By Femi Fani-Kayode I watched my brother Mazi Nnamdi Kanu's interview with my brother Chief Dele Momodu on Thursday evening and ...
By Femi Fani-Kayode
I watched my brother Mazi Nnamdi Kanu's interview with my
brother Chief Dele Momodu on Thursday evening and I was inspired and
encouraged.
Nnamdi spoke with such eloquence, passion, courage and
strength. He is brilliant and irrepressible. He cannot be underestimated or
ignored.
Every African should listen to that interview. He cleared a
lot of misconceptions about himself and made his position clear on so many
issues.
Most important of all is the fact that he had the decency
and humility to tender his regrets and apologies where he may have got things
wrong. That is the mark of a great leader.
I have loved and trusted him dearly ever since the first day
we met and spoke for 3 hours when we were both incarcerated at Kuje prison in
2016.
From the first minute we got on like a house on fire and we
have been close ever since. There is nothing that binds men together more than
being locked up together in prison or being on the battlefield together and
fighting side by side and shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy.
The truth is that Nnamdi is not just a friend but a brother.
We do not agree on everything but we agree on many things and the fact that we
can tell each other the blunt and bitter truth whenever we feel either of us
has gone wrong is the source and strength of our relationship.
Most importantly we stand as a moderating influence on one
another both in our public and private affairs and trust me when I tell you
that this man is a stabilising force, a good family man and a peacemaker.
Yet whatever anyone chooses to say or feel about him the
truth is that he won millions of new friends and supporters after that
interview from all over the country.
I thank Dele for giving this great man the opportunity to
express himself to the Nigerian people on a mainstream platform such as his
which has a massive reach.
After listening to the discussion I was prompted to meditate
and ponder on how IPOB is wrongly perceived by many Nigerians and to write the
following. Fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride.
You call members of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
terrorists yet you refuse to bring to justice those that have slaughtered or
illegally detained and incarcerated 30,000 of their members in the last 5
years.
This number was given to me by Barrister Ifeanyi Ejiofor,
IPOB's lawyer, whose home and community in Orifite, Anambra state was also
attacked, burnt down and plundered whilst many of his people were slaughtered
in a joint operation by the Nigerian military and police in a matter of hours.
I was there to spend the day with him and mourn the loss of
his brother on a Sunday and the tanks rolled in on Monday morning just a few
hours after I left!
When Ifeanyi called me early in the morning to say that they
were under attack, that his house and his late brothers house had been burnt to
the ground, that his elderly mother had been beaten to a pulp, that the Church
building that I had given a speech in the day before had been pulled down and
destroyed and that many of his people had been killed for no just cause, tears
rolled down my cheeks.
Had he not fled for his life and gone into hiding Ifeanyi
himself would have been killed on that day.
Any group of people that have been subjected to that kind of
barbarism from the Nigerian state would have resorted to an open armed struggle
by now but Nnamdi Kanu's IPOB have refused to do so.
Their struggle and quest for Biafran independence has
remained relatively peaceful despite the provocation from the Nigerian state
and the massive persecution they have been subjected to for 5 years.
Now tell me between IPOB and the Nigerian state who are the
real terrorists? Who has done the killing? Who has terrorised? Who has spilled
the blood of the innocent? Who has operated unlawfully and committed genocide
and crimes against humanity?
Who has sponsored and protected the Fulani herdsmen and
refused to curb and condemn their barbaric activities or declare them as a
terrorist organisation?
Who has been soft on ISWA and Boko Haram and released and
reintegrated thousands of their members into our Armed Forces even after they
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of defenceless Nigerians, including women and
children?
Who has unleashed their troops and security forces on their
own people and killed thousands of their own citizens? Who has crushed and
destroyed the lives and families of the innocent?
Who has burnt down Churches, slaughtered priests at the
alter and who has sacked, pillaged, levelled, captured and renamed towns and
whole communities?
Who has seized the land of farmers and raped their wives and
children, butchered Christians and Shia Muslims and slaughtered thousands in
Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and the core North.
Who has hacked to pieces thousands in Southern Kaduna,
Taraba, Plateau, Adamawa, Benue and murdered protesting children in Mushin and
at the Lekki Toll Gate?
Was it IPOB or members, associates and friends of the Buhari
regime and those they encourage and protect?
I am not a man of violence and I do not support the use of
arms. Where anyone or group of persons, including IPOB, involves themselves in
violence I am the first to condemn it.
I despise those that shed innocent blood and those that
unleash mayhem, havoc and tyranny on innocent people.
Yet the bitter truth is that those that have done more of
this than anyone else in this country over the last 5 years are the Federal
Government and their friends, associates and allies and not IPOB, OPC, YOLICOM,
MASSOB, YWC, Yourba Summit Group, MEND, NDVF, IYC, the Lower Niger Congress or
any of the other regional or self-determination groups.
I am not a coward and neither am I chicken-hearted. Truth is
my sword and the Lord is my shield and armour. I fear nothing and nobody other
than God.
It is for this reason that I refuse to be cowed or
browbeaten into joining the gullible and ignorant herd of lily-livered
cheerleaders who take pleasure in attacking and demonising the victims of the
state like IPOB instead of condemning the unbelievable cruelty and crushing
wickedness that has been unleashed upon them by agents of the state.
And the only reason they do this is because IPOB has not
been given adequate fair hearing in the nations media or the public space to
explain and defend themselves or tell their own side of the story to the
Nigerian people.
The bitter truth is that more than any other group in this
country over the last five years IPOB have been misepresented, villified,
attacked, demonised and subjected to the greatest and most horrendous form of
misrepresentation and negative propaganda. If anyone is attacked in the south
or any police station burnt, according to our media, it must be IPOB.
Thousands of their members are in cells all over the country
as we speak and yet no-one speaks for them, no one cares for them and no one
empathises with them. This is unacceptable. This is inhuman. This is unfair.
This is unjust. This is evil.
Worse still to compare IPOB to Boko Haram, ISWA or the
Fulani herdsmen is like comparing Little Red Riding Hood to the hungry and
ravenous wolf or like comparing Mother Theresa to Jack the Ripper: it simply
does not make sense.
Some have alleged that IPOB youths committed acts of
violence throughout the East and parts of Rivers state during the #EndSARS
protests. Unconfirmed reports suggest that some of them even killed policemen
and other innocent Nigerians. I find these reports troubling but I do however
question them.
The Nnamdi Kanu that I know can be impulsive and say some
very harsh things at times but he is not a killer or a violent man. He is a
formidable intellectual and a visionary leader and not a merciless, bellicose,
violent, murderous and bloodthirsty barbarian.
God forbid such a thing but if he was a man that took
pleasure in the spilling of blood he would have put one million Ak 47's in the
hands of his followers by now and all hell would have broken loose. Violence is
not in his blood and neither is it in his interest.
On several occasions he has told me privately and has said
publicly that IPOB's struggle is and must always be a peaceful one and he is
wise enough to know that anything outside of that will be counterproductive and
would lose him a lot of support and sympathy.
If indeed IPOB youths, as opposed to thuggish hoodlums that
are claiming to be IPOB or rogue elements within the organisation, have killed
anyone anywhere then I wholeheartedly condemn it and such barbaric behaviour
must stop forthwith.
Two wrongs can never make a right. The fact that the
Nigerian state indulges in mass murder does not mean that their victims must
also soil their hands with innocent blood.
And if anyone doubts that the Nigerian state is indeed a
brutal and bloodlusting killing machine which seeks to crush dissent and
silence those that do not key into its inherent barbarism then I challenge them
to find out how many young innocent Igbos are being targeted and killed by
security forces in Obigbo, Rivers state today in the name of fighting IPOB.
According to Amnesty International in Obigbo innocent people
have been kept in inhuman conditions in a 24 hour curfew for the last 10 days
without access to medicare, food, water and power and there are reports of extrajudicial killings with dead
bodies all over the streets.
The group torture, psychological trauma and mass murder of
Igbo people for whatever reason and under whatever guise in Obigbo is
unacceptable. I condemn it in the strongest terms.
Where is our humanity? Must the Igbo always be slaughtered
like flies in Nigeria? Do they not have red blood too? Does any race or human
being deserve this type of targetting and treatment?
I condemn the killing of security agents by anyone in that
community but does that mean that every Igbo there must be treated like a
prisoner of war or massacred?
What moral right do we have as southerners to complain when
northerners kill our people when we in the south are so ready to kill one
another in such a barbaric and cruel way?
Today I weep for the South and I weep for Nigeria.
Children and youths were massacred by soldiers at Lekki Toll
Gate in Lagos just two weeks ago and today children and youths, of Igbo
extraction, are being targeted, hunted down like animals and massacred by
soldiers in Obigbo in Rivers state. This inexplicable MADNESS and unconciable
BLOODLUST must stop!
If the truth be told the real terrorists in this country are
in Aso Rock and not on the streets of Igboland or in the ranks of IPOB.
Calling for a referendum and seeking to peacefully exercise
your right of self-determination after being subjected to and confronted with
60 years of subjugation, murder, ethnic cleansing, tyranny and genocide does
not make you a terrorist, it makes you a
courageous man of conscience and a freedom fighter.
I am not from the old Eastern Region of Nigeria and
therefore I am not a member of IPOB. I hail from the old Western Region where
we have our own struggles and where we also seek to chart our own course and
determine our own future.
That struggle is for either restructuring of the country or,
failing that, the peaceful establishment of our own nation which we shall call
Oduduwa Republic.
This is a noble quest because Nigeria has failed us just as
it has failed everyone else. And if things do not change quickly it is a quest
that will be achieved sooner than later.
Yet the struggle for freedom is not for the Biafrans and the
sons of Oduduwa alone: it is also for the ordinary people of the core North who
have been through hell and who have been subjected to unprecedented levels of
carnage and savagery.
Again it is also for the people of the Middle Belt and the
so-called minorities of the north who have suffered for so long and who have
been denied, deprived and suppressed more than any other people in Nigeria.
They too shall be free from the yoke, bondage and cruelty of imperial Nigeria.
Permit me to conclude this contribution with the following.
No matter how many IPOB members you torture, jail and kill and no matter how
many of them you misrepresent and demonise, they cannot be stopped because an
idea whose time has come cannot be successfully resisted.
Like the great Libyan warrior Omar Al Mouqthar who was known
as the 'Lion of the Desert', their battle cry is "we win or we die".
Like the gallant and courageous Patrick Henry, who led the
American people in their struggle for independence from Great Britain, their
song is "give me freedom or give me death!"
That is their story, that is their song and it is ours too.
Freedom calls and liberty beckons: one million tanks cannot stop them and all
the misrepresention, disinformation, misinformation and lies in the world
cannot deter them.
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