Having lost their parliamentary majority, Prime Minister Theresa May attempted to form an alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP is a set of misogynist Bible-beating reactionaries infamous for their diehard opposition to evolution, to manmade climate change, to same sex marriage and to abortion. A coalition with the DUP introduces fascism into British politics and would help install a regime that abandons hypocritical discourse about tolerance and instead relies on violent repression.

Britain has always supported the idea of one indivisible Nigeria in its opposition to the Biafran people’s quest for self-determination. But the same Britain has no problem breaking away from the European Union after more than four decades. Or recognizing the right of the Scots to go their way after three centuries of their union.

The idea of Le Pen becoming president is a frightening prospect to millions in France and elsewhere. But voting for Macron can only mean accepting France as it is today, with all that many people find unacceptable, and in opposition to the interests of humanity. What is needed instead is to seek to use this situation and the turmoil that it is creating to begin to work for a revolution to topple French imperialism and support revolution everywhere.

The Igbo expect that a post-Brexit Britain will have to sit down with a free Biafra and discuss the entire history of the Igbo genocide, the enslavement of the people of Biafra and the subsequent conquest and occupation of Biafra, forced into the genocidist Nigeria “federation”. 

Britain will surely accept full responsibility for the crimes against humanity, apologise to Biafrans and pay full reparations.

Brexit appears to reveal a growing dissatisfaction with globalization. But, on the basis of debates leading to and in the aftermath of the referendum, it seems that Britain’s decision to quit the EU is a mere hiccup in regional integration processes. Regionalism as a product of globalization is unstoppable, including in Africa.

The defence of national sovereignty, like its critique, leads to serious misunderstandings once one detaches it from the social class content of the strategy in which it is embedded. The leading social bloc in capitalist societies always conceives sovereignty as a necessary instrument for the promotion of its own interests based on both capitalist exploitation of labour and the consolidation of its international positions.

Isn’t it an interesting coincidence that Britons have voted to leave the European Union exactly 50 years after the British government helped ruthlessly crush the Biafra secession in Nigeria? Aren’t all people, whether Biafran or British, entitled to the same right of self-determination?

The life template developed in Europe and then culturally transmitted to the rest of the world is not sustainable. The time has come for a wider, global discussion about how Europe may be kept in peace and prosperity alongside everyone else, as opposed to at the expense of everyone else, as has been, and remains, the case in today’s world.

Believing that Brexit could represent the beginning of the end for international cooperation is to believe that the world does or should revolve around Europe. The late Pan-Africanist Kwame Ture (aka Stokely Carmichael) pointed out that those whose thinking is dominated by Euro-centrism and white supremacy often mistakenly “make the particular history of Europe the general history of the world.”

The potential for other states within the EU to withdraw from the bloc is a major worry for the imperialist states. The priority for African and other developing countries should be removing their vulnerabilities from the international capitalist system in order to achieve sustainable growth and development based on the interests of the majority of the world’s population.

There is a distinct possibility of a much smaller “Little England” looking at itself in the mirror and asking how it might salvage its relations with Africa in order to continue to get Africa’s resources and markets. This time, Africa should not let England divide and rule it; it must take the opportunity to unite and negotiate as one continent.