By Ike Abonyi
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.” ― Thomas Paine
Indeed, the Southeast geopolitical zone is undergoing the fatigue of seeking justice despite hostile neighbours and an indifferent central government.
Whichever way you view the current hostilities between arms-bearing state actors and the militant Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, the continued detention of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is not in the interest of the Nigerian state, or anyone who desires peace and harmony in the South-East and the entire federation.
Whatever his arrest and detention were intended to achieve, part of which is to show power and superiority, was probably obtained long ago. Perhaps, the only reason for his continued incarceration is the unwillingness of the Nigerian establishment to address the injustice that gave rise to an IPOB in the first place.
It is therefore super derogatory on the part of our security agencies to continue to keep Kanu in detention, especially after a law court had freed him on the grounds of his illegal bundling from Kenya in utter disregard of existing protocols. It is misguided and ill-judged to keep him in a chokehold to date, even one year after the president who had contemplated killing him left office and left the nation in the slaughterhouse.
Let me state categorically here that the internal enemies of Nigeria are creations of the state, directly or indirectly. Boko Haram, which has turned Nigeria into a top terrorist country, began with the injustice of political leaders against some youths they had used to win elections and dumped thereafter. The youths’ fight against those ripping them off metamorphosed into such a dreaded terror group that has now turned into monsters claiming over 50,000 innocent lives since 2002.
The effect has even grown, giving birth to other dangerous criminal gangs such as the Islamic State of West Africa, ISWA, and bandits spread all over the geographical North.
If that injustice in Borno State had been addressed judiciously when it started as a mild disagreement, Nigeria would have been saved from the harrowing consequences of the last 22 years. The numerous human lives lost, resources wasted on arms and ammunition, and the environmental disruption of human settlement would have been averted, but here we are – torn apart by our indiscretion and foolhardiness.
Curiously, the death of the founder of Boko Haram, Mohammad Yusuf, in 2009 as well as the elimination of subsequent vicious leaders like Abubakar Shekau, has not made the body fizzle out. This is largely because the entity is a product of the struggle for justice.
Notwithstanding the unreasonableness of some of their actions, the group will continue growing since injustice and corruption in our environment remain unabating. That is why America’s foremost civil rights lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, admonishes, “Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”
Today, Nigeria is behaving as if Boko Haram came up from the devil’s box and started attacking it. If so, why did the group originate in Borno State and was able to lay a solid foundation? Just one man’s arrogant bluff and refusal to right his wrong has brought the nation to its knees with Borno and Yobe states virtually decimated.
The rich and the oppressors can always have their way with the poor and the oppressed, but Roman-born American Nobel laureate and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, reminds us, “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
When these protests come, they usually do not come on our terms. At inception, the protests can be civil, depending on the ‘civility’ of the protagonists. However, they can be brutal just like the Boko Haram operatives have become. Boko Haram initially was not brutal until the Police killed their founder, arrested by the military and handed over to them for civil handling.
No one can easily determine how the man held down can behave if he finds a small space to react. He, who is already on the ground, no longer fears a fall and can do anything. Like Boko Haram, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and his IPOB group are creations of injustice in the land.
For the umpteenth time, regime after regime, the ethnic Igbo have continuously lamented the gang-up against it. The only time you see the ethnic Yoruba and the Hausa-Fulani at one table discussing amicably is when the topic touches on how to checkmate the Igbo.
Ndigbo, one of the ethnic triumvirates upon which Nigeria’s political foundation was built, has been turned into the hearthrug, all because of the civil war that ended in a no-victor-no-vanquished understanding 54 years ago.
The war-weary Biafrans who returned to Nigeria continued to take all kinds of rubbish with the two ethnic rivals ensuring that they did not come near political power. They ensured that they were quarantined in five states while their rivals enjoyed as much as six or more states. In parliamentarian representations, they remain significantly deficient in the two chambers, so it has been in all other public positions. In the House of Representatives, the two Fulani states of Kano and Jigawa alone have more representatives than the entire South-East put together. All the cries for this anomaly to be corrected fell on deaf ears.
Before his death on November 26, 2011, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who led the Biafra secession bid, warned several times that war-weary Ndigbo who could take the continued marginalisation were giving way to post-war children who would not take it any longer. Those Igbo born in 1970 when the war ended are 54 years old today. All those tormenting the region, including Nnamdi Kanu, and the rabble-rousing Simon Ekpa did not experience the war.
Kanu was born on September 25, 1967, at the peak of the war. He was already growing up when Ekpa was born on March 11, 1985. The majority of those following and adoring them are under 40 years old.
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When Kanu came up with his IPOB group through his defiant Biafra Radio, he was not immediately welcomed by the majority of Ndigbo, including the youths, because of his vulgar language of referring to Nigeria as a zoo. Rather than listen and address the factors that created such a strange thing, Muhammadu Buhari, still angry about the war, added to the several political rejections of him as a leader by Ndigbo, decided to pour salt into the wound by incarcerating Kanu.
It was that needless seizure of Kanu’s freedom that elevated him from being a noisemaker on Igbo matters to a hero. Whether Nigeria likes to hear it or not, Kanu is seen largely by Ndigbo today as a freedom fighter and a prisoner of conscience. Exactly one year after inheriting such a prisoner of conscience, President Bola Tinubu has also continued to hold him in detention even after a court had pronounced that he could not be tried after the previous regime had messed up their case with his unlawful extradition.
Because he is Igbo, Kanu continues to be in prison, Miyetti Allah President Bello Bodejo, formed a militia and the system has his case withdrawn because he is Fulani, not Igbo. The people who forcefully wanted to take over the government in Ibadan will soon be freed if they are still in detention because of who they are, not Igbo.
So, the sit-at-home nonsense in the South-East is a creation of the Federal Government. Anybody expecting it to end with Kanu in detention is living in denial. Common criminals have taken over the sit-at-home enforcement, but harbingers of injustice created the platform.
Fifty-four years after a civil war that ended in a no-victor-no-vanquished spirit, the people of the South-East are under siege by police and military checkpoints at every hundred-metre distance. Yet, crimes are not abating. The answer to ‘Who killed soldiers in Abia State?’ should be supplied by the security agencies and nobody else. If criminals act in the North, they are criminals, if they act in the South-West they are criminals, but if they act in the South-East they are Biafrans.
The government should come clean on the security situation in the South-East, late General Sani Abacha spoke from experience when he said that when insurgency lasts beyond 24 hours, the government must know something about it. Nigeria’s security system should know much more than everyone about the security challenges in the South-East. If they want the world to link it to Nnamdi Kanu, they should release him and end it.
To uproot the problem from the foundation, the Igbo question must be addressed. In any nation where liberty is planted and justice manured, skirmishes hardly find roots. Those who think Kanu should die in the slammer because of whatever he did should read Mahatma Gandhi’s saying that freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. God help us.
- ABONYI is a Columnist, former Group Political Editor, Thisday, former Deputy Managing Director of New Telegraph, and Media Consultant who lives in Abuja. (First published in New Telegraph on June 6, 2024)
