An industrialist, Dr Chike Obidigbo, has advised politicians, especially those from the Southeast, against compounding the travails of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
He expressed dismay at the way some Igbo political elites are handling the ongoing popular demand for the release of the embattled IPOB leader, stressing that the overzealous politicians are acting out of ignorance and mostly for self-aggrandisement.
In a statement, he sent to journalists in Enugu, Obidigbo, who is the President of Osisioma Foundation, noted that the delicate nature of Kanu’s incarceration requires quiet diplomacy to achieve a political solution without politicising the young man’s release, the way they are going about it.
While identifying the salient complications around the IPOB leader’s forceful rendition and consequent incarceration, he said Britain’s loud silence about Kanu’s predicament raises a large red flag.
Part of the statement read: “I woke up this morning with a very heavy heart. I am constrained to say that I am not comfortable 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 power to release Kanu, although he has the power to influence things if he so wishes.”
Obidigbo disclosed that the other powerful elephant in the room blocking Kanu’s freedom is the British government, stressing that Kanu acted against British economic interests in Nigeria.
He remarked that this 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 every Nigerian elite, most are simply pretentious.
“Everything that Kanu said or did was 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 then got him kidnapped in Kenya and forcibly and illegally renditioned him to Nigeria. They could not have done that in any other part of the world, outside of Africa, without extreme repercussions and consequences. Such can only happen in Africa, and they knew that much.
“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 in was to hear Kanu renounce his dream of a Biafra, probably with a promise never to support any such agitation in the future,” he stated.
The industrialist said Britain’s double standards and hypocrisy betray their long-term destabilising designs against Nigeria’s socio-economic prosperity and independence.
According to Obidigbo, “Here was the same Britain that frustrated in 1984 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 own fertile farmland for free economic exploitation and political manipulation. They have no wish to relax their stranglehold, not now, not in the near future.
“But then, African youths are gradually coming up to challenge all the existing frustrations, deprivations, and blatant exclusion from enjoying the natural endowments of their own countries.”
