Most Nigerians believe that if Kanu is released he would again set off on a canter around the world, bad-mouthing Nigeria and her leadership at every stop. They are cynical and sceptical of claims that peace would be automatically restored to the South-East once Kanu is released. Let’s, therefore, make no mistake about it. The situation strictly calls for a trade-off between Kanu’s unfettered freedom of movement and relinquishing his freedom of expression, at least as far as secession is concerned.
By Tiko Okoye
There was a period just before the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War when the Dr Michael Iheonukara Okpara-led Eastern Region was heralded as the demography with “the fastest growing economy in the Commonwealth.” The extreme form of infrastructural devastation suffered by the zone as a consequence of constituting the major theatres of the genocidal war soon put paid to that superlative performance. But the indigenes of what became the South-East zone took their destinies into their hands and relaunched themselves as titans of commerce and industry within a few short years despite the daunting challenges the ‘Nigerian system’ conspiratorially foisted on them.
But shortly after what is clearly not more than a short pause for rest, the South-East became embroiled in another bruising war. The only real difference is that this time around Ndigbo are not fighting for survival against external aggressors and enemies, but have fully offered themselves as sacrificial sheep routinely led to the puny altar of an Utopian concept to be massacred in internecine feuds of attrition.
The irony is that stone-cold warlords causing so much death and destruction in the zone claim to be doing so in order to liberate Ndigbo from oppression and marginalisation in the hands of their Nigerian slave masters. Which leads to the billion naira question: If the mayhem they are creating is designed to liberate Ndigbo from their oppressors, who then will liberate their kith and kin from their stranglehold?
Not too long ago, Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo lamented that the state was losing a whopping sum of N40 billion every day as a result of the incessant sit-at-home orders. The Onitsha Main Market that used to be the largest market in the entire West African sub-region has become a ghoulish caricature of its old glory.
Deputy House of Reps Speaker Benjamin Kalu went a step further to reveal that the entire South-East has lost about N4 trillion over the last two years. This steady, massive haemorrhage, if further left untreated, could transform the state of the regional economy from comatose to irredeemably lifeless – and this would be apocalyptic for an ethnic nationality famous for their business acumen.
It is quite logical to suppose that the clearly unacceptable developments in the South-East finally caused eminent personalities from the zone to agree to meet to rub minds. Last Monday evening (July 10, 2023), notable individuals, comprising state governors, national and state assembly members and other leaders attended a parley that held in the Imo State Government Lodge in Abuja. They reportedly discussed the prevailing security challenges in the zone and resolved, among other things, to send a high-powered delegation to seek an audience with President Bola Tinubu over the matter.
Their aim may be well-intentioned but I personally don’t see any concrete positive gains from the meeting. If we must call a spade a spade then we must accept that the mere thought of sending any type of delegation, be it low-, high- or hybrid-powered, to Aso Villa when Peter Obi is still trying to “reclaim his stolen mandate” is a non-starter. It is what it is.
As if to support my point of view, negative reactions to the Abuja meeting have been fast and furious. The man in the eye of the storm and factional leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Finland-based Simon Ekpa, contemptuously declared an in-their-face two-week sit-at-home protest to be observed between July 31 and August 14, 2023. What I consider most interesting is the brash manner he threw down the gauntlet at the feet of the political leaders by asserting, without mincing words that “The (two-week sit-at-home order) aims to invalidate the legitimacy of individuals who claim to represent Nigeria within Biafran territory.”
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Just how can any sane mind reason that killing and maiming fellow Ndigbo and destroying infrastructure in the South-East would make the rest of Nigeria buy into the campaign to release Kanu from DSS custody? How absolutely preposterous! It’s high time our political elite either put up or shut up. There can no longer be any waffling, vacillating, dithering or sitting on the face henceforth.
The President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, announced at the end of the Abuja meeting that “all leaders across political parties have agreed to work together for the benefit of the zone.” This is a far cry from the past when politicians sought to out-do each other in justifying every act of IPOB just to score cheap electoral points. But have they all really agreed to put the zone’s overall interest above personal interest? And hasn’t it become a case of too little too late?
I personally fault the Abuja meeting for other reasons. I’m fully persuaded that the optics is very wrong. For crying out loud, why would these men, with their convoys of armed security guards, bypass cities in the Igbo heartland and go all the way to Abuja to discuss matters affecting their zone? Doesn’t it all underscore the reality that the political, religious and traditional establishment in the South-East have lost control of the zone to non-state actors? Besides, if they are too frightened to convene such a meeting within the zone how can they in good conscience tell the defenceless hoi polloi to defy blood-thirsty enforcers of sit-at-home orders?
The special counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, Aloy Ejimakor, spoke the minds of a good majority of Ndigbo when he recently urged President Tinubu to demonstrate good faith with his campaign promise to negotiate with all agitators to ensure peace in the South-East by first releasing Kanu prior to negotiating with him. It is a trite legal dictum that he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.
So, what’s to be made of Ejimakor’s arguments? While it may amount to simply an attempt to brew a storm in a teacup, it is still germane to ask whether you can still hold a politician to ransom for a campaign pledge he made as a qui pro quo for your vote but you ended up giving him a thumbs-down.
But the political elite are not the only group to lose control over the goings-on in the South-East. This was self-evident in IPOB spokesman Emma Powerful’s press release condemning the statement credited to the Chief of Army Staff, General Lagbaja Taoreed, linking his secessionist group to what Powerful called “the incessant, reckless, abusive and destructive sit-at-home orders and enforcement in the South-East by criminal Simon Ekpa and gang of criminals.”
He went as far as drawing the attention of Gen. Taoreed to instances when Kanu had ordered a cessation of sit-at-home orders from his DSS custody while squarely blaming “Simon Ekpa, along with his gang of criminals, who continued to act contrariwise.” Could this be the same face of IPOB who took considerable delight in stoking the fires of violent resistance to the census exercise, voter registration and elections in the “Zoo”? Wonders will never end!
What it all boils down to is that the Kanu-led faction – in which Powerful is a major player – has lost total control to the Simon Ekpa faction. This has serious implications for the advocacy to release Kanu from prison as it raises huge question marks over his capacity to restore peace and whether he would take off from where Ekpa stopped in order to retake full control.
Truth is that we must stop playing to the gallery with respect to the sad debacle of Kanu. This is a problem that is best resolved through hard-nosed, behind-closed-doors negotiations. Those who are thinking that southerner-Tinubu would be more disposed to unconditionally releasing southerner-Kanu than northerner-Buhari was must have a rethink. It goes without saying that no president wants the country to disintegrate into component parts under his watch.
And most Nigerians believe that if Kanu is released he would again set off on a canter around the world, bad-mouthing Nigeria and her leadership at every stop. They are cynical and sceptical of claims that peace would be automatically restored to the South-East once Kanu is released. Let’s, therefore, make no mistake about it. The situation strictly calls for a trade-off between Kanu’s unfettered freedom of movement and relinquishing his freedom of expression, at least as far as secession is concerned.
Sweeteners could come in the form of agreeing on a future date for the conduct of a referendum in compliance with the provisions of the constitution. Would Kanu and his team accept his conditional freedom? Can the government trust that Kanu would keep his end of the bargain, particularly given how he once jumped bail and landed Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe in hot waters?
Meanwhile, critical stakeholders or, better still, a coalition of the willing, comprising Ohanaeze, political leaders, top clerics, traditional rulers, civil society organisations, representatives of town and market unions, Kanu (to be represented in the interim by the Emma Powerful faction of IPOB) and other non-violent Biafra agitators should hold consultative sessions aimed at crystallizing effective remedies and best approaches to bring full closure to the challenges in the South-East zone aimed at enabling the calamity-weary indigenes to start living normal lives again.
