NNAMDI KANU AND WHAT HE PERSONIFIES IN TODAY’S NIGERIA — AN APPEAL TO THE UNITED NATIONS, TO WORLD LEADERS AND TO GLOBAL BODIES TO INTERVENE AND FINALLY RESOLVE THE LINGERING QUEST FOR THE REPUBLIC OF BIAFRA
A personal submission to the UN, AU, EU, US, UK, the Commonwealth and the Holy See on what the worldwide phenomenon called Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and its charismatic leader, Nnamdi Kanu, have come to signify in today’s Nigeria; on the backdrop of his criminal abduction in Kenya and illegal repatriation, incarceration and prosecution in Nigeria.
THE CRISIS IN NIGERIA TODAY, THE AGITATION FOR BIAFRA AND THE MAN NNAMDI KANU
1. Firstly, I urge Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to gracefully bear the plight of a two-time prisoner of the half a century freedom struggle for the Republic of Biafra. I urge him to rather relish his ordeals in or out of prison, with the fortitude of the martyrs of freedom. And I hope that the spirits of his illustrious comrades and forebears in the struggle for freedom may grant him courage, counsel and company. Surely, he is not alone! Over three million lives have already paid the supreme price for the unabating struggle for the Republic of Biafra. Not many of the Biafra activists had the painful privilege of incarceration as prisoners of conscience. Those so privileged, ought not bemoan it, but ought to transform it and whatever comes out of it, into an advantage for advancing the same course of freedom. Going forward, I shall talk, not about the person or profile of Nnamdi Kanu, but about what Nnamdi Kanu, his IPOB and Radio Biafra have come to personify in today’s Nigeria.
2. Let’s begin this way: what is it that made a man who lives and broadcasts from over 5000 km of air distance away from Nigeria, the most popular Nigerian today? What is it that gave Nnamdi Kanu’s multicasting Radio Biafra its numberless online followership? Nnamdi Kanu and family are British citizens, comfortably resident in London: what is it that makes him willing to give his life for Biafra? What is it that made Kanu’s IPOB a worldwide movement espoused by millions of people in less than ten years of existence? How did it happen that people are ready to follow him and to die with him or for him? The point is that Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and Radio Biafra symbolise a verbalisation of the discontents of millions of Nigerians. Politicians accuse it of hate or incitement or secession or even terrorism, yet it cannot be denied that Kanu’s Radio Biafra has a message that resonates with millions of Nigerians, home and abroad, rich and poor, lettered and unlettered. At times it is harsh and brash, like politicians who trade insults during campaigns, but unlike politicians, Radio Biafra relays hard truths, which open the eyes of people. Radio Biafra speaks to the concrete situations of Nigeria and that’s why millions of them spend time and data to listen to it. Denying this fact would be taking illusion too far!
3. Nnamdi Kanu’s Radio Biafra broadcasts are at times controversial and discourteous. Yes! Yet, Kanu and IPOB represent an awakening that has stirred up Nigerians towards a renewed struggle for ‘true’ freedom. This awakening is led chiefly by diaspora Nigerians, but has its stronghold among the youths and the adult non-political class in Nigeria. This group — young and old, home and abroad — are united by the same impulse; namely: a dissatisfaction with Nigeria as presently structured, a rejection of Nigeria as presently managed, as well as an overt or covert intent to do away with Nigeria as presently constituted; and this is because it is not working for them. Like the Arab Spring, the ongoing awakening which Kanu’s IPOB symbolises, beckons for a renegotiated Nigeria wherein each ethnic nation would freely and responsibly determine itself. However, this cross-creed and cross-ethnic sentiment-turned-movement is way beyond Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB. It has other names and forms; such as Sunday Igboho of the Yoruba nation movement, Tony Nnadi of the Nigerian Indigenous Nationalities Alliance (NINAS), Ibom Republic of Ibom Freedom Organisation, Ijaw Republic of Ijaw National Congress and even the #ENDSARS movement that keeps trending among young Nigerians. These are indicators that Nigeria has not worked for its peoples.
4. The rise of Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB is an expression of the failure of Nigeria as a political entity, after over a hundred years in being and over sixty years of self-rule. Nnamdi Kanu’s ascendancy underscores Nigeria’s leadership deficit at all levels and spheres — political, military, traditional, religious, ideological, educational, economic. Likewise, the IPOB phenomenon is a daring rejection, by IPOB Nigerians and the likes, of a clueless, rudderless and foundering political entity, as their country. That Nigeria has failed in barely every index of nationhood is not an exaggeration; the Nnamdi Kanu saga is both an expression of it and a response to it. It is important that the world understand and put this fact in proper focus.
5. Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB and the likes, represent the spirited vexations of especially young diaspora Nigerians, who are tired of the hypocrisy and complicity of the British Government and people, in the atrocities that for decades have been going on in Nigeria; and which by the indications of the body language of n.10 Downing Street, the Whitehall and Catriona Laing, they wish to so maintain for their continued colonial advantage. Nnamdi Kanu’s worldwide IPOB is a sort of the signification of this vexation! But it is also a symptom of the vexation of the peoples locked-up in the former British colonial conglomerate that became Nigeria; who have now arisen to confront Nigeria, Britain and the world powers, who simply stand aloof, watching as Nigeria desolates the destinies of its ethnic peoples and bring wrath upon anyone who dares to scratch its rot. It is no longer possible for Nigerians to keep suffering and dying in silence; and this is the reason for the rise of Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB and the renewed quest for our Biafra homeland.
6. Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB typifies a nationwide movement that is overdue; destined to spearhead the efforts to give the over 250 ethnic nationalities forcibly lumped into one country by Britain over 100 years ago, an opportunity to truly negotiate for themselves and determine for themselves what kind of political union they wish to be part of and with who. Many believe that the 1914 Amalgamation that gave birth to Nigeria, is a political misadventure that needs to be reviewed. Prior to 1914, there was no Nigeria. Today, after over 100 years of a non-consent amalgamation, instead of the unending killings and crises, instead of the malady that Nigeria has become, it is only right that we give ourselves an opportunity to re-evaluate and renegotiate the union. This is what Nnamdi Kanu is saying! This is what IPOB is fighting for! This is what millions of Nigerians want! This is our appeal to the United Nations!
7. The IPOB phenomenon is an emphatic ‘NO’ to what Nigeria has become after 100 years of existence; namely: world poverty capital, world terrorism capital, world student-kidnapping capital, world banditry capital, open-grazing cow republic, government terrorism, immunity impunity, police criminality, military barbarity, judicial jumble and mishmash, parliamentary-pay robbery, debt and borrowing rascality, unfettered nepotism, presidential health tourism, ethno-religious bigotry, executive graft and all kinds of malfeasance, electoral thuggery, epileptic electricity, educational debilitation, deliberate economic castration, like: moribund refineries, suppressed seaports, abandoned projects. Everywhere in the world Nigerians are suspects. Even other African nations despise Nigerians and for good reasons. IPOB is a determination by a people to redeem and redefine themselves from such a scourge; and all people of goodwill ought to support it. Providentially, the agitations caught fire under General Muhammadu Buhari; who, as military and civilian leader, epitomises 60 years of Nigeria’s unpardonable rudderless leadership.
8. Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB represent a resistance to the oppression that Nigeria has become. Today’s Nigeria is not a place anyone wants to live in. Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB has rightly insisted on freeing its peoples from a Nigeria where citizens have no rights that they can count on, including those enshrined in the constitution, including the right to elect their leaders and manage their resources; Nnamdi Kanu rightly rejected a Nigeria where citizens cannot protest — peacefully or violently — without facing a firing squad; where soldiers wantonly kill citizens and burn their corpses; a Nigeria where citizens cannot agitate for a cause without being proscribed and branded ‘terrorists’, while real terrorists and bandits are protected and propitiated. Kanu’s IPOB wishes to separate from a Nigeria where anytime, anywhere, anybody can be crushed or crippled forever by daredevils in force uniforms, doing the bidding of themselves or of politicians; a Nigeria where the elite and political class live literally above the law, while the masses are repressed like mere slaves. Kanu has rightly insisted that such a Nigeria has no place in the future and he has both the open and tacit support of millions of Nigerians.
9. There are many who take offence at Nnamdi Kanu, believing he lacks diplomacy or civilization and who think that he should speak on Radio Biafra like a diplomat in Geneva, or a professor at Nsukka, or a lawyer at the Hague, or a politician on campaign or a priest on the pulpit. But Kanu knows that he’s none of these. Maybe they do not, but Kanu understands that he is up against an ‘uncultured’ clime, a bunch of unprincipled politicians who change parties like panties, and a repressed people bullied into silence. Kanu knew that he needed the ‘roar’ of a lion. Today, largely to his credit, the people and the politicians have both woken up. As expected, Nigerians are agitating everywhere in the world and the same political ‘hirelings’ who have not solved a single problem for Nigeria in 60 years, are ferociously fighting back, even at the cost of contravening international laws. We are appealing to the UN rise to its task; to hasten its intervention.
10. Let me add that, while no one would approve of incivility, the perceived invectives and harsh narratives of Kanu’s Radio Biafra is an understandable strategy, perhaps needful to ‘jolt’ those trapped in the mirage of a certain ‘giant of Africa’ and perhaps needful to ‘wreck’ the giant fraud of ‘One-Nigeria’ itself; which has flourished for decades at the impoverishment of its people. On the other hand, President Buhari’s bloody clampdown on IPOB and the illegal abduction and incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu, depicts the expected fightback by the beneficiaries of a fraudulent system that has outlived its colonial relevance. This may sound hard, but it is true! Gladly, the United Nations is already aware of the unacceptable situation in Nigeria. In the report of the UN 2019 Special Envoy, sent to assess the situation in Nigeria, Agnes Callamard, aptly described Nigeria as ‘a pressure cooker for injustice’. To this we add that, in 2021, Nigeria has sunk deeper into disunity, despotism, debt, insecurity, instability, poverty, banditry and Fulani jihadism, with unimaginable deaths. If nothing is done, it would soon reach the abyss of crisis.
11. For the people of the defunct Eastern Region of Nigeria, Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB represent a ‘reincarnation’ of the collective spirit of those chiefs, elders, parliamentarians, military officials, who, at a special joint Consultative Assembly in Enugu on the 27th of May 1967 decided to take their fate in their hands, to fight to defend the lives, rights and dignity of the peoples of their region. At that point in 1967 when they saw that Nigeria was not for them, these men and women boldly rose up to the challenge. At a point in the war that ensued, both sides laid down arms on the condition of a ‘no-victor-no-vanquished’ truce. The Biafran troops were not beaten to defeat. No! A ceasefire accord was reached. The resurgence of the struggle in the form of MASSOB and IPOB means that Nigeria has again fallen short of the aspirations of the Biafrans; Nigeria has again proven not to be a place for them. We are now alerting all people of goodwill to help to avert a repeat of 1967–1970.
12. Nnamdi Kanu’s rise to prominence and his undisputed status as a de facto leader in Eastern Nigeria (i.e., the Biafra region, which was maliciously balkanised into South-East and South-South regions) is a verdict by the people of the region on all those who by their position are the de jure leaders of the region. There’s no doubt that this region is the heart of Nigeria’s economy. Yet it is the most deprived region. Over the years, no effort has been spared in disuniting and subjugating this region, chiefly by the Britain-backed Northern-Muslim-Hausa-Fulani oligarchy that has had the reins of political power in Nigeria, To this day, those who have made the subjugation and exploitation of south-eastern Nigeria possible are the de jure leaders of the people. In Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB, the people see a credible movement, beyond the intrigues and doublespeak of politics, which promises them, not just a change for the better, but a country where its ethnic peoples would truly own their God-given resources and for once truly profit from them.
13. Nnamdi Kanu has come to personify the strong will of young Nigerians, especially from south-eastern Nigeria, ready to confront the insanity that Nigeria has become and to forge for themselves a new future in a country that would be truly peaceful, prosperous and progressive; and this explains the vilification. But, let the world be put on notice, that contrary to the antics of the Buhari regime and some self-serving politicians from the Biafra region, IPOB is far from a rascality or even a militia, to be smeared with the stigma of ‘terrorism’. No! IPOB represents a justified desire by a people for true freedom, for a homeland that they can relish. Every nation has its ‘liberator’, it is in this manner that Nnamdi Kanu embodies the hope of millions of people in Nigeria. I urge the UN, world leaders and men and women of good conscience to quickly intervene and ensure his safety and release. No mortal can lay claim to perfection, yet for many in today’s Nigeria, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it takes a hundred years to get a man like Kanu.
14. Kanu and IPOB are examples of the people’s vehement refusal to be cowed by the tag of ‘secession’ and ‘terrorism’ in order to cage them, their children and their future, in a system that has proven to be unworkable; a system that runs on fraud; a system that does not have as much as a people’s constitution at its foundation; a system that has no respect for its own laws and its own courts. To deal with this absurdity, IPOB merely chose the path provided by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP 2007) to severe its people from such a system. Yet, IPOB is even not imposing its wishes on its peoples, IPOB is simply demanding for a UN-monitored referendum on self-determination. Gladly, IPOB’s demand for referendum echoes the mind of other blocs of indigenous populations in Nigeria. Thus, it would only be honourable for the International community to obey its own laws, to respect peoples’ God-given rights and allow Nigeria’s indigenous peoples to “freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”, as stated in article 3 of UNDRIP.
15. Finally, thanks to Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB and Radio Biafra, the struggle for true freedom has again begun. In 1960 it was a struggle for independence, today, it is a struggle for true freedom. Then it was a struggle between the people and the British, today, it is a struggle between the people and the politicians. After 55 years of the Biafra struggle, after the genocide of the Biafra war, it is only just, at this point, that the international community should let Biafra be. The Biafrans have paid the price for their freedom in millions of lives. It is time to let them go home and heal their wounds. Nnamdi Kanu has set the ball rolling, he has played his role. Now he is in custody. It is now up to the people and the UN to decide who wins this struggle, the people or the politicians. But it is in the best interest of the people and the UN that this matter be resolved finally and peacefully. We therefore, humbly and fervently urge the UN, other world leaders and all men and women of goodwill to graciously intervene and attend to the lingering quest for the Republic of Biafra.
– Michael Richmond Duru is a Catholic priest from Biafraland in Nigeria, living and studying in Rome. This appeal is scripted this day, 12 July 2021.
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