By Tukur Mamu
Despite the treason charges against him and the stringent bail conditions that includes barring him from granting interviews and holding rallies, leader of the so called IPOB, Nnamdi KANU has continued to defy the Court that granted him bail and the Federal Government that facilitated his release with unprecedented impunity. While the Federal Government has succumbed to blackmail and intense media propaganda designed by the sponsors of the criminal agitation, KANU has now constituted a Government within a Government in today’s Nigeria and under an administration that promises change. Since his release, KANU has severally violated the laws of the land and challenges/threatened the nation’s helpless security agencies.
In gross violation of his bail conditions and with the full support of his kinsmen and financial backing from some foreign countries notably Israel, KANU has not only granted provocative and inciting interviews but has continued to hold rallies with thousands in attendance and without seeking Police permission in ANY of such unlawful rallies. Kanu’s intimidating convoy with Israeli trained private body guards armed with all kinds of weapons looks more than that of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In Kanu’s case, the federal government is setting a bad and dangerous precedence. In my opinion, the only difference between KANU and his IPOB with Boko Haram, is he has not yet (at least officially) started killing in the name of his struggle but has so far exhibited all the attributes of BH.
As usual, Kanu’s visit yesterday (Monday) to ABAKALIKI, the Ebonyi State capital has again exposed the double standards of the Igbo political elite particularly the governor of the state and the incapacitation of the nation’s security agencies to squarely contain such glaring threat to national security. Kanu’s visit to Ebonyi which has no Police permission was allowed by the governor to hold even as he has the powers and the resources to prevent it from holding. The visit has disrupted business and government activities to a standstill.
Motorists have waited for hours to allow Mr. KANU and his convoy to do as they want. In a clear message to the Government that allowed him to do as he wished (which we never witness since the civil war), KANU who is supposedly on bail declared categorically and with impunity during his rally at Abakaliki that, “I will teach the Federal Government what they don’t know. I will teach them that nobody can stop Biafra. Biafra has come to stay. I will transverse all parts of Biafra land with out anybody stopping me including POLICE and SOLDIERS.
I will continue to walk in their midst as you can see and I dare them, they can’t arrest me. They know they can’t stop Biafra. I have come to declare EBONYI a Biafra State and when next I come, I will shut down the state for three days”. So far and as at the time of writing this piece, the Ebonyi State Governor has not responded to Kanu’s acts of defiance nor has he consider it appropriate to condemn what was done yesterday in his own state. The federal government too did not make any statement regarding Kanu’s acts of lawlessness, impunity and breach of the Nigerian constitution.
And yet the federal government will justify applying the law to others that don’t have the kind of backing Kanu has.
A very clear case is that of the
