Just as well: it ended a damp squib — Omoyele Sowore’s much touted rally to willy-nilly spring Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader, on trial for grave terrorism charges.
Just as well, too: Kanu announced the start of his defence, never mind his soap opera stunts — and taunts. The trial court has ordered, and his defence he must enter.
Both developments reinforce a critical canon of civil society: that the majesty of due process can never be halted by cynical agitations — or how else do you describe the Sowore rascality of October 20, pushing the democratic right to citizen protest, to stall the sacred principle of due process: the hallowed backbone of any democracy?
Still, Shakespeare was right: it was all “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”! A juvenile scheme to stall a court process was never more asinine!
Indeed, Kanu’s cowardice, on four feet, is never clearer! No less clear is his arch-delusion — and his proxies’ — that their braggadocio could indeed stop a criminal trial.
Simon Ekpa, already nestling in jail in Finland, on his judicial day of reckoning, blabbed he was a content creator — a content creation that claimed lives and hewed limbs, of prominent Igbo folks as Dr. Chike Akunyili, the late Dora Akunyili’s husband; and non-Igbo, as Adamawa’s Ahmed Gulak! Ekpa got his due.
Kanu too has pushed his glorious right to agitation. Perhaps the Nigerian court would find for him, though the Finland court trashed Ekpa’s fib of content creation?
So, those busy hailing his juvenile showmanship in the dock, after he had sacked his lawyers, had better warn him he might just be nailing himself. The severe beauty of the judicial process is real. It’s no Nollywood movie!
Still, to float or to sink is a democratic choice. But those first to scream and bawl and screech and screed “injustice!”; those who zealously boom “victimhood!” must apply their minds to the grim sequel of cynically skewing a court process; and the blatant injustice that grinds on the civil society, which apogee is that legal process.
That’s what Kanu is up to. It’s in-your-face cowardice on four feet! But when the sure outcome descends, let no one go berserk with cheap moans.
After a long rigmarole that dates back to 2015, the present case is nearing a climax. The prosecution has closed its case, after calling witnesses; and tendering documents.
But Kanu blustered with of a “no-case” submission, which the court threw out. To start his defence, Sowore hopped in with stunts, starry-eyed Kanu zealots in tow.
Clearly, Sowore and Kanu think the court is a place to catch a cruise, with thrilled plebs on the sidelines thundering with cheers.
Take Sowore. In fashionable lack of introspection, he’s nonpareil. As if caught by a bug, he worked himself into a lather, drawing “Revolution Now!” graffiti all over the place! It was his signal of an anarchist’s paradise!
But the late President Muhammadu Buhari would have none of that rubbish. What followed was a period of arrest, detention and trial, until new President Bola Tinubu’s Justice Minister, Lateef Fagbemi, entered a nolle-prosequi.
But not even that could wean Sowore off hare-brained agitations, hyped by brazen lies, spewed by his Sahara Reporters, now a virtual rag.
During the so-called “Days of Rage”: the “End Bad Governance” protests, of 1-10 August 2024, Sowore and his “Take it Back” ensemble plunged into the fray! Less than one year later, 7 April 2025, another “Take it Back” comedy, which drew little traction.
From Sowore and co, it’s anarchy yesterday, anarchy today, anarchy forever. With that troubled mindset, he romped into the Kanu matter. Still, who in his right senses would follow Sowore in anything? Apparently, though the “Free Kanu Now” protests proved a burlesque, many Kanu zealots still fell for it. Gullible!
Like Sowore, Kanu has not shown much sobriety, since his unfortunate saga broke on us. Those blaming others for his prolonged trial are entitled to their crass pity party. But even they know such a stance is a fraud. Nnamdi Kanu is Alpha and Omega of his own fate. No other one! The facts are there for all to see.
On 28 April 2017, he got bail on certain conditions: not to address any gathering, or grant a press interview. But he scorned his bail terms with a frenzy, abusing and traducing everyone, while those that stood surety for him looked askance.
He claimed the Army invaded his space allegedly to kill him — maybe: and you can only be alive to fight any battle. That would appear his prime reason for jumping bail.
But does that also justify, from a safe haven abroad, the rabid launch of unvarnished sedition: raw hate against the non-Igbo: beasts, he claimed, in a zoo called Nigeria?
Does that justify the slaughter of fellow Igbo, caught in IPOB-decreed wrong places, during the so-called Monday sit-at-home strikes? Kanu himself — on record — bragged that anyone caught would be killed — a sickly threat the jailed Ekpa took to a grotesque new low from Finland!
Does that justify the mass slaughter in Orsu, in Imo, whose folks claim they had lost no less that 5, 000 kith-and-kin, over four years? Their forest bore brazen criminality, allegedly by IPOB and the Eastern Security Network (ESN): rotten and smelly skulls and bones, and decayed remains of fellow Igbo!
Does that justify the Kanu 2020 EndSARS pure lunacy: his deranged order to “burn down Lagos!” — and the high casualty figure of security agents on lawful duty? Why, that Kanu mob even torched The Nation head office in Lagos!
Does that justify Kanu’s endless uncourtly drama? He lampooned the trial judge, Justice Binta Nyako, in the open court; and abused Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN — old enough to be his father, and, on all counts, far more accomplished — and all for what? To press his democratic right to be rude, crude and uncouth?
He would later apologize for his arrogant excitability, after the judge had stepped down. But did he think that delinquency would halt the process?
Then, the latter-day bombast of sacking his entire legal team, growling at his lawyers to “shut up! while I’m talking!”, the infantile “threat” to defend himself though he is no lawyer, and finally — on October 27 — his comic back-off from even that; and his claim (even after a definitive court ruling), that his “no case” submission was valid! What hubris!
Again, is he so delusional to think all this vile drama would make the case vanish?
Let’s be very clear. Nnamdi Kanu is no Obafemi Awolowo, whose 1962/63 treasonable felony trial, and the suspect way it was conducted by the then powers-that-be, are still a subject of controversy, some 62 and 63 years later.
Nor is he MKO Abiola, who some misguided political soldiers thought they could cheat, annul his hard earned June 12, 1993 presidential election, and live happily ever after. It took MKO’s martyrdom — a most costly act of cowardice from Abiola’s oppressors — to violently kick them out of their even costlier delusion.
They — too late — found out there’s no rest for the wicked!
Whatever Nnamdi Kanu does in the dock is all on him. But he is charged with terrorism. Those charges won’t just vanish, because he and his supporters are are playing games. And no evil can turn to good, because of the comedy of ethnic exceptionalism, as not a few are foolishly blabbing.
The law will take its course and heavens will not fall! That’s due process: justice for Kanu, justice for the state, justice for the rest of us. No more. No less.
