AFTER more than a year and a half of incomprehensible judicial rigmarole and executive procrastination that began in October 2015, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, was finally released on bail with stringent conditions. In three days, surprisingly, the bail conditions were met. Mr Kanu had been asked to (a) Produce 3 sureties, who must deposit the sum of 100m each; (b) Produce a highly placed person of Igbo extraction; (c) Produce a respected person who resides and owns landed property in Abuja; and ensure that (d) One of the sureties must be a highly respected Jewish leader since Kanu practices Judaism as his religion; (e) Must not attend any rally or grant an interview; (f) Must not be in a crowd exceeding 10 persons; and (g) Must surrender his Nigerian and British passports.
Apart from the trial itself been needless, it is doubtful whether the stringency of the bail conditions did not violate the purpose of a fair trial and the constitutionality of bail. Contrary to what the federal government hoped, the Biafra issue was kept on the front burner for the entire duration of the incarceration of the IPOB leader. In fact, by default, the previously little known IPOB had soared in significance over the months to rival the far better known Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). Instead of one or two organisations dedicated to promoting Biafran ideals, now the country must contend with three, no thanks to the government’s pigheadedness.
Mr Kanu went into detention a comical, little known figure. He has emerged in less than two years as a force to reckon with in a hydra-headed movement that may yet shake Nigeria to its foundations. The reason is tied to the reckless and tyrannical show of force by the executive arm and the abdication of a somewhat pliant and shackled judiciary. How the government hopes to defeat by force a movement that exists more in the mind than in active and tangible use of violence is hard to understand. Biafra has over the years morphed into an ideology, partly as a result of the complicity of an insensitive government that failed to understand the beginnings of the movement and was also unable to offer a closure to the fractures and contradictions that triggered the 1967-1970 Nigerian civil war.
Should Mr Kanu possess the deftness to exploit the fame foisted on him by a bungling executive arm, should he indeed be imbued with the charisma he seemed to have exuded in prison and the ideas to drive the movement in an engaging and easily accessible way, he will in the coming months present a far more worrisome dilemma, if not nightmare, to the government in or out of prison. This is often the byproduct of a government that exaggerates and places its powers far above what the constitution has provided, and one that inflates its self-importance in a destructive, pernicious manner on the road to erehwon (nowhere).
Apart from the trial itself been needless, it is doubtful whether the stringency of the bail conditions did not violate the purpose of a fair trial and the constitutionality of bail. Contrary to what the federal government hoped, the Biafra issue was kept on the front burner for the entire duration of the incarceration of the IPOB leader. In fact, by default, the previously little known IPOB had soared in significance over the months to rival the far better known Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). Instead of one or two organisations dedicated to promoting Biafran ideals, now the country must contend with three, no thanks to the government’s pigheadedness.
Mr Kanu went into detention a comical, little known figure. He has emerged in less than two years as a force to reckon with in a hydra-headed movement that may yet shake Nigeria to its foundations. The reason is tied to the reckless and tyrannical show of force by the executive arm and the abdication of a somewhat pliant and shackled judiciary. How the government hopes to defeat by force a movement that exists more in the mind than in active and tangible use of violence is hard to understand. Biafra has over the years morphed into an ideology, partly as a result of the complicity of an insensitive government that failed to understand the beginnings of the movement and was also unable to offer a closure to the fractures and contradictions that triggered the 1967-1970 Nigerian civil war.
Should Mr Kanu possess the deftness to exploit the fame foisted on him by a bungling executive arm, should he indeed be imbued with the charisma he seemed to have exuded in prison and the ideas to drive the movement in an engaging and easily accessible way, he will in the coming months present a far more worrisome dilemma, if not nightmare, to the government in or out of prison. This is often the byproduct of a government that exaggerates and places its powers far above what the constitution has provided, and one that inflates its self-importance in a destructive, pernicious manner on the road to erehwon (nowhere).
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