By Emeka Alex Duru
Ordinarily, the bail granted Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), by an Abuja High court presided by Justice Binta Murtala Nyako, on Tuesday, April 25, should have come as a welcome relief to the teeming members of his group and supporters all over the country and beyond.
The gesture, which the judge said was on health ground, is expected to enable the IPOB leader attend to his falling health which the prison authorities seem lacking the capacity to deal with.
Baring the usual interference from the government, the bail would also open a new chapter in the attitude of the President Muhammadu Buhari presidency that barely conceals its disdain on the pronouncements from the judiciary and legislative arms.
The bail to Kanu by Nyako, was not the first of its kind since he and two members of IPOB were clamped into detention in October 2015 by the federal government, on allegation of treason.
Kanu had similarly been granted bail by a Magistrate Court in Abuja, while his case was thrown out by a Federal High Court, Abuja, before Justice Ademola Adeniyi at a point in the trial.
On both occasions however, the government, had snubbed the courts. It was against this backdrop that many see the non-interruption of the gesture by Justice Nyako, as the government, perhaps, turning a new leaf.
Even at that, the conditions of the bail are seen by observers as being too stringent. As parts of the conditions, Kanu is expected to provide three sureties one of who must be a serving Senator, a Jewish religious leader and highly respected person that must own a land in anywhere in Abuja.
The bail bond is N100 million for each surety. He is also ordered never to grant any press interview pending the outcome of his trial and should not be in a gathering of more than 10 persons.
Nyako, who remarked that the bail would be revoked if any of the orders is flouted, however, denied bail to the two other IPOB activists charged with Kanu on the ground that treasonable felony, for which they are being tried is a serious offence against the state.
These conditions, considered too strict, if not impossible, impacted heavily on the sudden eruption of ululation among IPOB members and their supporters in many parts of the country.
In Aba (Abia State), Onitsha (Anambra) and Port Harcourt (Rivers), where the news of Kanu’s reprieve had initially sent his followers on wild excitement, the import of the conditions listed by Justice Nyako, instantly dampened their mood.
The people react
An IPOB member, who introduced himself as Nwaezeigwe Okoro, dismissed the bail as mere Greek gift. “Where would our leader get any senator from the East – those cowards – to stand for him? Who is the Jewish religious leader; a foreigner that would be seen as supporting Kanu in daring Nigeria? Is it possible for our leader not to grant press interviews? What is even the rubbish in ordering him not to be seen with more than 10 persons? Don’t they know that he is leading a people? So we cannot go and welcome him?”
“So even members of his immediate family cannot go and welcome him, if they are more than 10?”
“What about his colleagues? Are they not being charged of the same offence? They are not ready to grant him bail. When they are ready, we will know”.
“Thank God, our leader (Kanu) is not a coward. We know that they cannot buy him over with their divide and rule tactics. We are ready for them”, he fumed.
Notable Igbo leaders have also expressed similar sentiments as Okoro, with former President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Dr. Dozie Ikedife and First Republic Minister of Aviation, Mbazulike Amechi describing the conditions as too stringent.
In their separate reactions shortly after the court sitting, they reportedly wondered how the court expected Kanu to meet those conditions.
Ikedife said: “It is good that they have granted him bail. This is what I have been demanding for a long time.
“The next thing we expect them to do is to dispose of the charges brought against him one way or the other. They detained him for a long time and the question is, are they going to compensate him for long incarceration? He ought to have been released a long time ago, but those who kept him in detention did so for reasons only they can explain.
“Besides, the bail conditions are stringent. Is Kanu going to get all these people who have been burying money in various places to surety him? Where will he find the three people listed as those to surety him?”
On his own, Amechi was quoted to have said: “Granting bail to Nnamdi Kanu was long overdue. He is a prisoner of conscience and they incarcerated him this long because he is an Igbo man.
“The conditions given him to meet are very unkind. He should have been granted bail unconditionally. And how do they expect him to get people with the kind of money mentioned to surety him?”
Taking a different perspective, Lagos State Publicity Secretary of All Progressives Congress ( APC), Joe Igbokwe, advised Kanu to go home and stop his agitation for the realisation of Biafra.
Igbokwe who spoke to a Lagos newspaper, while reacting to the bail granted the IPOB leader, said Igbo people were not interested in Biafra.
“Now that he has been granted bail, he should just quietly go home and rest. We are not a candidate of Biafra. They are just dissipating their energy for nothing. I just hope he will just go home quietly and stop disturbing the peace of the country”.
“We are not for Biafra. We can’t build Nigeria for others. The so-called Biafra is too small for us. Nigeria provides a big stage for us. We own this country. We are a major ethnic group in this country. How can you go for a small pond when you have Atlantic Ocean?” he said.
To be or not to be?
While the reactions on the nature and stringency of the bail conditions dominated the discourse by IPOB enthusiasts and the obviously concerned members of the public, there is even the greater uncertainty of Kanu consenting to the gesture.
A member of the group who confided in our reporter, maintained that the IPOB leader would not go for the bail, not only on ground of the stringency of the conditions but also because the same gesture was not granted his two other colleagues.
“We are seeing the bail issue as an exercise in divide and rule. They want to sow a seed of discord among us. But I can bet that they will not succeed. They want to throw up the faithless bail conditions to blackmail Kanu so that he would appear as the one keeping himself in detention. But even if they had just asked him to go, I can bet that he will not step out of the prison without the other great men held with him. They are up to their games but we are as usual, smarter than them” he asserted.
What next after the bail?
The IPOB activist was not forth coming on the next step by the group in the event of Kanu not meeting the bail conditions and thus, remaining in prison. “A soldier does not disclose his strategies to a civilian”, he simply told TheNiche.
But there are speculations on the group returning to the streets on its traditional non-violent protest to draw the attention of the world on the plight of Kanu and its advertised agenda of an independent state for Igbo land.
IPOB and the sister Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), had, before now, sent out flyers to the Igbo in all parts of Nigeria, to stay off their activities on May 29, as mark of respect for their kinsmen and women killed during the Nigerian civil War and others felled by the Nigerian military in course of the struggle for an independent state of Biafra.
In the past when they had filed out in the streets to make these presentations, they had been visited with unparalleled weight of the arm by soldiers and other agents of the state security. Would the new phase of the Kanu trial result to this? That is the question.
- Advertisement -
- Advertisement -
