The One Above All

WE ARE IGBOS We are the people who set up a 31-year guerrilla resistance movement in Anioma, against British imperial expansion and economic intrusion, thus blessing the history of mankind with the famous Ekumeku War of 1883-1914. We are the guys who, between 1891 & 1902 staged a major military conflict where the Aro Confederacy fought to defend its long-standing commercial monopoly, spiritual center (Ibinu Ukpabi), and regional autonomy against British Invasion. History remembers this as The Aro war/Aro Resistance We are the guys who resisted multiple colonial taxation on our women in 1929, and 25,000 plus of our mothers came together in signature Igbo defiance to leave a revolutionary footprint called Aba Women Riots. In the Early 20th Century, a local revolt by the people of Abiriba against the arbitrary authority of British-appointed warrant chiefs and unfair taxation, led to what history would later remember as Abiriba Rebellion. Have you ever heard of The Enugu Coal Miners' Resistance in 1949? Oh, that was super high-stakes labor strike by coal miners at the Iva Valley mine in Enugu, who were protesting poor wages and conditions, which turned into a historic anti-colonial flashpoint when British police opened fire and killed 21 miners. Are you counting? Here’s another one: 1940s - 1950s, an organized movement of market women in Onitsha fiercely resisted an exploitative colonial price controls, trade restrictions, and taxation. What resulted from that signature Igbo resistance is remembered today as The Onitsha Market Women Protest. I’m not finished. In May 1803, around 75 enslaved Igbo people—trafficked via the Middle Passage—overpowered their captors on a smaller coastal vessel named the York after arriving in Savannah, Georgia. Their anger? They were mostly warriors from present day ANAMBRA State and were tricked into making that trip by the slavers. When they realized they were going to be sold as slaves, they staged a revolt, overpowered their captors, capsized the vessel and committed mass suicide by drowning themselves! It’s today remembered as Igbo Landing. They chose the sea; They chose death over slavery, over culture theft, over the misappropriation of their cultural heritage! They were Igbos. We are Igbos. We are these people today. They’re all back to finish what they started, through us. Believe me when I tell you the person who will steal and misappropriate our cultural identity and heritage is not yet born. Believe me. For we Igbos, the battle for total and complete freedom doesn’t end in death, neither does it end in imprisonment. It simply ends when the freedom is won, and this is the generation of reincarnated ancestors who are here to secure that freedom at all costs. This isn’t rhetorics. We live now, but we have lived before. If we die fighting, it wouldn’t be our first, but it would sure be our last, because we won’t leave this fight for another generation. It ends here. Igbo Ga Adiri. Joseph OKECHUKWU Actor/Author/Activist