Stirring the hornet’s nest

Adebayo Obajemu

The late British Queen, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, was by far the most popular and respected British monarch in recent memory. Her death has continued to generate strong emotions across the globe far beyond Britain and the Commonwealth.

As the whole world mourned her passing, a Nigerian professor teaching in an American university, Uju Anya  took a different path from mourning to gloating over the monarch’s death, saying the Queen and her family’s crime against her Igbo people during the 30-months civil war was the reason for her diatribe against the Queen.

“I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating,” Anya had tweeted.

She continued: “If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star.”

She said “those slaughtered” included her family members, adding that she was born immediately after the war “facilitated by the British government”.

In Uju’s words, “the United Kingdom’s support came through political cover, weapons, bombs, planes, military vehicles, and supplies.

“My people endured a holocaust, which has shadowed our entire lives and continues to affect it because we’re still mourning incalculable losses and still rebuilding everything that was destroyed.”

Her tweets on Twitter immediately made the headline across the globe, for obvious reasons. It is an accepted convention worldwide not to speak ill of the death. So in the thick of outpouring of torrential  tributes  for 96-year-old Queen Elizabeth II the unsettling tirades made by Nigerian-born Prof. Uju Anya desiring that  the monarch have an ‘excruciating’ death, pierced the hearts of well-wishers and became subject of discourses in many lands.

But the Carnegie Mellon University professor who quickly defended her tweet responded to Jeff Bezos tweet, taunting her, writing, “Otoro gba gbue gi (Dysentery kills you). May everyone you and your merciless greed have harmed in this world remember you as fondly as I remember my colonizers.”

Also, Anya’s employer, Carnegie Mellon University in a statement on its Twitter page last Thursday railed against the tweets and distanced itself from her. The university wrote:

“We do not condone the offensive and objectionable messages posted by Uju Anya today on her personal social media account.

“Freedom of expression is core to the mission of higher education, however, the views she shared absolutely do not represent the values of the institution, nor the standards of discourse we seek to foster.”

But Anya’s was not the only critical denunciation of the late Queen.

In sharp departure from Anya’s acerbic remark, a South African political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) said in a statement that it would not mourn the queen because “to us her death is a reminder of a very tragic period in this country and Africa’s history.”

Anya’s critics in Nigeria are legion, so also are her defenders on Twitter.

Defending Anya, @Ebonyteach wrote, “Telling the colonized how they should feel about their colonizer’s health and wellness is like telling my people that we ought to worship the Confederacy.

“Respect the dead” when we’re all writing these Tweets *in English.* How’d that happen, hm? We just chose this language?”

Similarly, @YaaAsantewaaBa wrote, “Reminder that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times. She was an active participant in colonialism. She actively tried to stop independence movements & she tried to keep newly independent colonies from leaving the commonwealth. The evil she did was enough.”

@Punnet64 said, “Some people have no idea what this lady must have passed through that gave her the courage to be tweeting things like this.

“Racism in the UK is too much…. You won’t know such feeling unless you are a victim.

“She’s not defending just tribe, mind you….. She’s speaks for all nation, tribe, people that have been abused one way or the other by UK government. Her tweet is beyond pre Nigerian civil war and post Nigerian civil war…”

@iamchiisomm said, “You don’t get the point. The British helped the fulani and military develop and institute a system that makes it possible for corruption to drive unchecked for decades in Nigeria. Have you seen the board of the New NNPC?”

@twumpat said, “I can express my condolences to her people. But I can say that Britain exploited Jamaica for years until our independence. By then all our natural resources were plundered & brought to Britain leaving us hungry/desperate till today. They’ve done this all over the world.”

Her traducers have also taken to the same Twitter to lambast her.

@TOAAnjorin wrote, “Wow! I said it before not only in our home country that we behave and talk abnormal, it’s also affecting us Overseas where we take as our 2nd home base. Very sad to hear this kind of expression from a Professor to our World QUEEN. Even when Bezos is given an opinion she went on attack.”

Also knocking Anya over the tweet, @nkolikaebele wrote, “A disgrace to Igbo nation, I saw the war, she may not have seen the war, yet she carries a bitterness that is compressing her soul. Real shame. Igbo by tradition don’t speak ill of the dead.”

Another Twitter user, @Davideleye argued that “People who blame the west solely for the slave trade and colonization fail to realize that blacks were complicit in the accomplishment of both….it was blacks who kidnapped blacks and sold to the white man, so stop this one sided hypocrisy.”

@SeerVoice wrote, “By their name you shall know them. No fear of God, no empathy, full bitterness, haters of good thing. Always at verge of revenge who has never wronged them.”

@Seeramene said, “Her statement is disgusting. If she is truly grieved about what the colonisers did to not just Nigerians but Africa as a whole, what then is she doing with the same colonisers outside the shores of her birth country and continent?”

Going down on a historical lane, Anya’s angst may have been the latest in a long series of hostility to Britain over her colonial past .

In August 1967, one commentator had in the heat of Anya’s controversy come up with a letter written by Ven. Dr Akanu Ibiam, a Christian missionary physician, erudite theologian and statesman, who had worked for 30 years in the Church of Scotland/Presbyterian Church, a 20-paragraph letter to Queen Elizabeth II.

In his letter, Ibiam reportedly condemned without mincing words, the central role  played by Britain in the Igbo genocide, the foundational genocide of post-(European) conquest Africa, which had then entered its second year of unremittingly ruthless slaughter.

In protest to this role, Ibiam renounced and returned to the British head of state the three insignias of knighthood (OBE, KBE, KCMG) that both she and her father, King George VI, had earlier conferred on the esteemed missionary physician for services to church and state.

Now, Professor Anya is saying her life is in danger, as some shadowy figures are trying to link her with IPOB as to label a terrorist as a groundwork for her arrest. This may have come about following IPOB’s expression of support for her comment on the Queen. Anya has refuted claims that she belongs to, or is affiliated with any Nigerian political party.

She wrote on her official Twitter page on Friday, that anyone claiming she is in any way involved in Nigerian politics was lying, stating that her interest is in people and not in parties. She went further to disclose that even in the United States of America, where she presently works and resides, she is a registered independent.

The tweet states, “Gentle reminder, once again, that I am not involved or affiliated with any political party or movement in Nigeria. Even here in the U.S., I am a registered independent. Anybody who says I have anything to do with Nigerian politics is lying. My concern is people, not parties.”

Though tweets had been deleted  Anya told  The Punch in an exclusive interview that her life was under threat because of her comment on the late Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II. She said some blogs were linking her as a financier to the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB) and she could be tagged a terrorist.

“It is urgent that the world knows that these people are trying to put me in harm’s way. Nothing that anybody sees with my name on Facebook is true. I am not a member of IPOB.

“They are using me for political movements and messages that I do not align with, and they are seriously damaging me and my safety.

“This is going to be a huge problem for me. What if the Nigerian government considers me a terrorist and wants to arrest me? They are putting my life in danger.”

She had however, thanked Nigerians, for their support, following the lifting of the suspension placed on her handle by Twitter, last Tuesday.

The Anya’s controversy may be the first in public domain, there had been a whole discussion on colonialism and it’s legacies in the academic circles for years.