Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (), yesterday, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to immediately release leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, in compliance with ruling of the Court of Appeal.

Stating that Kanu’s health was deteriorating in the Department of State Services (DSS) cell, the group’s National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, in a statement, inquired if the Jibrin of Sudan comment by Kanu was the reason he is being denied freedom in contravention of an existing court order.

Buhari, in a documentary shown Friday night, had said he did not find it funny that many Nigerians believed the speculation that he was dead and had been replaced with a lookalike named Jibrin from Sudan.
“Yes! People said I am somebody from Sudan. I didn’t bother with the name. Nigerians have mischievous ways of explaining themselves,” the President stated.

When asked if he found the rumour funny, Buhari submitted: “No. It’s not funny, because those who made those statements just want to be cheeky. They want to distract attention from the main issue.”

Onwubiko said Buhari’s confession on the comment by Kanu, which gained traction during the President’s first term when he spent months attending to his health in the United Kingdom, could be one of the major reasons the Nigerian leader has decided to keep Kanu in DSS custody 19 months after he was arrested and brought into the country from Kenya.

The HURIWA boss recalled that during a meeting with Ebonyi State Stakeholders’ Forum at Government House, Abakaliki, in May, Buhari had said a political solution to Kanu’s travails was impossible and insisted that only the court would decide his fate.

He wondered why the agitator is still being in total disobedience to a subsisting court judgment.
Onwubiko continued: “With Buhari’s latest confession on the story of Jibrin of Sudan, one begins to ask what is fuelling his hatred for Nnamdi Kanu so much so that he reject an Appellate Court judgment freeing Kanu and has remained intransigent even when Kanu’s health has deteriorated dangerously.

One of Kanu’s lawyers, Aloy Ejimakor, on Saturday, said the IPOB leader needed heart surgery for a valve replacement. It is only proper for the Federal Government to release the detained agitator so he can get emergency medical attention.”