₦airaland Forum

sarrki:
Locking that criminal and terrorist like onikuje of Kuje land is within the law of federal republic of Nigeria

buckdudebuck:
Yes he is a terrorist for and to Lazy and parasitic low lives like you and your people.

jollymizzle:
Kanu tried his best... To be smart, brainwashing the igbo populace with his radio service by toying with their emotions. Calling for the youths to rise up in violence and take biafra by force. But he forgot that while its easy to prey on people though their emotions, The world has no place for extremists and fundamentalists. The memories of hitler and his likes are still fresh in peoples minds. There is still hope for him though, mandela started this way too before the long, cold solitary nights made him realise the world doesnt tolerate acts of intimidation. Now pat utomi (and surely the rest of his entourage) who himself stated boldly he doesnt belive in biafra went to see Kanu to shore up his political clout in the east. To the supporters of Kanu, that is what he has become, a circus show, just like going to the zoo to see a monkey eat a banana.other igbo leaders will use him to achieve their aims now that he has already done the dirty job. The world likes men of peace.

Pussickpunk:
Yes history in Biafra.They'll do well to remember him

sarrki:
So that criminal is still talking

Oooooh kanu you will know the differencenter between

Kuje and nguru prison soon

You have 5 more decades to spend behind bars

A renowned economist and former presidential candidate, Prof. Pat Utomi, tells TOBI AWORINDE that Nnamdi Kanu’s continued detention is a violation of the rule of law

Please, narrate your experience during the visit of Igbo leaders to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, in prison.

For some time now, a group of us have been involved in leadership mentoring. We have mentored a group of Igbo professionals who are scattered around the world, many in the United States, some in Nigeria, some in Europe. A number of us had argued that the time for a new generation of leaders is needed. But in some ways, there has been a failure of leadership across the country. But more importantly, in Igboland, we needed a new vision and new kinds of leadership vistas. That discussion resulted in a global group known as Nzuko Umunna. Nzuko Umunna in Igbo basically is a sort of town hall meeting of brothers.

We’ve been active on a couple of communication platforms in which we are essentially ceding leadership to a group of people in their late 20s and 30s, some of whom are in the US coordinating activities nationwide and around the world. That has resulted in a number of leadership initiatives in which issues, political, economic and social, have been advanced and canvassed, and matters of education, industrialisation and all of those have been in the offing. Among the issues that have come out of such discussions are those that are central to the new Igbo essence, to uplift and uphold the dignity of every Igbo man and engage stoutly to make sure nobody abuses and takes the Igbo person for granted anywhere in the world. So, one of the test cases obviously, which was staring us in the face, was the case of the incarceration ultra vires the rule of law. Of course, there was an imperative of engagement. As part of worldwide consultations, we were asked by this group to pay a courtesy call and get the point of view of the gentleman (Kanu) himself, and after that, to express views to the world. And that was what happened yesterday (Tuesday).

For how long has Nzuko Umunna existed as a formal entity?

In some ways, it is a migration from several groups and platforms. There is, for example, what is called the Igbo Intelligential Forum. There are several other groups, like the Think Tank, Aka Ikenga, all of these. Because values were central to redeeming the Igbo nation, people of strong values were literally handpicked from various other groups to form this kind of body. In this particular form, it has been in existence for perhaps a little less than a year or about a year. But it still has reference into some of the other groups and platforms.

Who are the executive members and the overall leader of the group?

There is a steering group from the US. There are people in Nigeria who are also (steering). There is a board of trustees, in which I am active. But as I said, the essential leadership was given to the 20- and 30-year-olds, who are typically intellectuals but they are youngand more active. The person playing a steering role in this group from Texas used to be an assistant of mine a couple of years ago. He is currently a PhD candidate in the US. His name is Joseph Oduomoko.

How many of you went to visit Kanu in Kuje Prison?

There were many people who wanted to go but we had to keep it trimmed. We were about 14, if I recall correctly. We had interesting conversations with him. We asked him to tell us what his perspectives were on things, to share on his current incarceration experience, and that was a useful conversation. It helped give us an insight into his consciousness because really, the group (IPOB) is a consciousness movement. If you remember Steve Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, this group is (also) an Igbo renaissance consciousness movement.

Can you share some of the things he told you?

We discussed the state of the country and perceptions of levels of justice in the country and why the economy is challenged: because of policies of exclusion. We discussed what we generally called the democratisation of discontent in Nigeria. That is to say there seems to be unhappiness about Nigeria everywhere around Nigeria, and therefore, the need to change course for the country. The whole idea is to create a platform for continuing conversation, to harmonise the views of different people about what the most appropriate solution is to this challenge of malcontent.

What are Kanu’s perspectives on these things you discussed?

I don’t think it is fair to be his spokesperson. He can represent himself and speak for himself. What I took away from the meeting is that he is a very intelligent person. He clearly is not mad. He’s very strategic and focused.

What did you notice about the conditions in which he is being kept?

He seemed quite calm and relaxed. There is a meeting area; he came to the meeting area. We didn’t go to into the cell. We did not discuss food and stuff like that. But I think the prison staff and wardens were very polite and professional. That was good.

The Federal Government has accused him of treasonable and inciting acts. Do you think it is fair to call Kanu a felon and a threat to national security?

From my perspective, certainly not. Freedom of expression does not constitute threat to national security, especially when you have the right to reply. The Americans have a doctrine on freedom of expression and I have been privileged to be on the US International Visitor Programme that was focused particularly on freedom of expression.

Among those that participated in that programme with me were Senator Shehu Sani and Hon. Abike Dabiri. Part of the convention on freedom of expression is, “Let a thousand flowers bloom, if there is a lie being told, enough truth will suffocate the life in the marketplace of ideas.” I think that is a very healthy way to look at expression because the converse to restrict or prevent expression drives down people’s ideas into silos with more threatening future consequences.

So, I think that there are enough outlets for a different perspective offered by any citizen that the rule of law and the ideas of freedom of expression are much more important in the order of what is good or bad for society than repressive prevention of expression.

In your meeting with Kanu, was there any discussion of him setting aside his pro-Biafra agitation in exchange for his release?

To start with, two courts of competent jurisdiction have tried him. One gave him a bail because he did not find the matter to be of high treason, obviously. If it was high treason, he (the judge) wouldn’t give him a bail. The second completely discharged and acquitted him, calling for his immediate release. Surely, not doing so is to do damage to the concept of the rule of law. And where the rule of law is assaulted, when impunity reigns — because this is the reason we (All Progressives Congress) ran against the Peoples Democratic Party; we argued that they were a party of impunity. It would be inappropriate for us to become a party of impunity. So, the law is there and courts of competent jurisdiction have asked for his release. I think that it is inappropriate to continue to hold a person like that. And I think it is even more inappropriate to ask a person to submit to a denial of his freedom, to express himself in the future as basis for giving him his freedom, which is what, ‘Promise that you can’t talk again, so we can let you go,’ amounts to. One of the most important factors in the development and human prosperity is when institutions have their legitimacy challenged by impunity or by refusing to obey law, for example. That brings greater harm to the rest of society than whatever may be dysfunctional about allowing a person to express views that you are not happy with.

How do you think Kanu’s detention will affect the Igbo in the 2019 presidential elections?

I am not a soothsayer. It is not my place to speculate on presidential elections. It is just my place as a citizen to exercise citizenship behaviour and point to the fact that abuse of the rule of law jeopardises my freedom because I could be the next victim. That’s all.

Are you in support of Biafra?

I don’t know what that means. I don’t think you have met anyone who is more Nigerian than me, both in my upbringing and the things that I have said. If you want to evaluate, you just go back to my history and read, and find out if you or anybody you know is more Nigerian than I have been. I was born in Kaduna (State). I was baptised in Jos (Plateau State). I lived in Maiduguri (Borno State) as an infant. I started school in Kano (State); the bulk of my primary education was in Gusau, now in Zamfara State. I started secondary school in Onitsha (Anambra State). Then I had the bulk of my secondary education in Loyola College Ibadan. I attended the University of Nigeria (Nsukka, Enugu State). If you check my history, one of the things I am accused of is that I am more Yoruba than anything else. So, I think that you don’t need to ask me a question about that.

How do you think Kanu’s continued detention could affect Biafra agitations going forward?

There is a book that was published last year and at the presentation of that book, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar called for a restructuring of Nigeria. The title of that book written by Chido Onumah is We Are All Biafrans. Now, Biafra is used in that title as a metaphor to suggest that across the board in Nigeria, people feel this great discontent. In effect, all Nigerians literally have become Biafrans in the sense of discontent with the Nigerian project. If you see the statement that we made, it began with a quote from a statement made just last week by Prof. Ango Abdullahi, in which he said “Nigeria is not working.” So, if Nigerians are honest in expressing it (their discontent) in all kinds of different ways and the metaphor for that expression is the word that rallies a people who felt discontent with Nigeria many years ago, that word being ‘Biafra,’ I think you have to be careful with your interpretation of what people mean when they say ‘Biafra.’ Biafra essentially is a catch-all phrase for being unhappy.

Are you still with the APC?

Of course, I am a passionate, committed member of the APC still, and one of my major commitments is to work internally for the reform of the APC from within.

If the Buhari government has not heeded calls to release Kanu so far, what new approach will you take as Igbo elders?

We will cross the bridge when we get there. We pace it and take it one day at a time.

LouisBERG:
Get your facts right and provide a valid source until then, I would say you have no inkling of what's going on.


#caLLmeBERG

MalcoImX:
//
EXCLUSIVE: Elbit Systems officials arrive; begin installation of $40 million Internet Spy facility for Nigeria
November 26, 2013 Ogala Emman
http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/150333-exclusive-elbit-systems-officials-arrive-begin-installation-40-million-internet-spy-facility-nigeria.html

MalcoImX:
Sure he was the most insulted, but the fear of repercussions was with us. He contracted an Israeli firm (Elbit, I think) to spy on internet users - which means anything could happen.

MalcoImX:
See freedom of speech. During GEJ, even to criticize na fear. Now see your moniker. Try that during GEJ and you'll be blocked.

freshcvvs:
Uneditable and undeniable fact is that MOST of those wishing him dead will die before him.

Not a curse but a known fact.

It could be you you know? Yes YOU.

So watch what you wish others.

We all have our sins so don't wish death on others if you don't want same for yourself.

When former Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, died in June 1998, I was one of those who took to the streets to celebrate the nation’s liberation from his murderous grip. These days, I look back at that infamous Monday and wonder the point of rejoicing at someone’s death when none of us is beyond mortality. Abacha’s death, we know, resolved a conundrum and cleanly freed us from the bonds with which he held us. Also, given the timing of his death, it did in fact seem God heard Nigerians’ cries for liberation. However, death by natural causes is no punishment; it is one of life’s many realities.

In the past few days, both the “fake news” and refutation of President Muhammadu Buhari’s “death” have seized the airwaves and “bus-stop parliaments.”



Since the President’s announcement of his annual vacation and “medical trip” to the United Kingdom, folks eager to script Buhari’s obituary have been beating an elegiac gong. In the post-truth world, rumours and fact-free truths travel the world without a visa and debunking them, unfortunately, sometimes assert their validity.

To make a revolting matter even more shameful, Buhari’s media aides, Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, two spin doctors who never muster enough professional dignity to overlook the temptation of wading in murky pools with every species of human, seized their social media handles. They announced – with puerile peevishness- that the President was alive and well! From their interaction with cybercitizens, one deduces they imagine that those who wanted the President dead are malevolent souls who are still sore Buhari defeated their candidate in the 2015 election.

Adesina and Shehu might well be right. In the run-up to the 2015 election, the sitting governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, started the guessing game about Buhari’s health and death. Other “wailers” picked up the baton and have continued to run with it since then. What both aides have probably not considered is that such rumour mongering is also a response to the failures of the government to properly communicate with people. Over the years, the Nigerian government has proved to be thoroughgoing dishonest on even simple and insignificant issues. When people cannot get reliable official information, they make up their realities and hawk them around until they acquire some truth value.

Besides, our nation has a long history of leaders lying about their health. From Abacha to the late Umaru Yar’Adua, to the wife of the former President Goodluck Jonathan, we never get an accurate picture of anything. Till now, we cannot tell with confirmed certainty if it was liver cirrhosis that killed Abacha or the mysterious “Indian escorts.”

Did Yar’Adua speak regularly to his ‘Kitchen Cabal’ or his communication on his deathbed was a case of ‘Esau’s hand, Jacob’s voice’? How did Governor Danbaba Suntai govern Taraba State after his accident? What was the nature of Dame Patience Jonathan’s illness and how did she get mysteriously healed after leaving Aso Rock?

What is Buhari’s actual condition of health? In these times where the traffic one successfully drives to one’s website translates to financial gains, “fake news” mongering will not abate. Until our leaders learn to preempt rumours by making their health conditions public information, they will expend themselves putting out fires.

Rather than stamp their petulant feet on the ground and moan the immorality of wishing one’s leaders dead, they should ask why the people they govern want them dead.

Beyond the obvious reasons of poor communication between the leader and the led, is the reality of spite and sadism on the part of the citizens. People wish their leaders dead because they want to transpose some of the pains those leaders inflict on them back to the leaders; they want everything that brings them joy obliterated

While I am in no way justifying this sadism on the part of the people, I also think a mere resort to flagellating them will not help our leaders to introspect. The question they should in fact ask themselves is why things should be otherwise.

Why should people care if their leaders live or die when those leaders themselves do not care if their people die or live?

Why ask people to demonstrate empathy towards a leader who grabs the public wallet and goes abroad to see well-trained specialists in well-funded hospitals? Why ask impoverished people to show humane feelings towards such a person when the system that the leader runs at home cannibalises them and their children?

Why would people who live, move, and have their being amidst dehumanising conditions be concerned about the ethics of wishing death on someone else? The conditions of their own existence already bespeak death, yet they are supposed to writhe at the pain of a leader whose privileges are funded with their blood?

If they must know, wishing our leaders dead is moral revanchism. Those death wishes are like the stone from David’s slingshot. They might not have achieved the desired aim of hitting Goliath in the head and watching him drop dead, but is nevertheless a ready weapon of warfare available to the agonised poor, the helpless victims of the nation’s necropolitics, the forgotten and silenced majority, and the historically and structurally dispossessed.

Trying to ramp up religious or cultural sentiments about the immorality of wishing our leaders dead will not abdicate the reasons people wish death or evil on their leaders. Such shaming will only repress the instinct to publicly express it. Under that surface sneer of “I wish Mr. President soonest recover” will remain a seething rage that can only find some cathartic outlet through their deaths.

I dare say that this feeling of “go and die!” as it was once tactlessly voiced by a former Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole, is mutual between the leaders and the led. In Nigeria, we eat death for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Life is cheap here and there is little evidence that our leaders think that our lives matter. Ours is a country where a bomb will “mistakenly” drop on a refugee camp, death toll will rise to 236 and not a thing has changed one week later. No lawmaker is currently sitting to review the gross incompetence that led to such a massacre and propose changes to the conditions that made it happen.

Ours is a country where protesters are shot by security agencies whose heads have been addled and nobody, not even their state governors or legislators, will shut down the system and demand that their deaths be redressed. From Benue to Enugu states, people have been gruesomely killed by rampaging herdsmen, but what have our “dear leaders” done other than toss the responsibility of accountability elsewhere?

The blood of the Shi’ites who were dumped in graves dug at night still cries for justice, but it flies past our deafened ears. The many victims of violent deaths vociferously cry for redress; their vain pleas drain us of psychic energy. If our lives are treated so cheaply, why are they surprised wishes of their own death are cheaply trafficked?

We are gradually becoming a society where death is meaningless because life itself has been sapped of meaning. When people look at their leaders and wish them dead, they are trying to infuse some meaning into a meaningless order.

Just like we thought of Abacha, if this person — who represents ethical and spiritual corruption, decadence, executive aloofness, oppression of the poor by the rich — drops dead, then maybe it is proof that there is a God; He exists and in fact cares about alleviating our pain.

Buhari is not the first president who will be rumoured dead; and if the one that comes after him makes our lives miserable too, people could wish him/her dead as an expression of their inner rage and frustrated helplessness. It is nothing personal.