Buhari, if you must send Kanu back to Kuje prison, send Arewa youth leaders to Kirikiri

I do not like Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). I think he is a megalomaniac who uses his tongue to seduce impressionable Igbo men and women for an insular end.

In fact, I see Kanu as an incarnation of Adolf Hitler, the late German demagogue, who wheedled his people into believing that the Jews were their problem.

The IPOB leader is a hate-speech merchant, and he is paying the price for his abomination against the state. He had spent more than a year in Kuje prison, Abuja, and he is currently facing charges of treason at a federal high court in the Nigerian capital.

Before his release from prison, his supporters – thousands of them – held rallies and protests in the south-east and the south-south, and they often swarmed the court where he is facing trial. In some of the rallies, many of his supporters were mauled down by army bullets. What will happen if he is re-arrested?

I recall in November 2016, Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog, released a report stating that the army killed 150 pro-Biafra protesters extra-judicially. This is just an aside, by the way.

On Monday, the office of the attorney-general of the federation (AGF) disclosed that it had filed an application for the revocation of Kanu’s bail.  According to Abubakar Malami, the AGF, the IPOB leader has flouted all the conditions for his release.

I will not go into the forest of the conditions of Kanu’s bail because I know they dominate the public quarry. But when a judge orders an accused person, one with a strong, inebriated following for that matter, not to be in a gathering of more than 10 people or not to grant interviews that is a vademecum to disobedience.

Personally, I think the bail conditions violated the fundamental rights of the Biafra hate connoisseur. This is what I think, even though I believe Kanu does not have faith in the cause he is pursuing. He is just an attention whore who uses the agitation for Biafra as opium to sedate his “lovers”.

Now that Malami has initiated a process to have Kanu sent back to jail, which going by the law is normal, why is he not taking action on Arewa youth leaders who held a news conference in Kaduna and ordered an entire ethnic group – the Igbo – to leave the north by October 1? These northern youth leaders even had the temerity of declaring that all Igbo property in the region would be repossessed. This shocking, even though the threat was withdrawn, it sent variegated panic signals across the country. The fact is, the ultimatum is a denominated hate speech, and treasonable.

As matter of fact, that Kanu should be sent back to jail is not my problem, but what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

It is risible the reason Malami gave for not moving to have the northern youth leaders, who acted against the state, arrested. According to him, it is because of “security considerations”. This is ludicrous.  So, I ask, does he think the re-arrest of Kanu will not have greater security implications? The attorney-general has simply given fodder to ethnic warthogs to grunt and kvetch.

Also, what he has done is to give credence to the assertion that Kanu is being prosecuted and persecuted because he is from a hated and subdued section of the country.

The point is; if the government is determined to send Kanu back to Kuje prison, it should also be willing to send the northern youth leaders to Kirikiri prison. Both Kanu and the youth leaders have acted against the state. They both deserve space in penitentiary.

In conclusion, UN human rights experts have called on the Nigerian government to prosecute the northern youth leaders for the gravity of their action. But sadly the government is playing possum on this. Also, Arewa youth leaders called for the re-arrest of Kanu, and the government was up in speed to have him incarcerated. Nigeria is a delicate country and its handlers must handle it delicately. Again, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

MEANWHILE…

Why are women always blamed for the collapse of a marriage?

I read the statement of Olori Wuraola, ex-wife of the Ooni of Ife, announcing the end of her marriage to the monarch, and I was flummoxed by the fusillade of slander she is enduring.

One spectrum of the twirling rumour of why the marriage hit the Titanic iceberg says she is infertile, another says she cheated on her ex-husband. In all of this, the Ooni has no blame. Can the “bashers” of this woman spare a second and think that she might have endured domestic abuse in the marriage, and that it might be the Ooni who is the serial cheat.

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