Kabir,
I did listen to a similar programme over BBC Radio 4. This is yet another hypocrisy about democracy – really disgusting, to put it mildly. It is the architects of such hypocrisies who are accorded peerages and other accolades in the Western countries for a job well done!!
These policies of national chauvinist interest first before everything else is really the mother of all the major evils in the world including the causes of what the leaders in the West call War on Terrorism. Which Hon. George Galloway, British MP, however says is a misnomer, as, according to him, the war is actually a War of Terrorism, not on Terrorism. This is precisely because the so-called terrorist combatants have become more terrifying and atrocious than the so-called terrorists.
Back to the litany of imperialists’ hypocrisies and conspiracies in and on Africa….
In my view, the most damaging of these imperialists backed conspiracies against Africa were the assassination of most gallant, steadfast and committed Patrice Lumumba and the coup against Dr Nkrumah, the BBC polled African of the 20th Century….
In Congo, one of the richest areas in the world in terms of mineral deposits, and which in 1700s, was the fastest growing economy on earth, we have seen how the Belgian Monarch, Leopold II, instructed Moise Tshombe (a Congolese) to lead the secession of Katanga from Congo which ultimately led to a civil war and the consequent downward spiral of the Congolese economy making Congolese one of the poorest people on earth while Western companies continue to feast on their wealth.
He have seen, how, according to Ludo de Witt, Belgian troops, which were sent on the pretext that they were to protect Belgian lives, were actually sent to further engineer and back the secession.
How President Eisenhower of the US in August 1960, during a National Security Council meeting, told then CIA chief Allen Dulles to “eliminate” Lumumba, one of Africa’s most illustrious sons. These Western leaders have only crocodile tears for Africa’s condition….
We still see (on our screens) how Lumumba, hands tied behind his back, being driven in the streets of Katanga province, and subsequently on the back of a lorry, after receiving enormous tortures on the orders of the US which were carried out by the Belgians. He nontheless gallantly remained unshaken for the course of true Africa liberation… His letter from brutal detension, addressed to his wife, but which in reality is a literary piece to all human kind, of what Lumumba himself called "unshaken" dedication to the cause of true African liberation.
We have seen, in our minds eyes, how Lumumba and two of his colleagues were ultimately shot at point blank range under what became known as the Big Tree, which by the way, is reported to still have the scars of those bullets in 1961. This is another (Nazi-like) Sobibor in Africa....
We have seen how the UN was more like an imperialist instrument during the whole 1960/61 Congo crisis than being the guardian of the sanctity of human life, that it was established to be.
How the UN was most wanting in safeguarding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a member nation. How even the Ghanaian soldiers that Nkrumah sent under the Blue Helmets, were disappointed and helpless under the imperialist dominated command and control, how, due to such command and control, they could not prevent Lumumba’s arrest and ultimate assassination, as was the most significant desire of Dr Osagifo.
This was Dr Osagifo first face to face encounter with naked imperialism. We were all to further realise barely 5 years on, this time in Ghana, that imperialism, whether naked or clothed is never to be underestimated….
We have seen how together with the CIA, Belgium ordered Lumumba’s body to be exhumed from the grave that he was hurriedly buried in the night of his assassination - this is one of the darkest nights in independent African history – to be dissolved in a barrel of acid which was reported to have been provided by Union Miničre, the Belgian mining company, which dominates the mining industry in Congo since 1906.
Lumumba’s body was dissolved in Union Miničre’s purportedly provided acid because the Belgians, the Americans and their Western allies realised that Lumumba’s grave was becoming what they called as “dangerous” as the living Lumumba.
We have read the account of the Belgian officer who led this heinous act in Africa, how Lumumba’s skull was crushed because it was too strong to dissolve in the acid and the “bones scattered on the way home” from the debacle of the human flesh fuming barrel of acid.
We have seen how frustrated Dr Nkrumah was that independent Africa cannot stop imperialist plots after independence, that one of his foremost colleagues was to be murdered not only under the very eyes of UN troops but under the very nose of Ghanaian soldiers.
How he ultimately re-echoed that fragmented “independent” African states would remain too weak to counter the imperialist machinations of the West and as a result, especially given his strategic vision of constructing an independent and united Africa, which would be able to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity under all economic and political weathers, he became the next target for...
...Britain’s MI5 and the CIA and the Israel’s Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks (Mossad – Hebrew for Institute – which unlike CIA and MI5 is younger in terms of years and was founded in 1951, but consequently established its authority by two security feats, (1) obtaining a copy of Khruschev's 1956 Party Congress speech about what Khruschev referred to as Stalinist atrocities which was much sought after by the then more exeprienced CIA and MI5, and (2) the uncovering of a 1961 plot by some French army officers to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle, which information Israel traded with France for nuclear-weapons technology, which unlike Iran would never be queried by its Western Allies.)
These are the tree murky secret agencies which now dominate international conspiracies and which have wrecked political and economic havoc on Africa and other parts of the exploited world….
We have seen how Nkrumah was ultimately lured into a mediation mission between America and Vietnam; a mission that never was; resulting into another dark chapter in African history. The three secret agencies are reported to be behind it, with the complicity of some Africans in scoring another political and economic goal for imperialism against dear Africa.
We have also seen how the America regime of all regimes, promised to stop the bombing of Vietnam to make sure that Nkruma’s plane arrived safely in Hanoi (Foroyaa, March 23 – 26th 2006) (after all the untold human atricities, already committed then)t o give the mission an aura of genuine urgency. But which was in reality to enable them to undertake their sinister plan of overthrowing him, because spilling the blood of Osagifo in the soil of Ghana was sure recipe for unrest.
We have seen how the President of the USA Lyndon Baines Johnson, who, according to Nkrumah’s former Research and Editorial Assistant and later his literary executrix, June Milne, initially ordered the assassination of Dr Nkrumah at the airport in Accra, was later convinced that the blood of Osagifo on Ghanaian soil would cause a civil war in the counrty.
Hence, with Lumumba and Nkrumah gone, and the rest boxed into robotic nerves, Africa was defenseless from the ravages of economic imperialism. This was more moral than colonialism as they would would take any responsibility as Mobutu later learnt very late in life after causing so much damage on Africa.
Imperialism therefore regained its strong hold of the continent once more which it maintains to this day to the detriment of the majority of Africans. F-r example, the World Bank estimates that with the current trend, Africa will achieve the MDGs in 2147 (Practical Action and PELUM Association, 2005).
Consequently, the British state sponsored rigging of the election in Nigeria is following the same imperialists’ machinations of chauvinist national interest first before any so-called democratic policy or economic morality.
This enabled them, as they in continue to do today, to ravage the resources of African regions like the Niger Delta Nigeria, Ashanti fields in Ghana, Katanga province in dear DRC, and so on and so forth.
In short, Africa would have faired much better if these Western imperialists had been made to stop from meddling in Africa’s affairs by Africans themselves.
As a result, a good percentage of the current ink in the Britain would be required if we were to catalogue all the hypocritical actions and the atrocious and murderous policies that the West has perpetrated and still continue to perpetrate against Africa and other regions.
However, this we must do in the further quest of what Halifa Sallah calls the establishment of a Pan-African Library….
As the regurgitation of the atrocities of the successive imperialists regimes shamelessly continues, we certainly do not need the crocodile tears of the present imperialist regimes.
Abdoulie Jawo
University of Bradford
Kabir Njaay <[log in to unmask]> wrote: BBC documentary
Britain rigged election before Nigerian independence
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/aug2007/nige-a09.shtml
By Barry Mason
9 August 2007
A BBC radio documentary on the events leading up to the independence of
Nigeria, Britain's former colony, charged the British government with
interference in the election to ensure the result was in line with its
interests (see "Rigging
Nigeria
").
The programme cited two files held in the British National archives covering
the period leading up to independence in 1960 that to this day remain closed
to the public and will remain closed for another 50 years.
One file contains material relating to the governor general at the time of
independence, Sir James Robertson, and the other material on Dr Azikiwe,
known as Zik, who was leader of the nationalist pro-independence political
party, the National Council of Nigerian Citizens (NCNC).
Mike Thomson, the investigator on the programme, spoke to Harold Smith who
had gone out to work as a British Colonial Officer in the 1950s after
graduating from Oxford University. Smith was based in the then capital,
Lagos, working in the ministry of Labour, then headed by Festus Okotie-Eboh,
a flamboyant politician who was treasurer of the NCNC. The NCNC was based in
the Eastern Region of Nigeria. Under colonial rule the country was divided
up into three regions, North, East and West.
One day Smith was given a secret file containing a minute that ordered him
to get involved in regional elections taking place in the late 1950s in the
run up to independence. He was to make vehicles, staff and other resources
available to the NCNC colleagues of Okotie-Eboh who was standing in the
elections. Smith was shocked at the request. He explained that the election
had to be fixed because the plan was that the Northern region would hold
power on independence.
Thomson asks, "Could an allegation of British government involvement to rig
an election or at the least to favour a particular party be substantiated?"
He interviewed Professor David Anderson, Director of the African Studies
Centre at Oxford University. Asked if such manipulation of an election
result could have happened Professor Anderson replied: "In almost every
single colony the British attempted to manipulate the result to their
advantage.... I would be surprised if they had not done so."
Nigeria's Northern region constituted three quarters of the land mass of the
country and had roughly half the population. Professor Anderson explained
that the North, with its Islamist culture, was very conservative and had
enjoyed a close relationship with its British colonial rulers. The British
had ruled through the emirs.
The British government was concerned that the result of independence might
lead to partition. They regarded the Northern region as a bulwark against
opposition. Professor Anderson explained that British analysts at the time
thought that West Africa as a whole with its high levels of poverty was
highly vulnerable to communism.
The politics of the North was dominated by the Northern Peoples' Congress
Party (NPC). Britain was aware that the NPC would be unable to rule an
independent Nigeria by itself and would need the support of a major party in
the East or West.
This is why, explains Smith, he had been ordered to help the party of Dr
Azikiwe (Zik), in the East, the NCNC. He explained: "They had to fix Zik of
course, there was stuff they have got him for that could send him to prison
... [they] forced him to do a deal with the North."
Smith is adamant the orders to help the NCNC came from the top, the governor
general Sir James Robertson. Smith described Robertson as "a thug and he had
a terrible reputation....We loved Africans, but these people who came to do
this job were a different breed, these were the ex-SOE [British Secret
Service outfit set up during the Second World War] and MI6."
According to Smith his colleagues reluctantly went along with the orders to
aid the election campaign. Smith refused and asked to see Robertson.
He describes his meeting with Robertson. Robertson said, "I want you to know
that everything you have alleged about the elections is correct.... You know
too much and I want you to know how much trouble you are in. The Colonial
Service is just like the army, you know what happens if you disobey orders
on active service and that is what is going to happen to you."
Smith added that Robertson was so angry he half expected him to produce a
pistol and shoot him.
Smith showed Mike Thomson the copies of correspondence he has sent to the
"great and the good" over the years in his campaign to highlight his
allegations. Thomson remarked that without recordings of the conversations
Harold Smith claims took place and no copies of the orders it is difficult
for him to prove his case.
However, Thomson was able to quote from some documents that give a hint of
what happened. One document is a letter written by Sir Peter Smethers who
was a private parliamentary secretary at the British Colonial Office
throughout most of the decolonization period and had been present at most of
the independence negotiations, including that of Nigeria.
Writing of the Northern political class he says, "The attraction of the Kanu
rulers was that they had a long and successful experience of government ...
offered the obvious choice to head the new experiment. It was difficult to
see an alternative to the early stages of independence."
Smethers died last year at the age of 92.
The other document was from the memoirs of Robertson, who died in 1983. He
explained that in the elections that took place in 1959 to choose the
government that would rule after independence, before the result was known
there were rumours that the NCNC in the East and the so-called Action Group
in the West were considering a coalition and would be able to form a
majority in the House of Representatives.
He explained how he thought this might result in the North leaving the
federation. Part of his role was to appoint as prime minister whoever he
thought best able to command a majority in the House of Representatives. He
invited Abukakr Tafawa Balewa, the Northern leader, to form a government
even before the result of the election was known. He did so without
consulting the secretary of state in the British government.
Thomson also explains how the British carried out a census in Nigeria in the
years leading to independence and were accused of overestimating the numbers
in the North to give them a higher representation in the parliament.
Professor Anderson agrees it was certainly in the interests of Britain to
have done that.
Both Professor Anderson and Mike Thomson applied under the Freedom of
Information Act to gain access to the two files but have been refused.
Anderson told the programme:
"Clearly someone in the British government, when those files were
classified, did not want us historians to learn something about what they
contain and that raises my suspicions that those files might contain
information about whatever deals were brokered between the British
government and the NCNC. Because it is certainly the case that the NCNC
would not have won the election it did without British support. Nor could it
have formed a coalition with the NPC at independence without British
support. So I would love to see what's in those two files about Sir James
Robertson and Dr Azikiwe."
See Also:
**
The Congo: How and why the West organised Lumumba's assassination Review of
two BBC documentaries: *Who Killed Lumumba?*, and
*Mobutu*
[10 January 2001]
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