WHEN one views the atrocities of the unknown gunmen suspected to be members of the Indigenuous People of Biafra, IPOB, led by Nnamdi Kanu, one comes to the bitter elastic conclusion that this defiant acts of murder and bestiality against their own people and the Nigeria security agents is a raw madness. These animals in human forms easily flaunt elementary principles of justice and humanity. Their deeds haunt any human being with a soul as it was reported recently that some are now cannibals eating fleshes of their victims in their hideouts.
Recently, Peter Obi, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party, LP, asked the Nigerian government to release Kanu from detention. He stated this while speaking to reporters in Onitsha last weekend. According to him, “I don’t see any reason for his continous detention, especially as the courts have granted him bail. The government must obey the court…we are in a democracy, and we should not be doing things that are arbitrary and not within the law”.
This is not the first time Obi is calling for the unconditional release of Kanu. Under the Buhari lead administration, he asked that the government release the IPOB spiritual leader and stop the use of force in fighting the Biafra agitators in spite of the fact that these misled youth had taken arms against the state and had created a quasi-state within the nation.
In my opinion, I think Obi is making a grave mistake in this his populist clamour for the release of Kanu who is undergoing trial for treasonable felony.
First, it is a transparent untruth, as usual, for Obi to claim Kanu has an existing bail granted him which the federal government is disobeying.
For the unitiated, Kanu was arrested in 2015 when Buhari was in power. Some of the stakeholders from the eastern part of the nation intervaned and he was granted bail on several conditions. He flaunted the conditions and fled the country. About seven years later, he was arrested again in Kenya and brought to Nigeria to face trial. The Court of Appeal held in 2022 that the IPOB leader was extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria and that the action was a violation of the nation’s extradition treaty and also a breach of his fundamental rights. On this basis, the appeal court struck out the terrorism charges filed against him by the government and ordered that he should be released immediately.
The government appealed the ruling of the appeal court by optaining an order staying the execution of the court at the apex court. The Supreme Court reversed the acquittal granted to Kanu by the appeal court and ordered the continuation of his trail at the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja. I was previleged to attend one of the sittings.
Several bail applications by councels to Kanu were dismissed by the court. So it is not true that there is any existing bail for Kanu the government is not obeying; Obi is not telling the public the truth.
Secondly, Obi is not sympathizing with victims of Kanu’s purported orders as much as he is with Kanu being in detention. There is hardly no agency from the Nigerian Army, Airforce, Department of State Security, Imigration, Customs, Police, Federal Road Safety Corps, and Civil Defence, if my memory stretches rightly, even the Ibos in the East, that have not fallen victims to the sabre rattling of these murderous cannibals. The gang have killed a lot of people in most atrocious and grisly ways. There was a video that went viral sometimes last year where they striped a military couple and cut them with knives like they were cutting beef. The video revolted even the devil.
According to some security reports, Kanu made public broadcast, just like his satanic ilk, Simon Ekpa, the Finland based rogue, instructing members of the deadly gang to kill security forces and burn down their facilities. Since these dare-devil cessationists have murdered over a hundred of them. Recently, about five soldiers on security mission were murdered in Abia State cold-bloodedly.
Does Obi think about the untimely death of these military personels who did not die in the hands of external aggressors, but in the hands of internal rascals aided by rhetorics from these so called leaders of the movement? What about the family of the victims? Does he think if the man accused of instructing and aiding the killings of their family members serving the nation does not face the full length of justice, they will ever find psychological closure to the internal pain?
What Obi should be calling for is justice to be served without prejudice, not unconditional release of an accused Kanu. Apart from murder, treason os one of the highest crimes known to man in my own estimation. Obi should ask that if Kanu and other members of IPOB killers that have been apprehended are found guilty of the crimes under which they are charged, they should face the hanging rope of the executioner. No state looks away while her security operatives are murdered without the murderers facing some measure of consequences when apprehended.
