South East Renewal Group says Nnamdi Kanu is a joker who has surfaced because he is now broke

IGBO socio-cultural association the South East Renewal Group (Serg) has dismissed calls for by the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob) leader Nnamdi Kanu calling on Ndigbo to boycott next year's elections calling him a joker who should not be taken seriously.

Last week, Mr Kanu appeared praying at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem after fleeing from Nigeria in November 2017. His sudden appearance created a lot of excitement among his followers campaigning for secession from Nigeria and yesterday, Mr Kanu ratcheted up the pressure further with a live broadcast in which he called on Ndigbo to boycott next year's general elections unless it included a referendum on the creation of Biafra.

Defiant in his speech, Mr Kanu vowed not to return to the federal high court in Abuja where he was standing trial for treason before he fled Nigeria. In his case before Justice Binta Nyako, Mr Kanu had been granted bail after 18 months in detention but following the storming of his compound by the men of the Nigerian Army on September 14 last year, he decided to break bail and flee, claiming the government was trying to kill him.

In yesterday's broadcast via Radio Biafra, Mr Kanu boasted that the Nigerian court lacked the capacity to try him. He said the judge who asked his sureties to produce him should have asked the army why they invaded his residence.

Mr Kanu added: “Ipob will liberate Biafra and we will not take part in any election until we get a referendum and this is not negotiable. We will achieve this by every necessary means, we thank Israel for all the contributions they made to Ipob.”

“The Nigerian court is a Kangaroo court. I did not jump bail, I left because the court failed to protect me.

“I shall not be honouring the court as I cannot be tried by a court I do not recognise and the zoo called Nigeria cannot jail me. Till now, Binta Nyanko’s court has yet to hold a hearing about the circumstances that led the Nigerian Army to come to my house to kill 28 people.

"Only upon a clear pronouncement of the intentions of that very court, which I suggest to them should be free, will this very case move forward. Going forward, there must be guarantee from the international community so that this case can proceed and I will prove once and for all that there is something fundamentally wrong with the brains of those that rule Nigeria.”

In response, Serg said Mr Kanu’s declaration that there will be no elections in south eastern Nigeria, which he claimed to be Biafran territory, was a joke that should not be taken seriously. Serg president Charles Mbani, said it was most unfortunate that Mr Kanu was back to cause trouble for people of southeast of Nigeria, who have spent the last one year re-building confidence with their neighbours in their bid to repair the damages caused by him and his Ipob members.

Mr Mbani said: “His utterances are at variance with the belief of the people of southeast Nigeria, who are cultured, have maximum regards for Nigerians of other ethnic stock and believe in the unity of Nigeria while they continue to clamour for restructuring that will promote equity, respect constituted authority and institutions. They will never descend low to the point of disparaging other human beings.

“The annals have recorded it that Nnamdi Kanu is a coward, who incited promising Igbo youths to throw away their lives literarily and figuratively. He threw the entire southeast into confusion and pocketed the money raised from suffering Igbo masses only for him to escape when the people had erroneously thought he had something in stock for them.

“It is the height of insult to the Igbo sensibility for him to think that putting up this charade from the Holy Land will fool Ndigbo another round. If he is broke and wants to use this latest performance to finance his drug-addled life he should have a rethink and look for honest work to pay his own bills.

“We strongly believe that his desperation for money has made him team up with those that are out to frustrate the Igbo agenda and interest. We say this because it is curious that Kanu had hidden for so long as a common criminal only for him to turn up at a time when the political fortunes of the southeast are improving with the nomination of one of our own,  Peter Obi as a vice presidential candidate in next year’s election."

According to Mr Mbani, Serg will ensure that Ndigbo are not misled by Mr Kanu and other similar miscreants. He stressed that Igbo youths should be warned that nothing is to be gained from supporting terrorist and separatist ideologies as the only region to have allowed that in the country is today full of regrets.

Mr Mbani added: “We should rather continue to support the federal government, irrespective of the ethnic group of the person that occupies the office. Igbo youths, leaders and organisations must also apologise to the Nigerian Army that was wrongly accused of killing Kanu when in reality the coward ran away from the country on his own volition.”