The Ohanaeze Youth Council (OYC), the youth wing of the apex Igbo sociocultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide, has warned President Bola Tinubu-led Nigerian government to release the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, from detention to avoid plunging Nigeria into a looming destructive anarchy in the country.
The Council led by Igboayaka O. Igboayaka, as its National President General, said that the Nigerian government’s refusal to release Kanu is a clear sign that the Southeast, popularly dominated by Igbos are political captives in Nigeria.
Igboayaka described the continuous “derogatory incarceration” of Kanu in custody of the Department of State Service (DSS) as “a deliberate act to perpetually keep the Igbos in servitude and fiefdom as political captives in Nigeria.”
Speaking to the journalist during the weekend in Owerri, Imo State capital, Igboayaka berated the Supreme Court for adjourning ruling on Kanu’s case to December, 15, 2023 “while working secretly with the executives thereby condoning executive rascality, impunity and lawlessness exemplified in the Supreme Court’s encouragement and/or supportation of illegitimate rulers such examples like of Bola Ahmed Tinubu.”
Igboayaka said that “If Nigeria is a country where there’s a genuine, constitutional sense of the power separation between the executive and the judiciary, the conspiracy of long debilitating and/or annoying adjournment of Nnamdi Kanu’s case to far away December, 2023 wouldn’t be conceivable but for, unfortunately, the sick judiciary of ours in Nigeria which has, hitherto, been the most corrupt judiciary in Africa without any iota of independence.”
He therefore called on governors, Senators, Houses of Representatives and Assembly members, Ministers, Ambassadors, traditional rulers and religious leaders of Igbo extraction to cause a demonstration of some variants of civil disobedience to Nigeria to agitate and press for the unconditional release of Kanu.
According to Igboayaka, “It’s obvious that Nigeria doesn’t want to implement the 3Rs introduced by Gen. Gowon which are Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation for it is surely clear that the power divers of Nigeria do not want to treat Igbos as true Nigerians.
“In every ramifications, the federal government has treated the Igbo as slaves since 1970 and the slavery treatment against the Igbos is still in continuance against the Igbos in Nigeria as can be seen in police, army, navy, immigration, air force, and other federal agencies.
“The federal government of Nigeria doesn’t have any good intentions for Igbos except to keep them in slavery and econo-political docility. Since 2015 of president Mohammed Buhari to the present illegal, illegitimate occupation of Aso rock by president Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Igbos have suffered huge and clear tribulations of extra-judicial massacre, killings and a deliberate ethnic cleansing against their constitutional rights in Nigeria.
“It is simply obvious that Igbos are rejected in Nigeria and there’s no hope and guarantee of the lives, future and progress of the Igbos in the present political structure of oppressive contraption called Nigeria, Comrade Igboayaka lamented.”
He warned the Nigerian government and leaders, “whose only interests are in the milking dry of the Nigeria’s natural resources, that the neocolonialism tendency that is hitting up, the marginalization of Igbos and the continuous detention of Nnamdi Kanu in prison are calling for another civil, tribal war where Nigerians, and not baboons, would be soaked in their blood.”
Igboayaka stressed that “There is nothing again that appeals to the spirit of any true Igbo person to be part of Nigeria except conducting a referendum for the indigenous Igbos,” adding that “Nigeria’s unity simply means an orchestrated conspiracy to keep Igbos as slaves. Therefore Igbos must rise with laudable stratagem to reject this slavery by discovery a new nation for themselves, Comrade Igboayaka stated”
The OYC President said that the Nigerian government under the leadership of President Tinubu “must realize that holding Nnamdi Kanu and disobeying several courts that have set him free is simply nursing a beast that would cause anarchy leading to the destruction of Nigeria.”
Therefore, “In the light of the above, I honestly urge the Nigerian Government to earnestly work for a possible referendum for the Igbos to avert a looming bloody crisis that would soon engulf Nigeria.”