The first Republic Aviation Minister, Mbazulike Amaechi, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari, to release the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, for peace to reign in the Southeast.
According to Amaechi, Kanu’s release would end the spate of insecurity in the Southeast.
He noted that most criminals claiming to be agitating for Kanu would go into hiding if the IPOB leader is released.
“There is only one key to the solution to killings in Igbo land now, and that is the release of Nnamdi Kanu. If that young man is released, you will see all these criminals who spring up claiming to be agitating for the release of Nnamdi Kanu while their real intention is to rob innocent and unsuspecting people, will go into hiding because they will have nothing as a reason to come out.
“IPOB has disowned them and has even taken measures to apprehend them but as you know, criminals will have their ways of operating and claiming one fake thing or the other, but they are simple criminals operating one way or the other,” Amaechi spoke to journalists yesterday as part of events to mark his 94th birthday.”
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that Kanu, who earlier spoke from detention, revealed how he was arrested in Kenya.
First Republic Aviation Minister, Mbazulike Amaechi
The leader of the pro-Biafra group was brought back to Nigeria to face a treason trial.
Aloy Ejimakor, Special Counsel to Kanu, asserted that the IPOB leader told him that “the people that abducted him said that they were told by their sponsors that Kanu was a Nigerian terrorist linked to the Islamic terrorists in Kenya, presumably Al-Shabab.
“But after several days when they discovered his true identity, they tended to treat him less badly. Despite that, they told him they felt committed to hand him over to those that hired them,” Ejimakor said.
Al-Shabab, a terrorist, jihadist group based in East Africa and Yemen, for decades has been carrying out deadly attacks in Kenya.
The Nigerian government must have contracted a third party, probably outside the knowledge and involvement of the Kenyan government, for the “interception” of Kanu, going by the revelations from the IPOB leader.
Kanu said he was held incommunicado and chained to a bare floor for eight days in a nondescript private facility in Kenya.
He said no warrant of arrest was shown to him or even mentioned to him, according to Ejimakor.
“Kanu was in point of fact tortured and subjected to untold cruel and inhuman treatment in Kenya. He said his abductors disclosed to him that they abducted him at the behest of the Nigerian government,” the lawyer said.
“He was blindfolded and driven to the tarmac very close to the plane without passing through the airport immigration. The plane departed Nairobi at about 12 p.m. and arrived in Abuja in the evening.
“Kanu was flown to Abuja in the private jet on Sunday 27th June 2021 from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi and he was the lone passenger,” he added.
Ejimakor said Kanu was interviewed for the first time by three SSS officers, in his presence.
“The interview was revealing as it contained certain new allegations that were never heard of before. But all the questions relate directly or indirectly to his status as the leader of IPOB.
“I observed that despite what he has passed through, he was in high spirits and looked forward to overcoming the extraordinary rendition that brought him to Nigeria,” the lawyer said.
“In my assessment of how the case now stands, I wager that before any court can subject Kanu to trial for any offenses, it has to first conduct a trial within a trial on the grievous incident that forced him to leave Nigeria and the equally grievous incident that forced him back to Nigeria. No court of law, conscience and equity will overlook those two supervening incidents and proceed to trial,” Ejimakor stated.
The Nigerian authorities have accused Kanu of ‘orchestrating’ the killings of about 60 people, including security officials in the country’s Southeast region.
IPOB, which had been proscribed by the Nigerian government, has denied being responsible for the killings.
Kanu, a British-Nigerian citizen, is known to have been residing in the UK after he jumped bail and fled Nigeria in 2017 during his trial for treasonable felony.
His country home, in the South-east, had earlier been raided by Nigerian security forces before he fled the country.