NNAMDI KANU: It's time Buhari is read the Riot Act

NNAMDI KANU: It's time Buhari is read the Riot Act

Much as violence is abhorred as an effective tool for any conflict resolution certain actions that could plunge the polity into utter chaos must be frowned upon no matter whose ox is gored.

Nigeria operates a federal system of government with no fewer than 36 federating units. It is an established fact that the constitution makes no provision for a federal referendum to decide an important public question like the ongoing agitation for an independent Biafran state.

Kanu has millions of followers and admirers and trying to hush a million dissent voices into silence is as good as attempting the impossible and for the government of Nigeria to resort to the use of brute force to suppress the agitation of over 70 million easterners is none other than courting unmitigated disaster.

The international community may yet feign ignorance under the existing circumstances but would be forced to act when it comes to the crunch. Many defenceless Biafran agitators, we have it on good authority, have been felled by Nigerian security forces with no official statement from Abuja decrying the excesses or overzealousness of the gun-totting security operatives. Silence, they often say, sometimes implies consent. Would one be right to say the Nigerian strongman did not tacitly order the killings of the unarmed, defenceless agitators?

The role of the OHANEZE NDIGBO on the continued incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu is not only condemnable but also a crying shame. They are an irritating lot who have shamelessly sold their birthright for a pot of filthy porridge considering their stance on the ongoing agitation and attempt by some Kanu's kith and kin to testify against him tomorrow March 9. Our hearts bleed and there is no way OHANEZE NDIGBO could ever extricate themselves from that impending show of shame!

Thrice, we have it on good authority, has the detained IPOB leader been granted bail by Nigerian courts sitting in Abuja. It agitates us terribly why these court orders were not heeded; the erudite judges that presided over the case in turn and granted the bail application in succession could not have erred and the president lacks the moral standing to teach these judges to suck eggs. What is likely to occur in the ongoing kangaroo trial is to give a ruling within the whims and caprices of the president who is dead against Kanu's release from detention and this we dare say is tantamount to tyranny.

While we condemn secret trial for Kanu we also wish the witnesses who may have been induced financially or coerced to testify to know the dangers inherent in collaborating with agents of the state to crucify a prisoner of conscience who is already in the grips of devastation. Justice Tosho should bear in mind that dancing to the whims and caprices of one man who seemingly wields absolute power is a grave danger to the people.

Justice Tosho must cast his mind back to the earlier rulings made by other erudite judges that first saw the need to grant Kanu's bail application and had the case struck out. Justice John Tosho, we say yet again must not allow the whims and caprices of one man to influence his ruling as the IPOB leader appears before him tomorrow. It is time President Buhari is read the Riot Act.

-Daily Globe Watch