A rump of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has threatened to resume the enforcement of the Monday sit-at-home which was started over four years ago as a way to force the federal government to heed the call for the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, then detained by the government of late President Muhammadu Buhari. IPOB grew out, from the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). IPOB has itself mutated, even though the mutants have no new name, known to the public.
The recent threat is a reaction to the effort by the governor of Anambra State, Chukwuma Soludo, to stop the wasteful sit-at-home on Mondays which IPOB used to draw attention to the trial of Nnamdi Kanu who has now been jailed for terrorism related charges. The group initially enforced the order on the days Kanu went to court, but eventually included every Monday, to push their campaign. According to Aloy Ejimakor, Kanu’s lawyer, his principal had since ordered a stop of the sit-at-home, but some of his followers remained defiant.
One of the leaders of the mutants, Simeon Ekpa, has been jailed in Finland for terrorism. This writer was particularly irked about Ekpa’s style of making light the consequences of his messages in the region. In one video, he was dancing and said he was enjoying himself, while his detractors were claiming he was under detention, which showed the so-called fight for Biafra was a joke for him. The cavalier manner he treated the grave issue of the deaths and mayhem in the southeast resulting from his actions showed he didn’t care a hoot about the so-called struggle.
Before they were jailed, Ekpa had openly defied Kanu over the latter’s order to end the sit-at-home. With Kanu in detention, Ekpa had assumed leadership even while pretending to be acting in the interest of the Kanu. Of course, there appears to be cells operating independently of the leadership, dishing out instructions and countermanding orders from the IPOB leadership. The results have been killing of the ordinary persons, by what came to be regarded as the unknown gunmen.
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At the height of his confrontation with the Nigerian state, Kanu with tremendous gift of garb, framed the fight as one between the quest for an independent republic of Biafra, and the hegemonic powers that ruled Nigeria. A bombastic fellow, Kanu held his followers captive, with eloquent denunciation of the challenges bedeviling Nigeria. Courted and cult-ed, he became a folk hero, amongst the downtrodden and disposessed, in the region. Soon, some members of the intelligentsia and the business class also warmed up to him and that made him more daring.
Like Ralph Uwazurike of MASSOB, to tantalize his supporters, Kanu began to make promises he had no way of keeping. He gave dates and events that will culminate into the birth of Biafra republic. As if in a conspiracy, the government of late President Muhammad Buhari, in rhetoric and in action, gave the impression that Igbos of southeast were dispensable in determining the future of Nigeria. And as if in concert, terrorism by herdsmen under Buhari, added a new dimension to the Nigerian fault lines.
Those who hitherto were dismissive of a purported ethnic/religious agenda, under the government began to believe that something was really afoot. In remote villages across the southeast, and of course other parts of Nigeria, herdsmen clutching AK47 rifles, became the symbol that Armageddon was near the gate. So, when Kanu said that there are plans for the Fulani ethnic group to take over other parts of the country by force, even the doubters believed. Like a prophet whose last prediction came to pass, Kanu was emboldened to make more predictions and issue more threats.
With Kanu’s image getting far larger than those elected to govern at the federal and the state levels in the southeast, it was definite, as the pre-eminent Tatalo Alamu, of this newspaper would say, that something had to give. There are several conspiracy theories as to how Kanu was rendered back to Nigeria from Kenya by the Buhari regime. There are many political leaders in the region, who have been smeared with the tag of saboteur, for allegedly rendering Kanu back to Nigeria.
The Buhari regime despite its best efforts could not bring the trial of Kanu at the Federal High Court Abuja, to an end. Kanu was able to outfox the regime for about four years, with all manner of legal gymnastics, as some have called it. He changed his lawyers many times, defended himself a few times, and forced changes of judges at other times. While that was going on, the economy of the southeast was haemorrhaging profusely. The economic loss is projected in several billions of naira, the loss of life in monumental proportions, and the dislocation of social life, very substantial.
With the Buhari regime and its concomitant idiosyncrasies ending in 2023, many thought the challenges associated with the crisis would dissipate. Leaders of the southeast tried to outdo each other, to position to claim credit, believing that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would release Kanu from the gulag. Kanu even toned down his rhetoric, in the earnest hope that the new regime’s renewed hope agenda would grant him freedom. Instead of a political solution, the courts went for a legal solution as Justice James Omotosho ignored all legal mischiefs, and went ahead to conclude the trial and jail Kanu, for life.
With a mischievous obiter dictum that Kanu should be jailed in any prison that pleases the powers that be, he was sent to the Sokoto Correctional Centre, the seat of the Caliphate that he had been lampooning in his rise to prominence. In a tinge of irony, like a youth corps member, it seems he was sent to learn the ways and means of Fulani, so he can become a better pan-Nigerian. With Kanu put away in faraway, Sokoto, many have been wondering whether IPOB would continue to dissipate and eventually disappear.
But the ever loquacious spirit-man, Emma Powerful, the spokesman of IPOB, seems to have a different agenda. He is giving the impression that IPOB is a phoenix. He has called for renewal of the sit-at-home agenda, which has never augured well for the region. This writer urges those pushing for the sit-at-home order to continue to please abandon a strategy that has hurt the southeast more that it has benefited it and hope that President Tinubu would release Kanu and help the region to recuperate. The southeast has suffered enough, from the Buhari-era crisis.
Of course, while the southeast was haemorrhaging, the national economy was bleeding. Governor Soludo, who made the contested order, has threatened traders with grave consequences if they fail to resume on Mondays. This column hopes he has put plans in place to secure those willing to work on Mondays from criminals masquerading as liberation fighters.
