Coalition of Northern Groups on Monday warned President Muhammadu Buhari not to grant the request by some Igbo leaders to set free the detained leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu.
Kanu is currently undergoing trial before an Abuja High Court for offences related to terrorism.
CNG, however, also condemned Buhari’s promise to the Igbo leaders’ delegation to look into their request, saying it was concerned by the “President’s ambiguous, careless response in which he tended to make a specific promise to consider that heinous and unpatriotic demand rooted in a history of evolving terror.”
The Coalition further warned that “the North would no longer remain idle when its people are deliberately targeted and massacred while the perpetrators are shielded by criminal tribal bigots who pose as leaders.”
CNG gave these warnings in a statement by its spokespersons, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, entitled, “STATEMENT ON IGBO LEADERS’ DEMAND FOR RELEASE OF NNAMDI KANU AND PRESIDENT BUHARI’S RESPONSE” against the backdrop of the Igbo leaders visit President Buhari in Abuja to plead for the discontinuation of the trial and release of the IPOB leader.
The full text of the Coalition’s statement dated November 22, 2021, reads:
STATEMENT ON IGBO LEADERS’ DEMAND FOR RELEASE OF NNAMDI KANU AND PRESIDENT BUHARI’S RESPONSE
November 22, 2021
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG), representing the vast equation of rights and civil organisations in northern Nigeria, has taken stock of events unfolding since the arrest and repatriation of Nnamdi Kanu, the fugitive leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
We especially note, with deep sense of concern, the unrelenting desperation by certain interest groups in the South-East, to subvert the due process of justice and tamper with judicial processes since Kanu’s arraignment.
This level of desperation to abort Kanu’s trial for masterminding series of mindless violence and separatism through the force of arms and terrorist tactics got to a peak with the recent visit by a certain ‘Highly Respected Igbo Greats’, led by a 93- year-old 1st Republic parliamentarian and Minister of Aviation, Mbazulike Amaechi, to demand from President Muhammadu Buhari his unconditional release.
Of particular concern is the President’s ambiguous, careless response in which he tended to make a specific promise to consider that heinous and unpatriotic demand rooted in a history of evolving terror.
PROFILE OF CRIMES
From 2017 to 2020, at the peak of IPOB’s dangerous campaigns, Kanu had instigated the killing of more than 1,230 northern Nigerian citizens living in parts of the South East.
Several millions worth of businesses, properties and valuable assets belonging to northerners and citizens of other regions were destroyed across the South eastern cities on the instructions of Nnamdi Kanu within the same period.
From early 2020 to date, Kanu had instigated, the proscribed IPOB to continue to mastermind mindless attacks and destruction of national security assets, democratic symbols, and killings of about 400 security personnel and orphaned their families.
The atrocities got to a height when Kanu infiltrated and hijacked the ENDSARS protests and openly incited the callous, dehumanizing cannibalistic murder of about 250 security personnel and the razing of hundreds of police stations, security facilities and private businesses of Nigerians from other parts of the country.
His incitement to violence and destruction in the wake of the ENDSARS protests, replayed long-practiced tactics in the form of more coordinated attacks against northerners and against agents and symbols of the Federal Government of Nigeria in the South-East and parts of the South-South.
Unprovoked evictions, attacks and killings of northerners in various parts of the South resulted from the hate campaigns and propaganda being conducted by Kanu and other regional and ethnic agitators.
Since early 2021, Kanu continue to play a major role in the ongoing insurgency in Southeastern Nigeria, as his Eastern Security Network (ESN), battle the nation’s security forces.
Throughout these years, the Igbo leaders who are today all over the place seeking his unconditional release, never deemed it necessary to call him to order or create any distance from his atrocious activities against the state and collective mayhem against Nigerians and the North.
OBSERVATIONS
The latest desperation by the Igbo leaders to free Kanu and Buhari’s disturbing pledge to consider the plea inadvertently leads to the following inevitable observations:
1. The composition of the Igbo elders group has vindicated the position we have espoused since 2017 that the diabolical scheme planned and exhibited in the criminal actions of Kanu and IPOB, is fully supported morally and politically by the vast majority of the pliant Igbo elders, elites, politicians, religious leaders, traditional rulers, business persons, and the larger population of the South East.
2. The Group’s demand and the President’s promise, represent nothing short of a grand conspiracy to condone and impose an agenda of destruction and collective mayhem seen in the several unreasonable and unacceptable actions that have been perpetrated against the Nigerian state and people by Kanu.
3. The demand, and Buhari’s disturbing promise to consider it without minding the number of soldiers, policemen and thousands of other innocent Nigerians already murdered and presently physically threatened by IPOB terrorists on the express orders of Kanu suggest a lack of sense of responsibility on the part of those in power.
4. Buhari’s response to the Igbo leaders’ demand could also signal a dangerous endorsement of the amassing of the huge number of arms already imported by IPOB terrorists and their sponsors, which are already being used to cause mayhem across the country.
5. The President’s body dance towards acceding to the demands for Kanu’s release suggests that he has lost the statesmanship and caurage to uphold the universal principle of separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.
6. This has also further exposed the extent of complicity and docility of our clerics and other community leaders who were in the forefront of urging tolerance from northerners when they came under incessant attacks, but could not find the voice to speak today.
RESOLUTIONS
In view of the above stated facts and observations, the CNG hereby resolves:
1. To warn that any attempt by the President to accede to the demand to release, without prosecuting and punishing Kanu, will inadvertently reduce Nigeria to a completely lawless state where criminals of all shades will commit crimes against the country, and then ask their traditional rulers and other regional or tribal leaders to press for their release.
2. Warn President Buhari to reclaim his statesmanship by refusing to be cajoled into interfering with the standard principle of separation of powers and independence of the judiciary.
3. Warn that the North would no longer remain idle when its people are deliberately targeted and massacred while the perpetrators are shielded by criminal tribal bigots who pose as leaders.
4. Warn President Buhari that the North has today realized that he places more premium on the pursuit for votes and political popularity for his party, than he does for the sanctity of lives of northerners and security personnel who stake their lives and welfare of families in the service the nation.
5. To warn that the North would hold Buhari responsible for the blood of its people unlawfully shed through the activities of Kanu in the event he succumbs to the Igbo pressure to release him.
5. To demand the arrest and prosecution of those Igbo leaders and any other group or individual who are involved in this complicity to get Kanu freed by subverting the course of justice as accomplice and sponsors of the many atrocities and crimes committed by Kanu against humanity and the Nigerian state.
Thank you.
Abdul-Azeez Suleiman
Spokesperson, CNG