Kanu: Buhari — not I — should be detained for disobeying court order

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), says President Muhammadu Buhari and Lawal Daura, director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS), should be detained for disobeying court orders.

In an interview with The Sun, Kanu recalled how the federal government refused to release him after the court ordered that he should be set free.

He told those calling for his arrest to demand that the president should be detained.

“President Muhammadu Buhari was the one who broke the laws, he disobeyed the direct court order to release me unconditionally, not once, but twice,” he said.

“Honourable Shuaibu of Wuse magistrate court granted me bail, Buhari did not release me. Hon Justice Ademola granted me unconditional bail, Buhari and his cousin, Lawal Daura refused to honour that court order.

“They are the ones who should be detained for flagrant disobedience to court orders. I want the northern Arewa irredentists to call for the arrest of Buhari and Daura for flouting court order after court order, asking for my release.

“It smacks of hypocrisy and absolute cowardice that people who could not rise up in defence of the law when a court made a judicial pronouncement are now clamouring for my arrest because they believe it is easy to do so. Before now, Nnamdi Kanu is Igbo, he is a Biafran and can be arrested and nothing will happen but that would not be anymore, it would no longer happen.”

Kanu also boasted that the country would but if the federal government re-arrest him.

Last week, the government approached a court in Abuja to seek the revocation of Kanu’s bail on the grounds that he had violated the conditions under which he was released.

Binta Nyako, a judge of the federal high court in Abuja, who set the agitator free after 18 months in detention, ordered him not to grant press interviews and to avoid being seen in a crowd of more than 10 people.

But Kanu has since violated the bail conditions.

In the interview, he wondered why no attempt has been made to arrest the Arewa youth who gave the quit notice to the Igbo resident in the north.

“Quote me verbatim. If I’m rearrested, this country will burn, I assure you,” he said.

”From where that oil money they depend on, they can no longer have access to it. I assure them that. This is not empty threat.

”We’re IPOB, we don’t abandon our own.”

Asked why he has been violating the bail conditions, he said: “Are you talking about an illegal and unconstitutional bail condition?  A bail condition designed to emasculate and basically render IPOB impotent? Does anyone seriously think I’m going to stand for IPOB to be rendered desolate?

“I can’t allow that to happen, I have not violated any laws unknown to the Nigerian judicial establishment. I have not committed any offence; no crime whatsoever. I said no crime. It is a violation of my right to ask me not to speak; to ask me not to be in a congregation of not more than 10 people, an absolute violation of articles enshrined in the constitution that I expect all and sundry to be rising up in defence of, not trying to justify the erosion of my fundamental human rights to speak, to be heard and to associate.”

He insisted that the Anambra governorship election will not hold, calling on his supporters to boycott the exercise.

“I gave a speech in Aba, Abia state on Sunday and I made it absolutely clear that the boycott stays,” he said.

“We must boycott the election in Anambra state. It is our civic responsibility to do so and that’s what we are going to do – total and absolute boycott, to let the whole world understand the strength of IPOB on the ground, in Anambra state.”