By ALOY EJIMAKOR
Earlier today (12th November 2024), I noticed that several news outlets quoted the Northern Elders Forum (NEF) and Prof Ango Abdullahi as having proclaimed that Nigeria “expired” 10 years ago or in 2014. They even added that Nigeria as a nation should, for this reason, be “renegotiated”.
To me, this landmark proclamation is a significant departure from what was the stance of the North and even the Buhari-led Federal Government when, some years ago, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu made the same proclamation in an epic broadcast on Radio Biafra.
To be sure, Mazi Kanu’s position then, just as the North has now conceded, was that the legal instrument upon which Nigeria was founded in 1914 has a fixed duration of one hundred years which expired in 2014.
It will be recalled that this very broadcast was one of the major reasons Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was then charged with the offense of secession which was later escalated to incitement of terrorism for which he was renditioned and remains in incarceration for over three years, awaiting some trial.
So, one might ask: Now that the North has said the same thing for which Mazi Kanu was arrested, renditioned, detained and charged to court, is it not time for the Federal Government and even the North to show some contrition by apologizing to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu or acknowledging that he was right all along.
