By Chris Ohanele
The arrest of Mr. Nnamdi Kanu and his repatriation to Nigeria on or about June 27, 2021 presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the Federal Government of Nigeria. The challenge is two-fold, one being that the safety of Mr. Kanu is now in the hands of the Nigerian state, and it is an enormous responsibility; the other being that it must ensure that he is put through a fair and transparent judicial process.
Whether one supports Mr. Kanu or not, the fact is that the issues he has brought to the fore are highly relevant not only to Ndigbo but to all Nigerians. Although he has focused his attention on the Igbos and on the push for a referendum and ultimately Biafran secession, the issues that bedevil Nigeria are broader and deeper and affect all the constituent ethnic groups in Nigeria. The strong support he enjoys among large segments of the Igbo population points to the fact that he has touched something important, visceral, and urgent to them. His personal safety has now assumed greater importance than the safety of one man. Millions of Igbos and other Nigerians will be paying attention while he remains in custody and are rooting for his safety.
The cause for which Mr. Kanu and many other Nigerians are fighting is a just one. He has become a prominent figure in the struggle to wake up the Nigerian state to its responsibility of securing the welfare of citizens, including taking custody of the metastasizing issues that ravage the whole country. Everywhere in Nigeria people are calling for a restructuring of the country to a true federal republic in order to give citizens a sense of autonomy and belonging. But on the specific concerns of Ndigbo, he has set his sights beyond restructuring. Mr. Kanu stands out in going farther than others and vociferously demanding a referendum and eventual secession of Biafra as an independent country.
But he has caused consternation even among Ndigbo by his strident tone, the incendiary statements, the insults, and even more. By his style and utterances, he has gotten under the skin of many people especially those in power who would now want to visit retribution on him. And he has inadvertently alienated people from other ethnic groups especially those bordering Igboland who share the same aspirations of freedom, justice and equity and would be inclined to collaborate and build synergy with Ndigbo.
Regardless of his style, Mr. Kanu now stands both as a symbol and a symptom of the serious fundamental troubles that Nigeria faces and must contend with. If Nigeria were hale and hearty, there might not have been a Mazi Nnamdi Kanu on the scene talking about the issues that trouble Ndigbo within a troubled Nigeria. He might not have become the thorn in the flesh of Nigerian officialdom that he now is.
Biafra has also become more than a specific contiguous territory seeking self-determination and independence from Nigeria. Biafra has now come to symbolize the idea that all component ethnicities in Nigeria have the right to be free and be treated with justice, fairness, and equity. Holding Mr. Kanu in custody will not make this right go away and will not cause the Nigerian people to stop agitating for them. The genie has since come out of the bottle as there is now Biafra in every part of Nigeria whatever local name it is called.
Reasonable people do not chase rats when their house is on fire. Ndigbo must pull together and complement their efforts. Igbo leaders including Ohaneze, governors and elected federal and state representatives, need to come together, and engage Mr. Kanu and IPOB leadership to reduce distrust and start a conversation to develop a common Igbo strategy. Tearing each other down or turning on one another is not a winning option.
Mr. Kanu enjoys strong support among Ndigbo, but he has his critics, particularly on style. His supporters often take disagreements with Mr. Kanu’s style to mean a fundamental disagreement with the substance of his message – freedom, justice, equity, referendum, and an independent state of Biafra. That is wrong. What many people disagree with it are the unguarded utterances, baiting of the government and its officials, his characterization of Nigeria as a zoo, as well as the insults on Igbo leaders and other leaders across Nigeria. The disagreement is about tone and style and not about the substance of the demands.
A good case can be made about changing style to ensure that it does not stand in the way of the desired outcome. Ndigbo need fewer enemies and more friends both domestic and foreign. Ndigbo should continue to project confidence and at the same time be respectful of our fellow Nigerians especially those who share similar aspirations for peace, freedom, justice, and equity. It is a fact that Ndigbo are admired by other Nigerians for our qualities as a strong, hardworking, resilient people and for our entrepreneurial spirit. But we should be humble enough to admit that we do have our weaknesses also, just like other Nigerians.
Style matters also in the pursuit of our just demands. The demand for a referendum, for instance, is important because it is a necessary step on the road to Biafra. But to even get the opportunity for a referendum you must use existing institutions of the Nigerian state and engage the appropriate stakeholders who have the constitutional authority to act. Think of the national assembly, for instance. You cannot productively engage them by hurling insults at them and the people they represent, or by carrying on with the cacophony that is playing out daily on social media. Intelligent and wise people do not shoot themselves in the foot.
This is a moment of opportunity which the federal government needs to seize. The ultimate benefit of apprehending Mr. Kanu will be to use the opportunity to find a just and equitable solution to the problems that he has shone light on. The government should take advantage of this moment to call people together and sincerely engage them and respectfully listen to their grievances and their demands. The government has an opportunity here to start a peaceful process to understand and begin to address the problems of the country. However, if the government opts for retribution that would be a huge mistake and this opportunity would have been squandered. “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind”, according to Mahatma Ghandi. The time for statesmanship is upon us.
There are two possible and acceptable options now; namely either restructure the country or dissolve it amicably. Restructuring has been a buzz word for many years even if most Nigerians are not quite clear about what it means in any detail. What is clear though is that restructuring supposes an acceptance that Nigeria is the country and restoring it as a true, functioning federation is a desired imperative. A belief in restructuring betrays a certain confidence that, as odious as it currently is, Nigeria may yet be saved. But the window of opportunity is narrow and closing.
On the other hand, if restructuring does not happen soon, there may be no other realistic peaceful option than to dissolve the country amicably. Biafra would then come to being, not by secession but as one of several outcomes of that dissolution. Other “Biafras” will also emerge in other parts of the country. To produce this outcome will require patient, methodical, respectful engagement with other Nigerians who are determined to see similar outcome. And it will need patient, quiet diplomacy and statesmanship on the part of the leaders on all sides of the conversation.
Finally, it cannot be overemphasized that whether the country is restructured or dissolved amicably will require using existing institutions of the Nigerian state. The three arms of government must be actively involved. It is therefore in the interest of Ndigbo that Nigeria and its institutions should be stable and effective enough to withstand the inevitable pressures, the push and pull forces, that will bear on them as the process unfolds and runs its course. Quite frankly, it is also in the interest of all the Nigerian people. Let us therefore keep open the path to our freedom, not block it.
Chris Ohanele, Moderator of Mbaise Leadership Forum (MLF), wrote in from the U.S.