonely figure in a society that valued people more than wealth and still name their children Nwakaego or Ndukaku meaning, child is greater than money or life is greater than wealth. No wonder his name was also Oriaku – a pejorative title by the Igbo for a parasitic wife who only consumes wealth, a title that Igbo women rejected in preference for Odoziaku or wealth manager.

In the New Yorker, Adaobi exposed her motivation for her hagiography when she wondered if Africans deserve reparations given that her great-grandfather was a highway robber and kidnapper. Fallacy of the straw man. She also claimed that her family was facing mysterious disasters attributed to the sins and abominations committed by her great-grandfather, forcing the family to contemplate changing their name, to chant psalms annually and pray for forgiveness, and to destroy some family juju pots, perhaps to attract rich wives and husbands for their beautiful children (the thinly disguised theme of her debut novel about 419 fraud, I did not Come to You by Chance).

I advised Adaobi in my earlier blog response to tell her wealthy family to set up scholarship funds for her cousins who descended from those that her great-grandfather oppressed instead of simply praying to be washed as white as snow for as she reported, schooling is a great leveler of social statuses – school children make friends without being constrained by ancient claims to status, wealth or caste.

In the BBC story, Adaobi quoted the eminent historian, Adiele Afigbo, to give credibility to her amateur psychoanalysis of her dysfunctional family by suggesting that the residues of the slave trade continued until the 1950s before the British finally ended the crimes against humanity that they themselves initiated and ran for hundreds of years without apology or reparations, charged Chinweizu in The West and the Rest of Us.

Not being a historian, Adaobi failed to interpret this riddle from Afigbo who was obviously inviting scrutiny of the fact that Africans were to blame for their inability to mobilise and end the slave raids by themselves for more than 400 years. Look how long! For that, Mathew Kerekou, president of Benin Republic, rightfully took a knee at an African-American church and apologised for the despicable roles that some African chiefs were forced to play in the inhumane crimes against humanity but Rodney insists in The History of the Upper Guinea Coast that Africans were mostly warriors against slavery. Afigbo was reminding us that since Africans were conscripted as enslaved people to fight for the British during the European tribal wars as if they were slaves, the British cannot claim to have ended slavery. When unarmed African women demanded not to be taxed without representation in the colonial government, the British massacred dozens of them as if they were homo sacer or slaves whose lives could be taken with impunity, wrote also Afigbo in The Warrant Chiefs. And when coal miners demanded for a living wage in Enugu, the colonisers massacred dozens of them in 1949 to prove that it was never their intention to end slavery in Africa, they only wanted to transform it into colonial slave labour and Africans continued to resist, wrote Du Bois, Azikiwe and Rodney.

How can the British claim that they ended slavery and barbarity in Africa when they orchestrated the genocide that took 3.1 million Igbo lives in Biafra? All I know is that my great-grandfather was not a slave trader, he was a resistance warrior for justice quite unlike Thomas Jefferson who raped little African girls and then sold his own children for money.

When will Adaobi write about American Founding Fathers who were perverts like her great-grandfather and who raped children and called them his ten wives like Boko Haram?  Maybe I should write that book in answer to the bewildering question repeatedly posed by African Diaspora colleagues: were you not the ones who sold us? No.

•Agozino is Blacksburg, Virginia, United States Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. He is the author of the following books – Critical, Creative and Centered Scholar-Activism: The Fourth Dimensionalism of Agwuncha Arthur Nwankwo (2016, FDP); ADAM: Africana Drug-Free Alternative Medicine, 2006; Counter-Colonial Criminology, 2003; Pan African Issues in Crime and Justice (co-edited), 2004; Nigeria: Democratising a Militarised Civil Society, (co-authored) 2001; Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Migration Research (edited), 2000; and Black Women and the Criminal Justice System, 1997.