NNAMDI KANU’S LIFE IS ON TINUBU’S NECK.
The Igbo nation lately has been inundated by disturbing tales of the deteriorated health condition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. This alarm has been raised by not a few which includes the Honourable Member Representing his Federal Constituency who visited him just recently, Honorable Obi Aguocha.
There is a national consensus for his unconditional release which has been clearly underscored by endless dilation of the trial Court that keeps embarrassing itself and the National Assembly leadership that has in the past pleaded with Mr President to exercise his prerogative of mercy.
The Southeast governors had also met and lobbied the President to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to help douse the flames of insecurity in the Southeast. Ohanaeze, other notable leaders etal. No stone has remained unturned in this advocacy. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has become our modern day Steve Biko of the Apartheid era and must not be allowed to go the way of the South African hero. Nigeria may never survive the after shock.
His continued incarceration serves no more useful purpose other than to stir unintended rebellion against the ruling elite. Nnamdi Kanu’s issue is a keg of gunpowder that has the potential to ignite the worst storm of calamity for this administration.
Tinubu’s government must begin to douse the conflagrating flames smoldering in Igbo land by immediately releasing Nnamdi Kanu to go and have his treatment. Tinubu and his triumphant goons must create a space for reconciliation with the Igbo people he’s busy humiliating today.
Ojukwu was more circumspect during his own time by releasing and escorting Chief Obafemi Awolowo to join his loved one on the Federal side after Gowon’s wartime release of Awo. Ojukwu would have decided to be treacherous by keeping Awolowo as a bargaining chip as Tinubu is doing today to the Igbo nation with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. But Ojukwu chose the path of peaceful engagement with the Yoruba tribe. We are still asking, who are those advising Tinubu?
Yoruba patriots like late Ayo Adebanjo and even Chief Olusegun Obasanjo had repeatedly pleaded with Tinubu to release Nnamdi Kanu and begin the process of mending fences with the Igbo ethnic race as a panacea to a progressive nation. He has remained adamant for reasons known only to him. Threatening the Igbos with destruction of their properties in Lagos and other safe havens will not solve the problem since all that Nnamdi Kanu and other Igbo patriots yearn and ask for is a level playing ground.
Lest I forget, it is important to remind Tinubu and those beating the drums of war for him against the Igbos that when their push turn to shove over Igbo peaceful coexistence in Lagos and elsewhere, their will be no oil and gas from the Igbo territories of Southeast and Southsouth to power their much vaulted industrial powerhouses.
We’re all linked and tied together in the Nigeria project and we all deserve our respects. As they boast of Lagos belonging to Lagosians, we will return the boasts that oil and gas belong to Igboland. No one cares about their aberration of Southsouth misspeak and geopolitical nullity. They will be made to know that Southsouth is an entity that does not exist geographically.
We do not ask for or seek any special privileges or advantages over others like the Yoruba and Fulani are busy expropriating our commonwealth for themselves. We only need a Nigeria that works for everybody and the agitation for Biafra will die a natural death.
We are therefore, once again urging President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban of Borgu to exercise his prerogative of power as the Commander in Chief of the armed forces to order the immediate unconditional release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu through political solution rather than deliberately convoluted legal solution.
Thereafter, he should commence the process of national healing by convening ethnic nationalities summit to chart a new direction for Nigeria. Anything other than this proposition is a thoroughfare to Kigali and Kathmandu that we all saw last week. We have taken enough shit from few reckless gangsters in the name of practicing democracy.
Dr. Engr Odo Ijere
