• IPOB constitutes clog to IPOB leader’s freedom, says Onoh
• Lawyer accuses DSS of lying about Kanu’s health condition
South-East elders under the aegis of Igbo Elders Forum (IEF), yesterday, stormed the Abia State Government House, Umuahia, the state capital, to pressure the Federal Government led by President Bola Tinubu to release the leader of the Indigenous People Of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, from his almost four-year detention.
They decried Kanu’s continued detention and prosecution despite various calls to release the IPOB leader by persons, groups, organisations, including courts at different levels nationally and internationally.
While the leader of the IEF delegation, Nze Ndudim Echebiri, told Governor Alex Otti at the Government House gate that their mission was to press for the release of Kanu to enable peace, progress and security to return to the South East and Nigeria, their spokesman, Emeka Ezebuiro, said: “We are here to plead with you (Otti ) and other South-East governors to jointly plead with the Tinubu-led Federal Government to release Kanu.”
While being received by the Secretary to the State Government, Prof Kenneth Kalu, and his Chief of Staff, Dr Caleb Ajegba, they stressed that the release of Kanu would engender peace, progress, security, equity and justice in the country.
The Igbo elders expressed concern that the detained IPOB leader has reportedly been denied medical examination by the hospital or doctors of his choice.
Meanwhile, the SSG, who commended the elders’ peaceful protest despite their obvious anger over certain happenings in the country, especially Kanu’s continued detention, assured that their message would be delivered to the governor.
MEANWHILE, following the recent threat by IPOB that there will be “unimaginable consequences,” as well as the outright “end of Nigeria” if anything happens to Kanu in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS), the former South-East spokesman for President Bola Tinubu, Denge Josef Onoh, has warned that the statement was not just an inflammatory rhetoric but a dangerous provocation that serves no one but the enemies of the Igbo.
“It is the kind of bellicose posturing that has repeatedly sabotaged every glimmer of hope for Kanu’s release and poisoned the wall of constructive dialogue.
“Let’s be unequivocal: IPOB’s threats are not the voice of a people seeking justice; they are the desperate cries of a movement that has lost its way, equating itself to the triggers of World War I, while ignoring the self-inflicted wounds it has on the South-East.
Meanwhile, one of Kanu’s lawyers, Onyedikachi Ifedi, has accused the DSS of lying about the health status of the detained IPOB leader, insisting that the secret police lack the clinical competence to manage his condition.
