Foundation for Environmental Rights Advocacy and Development, FENRAD, a pro-democracy, human and environmental rights advocacy group has called on the Attorney General, Mr. Abubakar Malami, SAN to produce separatist leader, Nnamdi Kanu at the court come October 21, 2021, which is the day for the preliminary hearing of his case after the DSS failed to produce the separatist leader before the Justice Binta Nyako court on July 26, 2021, an incident FENRAD says further escalated the tension in the Southeast as many among Kanu’s supporters feared that their leader had come to harm.
Kanu, FENRAD recalls, was, in the words of the Attorney General, ‘intercepted’ and ‘rearrested’ in an undisclosed country after he fled Nigeria following military attack, during the operation codenamed ‘Python Dance,’ on his home and father’s palace at Afara Ibeku, Umuahia while still answering to allegations preferred against him bordering on treasonable felony. Detained Kanu who now faces an eleven-count charge since his ‘rearrest’ and trial by an Abuja-based court on June 29, 2021, where also his case was adjourned until July 26, has never made a court appearance. FENRAD also recalls how his team of lawyers initially lamented lack of access to their client at the DSS facility a situation which led one of his lawyers, Maxwell Opara to file a fresh suit against the DSS over rights abuse when the lawyer was forced to remove his wears including medicated glasses.
FENRAD says since the operation leading to Kanu’s interception in a foreign country, an exercise which did not follow the required diplomatic protocols and international law instruments to which Nigeria is a signatory, Kanu’s proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB had declared ‘Ghost Mondays’ or Mondays ‘sit-at-home’ over the entire Southeast as a protest measure against the continued detention of its leader. Even though the separatists came out themselves saying the measure no longer stands, it was much like closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. Today, all manner of persons acting as sit-at-home enforcers had attacked businesses and properties in the region for perceived nonobservance of the order of stay-at-home. Worse is, the Southeast region, sources say, had lost billions in terms of revenue and inflows even as education in the region got affected since WAEC candidates were sacked from school on a particular Monday.
The situation escalated to the extent where non-state actors could declare a sit-at-home order from numerous sources including the grapevine. As it appears now, governments at all levels – both at federal and regional – had failed to address this problem, creating at the process needless tension and economic problems in a hitherto calm region. FENRAD believes leadership failure at the region, among its five regional governors of the Southeast, produced Kanu who manages Radio Biafra, a media house the federal government, after failing to jam, says pours out expletives and hate materials against the federation.
In a recent interview by Malami, the AGF himself hinted at a possible emergency proclamation over Anambara to enable INEC conduct election in a state that, in addition to call for secession, had been marred by killings and threats to life with governorship election less than a month away. FENRAD condemns such statement by Malami given the security situation in Zamfara, Kaduna, Plateau states and even Katsina, the home state of the president himself all for which emergency has not been declared in the face of abduction of schoolchildren by bandits and senseless killings by Boko Haram. The Foundation calls on the AGF to produce Kanu at court on October 21, 2021, allow him a fair hearing as is in tandem with his rights.
The detention of Kanu has not served a win-win for the region or the government and so if this situation continues the tension in the region will escalate the more.
Against the backdrop of marginalisation of the Igbo and other groups in Nigeria’s South, Kanu formed and now leads IPOB, a group seeking for the plebiscitary restoration of the sovereign state of Biafra, an apparent attempt to restore a short-lived republic that was declared by military governor, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu in May 1967 after killings of Easterners in other parts of the country resulting in a thirty-month civil war. Today, if the situation is not well managed, 1967 could be here again, FENRAD tells the AGF.
FENRAD believes tension in the Southeast or in any part of the country is not in the best interest of the federal government and does not serve the nation well, FENRAD calls on the AGF to produce Kanu at court ,give him fair trial on October 21 so as to allow peace turn to the region.
