From Magnus Eze, Enugu
Foremost industrialist, Dr. Chike Obidigbo, has advised that the push for the release of detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, requires quiet diplomacy and not the current noisy approach.
He called for a change of tactics, advising politicians, especially those from the South East against compounding the travails of the embattled self-determination agitator.
He expressed dismay that some Igbo political elites are pursuing the ongoing popular demand for the release of the IPOB leader the wrong way, stressing that the overzealous politicians are acting out of ignorance and mostly in self-aggrandisement.
In a statement in Enugu, Obidigbo said the delicate nature of Kanu’s incarceration was such that only deft diplomatic moves could engender the anticipated political solution.
Identifying the salient complications around the IPOB leader’s forceful rendition and consequent incarceration, he expressed worry over Britain’s loud silence about the predicament of their citizen, Kanu.
“The sense I make of the cheap scramble by Igbo politicians to be identified in the growing calls for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s freedom from prolonged and unjust incarceration is that they are merely playing to the gallery.
“It is obvious that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not entirely the one holding Nnamdi Kanu. It was not even former President Muhammadu Buhari nor his erstwhile Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami. All the AGFs, including the current one, are mere legal officers for the government.
“However, Kanu’s matter is a security issue, which requires the involvement of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu. The President may not have absolute power to release Kanu although he has the power to influence things if he so wishes.”
The statesman also advised that attention should be paid to the British Government, because according to him, Kanu had acted against British economic interest in Nigeria.
He remarked that this economic interest, which Kanu’s agitation was negatively affecting, has been enriching the government and people of Britain, over several centuries, saying that although the fact is well known to every Nigerian elite, most of them are simply pretentious.
“Here was the same Britain that frustrated in 1984 the forceful abduction and return to Nigeria of Alhaji Umaru Dikko, who was not even a British citizen at the time, but merely an asylum seeker in Britain.
“Britain continues to see Nigeria as their own fertile farm land for free economic exploitation and political manipulation. They have no wish to relax their stranglehold, not now, not in the near future.
“But then, African youths are gradually coming up to challenge all the existing frustrations, deprivations, and blatant exclusion from enjoying the natural endowments of their own countries.
“What the British may not reckon with easily is that the Biafra agitation has since gone beyond Nnamdi Kanu, because other elements have keyed into the struggle, thereby fuelling the agitation way beyond even Kanu’s own expectations. Therefore, restraining Kanu as it is erroneously believed by his captors, has little chances of disrupting the movement he founded,” Obidigbo stated.
He insisted that genuine efforts to free Kanu should be directed at the NSA as well as the Ambassadors of Britain, USA and those of some well-meaning, and influential countries like China, Russia, etcetera.