I have had some time to ponder the staying power of Nnamdi Kanu, whom I had at several moments described as an ethnic entrepreneur. I stopped calling him that long ago because he has transfigured into something higher: a genius.
I do not mean, by this assertion, that the jailbird in Sokoto is now a sublime act. But he is a beautiful subject of study.
What intrigues me is that he belongs to a group that swears and acts with blood and death. If his followers are just the street gang, the rough-hewn ragamuffins and the men with blood in their eyes, he would not inspire this essay.
But what concerns me is that he has the sympathy, I dare say, the following of some of the polished and intelligent citizens of the east. After all, when the authorities threw him to the edge of the northwest, the first major guest is a man of culture and commerce, and a man of democracy, a man of Nigerian confession. Alex Otti, the governor of Abia State , where Kanu hails from, paid him a call.
Even if Otti does not legitimate Kanu’s subversion, he is negotiating with it. He would not have visited if he did not carry with him the nod of his class in the east. By his class, I mean the Igbo intelligentsia, business, cultural and political elite. He walked into that jailhouse with the halo of the Igbo pride. He shook Kanu’s hands with the soul of his people.
Yet, when you ask the most peace-loving of the Igbos, they would say they abhor the acts of the IPOB group. And they say it with all sincerity. The Monday paralysis in the east punctures the chief business of the Igbo people, which is business. So, none of them would like what his group is doing.
Yet, before the day of verdict, some lawmakers from the east wanted to preempt Justice Omotosho’s judgment by asking for his release, and some form of out-of-court settlement.
What all this means is that, from top to bottom with some exceptions, the Igbo head may not always be with Kanu. But their heart is with him.
This was the fellow that said openly that Lagos should be burned down. He called Nigeria a zoo. He tried to deligitimise the governors in the Southeast. He opened a war room during EndSars where he was directing his foot soldiers to burn and destroy. He impugned Peter Obi, the beloved of the Obidients, by railing at his sexuality. Ironically, his followers form the core of Obi’s followers.
In spite of the visits and negotiations of the top men in the east, Kanu has not shifted one ground. He is not ready to foreswear Biafra. He is not ready to accept Nigeria. Has anyone asked how he has gathered senior advocates to defend him in court. Are they doing it for free? Of course not. SANs do not accept pittance to appear in court. Without pretty penny, there is no appearance.
Who is funding them? Street gangs cannot afford a SAN. No one has come out to tell us who the sponsors may be. If the lawyers are doing it for free, does that not add to Kanu’s mystique? He was not even a nice man to his lawyers. He openly insulted them, and he even threatened to fire them. Eventually, he did. Kanu has no resources for a court trial.
Why, then, would the Igbo elite sympathise with him? It is because the sentiment of Biafra is alive and well. It is not a goal in most of their hearts. It is a treasure. It has moved from a lived reality in the 1960’s when the war was fought with bloodshed and destructions and miscalculations and blunders that led to its collapse.
The elite who even fought in the war would tell you it was not a pleasant experience and they would not want to go through it again. When I was researching my novel, My Name is Okoro, I gathered this much from those who passed through its crucible.
But man is a creature of sentiment, not reason, said Oscar Wilde. Biafra still lives in the hearts of many Igbos, whether a professor or a roadside mechanic. Kanu has shown for them a courage that is pristine. He is their diamond in the rough. They can live with the rough, so long as it cherishes the diamond inside. In fact, the rough is a protector layer for the lustre within.
On the surface you would think that what Biafrans should fight for is justice. Justice may mean, even within today’s system, a fair shake in the polity. That would mean an Igbo president, good roads, better schools and education, peace and prosperity. In the days of Jonathan, the Igbo elite appropriated the Ijaw as Azikiwe, and Jonathan saw his opportunity to vouchsafed them his Ijaw heart. But all they wanted and got were positions as ministers and director generals and contracts.
When Buhari came and gave them the best infrastructure ever under Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN), the story gained traction that it was Jonathan’s legacy. Thanks but no thanks. If Kanu recants his position today and renounces his Biafran stance, majority of Igbos will be disappointed.
You can call him a ruffian, an anarchist, a hopeless irridentist, to most Igbo the man is a treasure. He may be stronger than an ideologue. Ideologues have a set of ideas about society and future. He has none. He is more of a utopian, like the spirit of a millenarian. That utopia is Biafra. Utopias are dreams, like soap bubbles. But they are delicate fantasies for which bloodsheds are deemed necessary. Although Machiavelli says ideologies covet violence, Kanu knows ideology limits him. He would rather gulp something that is at once simple and elusive. He has grown into a sort of charisma, like the fellow in Nobel prize novel The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk.
In that sense, Kanu is not an ideologue of justice. He is a miracle. Dostoyevsky wrote about the three features that entrap a people: mystery, authority and miracle. Kanu has embodied all of them by insisting on the purity of the Biafran idea, and that in itself is worth all the bloodshed, all the fear and trembling on the streets in the southeast. It forgives his foul rhetoric. His admirers would not want the poverty he is causing in the east, but they would not want to compromise him or want him compromised. In a sense, being in jail is Kanu’s ultimate sacrifice for his people. He will not shift his ground, and the courts would not shift for him.
They will not want him to go the way of Ojukwu, who had to leave Ivory Coast and sup with his conquerors in the National Party of Nigeria, the same people who saw Ojukwu humiliated a second time when he lost his Senate bid. Ojukwu lost his purity. They do not want that for the new Ojukwu. This Ojukwu bears no sword, commands no brigade, but holds something more potent: an idea. A sentiment.
If the Igbo love their business, they love Biafra more. Before business is the Igbo soul, and Kanu encases it even when he is a boor. Man shall not live by bread alone. As I stated, men never go to war for bread. There is no bread martyr in history. That is why I say Kanu, for them, is a miracle. The intelligentsia would not want to come out to condemn his acts. The sentiment is too strong. They remind one of the scene in Chigozie Obioma’s novel, The Road to the Country. As the war ends, some federal soldiers coerce some Igbos to shout One Nigeria, but an old woman, once the soldiers are out of earshot, yells “hail Biafra.” In Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, when the people are fleeing towns and villages, a woman insists she is not going to leave her home. Her home is inviolate, even on pain of death. That is what Kanu symbolises.
Those who say they can negotiate with Kanu are in a dance. The Sokoto jailbird is the choreographer, and the choir as well as the audience want the tune to continue. They can finetune it, but not to stop it. the choreographer is a genius
It creates a dilemma for them. They want peace, but they love, at least admire, Kanu, even if they cannot say it in public. Discussing it is like touching a sacred grove. The Igbos, from top to bottom, love Nigeria so much that they would not want to leave. Hence, when Ojukwu declared Biafra, he was not satisfied until he conquered all of Nigeria, and headed to Lagos. Hence when he died, I called him Omo Eko on this page. I told a journalist the other day that if Biafra is declared today, the next day Igbos will line up for Nigerian visa. She replied it was true and they like it that way. Biafra is a like a virgin. She must not wed.
