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Igbo group calls for release of Radio Biafra director, Kanu

By Joseph Onyekwere
29 October 2015   |   5:40 am
THE Igbo Ekunie Initiative (IEI), pan Igbo group, comprising Igbos at home and in the Diaspora has called on the Federal Government to release unconditionally the director of the Radio Biafra, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, and all other detained activists
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Director of the Radio Biafra, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu

 

THE Igbo Ekunie Initiative (IEI), pan Igbo group, comprising Igbos at home and in the Diaspora has called on the Federal Government to release unconditionally the director of the Radio Biafra, Mr. Nnamdi Kanu, and all other detained activists. The group also urged government to put a stop to what it referred to as “the clampdown, maiming and killing of agitators.”

According to a statement endorsed by the president and secretary of the group respectively, Maazi Tochukwu Ezeoke and Lawrence Nwobu, the arrest and incarceration of Kanu by the Department of State Security (DSS) is illegal and condemnable.

We demand his immediate release. We have, in the past few months and weeks of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, observed with great concern a strident campaign of repression and human rights violations as it concerns non-violent self determination activists exercising their fundamental rights to free speech and association. “We note that the arrest of Kanu signals an escalation of such human rights violations and repression for which the Buhari administration is becoming notorious for in a supposed democracy.

We observe that while the Nigerian constitution guarantees freedom of speech and association, the right to self determination is an inalienable right of all peoples and or indigenous peoples by virtue of which they can freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development as enshrined in the founding Charter of the United Nations.

In addition, other international and regional instruments, including the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights of 1981, the Helsinki Final Act adopted by the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) in 1975, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action 1993, amongst others, have all adopted the fundamental right to self determination as an integral part of their statutes.
“The international court of justice (ICJ) has likewise validated the right to self determination as guaranteed by international law in several judgments, including the Namibia case, the East Timor case and the Kosovo case in 2010,” they pointed out.

The group said it is strange and unacceptable that whereas the Nigerian state won independence from the British Colonial Government in the first instance on the basis of the right to self determination such that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and other self determination agitators were never arrested by the British Colonial authorities in the course of advocating self rule, the Nigerian state has oddly chosen to kill, brutalise, maim and detain those seeking self rule on the same premise as the founding fathers did.

They said: “We warn that no nation can ultimately be built or held together by force just as no marriage/association should be by force. The fact of Nigeria’s increasing existential crisis and the proliferation of self determination groups in the aftermath of a civil war fought to keep the country together vindicates the futility of war and or repression as a means of nation building.

We submit that the fundamental drivers of the agitation for self determination/self rule by various groups is rooted in the contradictions, injustices, marginalisation, dysfunctional structure, human rights violations, unitary system, inequality and absence of nation building that are the hallmarks of the Nigerian state.

Igbo Ekunie also holds the view that the failure of government to holistically address these underlying issues gives life to the separatist agitation. The sure path to ending separatist agitations includes the implementation of the National Conference Report of 2014 in the first instance, the further convening of a Sovereign National Conference with the ultimate aim of building national consensus and producing a nation-building constitution and the establishment of a nation-building commission or ministry charged exclusively with implementing reforms geared towards the consolidation of national integration and unity.”

They called on the peace loving people of Ndi-Igbos to remain calm, law abiding and steadfast, and avoid playing into the hands of the current government which is looking for the slightest excuse to descend on them to maim and kill with impunity while expressing the hope for freedom from slavery.

Igbo Ekunie stressed that a nation must of necessity be built by mutual consent and not by force, adding that the Quebec Independence Referendum of 1995, Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 and the Catalonia Independence Referendum of 2015 exemplifies the inalienable right of self determination and nation building through democratic consent to which all peoples are entitled under international law, alongside freedom of speech and of association as enshrined in the Nigerian constitution.

17 Comments

  • Author’s gravatar

    It is Biafra or Living Thing in the zoo called Nigeria will die, I hope all of you have gotten your coffin, Biafra must be free

  • Author’s gravatar

    let his biafran supporters go and bail him with nigerian currency…cosmic…

  • Author’s gravatar

    I support Biafra to the end.

  • Author’s gravatar

    Nigeria has expired in 2014. Biafra must be restored or everything in nigeria perish. In Biafra I stand , it’s my home my nation. Long live the republic of Biafra

  • Author’s gravatar

    A country that does not have plans for tomorrow (zoological republic) lecturers collect bribe to pass students, police collect bribe from every commercial vehicle on the road.National Assembly only interested in increase in word rope allowance instead of making laws that will benefit the poor masses.infact a confused entity.

  • Author’s gravatar

    Biafra director is carrying nigerian passport travelling all over the world.This guy is a fraud

  • Author’s gravatar

    One is tired about this bla bla about Biafra. They should carry their bags and go home since 90% of those agitating live in Lagos, Abuja or port Harcourt. Enough of this nonsense. They should go to their Biafra without Delta State if thet dare

    • Author’s gravatar

      you should close your mouth,leave abj,lag or ph and delta state is not a problem,your uncle collected all our money,what did he do with it after destroying us,any man God have bless no man can curse,today we are still stronger and solid,God have build us,zoo cannot destroy us any longer.THINK ABOUT THIS MESSAGE AND LOOK AROUND .WHAT CAN YOU SEE???? TAKE ANSWER FOR YOURSELF.

    • Author’s gravatar

      Saburi, there must be reason why you love Nigeria as it is today and it shows that you are either an illiterate or you are mentally sick because Nigeria is made up of people without any common factors.
      I don’t even think that you will want owe a house in Sokoto or Ikot Ekpene for free.
      Idiot.

  • Author’s gravatar

    What I we talking here. Igbos must been free. Biafra is real. We demand release of our brother kanu

  • Author’s gravatar

    Now you know why he calls Nigeria a ZOO.
    ANIMALS.

  • Author’s gravatar

    The call for the break up of any country is never taken lightly. However beyond the legality or otherwise of Mr Kanu’s arrest there is the bigger issue of the Igbos not feeling fully integrated into the Nigerian society. This I feel should be addressed once and for all. However I would like to debunk this notion among the Igbos that the Nigerian state (which some of the derisively call a Zoo) is somehow holding back the progress of people from the south east political zone. This is absolutely false. We live in a federation where each state to a large extent controls their resources. Can we really say that the south eastern states are better than other states of Nigeria in terms of infrastructure and peoples welfare? The proponents of Biafra have not told us how the peoples lives will be better off in an independent country.
    There is also the political issue. All said and done an independent state is a political entity Mr Kanu and his supporters like to write off the South South region as a political entity (they say there is no such thing on a compass). This is condescending and insulting to say the least. Even if there was nothing like South South in the Nigerian political lexicon previously there is and has been the Izon Ogoni, Efik Ibibio, Kalabari Okrika and many other minority ethnic groups from time Immemorial. To quote the late Saro Wiwa of blessed memory In his book titled on a darkling plain he said that Biafra as a political entity offered him nothing new. So my question is what new thing will a present day Biafra offer anybody?
    I have said it before and I will say it again The Republic of Biafra as constituted between 30th May1967 and 15th Jan 1970 is no longer politically , socially and demographically feasible.
    Nigeria has a myriad of problems which range from poverty to ignorance to corruption to poor leadership the Igbo ethnic nationality are not shielded from any of these problems.
    The Igbo have genuine concerns about their future within the Nigerian nation however Biafra is certainly not the way forward.

    • Author’s gravatar

      The zoo tag on Nigeria was first suggested by Fredrick Lugard in his book published in 1922. He actually said blacks were near animals and if he created Nigeria for blacks what does that make whatever he created?

  • Author’s gravatar

    As my late dear legend Ayinla Omowura sang, “A nwa ibi ti a ma fi asinwin si, o ni ka duro de owun bi a ba ti de oke odo” meaning: We are planning to abandon an imbecile, he wants us to wait for him at the top of the river. Let us have the referendum and if they want to let them go back to their villages. Enough of the hopeless distractions.