ICHEOKU says it is too far gone into the struggle for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to just go back now, regardless of whatever Igbo leaders might have said to President Muhammadu Buhari during their visit with him to urge that the Biafra separatist leader be freed from detention. Too many people have died already; people who laid down their lives believing that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was leading them somewhere. At least, if not them any longer, their beloved ones who they left behind.
It will therefore be a great disservice to their memory and their hopes and dreams, for which they paid the ultimate sacrifice, for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to now make a u-turn, accept the greek-gift from President Muhammadu Buhari and abandon the struggle. If he does, history will not be kind to him; and of course, millions of Biafra people as well as other global audience and well-wishers, who have come to admire his courage, will be greatly disappointed.
Therefore being negotiated out of his present ordeal is not an option as it is too risky a proposition. His life will be in perpetual mortal danger as the government might use its State secret service agents or other hired hitmen to whack him and pass it off as resulting from the insecurity in the Southeast or an internal rivalry within the IPOB rank, between those who are for abandoning the struggle in consonance with Igbo leaders meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari; and those who wants the agitation to continue.
Also, if the government doesn't kill him, some die in the wool IPOB operatives might knock him off in an internal revolt for being a sellout, for bringing the people out only to abandon them midstream.
Such a release will be an eternal dilemma for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, a Catch-22 sort of, agreeing to the president's "benevolent" release in deference to the Igbo leaders who secured it and isolating his IPOB one-world family base by accepting the attached implied conditions. At least Buhari will not just release him to go back during invectives and vituperations on him and his government as well as Nigeria. It will not happen and those Igbo leaders know as much. So how exactly can all the three conflicting factors be balanced out if not to retain the statusquo and damn the consequences.
Such a quandary of no real option will be better served if Mazi Nnamdi Kanu remains in detention or the Buhari government of Nigeria allows him to go free through a staged escape. In that way both parties will retain some degree of honor and the government will be able to finally wash off its hands from both the Kenya kidnap extraordinary rendition and whatever else might later become of or happen to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. But anything short of this scenario will only compound the issues further and make an already complicated situation even more complex. It is a gamble worth taking in order for there to be a real movement forward in the quagmire.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu no longer owns himself but have become inextricably woven to the fate of millions of IPOB members as well as millions more non members, but who empathize with the cause, which he has been championing and courageously leading for this past years. The decision to end the struggle is not his to now make because the struggle have outgrown him and he is now only but its globally recognized face.
So many people have died, killed by the Nigeria State while fighting for the cause. Ikonso in particular was brutally bludgeoned to death by the Nigeria State and so were hundreds of others who were disappeared, tortured and eventually killed. Some IPOB and other Biafra agitators were also drowned alive as the 23 Ezu River floaters in Anambra State evidences, one of the many atrocities perpetrated against innocent Biafra people whose only crime was dared to dream about a homeland.
Of course there was Nkpor massacre, Oyingbo massacre, Emene massacre, Afaraukwu massacre, Ihialla massacre and other countless incidences where brave men and women of IPOB stood their ground and perished as a result. There is also the global renewal and sensitization of a soon coming Biafra homeland which have got millions of people giddy with expectation that very soon, there will be a homeland for Umu-Chineke to finally call their own, where they can live and thrive in pursuit of happiness and excellence.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu cannot afford to quench all these hopes and dreams or in anyway rubbish the memory and sacrifice of all those brave men and women who believed in his promise that the realization of an independent State of Biafra is a non negotiable issue. Millions of people have been triggered and the fire lit in them is so fiercely burning now that going back from the struggle is no longer an attainable option, especially not by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu just decreeing it into being. It is a referendum at minimum and a smart government could easily defeat it through a rigged outcome; and that way finally rests the agitation.
The struggle has elevated so much that it is forward ever and backward never speeding train that will crush anything and anybody standing on its path. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu cannot afford to be that person to abandon the Biafra people in the middle of the road where he has led them to. The genie came out of the bottle the day people started sacrificing their lives for what Mazi Nnamdi Kanu assured them was a Biafra uploading. He owes these people as well as the broader Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, the homeland which he promised and assured them will soon come. Put in another words, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has no more other choice in the matter, except to deliver on his promise.
Mandela demanded a free South Africa and he got it after 27 years of incarceration. He went the full hog and to his willed mind, it did not matter however long it took to realize it. It is called sacrifice. Any leader who is not selflessly, mentally and physically prepared, and ready to sacrifice even his or her life to an objective at hand is in the strict sense of the word not a leader; at least not one in the mold of Nelson Mandela. Forcing an issue such as separatist agitation is not a cake's walk and also dying in detention as a result of it should have been contemplated too, should it ever get to that.
Anyway as the nation awaits what President Muhammadu Buhari eventually decides to do, his attempt at being clever by half, with that no assurance, assurance, remarks that he will consider it, does not give much hope, According to the president, Kanu is already standing trial and his intervention would go against the doctrine of separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary.
But the president cleverly chose not to mention that it was his government that charged Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to court. His government put the process in motion and can also end or terminate it. They can decide not to pursue the prosecution any longer as they are both legally and constitutionally empowered to do. It is called nolle prosequi and the president can direct the Attorney General to commence the discontinuance of prosecution process right at this very minute if he sincerely wants to let Mazi Nnamdi Kanu out of his gulag.
However, the big elephant in the room is not what President Muhammadu Buhari does or does not do; nor is it the wishes of the Igbo leaders and elders who visited him at Aso Rock. To some extent too, it is not whether Mazi Nnamdi Kanu agrees to be released into the suretyship of those Igbo leaders and bound to be of good behavior, no longer firebrand and provocative. No, the only indisputable issue, which is now a wishbone in the throats of everyone currently involved in trying to secure Mazi Nnamdi Kanu's "benevolence release" by President Muhammdu Buhari, is what comes the day after.
Will Mazi Nnamdi Kanu afford to abandon the cause and will he abandon the cause; and if he does, what will the response be from the stirred up millions of Biafran people, especially those restive IPOB members. President Muhammadu Buhari must not be allowed any credit or given a public relations profit from his releasing Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The best and the only plausible way for his release is to let the court rule on the wantonness of the Nigeria gestapo government that mounted the kidnap and extraordinary rendition of him from Kenya. Such a conclusive ruling needs to be given on the matter and in that way, the Dracula of Daura will not benefit from his illegality. But until then, lets keep watching as the drama unfolds. Viva Biafra. Keep hope alive.
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