₦airaland Forum

Nnamdipapa:
My final piece on the Nnamdi Kanu judgment and Peter Obi Statement situation:

On the 25th of July 2021, I and some family members drove from Lagos to Anambra to collect the bridal list from my in-laws, officially commencing the journey to my marriage. We arrived Nnewi around 5 pm and finished sometime past 8. My wife was in that blue Lexus 350 with us, likewise my uncle and brother, and the plan was that very early the next day, being Monday the 26th, we will drive into Nnewi to pick her and then be on our way back to Lagos.

We slept in my hometown, Azigbo, and around 5:30 the next morning, as planned, we started for Nnewi. We drove through Amichi. On getting somewhere around that market close to Igwe Orizu, we noticed that the vehicles going in the other direction were flashing their headlamps on us. We slowed down and soon a commercial bus driver revving his vehicle asked us while speaking at the top of his voice to go back because they were shooting somewhere ahead of us in Nnewi.

Who, we asked, and he said something about Biafra and IPOB and zoomed off. We reversed and join the procession of fleeing vehicles. Because of different engagements the people in the vehicle had back in Lagos the next day, we really needed to return to Lagos. So we tried again to drive into Nnewi through the inner roads in Awka-Etiti. The closer we got to Nnewi, the worse it became because we could now hear the gunshots. We drove back and decided to wait a bit. We phoned our in-laws and they confirmed it was hot that morning in Nnewi and that we should consider staying back, and/or leaving without their daughter. She would come back the next day using public transport.

We went back to Azigbo and decided to wait out the time. Later, because we hadn't planned on staying that long, we wanted to go find something we would eat, and also see if we could still travel back to Lagos, even if later than earlier. While on our way, a group of men intercepted us at Ichida Bus Stop.

“Who are you people”, one screamed at us, hitting the bonnet.

“Whine down the glasses”, another added, order coming from different angle as they surrounded our vehicle.

“Where are you going to”, the barking continued, with little time given to really answer their questions.

“Don't you know that today is sit-at-home; where do you think you are going when our leader Nnamdi Kanu is held prisoner in Abuja and is going to court?”

One of them tried to open the door.

“Oga come down; all of you should come down, we are driving this car to Abuja today. We are going to see Kanu. It is either you join us or you give us this car”.

We begged, cajoled, and agreed with them on the spot about the injustice meted out against us Ndigbo, Kanu, and the southeast in Nigeria. After a lot of parley led by my uncle who was in his late seventies, we gave them money, saying we supported the cause, and they allowed us to go. We went to the popular nwanyi ocha place in Ichida, ate, and decided not to go back that way, rather risk our way to Onitsha, away from Anambra, and then to Lagos.

The question I have asked myself all these years was, if that experience had happened sometime between 2022-2024 when tensions had stiffened and the group, with their spin-offs, more militarized and armed, what would have been our fate that mid-morning? Your guess is as good as mine as we have all seen similar events reported in the news and on social media and how they ended up.

Two months later, proceeding to the next stage of our marriage, my wife and I had to go to the headquarters of the Nnewi South local government in Ukpor to register our marriage and fufil other requirements like getting the documentation we would eventually hand the church. A local government wedding per se, which can be done in lieu of court wedding. Everything went well and while we were about leaving, we met a guy from my village, Iruokpala, who worked at the LG HQand he helped us take pictures.

A few months later, however, I met again with the guy in Azigbo. Amid conversation, he asked me to refer him to any job, building gig, or just about anything that he was no longer working at the LG HQ. On further enquiry, he narrated to me how sometime after we met at the HQ, unknown gunmen paid a visit and shot and ‘keed’ people, tagging them saboteurs working for the zoo government (or something to that effect).

“Nwanna, I escaped narrowly; small thing and I would have been a dead person today”.

I made some posts yesterday and a horde descended on them. Worse, my disagreement with the statement Peter Obi put out further inflamed many. I still stand by that condemnation.

Almost every social upheaval has a complex history, their evolution traced to various events. In 2019 or thereabouts, Obi was interviewed in the run-up to the election where he was vice to Atiku, and about IPOB he said something to the effect that they were harmless freedom fighters with valid grievances who could be dialogued with and things handled better, instead of the blanket proscription, nailing them as terrorists.

I agreed with Obi at that time. Even today, when situated in that context and time, I still agree. During the 2023 elections, when his detractors were everywhere whipping the video up in the face of worsening violent activities ascribed to IPON or its spin-off groups, attempting to utilize it in their bid to tag him a terrorist apologist, I was everywhere too erecting context to the video and arguing unremittingly in support of what Obi really meant there. This is a different case.

To be clear, I categorize the evolution of the agitation under Kanu and IPOB into two broad categories: Pre-2019 and Post-2019. If Obi’s statement verbatim dropped 22nd November 2019, I will agree verbatim with him. But this is 2025 and we have stood witness to the events of 2020 to this day. And, at this juncture, I will be fair to stop using the taxonomy, IPOB, as historically things began to be more complex somewhere around 2021/22 and it wasn't clear which group was behind the things that happened as we saw the proliferation of splinter groups, personalities, and units who carried activities that the ‘official’ IPOB themselves publicly denounced, or so it seems.

Staying relevant to Kanu, we all listened to broadcasts where he incited, ordered, and even took responsibility of some unspeakable things. These broadcast speeches are still out here on the internet. Kanu nailed himself with every broadcast, making it hard for anyone on earth to truly defend him with deep honesty.

I remember the 2020 EndSARS protest that was going on smoothly as disillusioned Nigerian youths vs incompetent government thing, and out of nowhere Kanu inserted himself in it. I remember listening to that broadcast in utter shock. It was too nerve-wracking that till today I still remember where I was, mouth agape, eyes popped in disbelief, and soon we were making calls amongst our young Igbo links and asking everyone to stay away from the protest or going out as Kanu’s speech might turn things on its head and set us against the Yoruba. Unfortunately, this happened towards or after a group of disgruntled younglings looted the palace of a Lagos Oba. It wasn't long and the propaganda machine went into work trying to leverage Kanu speech to say it was the Igbo youth burning down Lagos and desecrating traditional heritage. They also said the BRT inferno was set up by the Igbo.

Kanu never cared about Igbo people in Lagos and what could have happened to them if the spin caught on. And from thereon things went further downhill. Kanu will make a broadcast saying, k*ll security operatives, police, soldiers, etc and take their weapon. Soon, mostly days after, security operatives are indeed murdered and weapons taken. Some of them were Igbo and they were dealt harshly with regardless for continuing to work in the Nigerian force. This happened in many places in the southeast. Today, people want to revise this recent history gaslight us for pointing these out, trying to divorce bloody effect from its clear cause.

To some others, it isn't that Kanu is innocent and blameless, rather that a case of calling out the apparent hypocrisy of the federal government and the equalizing of approach to insurgent groups. Fair point and a solid argument to be had there. However, I as an individual do not care about other regions of Nigeria pampering violent group that have now held them hostage, and I do not want that model replicated in my region.

There used to be a time, just as recent as 2014-16 when, right here on social media, we brag to other Nigerians that nothing will ever make an Igbo person resort to terrorist activities. We bragged that an average Igbo will rather man a kiosk from Igba Oso-Afia, and gradually grow it to a business empire, than take up arms. We said these things and believed it. How wrong we were.

Look at Ihiala, Iseke, and environs today. Our own people did those things, and to their very own folks. Some people have attempted to counter these occurrences with the conspiratorial claims that the violence and the violent groups were planted by ‘the evil federal government to destabilize our region and implicate Nnamdi Kanu’. To this, I will say nothing.

People like Asoegwu are receiving death threats by folks here just because he is calling out these maladies, complete with video proof. Such utter radicalization. Yesterday, someone whom I spent six years with in a boarding secondary school threatened me too right there in the comment section. This is the last I will say about this matter and I end it by reiterating the popular saying that those who feed and ride a tiger will someday end up in its belly. For years people have fetched ant-infested firewood and now the lizards are here, and it will take some time to get rid of them, if we ever.

mrvitalis:
So there is insecurity all over the South, from South West to South South and South East

But you want me to believe
1) IPOB is responsible for insecurity in South East meaning the actors causing insecurity outside South East can't come to South East?

DatNiggaDaz:


But terrorists are killing a whole community, grabbing land, kidnapping.

Also your government whom you are supporting are releasing terrorists into the Army, into communities. They are even negotiating with terrorists. They even pay ransom to terrorists.

This is the Government you are supporting. The question is why are you quiet in all these rascalities the government you are supporting are into ?

Are you a yoruba man ?

mrvitalis:
So there is insecurity all over the South, from South West to South South and South East

But you want me to believe
1) IPOB is responsible for insecurity in South East meaning the actors causing insecurity outside South East can't come to South East?

JohnAOne:
CONTINUE TO SHIFT BLAMES!

Don't take responsibility for the evil you brought upon yourselves...

The Yorubas you hate will continue to progress, while YOU (and your people) will continue to regress.

Christistruth00:
Did your “whataboutism” save SE from Ipob Chaos?

JohnAOne:
CONTINUE TO SHIFT BLAMES!

Don't take responsibility for the evil you brought upon yourselves...

The Yorubas you hate will continue to progress, while YOU (and your people) will continue to regress.

Kalashnikov49:
Their wickedness has been exposed. They hide behind the North to always debase and undermine the SE.

Anyway, Kwara State is GONE
OGUN, OSUN, OYO, EKITI, ONDO etc and their kith and kin in Auchi, KOGI, are crying already.

A region that lies without qualms for benefits is actually the headquarters of the COVEN of Darkness.

The LORD ALMIGHTY elevates BIAFRA in the spirit that is why they already know it will be made manifest in the physical.

All their rants and antics is because they fear of what is to become of them once BIAFRA emerges. The NORTH , will not let they have LAGOS and have peace. That is why they attach to the North to sabotage the SE to remain relevant to Northerners against the SE.

Anyway, that narrative has expired. They are on their own Now.

Christistruth00:
What you couldn’t see about Ipob and Kanu in 2019 many people had already seen that danger in 2015.
Kanu was full of deadly hate even in 2015


Listen to this

Yoruba r kawordz, fiIthy dirty backstabbing people - Nnamdi Kanu

Talking down on late Ooni of ife.. using a fake story...

Dey all, including @PeterObi want him released.. Show me where any of dem condemned him when he was saying all this? But na Yoruba start bygotry 🙄😂
Cc… pic.twitter.com/2lbRFCY79F

— Comrade Àmọdá 🦇 (@AmodaOgunlere) October 4, 2024

This one was from 2014 where Kanu was already threatening to turn his place to Somalia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI95DOvNb8Y?si=ynRl9J4F57LnZh67

chiagozien:
.

JohnAOne:
CONTINUE...

Mbanda:
Christistruth00, is he lying?

Nnamdipapa:
My final piece on the Nnamdi Kanu judgment and Peter Obi Statement situation:

On the 25th of July 2021, I and some family members drove from Lagos to Anambra to collect the bridal list from my in-laws, officially commencing the journey to my marriage. We arrived Nnewi around 5 pm and finished sometime past 8. My wife was in that blue Lexus 350 with us, likewise my uncle and brother, and the plan was that very early the next day, being Monday the 26th, we will drive into Nnewi to pick her and then be on our way back to Lagos.

We slept in my hometown, Azigbo, and around 5:30 the next morning, as planned, we started for Nnewi. We drove through Amichi. On getting somewhere around that market close to Igwe Orizu, we noticed that the vehicles going in the other direction were flashing their headlamps on us. We slowed down and soon a commercial bus driver revving his vehicle asked us while speaking at the top of his voice to go back because they were shooting somewhere ahead of us in Nnewi.

Who, we asked, and he said something about Biafra and IPOB and zoomed off. We reversed and join the procession of fleeing vehicles. Because of different engagements the people in the vehicle had back in Lagos the next day, we really needed to return to Lagos. So we tried again to drive into Nnewi through the inner roads in Awka-Etiti. The closer we got to Nnewi, the worse it became because we could now hear the gunshots. We drove back and decided to wait a bit. We phoned our in-laws and they confirmed it was hot that morning in Nnewi and that we should consider staying back, and/or leaving without their daughter. She would come back the next day using public transport.

We went back to Azigbo and decided to wait out the time. Later, because we hadn't planned on staying that long, we wanted to go find something we would eat, and also see if we could still travel back to Lagos, even if later than earlier. While on our way, a group of men intercepted us at Ichida Bus Stop.

“Who are you people”, one screamed at us, hitting the bonnet.

“Whine down the glasses”, another added, order coming from different angle as they surrounded our vehicle.

“Where are you going to”, the barking continued, with little time given to really answer their questions.

“Don't you know that today is sit-at-home; where do you think you are going when our leader Nnamdi Kanu is held prisoner in Abuja and is going to court?”

One of them tried to open the door.

“Oga come down; all of you should come down, we are driving this car to Abuja today. We are going to see Kanu. It is either you join us or you give us this car”.

We begged, cajoled, and agreed with them on the spot about the injustice meted out against us Ndigbo, Kanu, and the southeast in Nigeria. After a lot of parley led by my uncle who was in his late seventies, we gave them money, saying we supported the cause, and they allowed us to go. We went to the popular nwanyi ocha place in Ichida, ate, and decided not to go back that way, rather risk our way to Onitsha, away from Anambra, and then to Lagos.

The question I have asked myself all these years was, if that experience had happened sometime between 2022-2024 when tensions had stiffened and the group, with their spin-offs, more militarized and armed, what would have been our fate that mid-morning? Your guess is as good as mine as we have all seen similar events reported in the news and on social media and how they ended up.

Two months later, proceeding to the next stage of our marriage, my wife and I had to go to the headquarters of the Nnewi South local government in Ukpor to register our marriage and fufil other requirements like getting the documentation we would eventually hand the church. A local government wedding per se, which can be done in lieu of court wedding. Everything went well and while we were about leaving, we met a guy from my village, Iruokpala, who worked at the LG HQand he helped us take pictures.

A few months later, however, I met again with the guy in Azigbo. Amid conversation, he asked me to refer him to any job, building gig, or just about anything that he was no longer working at the LG HQ. On further enquiry, he narrated to me how sometime after we met at the HQ, unknown gunmen paid a visit and shot and ‘keed’ people, tagging them saboteurs working for the zoo government (or something to that effect).

“Nwanna, I escaped narrowly; small thing and I would have been a dead person today”.

I made some posts yesterday and a horde descended on them. Worse, my disagreement with the statement Peter Obi put out further inflamed many. I still stand by that condemnation.

Almost every social upheaval has a complex history, their evolution traced to various events. In 2019 or thereabouts, Obi was interviewed in the run-up to the election where he was vice to Atiku, and about IPOB he said something to the effect that they were harmless freedom fighters with valid grievances who could be dialogued with and things handled better, instead of the blanket proscription, nailing them as terrorists.

I agreed with Obi at that time. Even today, when situated in that context and time, I still agree. During the 2023 elections, when his detractors were everywhere whipping the video up in the face of worsening violent activities ascribed to IPON or its spin-off groups, attempting to utilize it in their bid to tag him a terrorist apologist, I was everywhere too erecting context to the video and arguing unremittingly in support of what Obi really meant there. This is a different case.

To be clear, I categorize the evolution of the agitation under Kanu and IPOB into two broad categories: Pre-2019 and Post-2019. If Obi’s statement verbatim dropped 22nd November 2019, I will agree verbatim with him. But this is 2025 and we have stood witness to the events of 2020 to this day. And, at this juncture, I will be fair to stop using the taxonomy, IPOB, as historically things began to be more complex somewhere around 2021/22 and it wasn't clear which group was behind the things that happened as we saw the proliferation of splinter groups, personalities, and units who carried activities that the ‘official’ IPOB themselves publicly denounced, or so it seems.

Staying relevant to Kanu, we all listened to broadcasts where he incited, ordered, and even took responsibility of some unspeakable things. These broadcast speeches are still out here on the internet. Kanu nailed himself with every broadcast, making it hard for anyone on earth to truly defend him with deep honesty.

I remember the 2020 EndSARS protest that was going on smoothly as disillusioned Nigerian youths vs incompetent government thing, and out of nowhere Kanu inserted himself in it. I remember listening to that broadcast in utter shock. It was too nerve-wracking that till today I still remember where I was, mouth agape, eyes popped in disbelief, and soon we were making calls amongst our young Igbo links and asking everyone to stay away from the protest or going out as Kanu’s speech might turn things on its head and set us against the Yoruba. Unfortunately, this happened towards or after a group of disgruntled younglings looted the palace of a Lagos Oba. It wasn't long and the propaganda machine went into work trying to leverage Kanu speech to say it was the Igbo youth burning down Lagos and desecrating traditional heritage. They also said the BRT inferno was set up by the Igbo.

Kanu never cared about Igbo people in Lagos and what could have happened to them if the spin caught on. And from thereon things went further downhill. Kanu will make a broadcast saying, k*ll security operatives, police, soldiers, etc and take their weapon. Soon, mostly days after, security operatives are indeed murdered and weapons taken. Some of them were Igbo and they were dealt harshly with regardless for continuing to work in the Nigerian force. This happened in many places in the southeast. Today, people want to revise this recent history gaslight us for pointing these out, trying to divorce bloody effect from its clear cause.

To some others, it isn't that Kanu is innocent and blameless, rather that a case of calling out the apparent hypocrisy of the federal government and the equalizing of approach to insurgent groups. Fair point and a solid argument to be had there. However, I as an individual do not care about other regions of Nigeria pampering violent group that have now held them hostage, and I do not want that model replicated in my region.

There used to be a time, just as recent as 2014-16 when, right here on social media, we brag to other Nigerians that nothing will ever make an Igbo person resort to terrorist activities. We bragged that an average Igbo will rather man a kiosk from Igba Oso-Afia, and gradually grow it to a business empire, than take up arms. We said these things and believed it. How wrong we were.

Look at Ihiala, Iseke, and environs today. Our own people did those things, and to their very own folks. Some people have attempted to counter these occurrences with the conspiratorial claims that the violence and the violent groups were planted by ‘the evil federal government to destabilize our region and implicate Nnamdi Kanu’. To this, I will say nothing.

People like Asoegwu are receiving death threats by folks here just because he is calling out these maladies, complete with video proof. Such utter radicalization. Yesterday, someone whom I spent six years with in a boarding secondary school threatened me too right there in the comment section. This is the last I will say about this matter and I end it by reiterating the popular saying that those who feed and ride a tiger will someday end up in its belly. For years people have fetched ant-infested firewood and now the lizards are here, and it will take some time to get rid of them, if we ever.

JohnAOne:
CONTINUE TO SHIFT BLAMES!

Don't take responsibility for the evil you brought upon yourselves...

The Yorubas you hate will continue to progress, while YOU (and your people) will continue to regress.

Nnamdipapa:
He was and his followers are still asking for his crimes despite our security personnels being killed in the SE on Kanu's orders. You cannot support KANU and have a single brain cell left.

Nnamdipapa:
No one is shutting down businesses every Monday any part of the SW. No one is killing police and military officers anywhere in the SW. Kanu made a video instructing IPOB to disarm and kill every police and military officer's in the SE, since then, thousands of security agents have lost their lives in the SE.

May Kanu rot in jail.

Ikaeniyan0:
Some of una just love risking Una life unnecessarily. Una no dey listen to news?

Nnamdipapa:
Kanu and IPOB have destroyed the SE for us and some dunces on NL are supporting him.

mrvitalis:
So there is insecurity all over the South, from South West to South South and South East

But you want me to believe
1) IPOB is responsible for insecurity in South East meaning the actors causing insecurity outside South East can't come to South East?

Hedonisco:
You're not much better than Holocaust deniers if you keep lying to yourself about these things.

Nnamdi Kanu, Simon Ekpa and the other irritants they spawned are godforsaken monsters who have destroyed Igbo land with their nonsense. I feel ashamed how Igbos have somehow entertained these monsters, especially Kanu, and gradually turned them into 'heros' (God forbid).

We have to call a spade a spade.

Even if you want to seriously carry out a secession agenda, this is not how to do it. Is there a legitimate marginalization grouse? Yes. But any movement for a so-called 'Biafra' cannot be championed by nonentities and vagabonds from nowhere like Nnamdi Kanu and his minions. There has to be some sort of well organized movement with proper leverage - with a solid intellectual and diplomatic wing to which the militant wing must be completely subordinate.

We can't have this haphazard gang of deranged terrorists wreaking havoc on their own people in the guise of fighting for liberation. As you can see, the real enemies of Igbo land cannot believe their luck because they don't even have to lift a finger to undermine the Igbos they loathe. They must even be entertained seeing the Igbos undermine themselves.

The Igbos need to take a deeeeeeeeep breath, engage in prolonged self reflection, and then conduct a painful self-surgery (without anesthesia) in order to lay the foundations of a rebirth. And the likes of Nnamdi Kanu should have no place in this process.

Hedonisco:
You're not much better than Holocaust deniers if you keep lying to yourself about these things.

Nnamdi Kanu, Simon Ekpa and the other irritants they spawned are godforsaken monsters who have destroyed Igbo land with their nonsense. I feel ashamed how Igbos have somehow entertained these monsters, especially Kanu, and gradually turned them into 'heros' (God forbid).

We have to call a spade a spade.

Even if you want to seriously carry out a secession agenda, this is not how to do it. Is there a legitimate marginalization grouse? Yes. But any movement for a so-called 'Biafra' cannot be championed by nonentities and vagabonds from nowhere like Nnamdi Kanu and his minions. There has to be some sort of well organized movement with proper leverage - with a solid intellectual and diplomatic wing to which the militant wing must be completely subordinate.

We can't have this haphazard gang of deranged terrorists wreaking havoc on their own people in the guise of fighting for liberation. As you can see, the real enemies of Ndigbo cannot believe their luck because they don't even have to lift a finger to undermine the Igbos they loathe. They must even be entertained seeing the Igbos undermine themselves.

The Igbos need to take a deeeeeeeeep breath, engage in prolonged self reflection, and then conduct a painful self-surgery (without anesthesia) in order to lay the foundations of a rebirth. And the likes of Nnamdi Kanu should have no place in this process.

mrvitalis:
You want to talk about what ipob did without talking what lead them to do it? Does that make sense to you?

mrvitalis:
You want to talk about what ipob did without talking what lead them to do it? Does that make sense to you?

Nnamdipapa:
What lead to them? The floor is yours let's hear you justify criminality? I am sure people like you would justify Boko haram because FG killed Mohamed Yusuf, the founder. Let's hear your circular argument my friend.

Benzigler:
Dude, you sounds like very emotional person, we have many of your type in every society and tribe, use your sense for once.
I'm not an Nnamdi Kanu supporter, why are they crying more than the bereaved?
we know they never love us, go and sleep, you don't know what you are talking about.

Nnamdipapa:
What lead to them? The floor is your's, let's hear you justify criminality? I am sure people like you would justify Boko haram because FG killed Mohamed Yusuf, the founder. Let's hear your circular argument my friend.