The Biafran project is an article of fate (and faith) with MNK. If he yields the right of way to OBIdients, he would completely lose credibility and relevance for life both here and abroad. But if he persists on pursuing his pet project, it would considerably hurt Obi’s chances at the polls.
By Tiko Okoye
Before the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reached an agreement to televise Monday Night Football, American football teams typically played their matches only at the weekend. Come the next day – being Monday – and pundits would retrospectively position themselves as alternate quarterbacks who directed the plays to comment and criticize the games. These pundits became known in American sporting jargon as Monday morning quarterbacks.
The British equivalent of the American phraseology is “With hindsight analysis.” Whether you prefer the British or the American version the truth remains that it is much easier to have a holistic understanding of a situation only after it has happened and that means that one would’ve done things in a significantly different way. The contraindication, however, is that what seems so obvious in hindsight is not at all so crystal-clear when the action is taking place, rendering it extremely easier to criticize with the benefit of hindsight or as a Monday morning quarterback.
On the other hand, the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines foresight as “The ability to predict – not ‘prophesy’ – what is likely to happen and to use this to prepare for the future.” Both terminologies occasionally overlap, and sometimes they don’t.
For example, the inability to prepare oneself financially or establish an effective succession plan in case of an emergency can become legitimate cannon fodder for Monday morning quarterbacks. While pundits were discussing what the Ralph Uwazuruike-led Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) could’ve done better between 1999 and 2014 to achieve its desired goals, hardly any of them predicted – a clear lack of foresight – the emergence of a Mazi Nnamdi Kalu (MNK)-led Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) that rock Nigeria to her very foundation!
When first the Buhari administration succeeded in detaining MNK in December 2015, it thought that it had finally upended the seething cauldron of secessionist agitations, wanton killings and massive destruction of infrastructures that the South-East had transformed into. But MNK jumped bail and fled the country two years later. Once outside the jurisdiction and reach of the federal government, he invested virtually all his energies in shaming Nigeria and seeking foreign support for the Biafran secessionist cause.
And although there are many who rightly or wrongly perceive President Muhammadu Buhari in the worst possible light, the fact remains that his fellow heads of state and government in Africa think and speak very highly of him. It, therefore, beggars belief that MNK allowed himself to be lured back to an African nation for whatever reasons. Once he alighted at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Kenya, a flurry of activities occurred that saw him spirited to Nigeria in secrecy.
The general consensus was that given his very pugnacious anti-Buhari and anti-Nigeria tropes, the Presidency would adopt every possible measure to ensure MNK remains in prison until at least Buhari’s tenure ends on May 29 2023. But where foresight failed a vast majority of us was when Buhari told a high-powered Ohanaeze Ndigbo delegation who had called at Aso Villa to plead for the release of Kanu that the latter’s case would be strictly left to the courts to determine.
Not a few people believed that Buhari’s response was cynical and farcical. But these ones failed to appreciate that they themselves had placed the president between the rock and a hard place, as Americans are wont to describe such a scenario. He was regularly pilloried by them for alleged authoritarian traits. And yet, here they were practically begging him on bended knees to indict himself of the very crime of being a tyrant!
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If Buhari was swayed by their accolades to act after the manner of King Louis XIV of France – “I am France and France is me!” – and decreed Kanu’s release by having his attorney-general file a nolle prosequi to dismiss the charges, it would’ve been all the proof needed to convince the world that he’s indeed a maximum ruler. On the other hand, not making any concrete promise to release MNK would convince his kith and kin of his incurable hatred for the Igbo ethnic nationality.
Then like a bolt from the blue, the news broke that the Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja had quashed the terrorism charge brought against Kanu by the federal government, with the accompanying rider that “There was massive jubilation in the South East.”
Reactions have been fast and furious. Some have argued that the legal brilliance of MNK’s legal team plucked victory out of the jaws of despondency and defeat. Others have counselled that it is a Greek gift by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to stymie the spectacular momentum being gained by Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi among the youth population that constitutes a clear majority of registered voters.
As a matter of fact, commentaries have flooded the social media claiming that the release of MNK from Kuje Correctional Centre five months to the 2023 presidential election is no more than a ruse to prod all those shouting “We are OBIdient” to start screaming “Biafra!” The plot, according to this school of thought, is that come February 2023, only very few prospective voters in the South-East will bother to go to polling booths because the majority would’ve convinced themselves that Nigeria is nothing but a ‘Zoo,’ with or without a President of Igbo extraction.
This genre of conspiracy theory perfectly fits with what is dubbed “October surprise” in US political jargon, meaning a relatively last-minute news event that has a high likelihood to influence the decisions of prospective voters and either radically change the course of an election or reinforce the inevitable outcome of an election in early November when almost all US elections are scheduled to hold. Proponents of this conspiracy theory are already seriously appealing to those who are close to MNK to solemnly advise him “not to play into the evil APC plot to use him to destroy any chance of a credible and accepted President of Igbo extraction come 2023.”
I shared similar suspicions with some friends about three months back when I noticed that very seasoned lawyers from the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation were committing several unforced errors in MNK’s prosecution and making it seem as if prosecutorial loopholes were deliberately being created to enable the courts walk back from the answer – “Kanu’s release is solely in the hands of the judiciary” – to the question.
I have a very strong sense of déjà vu as I recalled how the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) attempted to checkmate Zik’s popularity with a state pardon and admission into its fold of former Biafran Head of State Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu in the Second Republic. But except for the lone case of the NPN ‘capturing’ the governorship of the old Anambra state, the plot didn’t achieve the traction it was designed to achieve as Ojukwu lost a senatorial contest ‘with ignominy’ to a relatively unknown Dr Edwin Onwudiwe of the opposition Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP).
Still, anyone pretending that this particular case is a simple matter is living in a fool’s paradise. The Biafran project is an article of fate (and faith) with MNK. If he yields the right of way to OBIdients, he would completely lose credibility and relevance for life both here and abroad. But if he persists on pursuing his pet project, it would considerably hurt Obi’s chances at the polls.
It is, however, fallacious and overly myopic to flag Tinubu and the APC as the only enemies. No way! Atiku and the PDP know only too well that with Obi out of contention not all but still a sizeable majority of Ndigbo would continue to automatically vote for their ticket to shore up Atiku’s chances of victory, especially in the light of Wike’s table-shaking. Besides, it’d have been a masterstroke for Tinubu and APC to conjure up a point of no return ‘January surprise’ with only days to the election if they had really wanted to orchestrate the Appellate Court’s judgement. Truth be said, Atiku and the PDP, rather than Tinubu and the APC, have a greater interest in seeing MNK neutralise Obi.
The key deciding factor would be what IPOBian-OBIdients, who clearly dominate Obi’s core support base, decide to do. Would they follow ‘the leader’ and turn their backs on the much-derided ‘Zoo’ or swallow their vomit and return to the same maligned ‘Zoo’ with Obi? This a Gordian knot that would task Obi’s negotiating and leadership skills to ascertain if he’s to have a shot at resolving the more complex, daunting challenges confronting Nigeria should he win the presidential election.
Foresight? How would all the permutations, if really true, finally pan out after February 2023? Monday morning quarterbacking? Should anything have been done differently?