OPINION: Nnamdi Kanu’s a prisoner of conscience

Except for the period between 2017-2021 when he escaped being killed by an invading murderous band of Nigeria’s security operatives including members of the armed forces, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra has been in jail for nine years since October 14, 2015. The Nigerian state had charged him in 2015 with offences bordering on terrorism and associated crimes. But his real offence was that he held political opinions which the rulers determined to be offensive. To add to that he leads a self determination group which espouses freedom through referendum from the Nigerian state.
But to a segment of the ruling class this country is, and will remain, one, united and indissoluble entity. To them there’s a consensus by Nigerians that the country will remain the way it is, at least, in terms of its territory. To them the present territory of the country is sacrosanct, inviolable and outside the realms of discussion or debate or negotiations.
This absurd thinking was the driving canon that informed and propelled the disastrous rulership of the eight years of Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari who turned out to be an affliction on the country. If Buhari was only guilty of bad governance, he could have been forgiven since he couldn’t have given what he didn’t have.
Buhari had been around before his accession to the highest office in the land again in 2015. He was a military head of state between 1983-1985. He was sacked by his colleagues in the army for rank incompetence and serial bungling. His achievements during the period were a controversial and compromised change of the national currency; the so-called war against indiscipline prosecuted by lashes of horsewhips on the backs of ordinary folks, and butts of assault rifles on any available parts of the bodies of our citizens.
Also to Buhari’s dubious credits in his first missionary journey were the promulgation of the Draconian Decree 4 which prohibited and criminalised publication of any stories against a public officer irrespective of the veracity of such stories; the execution by firing squad of alleged drug traffickers using a decree that was imbued with retroactive powers; introduction of trade-by-barter as an economic policy in the 20th century; racketeering of import licences; and, kilometres -long queues in parts of the country of citizens forced to line up at gunpoints to purchase essenco (essential commodities). The imported essential commodities were actually made up of sugar, tea, rice, beans, and sundry food items.
The tragedy was that some who were adults when Buhari first afflicted us with his brand of affliction were upfront in 2013, 2014 and 2015 promoting the presidential aspiration of Buhari, claiming that he had become a born-again democrat and a better prospective leader. There was no evidence of that because in the 30 years between 1985 and 2015. Buhari was not known to have delivered any position paper on any issue of national interest. He did not undertake any self improvement in any institution of learning in Nigeria or abroad. But he was known for two notorious things: Buhari led a delegation of his kinsmen to Ibadan to warn the former governor of Oyo state, the late Lam Adesina, that there would be dire consequences for the alleged killing of Fulani herdsmen in the state. He scurried away in shame when he was confronted with the evidence that the aggressors and the killers in the Oke Ogun area of Oyo state were actually the Fulani herdsmen. His second high profile duty in the intervening 30 years was his headship of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) under former military dictator, the late Gen. Sani Abacha. The PTF under Buhari was corruption personified in addition to being nepotistic in the delivery of its mandate. The corruption in the PTF was such that its sole high profile consultant died suddenly and mysteriously on the eve of President Olusegun Obasanjo launching a probe into the operations of that agency. So, Nigerians got what they deserved from the grossly incompetent Buhari.
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It was under the locust years of Buhari, 2015-2023, that the travails of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu started and became pronounced. Indeed Kanu was arrested barely five months into the life of that accursed regime.The regime was so paranoid and petty that one of the initial charges preferred against Kanu in court upon his arrest on October 14, 2015, was that he insulted Gen. Buhari. That should have given Nigerians insight into the dark and devious minds of the Buhari band of rulers. Even Malawi’s former president and dictator, the late Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, did not descend so low whilst he had his country in a vice grip. But Nigerians gave Buhari a pass.
For nine years and counting, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has spent more time in prison than out of it for practically no offence known to the laws of this country. In fact, Nigeria’s Court of Appeal in Abuja had once dismissed all the charges preferred against him by the federal government. For all intents and purposes, Kanu’s primary crime has been that he had been insulting some of our rulers. So one way to shut him up was to imprison him without trial or through trial by ordeal. It does not matter to the people who wield temporary, ephemeral and transient power that they are depriving him of his human rights – the right to personal liberty; the right to freedom of speech; and, the right to association. It could sound like an exaggeration, but Kanu’s unjust long incarceration could end up elevating him to the pantheon of celebrated global prisoners of conscience including Nelson Mandela of the apartheid South Africa and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, both Nobel Laureates. An entry in the online definitions of Oxford Languages says that a prisoner of conscience is “a person who has been put in prison for holding political or religious views that are not tolerated in the state which they live”. Kanu has been in prison for about nine years, barely three, for holding political and other views which are not tolerated in Nigeria where he is supposed to be a citizen. That he also holds a British citizenship has not made his travails any less cruel and inhuman.
Even the United Nations has since alluded to the fact that Kanu was incarcerated for his political views and separatist struggles. About this time two years ago, the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention indicted the Nigerian and Kenyan governments for the ‘arrest and extraordinary rendition, torture and continued detention of’ Kanu without due process. Upon its findings, the UN body asked the Nigerian government to ensure immediate unconditional release of Kanu, and payment to him of adequate compensation for the arbitrary violation of his fundamental human rights’. In addition, the agency further recommended that the government officials responsible for the torture meted to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) be investigated and punished. It has been two years since these findings and recommendations by the UN Council, yet nothing has happened. Instead the rogue regime of Buhari dug in while the successor legitimacy – challenged administration of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been busy plotting how it can reap political capital from the release of Kanu. The extant regime sees everything from the prism of partisan and electoral politics, and how much political gains can be extracted from every situation. To Tinubu, Nnamdi Kanu might as well be a pawn on his political chessboard. He could just shrug his shoulders, and he would be right in doing so, and say he had no hands ab initio in the lingering travails and trial by torture of Kanu. But not so fast. Tinubu was a self -acclaimed leader of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015 when Kanu was first arrested, and self – professed godfather of the former president, Maj.-Gen. Buhari. Tinubu was in the same position when Kanu was granted bail by a federal high court in Abuja and also when state security agents invaded Kanu’s home in Umuahia, Abia state, leaving trails of bloodshed and deaths. The IPOB leader managed to escape and subsequently fled from Nigeria. Tinubu was still the leader of the APC and Buhari’s godfather when Kanu was illegally arrested in Kenya, brutalized, tortured, and renditioned to Nigeria in 2021. Therefore, his attempt to play the Pontius Pilate will not work to the discerning. He also owns Nnamdi Kanu.
It’s interesting that there have recently been a cacophony of calls on Tinubu to put a closure to the continued detention and torture of Kanu. Some members of the national assembly (NASS) had done so. The South East caucus in the NASS led by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe had also done so. It even went further to visit the attorney – general of the federation and minister of justice to table its request. Governors of the five south east states met in Enugu and pleaded with Tinubu to free Kanu. Ohanaeze Ndigbo had similarly waded in for the release of Kanu.So far there have been no indications that the pleas have moved the needle. It’s possible that nobody, no group from within and without Igbo land, has clearly articulated to Tinubu what will be in it for him (Tinubu ) to free Kanu.
If the truth be told, the continued imprisonment of the IPOB leader serves the interests of some other nations in Nigeria. It will ensure that there will not be a let up in the insecurity in the south east. The insecurity will continue to devastate the economy of the region, keep fresh investments away and precipitate the exodus of firms operating there. With lack of new investments and the relocation of companies, unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, will grow by leaps and bounds, and that will provide recruitment pool for would be criminals. In addition, insecurity as epitomised by the Monday sit-at-home will negatively impact the south east education system. A situation where the children in the Igbo nation have not been able to go to school in the past seven years and have been compelled not to sit for national public examinations scheduled for Mondays will leave adverse impacts for generations. Some parts of the country who fear that the Igbo appear irrepressible will be gleeful at what has been happening to the Igbo homeland in the last decade, and they will readily add fuel to the inferno.
And one of the sources of insecurity in the south east has been the phenomenon of the so-called unknown gunmen. I cannot in good conscience exculpate misguided Igbo youngsters from that evil. But there’s also reason to believe that Nigeria’s state actors have their footprints all over the crime scenes. One man, Dokubo Asari, who publicly boasts that he runs a private military company (PMC) which had a security contract with the erstwhile Buhari regime, and who once professed abiding love and loyalty to Tinubu, had confessed that his militia was assigned to the east for covert security operations. Could it be that that assignment birthed the dreaded and deadly phenomenon of the unknown gunmen? The Good Book says that nothing is hidden under the sun. So we’ll get to know in the fullness of time.
Regarding Kanu, the only thing that is permanent is change. He will be free in spite of Buhari and Tinubu. The orchestrated suppression of the Igbo and the apparent coordinated devastation of their homeland will last for only so long. They will bounce back. Soon. They will pursue and they will overtake. It has happened before. And it will happen again.
AUTHOR: UGO ONUOHA

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