Dear IPOB, all IPOB, don’t succumb to the travails of the moment. Gird your loins and concentrate your entire energy to the cause of freedom and the immediate release of your Supreme Leader, MAZI NNAMDI KANU
By Moses Okorie
Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, Special Counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, and its leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has urged members of the group to be strong and united behind the release of Kanu.
Ejimakor said the continued detention of IPOB leader despite his discharge and acquittal by the Appeal Court in Abuja in 2022 has generated reactions about the sincerity of keeping him in the custody.
Recall that former president Muhammadu Buhari refused his release, instead sought a stay of execution order at the Supreme Court.
Ejimakor described Kanu’s detention as ‘the travails of the moment’, and called on Kanu’s faithful to concentrate their energy on the cause of his eventual freedom.
He tweeted, “Dear IPOB, all IPOB, don’t succumb to the travails of the moment. Gird your loins and concentrate your entire energy to the cause of freedom and the immediate release of your Supreme Leader, MAZI NNAMDI KANU, from the gulag. This tweet-advice is ‘inspired’. Hearken to it.”
Ejimakor maintained that IPOB and its members are non-violent. According to him, “I consider it my core duty to my clients (MNK & IPOB) to say this: Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB are still committed to the principles of non-violence. As from today, if you publicly accuse IPOB of using violence to enforce the sit-at-home, prepare to meet me in court to produce your evidence.
He said sit-at-home is a fallout of Kanu’s arrest and his subsequent rendition from Kenya to Nigeria in 2021. He had travelled to Kenya as a British citizen. His forceful repatriation to Nigeria was described as ‘extraordinary rendition’ by the Appeal Court, which also ordered the federal government to restitute him.
Recall that the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention indicted both Nigeria and Kenya governments for the arrest and extraordinary rendition and torture of Kanu. The Council, therefore, urged Nigerian government to ensure his ‘immediate and unconditional release’.
The Working Group said in the report that Kanu was a victim of State persecution as Nigeria failed to provide convincing explanations with proof that he is guilty of treason and other criminal allegations levelled against him.
According to the group, “Noting the failure of the government to explain what actions of Mr Kanu amounted to such criminal acts and how, and observing the lack of any evidence that any of his actions may in fact amount to such crimes, the Working Group concludes that Mr Kanu is in fact being persecuted for the peaceful exercise of his rights, most notably his freedom of opinion and expression.
“In the present case, the Government of Nigeria has presented no exceptions permitted under article 19 (3) of the Covenant nor is there any evidence to suggest that Mr Kanu’s exercise of his right to freedom of opinion and expression was anything but peaceful.”
Both Nigeria and Kenya are parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Ejimakor lamented that Kanu, the founder of IPOB, a group aimed at liberating the Igbo race and old Eastern Region from alleged suppression in Nigeria’s super structure is being kept for a long time at the custody of the Department of the State Services over an alleged running a proscribed group, jumping bail and treason.