by Nestor C Nzeribe
Between 1884 and 1885, a conference was held in Berliin by top European powers. It was The New Imperialism period, a time of Germany’s sudden emergence as an imperial power, and the European race for colonies had made it to start launching expeditions of its own. A determined push into Africa by Germany frightened both British and French leaders. Hostilities brewed and little skirmishes occurred across Africa. It was decided among leaders in Europe that an international conference was needed to quickly avert a much bigger conflict which clearly was looming.
As the need to scramble a European conference gained prominence, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck undertook to organize and host it in Berlin with two major objectives in mind. First, the Conference would discuss the partitioning of Africa and establish rules to amicably divide it’s resources among the European countries. The Conference would resolve disputes between the European powers with interests in Africa, create fake borders of ownership, allowing various European nations to claim almost the entire continent, including its resources and people. The second objective concerned the promotion of cooperation and trade between colonial powers, in order to avoid or minimize conflicts between them. As the race to each own a piece of Africa intensified, the European powers themselves, understood the need not to dissipate energy on internecine squabbling., especially, when there was enough to go round.
Thirteen European countries participated in the Berlin Conference. The list included
Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, and Turkey, (Ottoman ). The United States of America was also in attendance as the only non European participant, making a total of 14 countries. Of these fourteen nations at the Berlin Conference, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Portugal were the major players. The conference resulted in the signing of what is known as the General Act of the Berlin Conference, which divided Africa along the lines drawn by the owners of colonies. The borders of colonized African nations were negotiated and determined, according to the interests of European colonizers. They divided the lands, peoples and resources of Africa among themselves as Europeans, without regard whatsoever, to the existing political or cultural borders or age long affinities of African peoples.
The participating fourteen countries were represented by a plethora of ambassadors at the time the Conference opened on 15 November, 1884. After thorough deliberations and negotiations on its first day, it took an adjournment. It later resumed and got concluded on 26 February, 1885 with the signing of a General Act regulating European colonization and trade in Africa. The objective of peacefully partitioning Africa amongst the powers of Europe in order to minimize, if not totally eradicate the occurrence of bitter conflicts of rivalry between the contesting interests was accomplished successfully. Africa became a franchise taken by force, sold to themselves and partitioned amongst themselves by the colonizers from Europe.
The European predators, quite unlike their African “victims” could and did achieve their mission without going to war with one another. Africa and the interests of Africans got easily and totally subdued, when the self appointed masters of the continent peacefully worked together in an alliance built on the values of mutual respect and understanding to amicably share what neither of them had a right to in the first place. On their own part, the indigenous peoples of the “Dark Continent” were kept apart from each other in a pervasive atmosphere of rancour, mutual suspicion and ethnic rivalry, orchestrated mostly and sustained in the main, by the Europeans themselves. European weapons and ammunition was sold first to slave raiders who provided slaves for shipment to Europe and the Americas. When slaving became precarious, a strategy of continuously arming leaders of rival communities to frustrate the idea of raising a common front to confront the colonizers, gained traction.
From the slave trade period, through the time that attention shifted fully to other trading commodities, which gave way to full colonization of Africa, till date, undermining the unity of African peoples and states have continued. The relentless suppression of the free will of the peoples of supposedly ‘independent’ African states have remained a major enabler of exploitation. In the 21st century and several years after gaining what is best known as “flag independence” African nations armed by Western powers, continue to engage in vicious cycles of internecine inter-ethnic or inter-tribal wars. Therefore, constituting and sustaining a resilient common front against the dominance of strange interests on the continent, remain an unfulfilled dream.
Curiously, African states and leaders demonstrate a much keener interest in protecting and sustaining the sociopolitical, economic and cultural aberrations put in place by the colonizers for the interests of colonization than in reversing the multifarious errors of colonization. On the part of the former colonial masters however, despite apparent rivalries, they still maintain a cordial esprit de corps in according respect to one another. None of them can openly aid an African nation’s efforts, where that unusual idea exists, towards dislodging the exploitative paraphernalia of modern neocolonialism. Whether it is in north, south, east or west of Africa, today, the strategies or structures sustaining the never ending exploitation of African nations, continues to serve same useful purposes they were created to serve in 1884. In holding Africa and Africans down for a never ending European exploitation, the enablers are legion.
But as always, there are worse cases and some slight exceptions, not necessarily to the rules but with regard to the application of morals. These exceptions are dependant on the varying dispositions of the erstwhile colonialists, how they operate and where they operate. Whereas nations like Germany have apologized for genocide committed against the Africans of Namibia, and have even gone further to broker a reparation deal, others like France and Britain, through defiant policies and inappropriate shenanigans, continue unrepentantly to manipulate the governance of former colonies in order to maintain an unfettered access to their natural resources.
On Friday, 28 May 2021, about 100 years after it happened, Germany tendered an apology and offered the sum of $1.3 billion dollar’s in reparations to the people of Namibia for the killing by its troops of about 80, 000 Namibians. The massacre happened when the Germans quelled an insurrection against colonization. Japan, a non European imperial power had also tendered apologies, and offered to pay a $3 million dollar reparation to the families of the females it dehumanized in Korea during the period it colonized the country. Stolen artifacts have also been returned by Germany and a couple of others. While it is appropriate to say that both the German and Japanese gestures are both belated and inadequate, enough attention on the other hand, has not been directed at the British who slaughtered tens of thousands of Igbo in the Ekumeku anti- colonization wars that lasted for about three decades. (1883-1914)
The Ekumeku Movement consisted of a series of uprisings against the rising power of George Taubman Goldie’s Royal Niger Company, the acclaimed “owner” of Nigeria, and against forced British rule by Anioma people in present-day Delta State. The British penetration of Nigeria met with various forms of resistance especially, in Igbo land. The Empire had to fight many wars in the South of today’s Nigeria, in particular the wars against the Aro of Eastern Igboland in 1901–1902, and from 1883 to 1914, the Anioma in Western Igboland. Communities like Onicha-Olona, Ogwashi, Igbo uzo, Issele-Asagba, Ubulu-Uku, Obior, Umunede, in Aniocha and Anioma Agbor, incurred massive losses of human lives in the course of resisting colonization.
In addition to the Ekumeku massacres, there was also the brutal suppression of coal mines workers in Enugu, which was a massacre; and the incessant British meddling in the political affairs of Nigeria which has often led to genocides against the Igbo, and the total destruction of Igbo culture and values through the deliberate pursuit of a British vendetta. But instead of the expression of remorse, penitence and penance, the “Empire” continues to earn handsome rewards for its misadventures in Nigeria, through its control of the resources of a country that has been structured to accommodate and service foreign interests. The cost of Nigerian underdevelopment due to the fact that it is running on an imperial temple of clandestine meddlesomeness is monumental.
Sunday December 1, 2024, Senegal in a ceremony, marked 80 years since French colonial massacre at Thiaroye
Africa. It was the anniversary of the killing of hundreds of African soldiers who fought for France during World War Two, and were gunned down by French troops in 1944 for demanding fair treatment and payment on their return. After several decades of denial the French government finally admitted that the killing of the African troops by French forces had been a “massacre”. The fact that the ceremony in Senegal was witnessed by the Heads of state from Mauritania, the Comoros, Gabon, the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, and France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, who joined Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, underscore the growing desire for a new relationship with France. And indeed in Africa, the clock is ticking fast for the French. It sure has an urgent need to review it’s relationships with it’s former African colonies.
Perhaps, one day very soon too, the Igbo and those other nationalities who had colonization brutally forced on them with massacres and the looting of resources, will arise to seek redress. Like the late Nigerian politician, MKO Abiola, once mooted, Africans should formally institute a proper means of seeking redress for the wrongs visited on them through colonization. African nations have to take the lead in reshaping their own history which had been been terribly altered by colonization. In this regard, Senegal deserves some commendation for instituting a holiday in commemoration of the sordid Thiaroye massacre.