By Charles Ogbu
Exactly one year today, the Nigerian President and Commander-In-Chief, President Muhammadu Buhari sent in his soldiers into the family house of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, in a murderous raid. Hundreds of unarmed youths were killed in cold blood. Dozens were injured. Some were drowned in muddy waters captured in video. Nnamdi Kanu and his aged parents were either killed or taken away by the Army and have not been heard from since then.
Nnamdi Kanu
It is important to point out here that the murderous raid happened at a time when Nnamdi Kanu was still under bail granted him by a court of competent jurisdiction headed by Justice Binta Nyako. Also of note is the fact that under every known law in the whole wide world except in Banana Republics, when a suspect under bail is suspected of violating his bail conditions, it is only the court that granted such bail that has the powers to revoke it after the prosecution might have brought the complaint backed with convincing evidence. In cases where the suspect is suspected to have committed fresh offense while under bail, the legal option is to file fresh charges against him/her.
Resorting to self help such as invading the house of an unarmed man under bail with soldiers armed with armored tanks as was the case here amounts to legal sacrilege, Military brigandage, prostitution of power and a slap on the face of the trial Judge. The fact that Justice Binta Nyako ignored this act of executive banditry to insist that Senator Enyinnaya Harcourt Abaribe (one of those who stood surety for Nnamdi Kanu) must produce the IPOB leader further proves that Nigeria was built on so many things but justice isn’t one of them.
We must not also dis-remember that this lethal raid on kanu’s home happened at a time when the Buhari government and its soldiers were busy releasing members of the dreaded Boko Haram from detention and protecting the privileged terrorist group Fulani herdsmen and their cattle with a special army unit.
And as I write, another non-venomous snake called Python has been drafted to the Southeast to dance on unarmed non-violent people simply for choosing this day, the 14th day of September, 2018 as a Sit-At-Home day in memory of their siblings butchered by the same Python during last year’s murderous exercise. So in a nutshell, the Nigerian state headed by President Muhammadu Buhari didn’t just kill Igbos simply for seeking a fairer society, it is equally set to kill the scions and siblings of those murdered last year simply for daring to peacefully sit in their own houses to remember their dead loved ones
Let this sink!
How can anyone feel proud to belong to such a country that is completely barren of conscience?
How can anyone blame another person for seeking to secede from such a country?
How can it not be unfair to blame the secessionist group rather than the people who are resisting restructuring and still resisting secession even when there is no doubt as to the unmaintainability of the status quo??
I’m not here to ask President Buhari or his army to produce Nnamdi Kanu and his aged parents whether dead or alive. I’m not even here to ask anyone to join the Igbos in their today’s Sit-At-Home in honor of their kith and kin murdered simply for asking this thing masquerading as a Nation to treat them like equal partners in the Nigerian project or allow them secede in peace. I’m not here for any of the above because truth is, it is an impossible task trying to reason with a country that is deaf, dumb and blind to the sanctity of the life of the same people it exists mainly to protect.
I’m here primarily to remind Nigeria, President Buhari and the Nigerian army of one undying fact:
The best way to fuel an agitation is to try to suppress it.
Dead or alive, Nnamdi Kanu lives in every one of us. Banned or unbanned, we are all IPOB. Every single one of us, the fact that we sometimes disagree on methodologies is irrelevant. It’s only natural that we will disagree from time to time as humans that we are but make no mistake, the ideology behind the Biafra struggle is a common denominator to every Igbo person and indeed, everyone from the non-Caliphate rest of Nigeria. We are bound by faith and fate and common wars and woes.
For the avoidance of doubt, Biafra is a people’s cry against injustice, oppression, apartheid, state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, official nepotism and lack of respect for the sanctity of human life and natural justice. Biafra is not about Nnamdi Kanu or IPOB. It is an ideology being fueled by the grave institutionalized injustices of the Nigerian State. As long as those injustices remain in place, BIAFRA WILL NEVER DIE. Those who think taking out the Afara-Ukwu Prince (Nnamdi Kanu) will doom Biafra clearly thought wrong. Even more wrong are those looking for peace in a country that sleeps, walks and breathes injustice.
Was it not the Kenyan legal god and one of the best orators to come from Africa, professor PLO Lumumba who said that peace can only be a native of justice and that any other peace acquired through any other means remains a peace of the grave yard which is no peace at all? Didn’t the Pakistani peace Activist, Tasneem Hameed, put it even better when he opined that injustice and peace cannot co-exist???
Nigeria will progress the day justice, equity, fairness, merit and respect for life and rule of law overthrow nepotism, apartheid and feudalism currently being practiced.
President Buhari MIGHT have succeeded in taking our Nnamdi Kanu out of our sight but he will forever fail, woefully, I must add, in his attempt to take either him or Biafra out of our mind. He lives in our mind. And the Biafra struggle he championed and still champions whether dead or alive, will forever serve as the umbilical cord that binds us all.
WE WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR BEING IGBOS.
