Implications, New Calculations of Caging Nnamdi Kanu

By caging the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, President Buhari might have unwittingly removed for the Igbo intellectual-political elite ‘an irritant’ threatening them as a class and undermining the legitimate political struggle at the heart of their politics and engagements, writes Louis Achi

At a joint press conference with the State Security Services (SSS) on Tuesday, June 29, in Abuja, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), announced that international collaborative efforts with security agencies led to the re-arrest and repatriation to Nigeria of leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

His words: “Self-acclaimed leader of the proscribed secessionist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has been intercepted through the collaborative efforts of Nigerian intelligence and Security Services. He has been brought back to Nigeria, in order to continue facing trial after disappearing, while on bail regarding 11-count charge against him.”

Fleshing out Malami’s narrative, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, told journalists in Abuja, on Thursday, that Nigeria’s security intelligence trailed Kanu for two years.

He said: “It will interest Nigerians to know that for over two years, our security and intelligence agencies were on the trail of the proscribed IPOB leader as he lived a five-star life across several countries, travelling on chartered private jets, living in luxury apartments and turning out in designer clothes and shoes.

“Of course, as we all saw, he was wearing an attire made by Fendi, a luxury Italian fashion brand, when he was arrested. We can tell you that the forensic investigation carried out so far has revealed a treasure trove of information on the proscribed IPOB leader and his collaborators.”

On September 20, 2017, Justice Abdu Kafarati, then Chief Judge of the Federal High Court of Nigeria, Abuja, made the order proscribing the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) and designating it a terrorist group upon an ex parte application by the AGF, Malami.

But IPOB contended in a motion it filed before the same judge on September 22, 2017, that the proscription order was unconstitutional. In January 2018, Justice Kafarati, resolved all the three formulated issues against the group and held that the September 20, 2017 proscription order of the court was validly issued, hence dismissing the contention of IPOB’s lawyer, Barrister Ifeanyi Ejiofor.

Kanu was arrested in 2015, on several charges, including treason. He was released on bail in 2017 and fled the country in September of the same year following an invasion of his country home by the Nigerian Army in Afaraukwu, near Umuahia, Abia State.

The re-arrest of Nnamdi Kanu spawns several posers. Did the mode of his re-arrest conform to international diplomatic protocols? What are the implications of his repatriation and re-arraignment in Nigeria for the Igbo and other secessionist activists? Does the single-minded energy invested in the re-arrest project reinforce perceptions of Buhari’s alleged visceral Igbophobia and anti-Biafra stance?

More – will IPOB regroup and reorganise in the absence of its leader just as Boko Haram appear to be doing post-Yusuf and Shekau? How will the unfolding scenario impact the Igbo intellectual and political elite’s engagements? Will it measurably douse secessionist impulses across board? What manner of justice will be served?

According to Professor Moses Ochonu, the IPOB leader, Kanu, had become a disruptive factor for the South East region’s justifiable resentment of President Buhari’s Igbophobia, mirrored in his administration’s blunt marginalisation of the zone.

Ochonu, academician, author and Professor of African history at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee and who has been the Vanderbily Cornelius Chair in history since 2017, believes that, “Before his re-arrest, Kanu had become a complicating factor for the Igbo’s justifiable resentment of Buhari’s Igbophobia, and their equally justified sense that they’ve been excluded and marginalised since the civil war.

“Nnamdi Kanu not only threatened to delegitimise and scuttle the legitimate struggle of the Igbo people for “recognition and redistribution,” to borrow Philosopher Axel Honneth’s words; he also attracted unfair hostility to innocent Igbo people, especially, in Northern Nigeria.”

Pushing a novel insight, Ochonu feels strongly that by caging Kanu, Buhari has eliminated the disruptive strident symphony the IPOB leader has playing and the new theoretical calm could supply a more stable engagement atmosphere for Igbo leaders to make their case in a more acceptable manner.

Hear him: “What Buhari has done for the Igbo struggle with the arrest of Kanu is to refocus the struggle on the main issue of undeniable marginalisation and exclusion of the Igbo, self-determination, and the necessity of remedial measures, including the much-discussed restructuring.

“Buhari has cut the distracting and disruptive noise of Kanu out and has, by so doing, sent the IPOB wing of the Igbo struggle, which was gaining ascendancy and slowly entering the mainstream, back to where it belongs: the fringe.

“Conversely, he has re-empowered the Igbo struggle’s mainstream, including the intelligent, peaceful, less adversarial, less insular, and less rhetorically hateful agitation for a territorial or non-territorial Biafra.”

Debatably, taking Kanu and his alleged extreme activism out of the equation should refocus the conversation on the abhorrent way the Igbo have been treated since the civil war, and the inexplicably Igbophobic underpinnings of the Buhari regime’s political actions and rhetoric.

It is hardly debatable that beyond the huffing and puffing of the federal government, the re-arrest and re-arraignment of Kanu does not mean the end of IPOB. IPOB diehards will continue to rally round Kanu even in jail and find inspiration and vindication for their cause in the treatment Kanu may receive.

“Most Igbo people will be relieved that the nihilistically violent approach of Kanu and his IPOB has at least been rendered a bit voiceless and headless,” Ochonu further opined.

This, because, while Kanu was at large and in command of the IPOB’s non-terrestrial, very influential media infrastructure and platforms, he put the Igbo elite in a bind – such that they could not openly oppose the group without paying a political price. The initial scenario also ensured they could not get their moderate messages out or articulate an alternative ideology and strategy for addressing the grievances of the Igbo.

According to a former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, if the Nigerian government botches Kanu’s trial and the atmospherics around it, it risks further inflaming separatism, noting that Kanu appears to have some degree of popular support.

The hazy process of Kanu’s capture also raises issues of whether it conformed to international diplomatic protocols? The British High Commission in Nigeria has said it is “in the process of seeking clarifications” from the federal government over the arrest of Kanu.

Spokesperson of the British High Commission, Dean Hurlock, disclosed this in a message sent to the media on Wednesday. Kanu is also a British citizen.