By John Owen Nwachukwu Elder statesman, Chike Obidigbo has warned politicians, especially those from the Southeast, against further ...
By John Owen Nwachukwu
Elder statesman, Chike Obidigbo has warned politicians,
especially those from the Southeast, against further compounding the travails
of the Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.
He regretted that some Igbo political elites are going about
the demand for the release of the embattled IPOB leader the wrong way,
stressing that the overzealous politicians are acting out of ignorance and
mostly in self aggrandizement.
According to the elder statesman, the issues around Kanu and
his leadership of IPOB are not easy as politicians think, adding that releasing
Kanu without granting referendum to IPOB may not address the secessionist agitation
or the crisis in the zone.
In a statement made available to DAILY POST, Sunday,
Obidigbo, who is the President of Osisioma Foundation, noted that the delicate
nature of Kanu’s incarceration requires quiet diplomacy to achieve political
solution, without politicising his release, the way they are going about it.
While identifying the salient complications around the IPOB
leader’s forceful rendition and consequent incarceration, the Anambra-born
elder statesman said Britain’s loud silence about Kanu’s predicament raises a
large red flag.
Parts of the statement read: “I woke up this morning with a
very heavy heart. I am constrained to say that I am not happy with the way and
manner our political elites are going about their request for the release of
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
“The sense I make of the cheap scramble by Igbo politicians
to be identified in the growing calls for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s freedom from
prolonged and unjust incarceration is that they are merely playing to the
gallery.
“It is obvious that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not
entirely the one holding Nnamdi Kanu. It was not even former President
Muhammadu Buhari nor his erstwhile Attorney General of the Federation (AGF),
Abubakar Malami SAN. All the AGFs, including the current one are mere legal
officers for the government.
“However, Kanu’s matter is a security issue, which requires
the involvement of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu. The
President may not have absolute authority to release Kanu although, he has the
power to influence things if he so desires.”
Obidigbo disclosed that the other powerful elephant in the
room blocking Nnamdi Kanu’s freedom is the British Government, stressing that
Kanu acted against British economic interest in Nigeria.
He remarked that the British economic interest, which Kanu’s
agitation was negatively affecting, has been enriching the government and
people of Britain, over several centuries, saying that although the fact is
well known to most Nigerian elites, they simply prefer to remain pretentious.
“Everything that Kanu said or did were done in Britain,
being a British citizen. But, they could not afford to arrest him on British
soil, because of obvious and potential backlash.
“What Britain did was to join in the international
conspiracy to lure Kanu to Kenya, knowing that Africans lack integrity and
respect for laws. They got him kidnapped in Kenya and forcibly and illegally
renditioned to Nigeria. They could not have done that in any other part of the
world, outside of Africa, without extreme repercussions. It is only on African
soil that such illegality can take place and his captors knew that much, and
took advantage of it.
“So, the British High Commissioner in Nigeria showed no
interest in at least speaking up against the violent kidnap and rendition of
her citizen. All the Embassy was interested was to hear Kanu renounce his dream
of a Biafra, probably with an undertaken never to support any such agitation in
future,” he sated.
The Industrialist said Britain’s double standards and
hypocrisy betrays their long term destabilising designs against Nigeria’s
socio-economic prosperity and independence.
He stated: “Here was the same Britain that in 1984
frustrated the forceful abduction and return to Nigeria of Alhaji Umaru Dikko,
who was not even a British citizen at the time, but merely an asylum seeker in
Britain.
“Britain continues to see Nigeria as their fertile farm land
for free economic exploitation and political manipulation. They have no wish to
relax their stranglehold, not now, not in the near future. So anything or
anyone posing as a threat to her economic interests in Nigeria, automatically
becomes their sworn enemy.”
The industrialist expressed relief that African youths are
gradually waking up to challenge all the existing frustrations, deprivations
and blatant exclusion arrayed against them from enjoying the natural endowments
of their own countries.
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