Ohanaeze calls on Buhari to allow Nnamdi Kanu address Ndigbo before next month's elections

OHANAEZE Ndigbo's general secretary Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to allow Indigenous people of Biafra (Ipob) leader Nnamdi Kanu to address the people of the southeast ahead of next month's elections.

Next month, Nigeria goes to the polls but the process is facing challenges in the southeast geo-political zone where unknown gunmen continue to wreak havoc by attacking government facilities. Calling on the government to step up to the plate, Mazi Isiguzoro said it could help diffuse the tension by allowing Mr Kanu to speak to his followers.

Highly controversial, Mr Kanu has been campaigning for the recreation of the independent republic of Biafra which broke away from Nigeria between July 1967 and January 1970 during the civil war. His campaign, which has led to the phenomenal growth of Ipob, has set him at odds with the Nigerian government who him arrested and put on trial for treason.

While the case was still pending, Mr Kanu was granted bail in April 2017 on health grounds but skipped his bail after flouting the conditions given to him by the court and fled Nigeria. In a dramatic development, in June 2021, Mr Kanu was abducted in Kenya and flown to Nigeria, where he has since been arrayed in court in Abuja, with fresh charges added to the pending ones.

Ipob members and members of those who subscribe to Mr Kanu's view are opposed to the elections and it is believed they are behind the ongoing violence. Security operatives have blamed the current attacks taking place across the southeast geo-political zone on the Eastern Security Network, Ipob's armed wing.

Mazi Isiguzoro, said the killings in the southeast would subside if President Buhari allows the Ipob leader to address Nigerians. he reiterated his stance on a plot to destabilise the 2023 elections in the southeast using the new self-proclaimed Ipob leader Simon Ekpa, who is running the body in the absence of Mr Kanu.

“This madness of sit-at-home and incessant killings and insecurity we are witnessing in the southeast can be traced to the continuous incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu, which Simon Ekpa is taking undue advantage of. Ekpa is an opportunist, a fame and fortune seeker who saw the window and lapses of Kanu’s detention as an opportunity for him to venture into his journey of amassing wealth from politicians and destroying the people of the southeast.

“The only cure to this madness of Simon Ekpa is a passionate appeal to the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to allow the leader of Ipob to address Ndigbo possibly this February before the elections because there is a grand conspiracy by some external enemies of Ndigbo and they are using Ekpa to shortchange and ensure that there is an election boycott in the southeast. The only cure to this Ekpa’s madness is for Buhari to allow Kanu, even if it’s a five-minute broadcast because Kanu has continued to say through his lawyers that these killings and insecurity in the southeast should end.

"The activities of unknown gunmen instigated by Ekpa should end and why there has been no effect on those messages is that the people doubt if those messages are from Nnamdi Kanu. So, in order to have a peaceful election, the federal government should give Nnamdi Kanu a five-minute broadcast to talk to the people of the southeast, which would end Ekpa and his madness.”