Still on the Owerri summit
By Tiko Okoye
About three months after a group of Igbo leaders of thought held a heavily criticised meeting in Abuja on July 10, they met again in Owerri, capital of Imo State, on September 28 and 29. This time around, they created a better optics by gathering at a location in the Igbo heartland to discuss matters of immense importance to Ndigbo. The composition of attendees was also more expansive and inclusive, as Ohanaeze chieftains, politicians from several persuasions, traditional rulers, serving ministers, top-ranking military and police officers, captains of industries, the Igbo intelligentsia and representatives of youths and women were fully involved.
Unfortunately, the Owerri summit was equally long on talk and short on creative thinking and real action. Making the release of the founder and leader of IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, the leading concern of Ndigbo at a point in time when the South-East is haemorrhaging from a massive youth employment, and when its globally-acclaimed apprenticeship system is in a coma, certainly cuts no ice with me.
Not too long ago, Anambra State Governor Chukwuma Soludo lamented that his state was losing a whopping sum of N40 billion every day as a result of incessant sit-at-home orders, talk more the entire South-East. Soludo further lamented that 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. Such steady, severe losses, if further left unchecked, could transform the state of the zonal economy from comatose to irredeemably lifeless – and this would be apocalyptic for an ethnic nationality famous for their business acumen.
“An idle mind,” as an African proverb avers, “is the devil’s workshop.” The difference between the South-East and the other zones where massive youth unemployment has given rise to cultism, banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and political thuggery, among other major felonies, is the spiralling internecine killings and massive destruction of critical infrastructure on a scale never experienced since the Civil War.
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Just how any sane mind can reason that killing and maiming fellow Ndigbo and shutting down schools and businesses in the zone would make the rest of Nigeria buy into the campaign to free Kanu from incarceration beggars belief. Worse still, our youths have achieved notoriety for cyber-bullying, rendering the critical tasks of inter-zonal bridge-bridging and forging of strategic political alliances, on a much broader scale, a more daunting challenge.
I readily concede some validity in the argument of those who say the available options constitute a catch-22 situation. There’s no denying that economic development will provide employment and income-earning opportunities for teeming youths. On the other hand, there can hardly be development without security.
Proponents of Kanu’s unconditional release contend that freeing him will take the wind out of the sails of elements in the pro-Biafra movement using his continued incarceration as an excuse to levy war on the South-East. But they should be honest enough to equally concede that there’s a 50-50 probability that the wind filling the sails might just end up being what American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson called “an east wind – querulous and wasting, all-knife and root-puller – rather than a south wind – guiding, instructive and inspiring,” in which case we should brace up for a far bigger problem than Kanu’s release is intended to resolve.
Deploying military personnel among civilians poses considerable challenges. Still, when are we going to gratefully acknowledge that the ongoing mayhem in the South-East would’ve been much worse without the heavy presence of soldiers? Are the “elements in the pro-Biafra movement” not ‘devil-may-care’ Ndigbo or are they ‘unknown’ aliens from Outer Space?
Kanu is reportedly said to have distanced himself, and IPOB which he leads, from the debilitating sit-at-home mandate and its brutal enforcement. What then stops him from convincing every doubting Thomas, including his members spinning conspiracy theories, by confirming same via a verifiable television or video broadcast?
I got worried when our spokesmen started spouting whatabouter arguments vis-a-vis Sunday Adeyemo, aka Sunday Igboho. He is a Yoruba self-determination activist similarly hounded by the Nigerian security services and recently released from detention in neighbouring Republic of Benin.
In its recent press release, Ohanaeze, while calling on “Nigerians who felt denigrated by Kanu’s actions” to “find it in their hearts to forgive him, as his release will mark a significant step towards national unity and reconciliation,” requested President Tinubu to embrace “the historic opportunity and contribute to the restoration of peace and harmony in Nigeria (just like President Talon of Benin Republic).” This is no more than a pinch of sophistry on their part. Apart from exuding an impolitic dig at Tinubu, does Ohanaeze plan to hold a plebiscite on how Nigerians feel? Does Kanu believe that he actually denigrated Nigerians for which penitence and forgiveness are called for?
You can’t compare apples and oranges. Kanu and Igboho are facing different sovereign jurisprudential systems (Nigeria vs Benin Republic). Igboho didn’t transverse the globe badmouthing Nigeria and its political leadership. Igboho didn’t establish a marauding armed militant wing, like Kanu did with the Eastern Security Network (ESN). At no point in time did members of Igboho’s group perilously threaten the economic well-being of the Yoruba with debilitating sit-at-home orders nor transform the South-West into a Hobbesian state where life is brutish and short.
Before misconceptions materialise and speculations run riot, let me categorically declare that I fully support calls for Kanu’s release. He is a very brilliant young man whose only sin, after rousing leaderless Ndigbo from their slumber of subservience, was that he didn’t know where to draw the line. Had he not allowed youthful exuberance to becloud his better judgement, he would’ve easily bestrode the firmament of the South-East like a political colossus – and that’s quite something for a young man his age!
Ndigbo leaders of thought are right to press for Kanu’s release. But they must cease and desist from playing to the gallery. If our leaders are not to engage in wishful thinking, they must first do the math prior to embarking on a nationwide advocacy. This is a problem that is best resolved through hard-nosed, behind-closed-doors negotiations. The Nigerian government and Nigerians – bristling with cynicism and scepticism of claims that peace would be automatically restored to the South-East once Kanu is released – would prefer to procure ironclad assurances that, if released, Kanu won’t set off again on a canter around the world, running down Nigeria and her leadership at every stop.
A trade-off between Kanu’s unfettered freedom of movement and relinquishing his freedom of expression, at least as far as secession is concerned, is imperative. Would Kanu accept a qualified gag order? Can the government trust that Kanu would keep his end of the bargain, after the experience of his jumping bail and leaving his surety, Sen. Enyinnaya Abaribe, a fellow Abian, to suffer the consequences?
Sending a high-powered delegation to plead for Kanu’s release is a wild goose chase, not just because Kanu’s post-release plans are up in the air, but so long as Peter Obi remains hell-bent on reclaiming his “stolen mandate.” Those who deny the existence of a nexus between both goals are just pretending to have fallen into a sleep it would be most difficult to wake them up from.
I can even imagine some top members of the Tinubu kitchen cabinet asking ranking Igbo leaders of thought to prevail on Obi to drop his lawsuits as a quid pro quo, just as I similarly imagine a mulish Obi saying a resounding ‘No’ each time the subject is broached. If the emissaries tell Aso Villa that Obi is adamant on having his day in court, the presidency is bound to rebut with: “Let’s then allow Kanu’s case to run the full gamut of the jurisprudential process.”
The fly in the ointment is that the government has probably amassed not less 500 counts – from the sublime to the ridiculous – so that even if Kanu is discharged and acquitted on some counts, security agents would be waiting at the court’s door to rearrest and charge him on a ‘new’ set of counts! This can only explain why former Ebonyi State Governor and current Works Minister, Dave Umahi – most probably speaking the minds of his frustrated colleagues, on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Friday, October 13 – blurted out that “Obi is causing unwanted distractions for the South-East by taking Tinubu to court”!
Whether one agrees or disagrees with Umahi is beside the point. What matters is that Obi contested and won not less than two governorship elections and scaled not less than three election petition lawsuits in Anambra. How would he have felt if all those who contested his victory didn’t only disparage the judiciary, but went on to incite civil unrest and uncharitably call for a declaration of emergency and forceful regime change, like he’s currently doing?
Ndigbo would say, Ife di be Okeke dikwa na be Okafor (what’s in Okeke’s house is also in Okafor’s house), hence it isn’t surprising that allegations of his own certificate forgery, that should have remained under wraps, are now spreading like wildfire as the hunter transmutes into the hunted; and don’t expect Obi and his support base to concede that whatever excuses they may proffer equally apply in Tinubu’s case.
