Dear Nnamdi Kanu,
We have never met. I only know you by reputation and I have
had cause in the last year to write on your activities within the public arena
and offer my own views about you, your persona, and your interventions in the
Nigerian debate. I sincerely hope you would get to read this letter wherever
you may be, that is assuming you are still alive.
Your father’s house was recently invaded by the Nigerian
military (surprised you don’t have a house of your own!). We were later told
that you simply disappeared into thin air, along with your parents. The
murderous Operation Python Dance II that was unleashed on Igboland by the
Federal Government of Nigeria has since become a subject of national interest.
Many people have proclaimed that you have been killed, abducted and that many
members of your family and movement – the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
have been wasted. Some people said you were called The Lion, but when trouble
came, you were the first to run away from the zoo.
You had boasted that you will deal with any invading force
from Abuja. You also said it would be “Biafra or Death”. But when death came
calling in the shape of Operation Python Dance II, your enemies insisted that
you should have waited. Don’t mind them, oh. I have defended you in another
piece where I argued that it is probably better to run away so you can live to
fight another day. Of course, it is not every revolutionary that runs away.
Che Guevara died in the struggle, and Martin Luther King,
Patrice Lumumba, and so on. Nelson Mandela was jailed for life, but he lived to
tell the story. In your case, the way the Nigerian state has been carrying on,
it is clear they don’t want you to tell any more stories. You have been charged
for treason. You have now been labeled a terrorist. Your organization has been
proscribed, and labeled an enemy of the Nigerian state. A week after
soldiers stormed your state, neighbourhood and home, the Nigerian Air Force
began to drop its men from helicopters all over Igboland. They call it show of
force.
I guess all of that is to let you and your men know that
wherever you are, the Nigerian state is determined to hunt you down. If you are
on land, they will grab you. If you hide in the skies, the Air Force will bring
you down. And if you hide in the seas, the Nigerian Navy and the Amphibious
Brigade of the Nigeria Army will fish you out. Officially, we have been
told that you and IPOB are worse than violent herdsmen and the Boko Haram who
have killed thousands of Nigerians in the last year alone. The Boko Haram has
been declared the fourth most violent group in the world, but the Nigerian
government insists that you pose a greater threat. In fact, a government
spokesperson sounded as if there is a secret plan in place to give herdsmen and
the Boko Haram national honours.
There is probably something that the Nigerian government and
state actors know that we do not know. You were dealing with the charge of
treason, now there is the additional allegation of terrorism. Don’t ever
deceive yourself that if you get arrested again, you’d be released, except
perhaps you change your identity and claim that you are now a herdsman or a
member of the Boko Haram. There may be many people who have Nicodemus access to
you who may be telling you to come and confront the Nigerian state. That
is how Nigerians sweet-tongue people to their death. I am sure that by now,
from your hiding place, you would have learnt some lessons.
The Nigerian state may be against you, but the people you
really have to fear are the same people you claim to be leading, that is the
same people who used to call you messiah and who followed you about, kneeling
before you and kissing the ground on which you walked. Of what use is a
change-agent without committed followers? Of what use is a revolution without
the people’s buy-in? Of what use is an ideology without foot-soldiers? The
moment the Federal Government activated Operation Python II, most of the people
who used to support you have gone completely silent. The Biafra Secret
Service is nowhere to be seen. The Biafra National Guard threw away its
uniform. Some of those boys who used to wave the Biafran flag and wear the
Biafran cap have thrown them away too. One or two persons are still issuing
statements on behalf of IPOB, but even those statements sound like they were
issued from business centres. Your own kinsmen have called you a tyrant
and an opportunist. Many of them have written social media pieces advising the
Federal Government to deal with you, because you don’t listen to advice.
They even say you are not a true revolutionary but a gold-digger.
In all manner of ways, the Governors of the five Igbo states
are using you to play politics. They have declared IPOB an illegal
organization. They are openly abusing you. All the big men in Igbo land are as
quiet as the dead sea. Igbo traditional rulers have refused to support your
father who is their colleague. Some of them have in fact asked the Abia state
Governor to withdraw his certificate and staff of office and appoint another
person in his place. Even the big men who signed your bail documents have
refused to defend you. You used to boast about international support for
the Biafran cause. It has been said that the government now knows some
“treasury looters” and international groups who are funding you and that IPOB
accounts have been traced to some countries, particularly France. The French
and the Turkish promptly distanced themselves from you. But the European Union
and the United States spoke nicely. America says IPOB is not a terrorist
organization and America will know.
But the Nigerian government that may not know half of what
America knows is insisting that it is now a crime for anybody, even as young as
five years old to identify with Biafra, regardless of the Constitutional right
to the freedom of speech and association and the right to self-determination
enshrined in the UN Charter. Indeed, it would appear as if the Nigerian
Government has been able to break the spine of your movement, at least for now,
and certainly, the way things are, the November 18 election in Anambra state
will take place – with or without you. If anybody expected that there would be
a massive protest in the South East over the treatment that has been meted out
to you, that has not quite happened. All the markets in the South East are
open; Igbo traders across Nigeria have moved on with their businesses. Life is
so normal in the South East, the Nigerian military is dancing and beating its
chest.
Northern and South Eastern Governors are holding meetings
and congratulating each other. You turned 50 yesterday, apart from a few
messages on social media, everywhere was quiet in the South-East. If this had
been a month ago, the crowd that would have gathered at your doorstep would
have stretched from Isiama Afara to Afikpo, and the cakes you would have
received would have been uncountable. Rochas Okorocha recently got 27 birthday
cakes, presented by 27 women, representing the same number of local governments
in Imo State, you probably would have received a cake from every local
government in the entire South East!
Since your disappearance there has also been little talk
about self-determination or Biafra among Igbos. The sound of the narrative is
gradually changing. There is more talk these days about Igbo marginalization,
and the need to appoint Igbos into offices. One prominent Northerner from
Kaduna has since gone to Chatham House in the UK to say Igbos should not
complain about marginalization when they didn’t vote for President Buhari in
2015, and that it is foolish for any Nigerian to expect to reap where he or she
did not sow. Nnamdi, you’d be surprised that appointment-seeking Igbos will
mobilise your people, including your followers, to vote massively for the same
people who are currently hounding you, in 2019. You can be sure this will
happen. In fact some people are already boasting that the only way to have
peace in Nigeria is to make an Igbo man President or Vice President in 2019.
While you were shouting “Biafra or death”, some people were eyeing the business
and political side of things. Every proposed revolution often runs into its own
contradictions.
But don’t worry. It may be fashionable now to criticise
Nnamdi Kanu but the wisdom of the mob is not always the best guide. I sincerely
hope that you are alive, and that you’d not end up as an Abogunrin. Not every
man has the opportunity to witness what life would be like after his own
funeral. Treachery is one of those unsavoury ingredients of the change process.
The deserters of the cause would claim they prefer to survive. The coffin maker
prays fervently for business but he would never wish that his own family
members should die. But take heart, hope is not lost. The fire that you have
lit will continue to burn. Your struggle speaks directly to the subject of the
national question. You have reminded all and sundry that Nigeria remains a
troubled country and that there are many unresolved issues. Every effort has
been made to kill your voice, and your movement, but the ideas that you have
forced out of the cupboard will continue to resonate.
The good news also is that there are Nigerians in diaspora
who have taken up the struggle. They went to demonstrate at the 72nd United
Nations General Assembly in New York and on the streets of London. Your
friends, FFK and Ayo Fayose are still standing by you. There are many others
out there who also do not agree that you are a terrorist, even if they do not
agree with your methods and rhetoric. You have also exposed the hypocrisy of
the Igbo elite. You have exposed the desperation of the ruling class. Don’t let
your head swell, though. If I must tell you the truth, you over-acted. Too much
acting dey spoil cinema. You paid too much attention to ceremony. You were
obsessed with your own heroism.
As you read this piece and reflect on your life at 50, let
me remind you of the following statement which you made on August 27, 2017:
“Where we are is Biafra land. Aba is the spiritual
capital of Biafra land. We started in Aba in 2015 at CKC. That day, heaven
authenticated our move that IPOB will restore Biafra and that’s what we have
come to do. We died in Aba at National High School. They shot and killed us in
other places in Biafra land where they were protesting for my release. As our
people rest in the grave, we’ll never rest until Biafra is restored. I don’t
care what they say in Abuja. I don’t give a damn what they say in Lagos. I’m a
Biafran and we are going to crumble the zoo. Some idiots who are not educated
said that they’ll arrest me, and I ask them to come, I’m in Biafra. If any of
them leaves Biafra land alive, know that this is not IPOB. Tell them what I
said. Tell Buhari that I am in Aba and any person who comes to arrest Nnamdi
Kanu in Biafra land will die here. I’ll never go on exile I assure you.
Some people talk about restructuring, are we doing the restructuring of Nigeria
now? Are we doing fiscal Federalism? Are we doing devolution? What we want is
Biafra! Forget all the nonsense they write about us. We are not slowing down
and no man born of a woman can stop us…”
Words on marble, Mazi Kanu, these are strong words on
marble… Whatever happens, the fight of the python and the lion is a defining
moment for Nigeria.
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