Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, A Time For President Tinubu’s Intervention.
Friday (Eke) 21-11-2025.
In the pursuit of an objective, approaches and styles may differ. While some may decide to be mild and cautious, others may be vigorous and unrelenting.
The Igbo have been a very strategic component of the Nigerian State. Their founding Leaders in the Nigerian Federation, such as Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mazi Mbonu Ojike, Dr Jaja Anucha Wachuku, Dr M. I. Okpara, Dr Akanu Ibiam, Mazi Alvan Ikoku, Dr K. O. Mbadiwe, His Royal Majesty, M. W. Ubani, Chief O. C. Ememe, and many others, were at the forefront of the struggle for attainment of Nigeria’s independence on October 1st, 1960.
It was believed that the vehemence with which the Igbo fought for Nigeria’s independence made the British Colonial Government to perceive them as a ‘warlike tribe that was extremely difficult to subdue and conquer, and that was never ready to bow to external authority’.
The Igbo Ethnic Nationality is one of the most populated tribes in Nigeria. Apart from her overwhelming dominance in the South-East, her indigenes come second in every other region after the indigenous population. Trade, commerce and industry distinguish them wherever they are.
The successes that accompany their ingenuity and enterprise, coupled with their boisterous and domineering nature, have often been a source of either envy, hate or even both.
As if to compound their social challenges, a crop of young Nigerian Military Officers plotted and executed a putsch on January 15, 1966, barely six years after Nigeria’s Independence. Though, from many reports, they had good intentions, the execution was bad. Only Northern and Western Leaders were assassinated in that coup. To add salt to injury, majority of the coup plotters were Igbo. It, therefore, became easily fashionable to portray it as an ‘Igbo Coup’.
On July 28, 1966, a counter coup plotted by Military Officers of Northern extraction took place. The reprisal coup, as it was called, was followed by pogroms on the Igbo. The climax was a declaration of war by the Federal Government of Nigeria against the Peoples of Eastern Region which, under the leadership of Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu as Military Governor of Eastern Region, had declared the Region as Republic of Biafra as the pogroms had continued. The war was bloody, devastating and lasted up to January 15, 1970. The Igbo lost more than Three Million people, mainly through starvation.
Since after the said war, the Igbo became sidelined in Nigeria. Their youths have been finding it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to secure employment in Federal Government Ministries, Departments, or Agencies. One would hardly see them in such national sectors like the Central Bank of Nigeria, Customs And Excise, Supreme Court of Nigeria, National Intelligence Agency, and so on. So, the Igbo produced the highest numbers of unemployed Graduates from Universities and other Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria. A good number of them took to buying and selling but by the time they would appear to be finding their footing, the shops they had rented for their businesses would have been demolished. Such experience goes on and on, and ends up leaving them frustrated and dejected. No Employment, No Conducive Business Environment!
The frustration gave rise to Igbo Youths demanding for Self Determination. It all started in 1999 when Chief Ralph Uwazuruike formed Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB. The Movement was geared towards recreating the Republic of Biafra through a non-violent pursuit.
However, Chief Uwazuruike was arrested and detained on three different occasions, in 2001, 2003, and 2005. In November 2005, he was arrested and detained for treason. He was only granted a three-month bail in October 2007 to enable him attend the burial of his late Mother. It was through the bail that he was let out of the hook.
The same glaring frustration that ignited the demand for self actualization in Chief Uwazuruike also inspired a younger Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to establish Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, between 2012 and 2014. That period marked the tenure of Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria.
As at that time, Members of IPOB merely ‘entertained the public’ with their songs, vuvuzela and flags. They were quite a peaceful non-violent group expressing their desire for self actualization, drawing the attention of the world to their marginalization, which may have been protected or implied in some sub-sections of Article 20 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Of course, President Jonathan ignored them, probably dismissing them as South-East entertainers that constituted no harm to national security.
On 14th October, 2015, the Leader of IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, was arrested at Golden Tulip Essential Hotel at Ikeja, Lagos by the General Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government of Nigeria.
In April, 2017, while President Buhari was in London on medical grounds and the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osibanjo, was acting as President, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was granted bail.
It has to be pointed out here that President Buhari did not hide his hatred for the Igbo. He openly stated that the South-East gave him only 5% of their votes in 2015 Presidential Election and should, therefore, not expect dividends of democracy exceeding 5% from his Administration. Apart from such a pronouncement that was quite unstatemanly, President Buhari described the People of South-East as ‘a mere dot in a circle’.
His Government’s posture became increasingly hostile to the South-East, at least, psychologically. A People openly described as ‘a mere dot in a circle’ by their President would definitely feel demoralized and downcast.
While Elders in the South-East could manage to ignore and endure the indecorous unpresidential vituperations of President Buhari, the dejected youths, a good number of who have embraced IPOB, were not ready to take kindly to further disdain and disparaging. Their presence became more prominent in the Region.
To worsen the situation, the Nigerian Army, on the command of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Buhari, acting under the Code of Operation Python Dance, invaded the Afara-Ibeku country-home of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s father, His Royal Highness, Eze Israel Okwu Kanu. It was reported to be a very bloody invasion. But Mazi Nnamdi Kanu managed to escape, and found himself back to London, being already a British Citizen.
Meanwhile, President Buhari was nonchalant to terrorists from his fulani tribesmen who were ceaselessly carrying a genocide against Christians in Southern Kaduna, and the Middle-Belt, and were setting Churches in those areas ablaze. Indigenous People of Hausa land were also being slaughtered in hundreds, if not in their thousands.
On June 27, 2021, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was arrested in Kenya through the instrumentality of President Buhari and later brought back to Nigeria for trial in what has been described as Extraordinary Rendition.
When President Buhari’s tenure ended on May 29th, 2023, the new President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu inherited the challenges of marginalization of the Igbo, and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s cases.
Yesterday, Thursday (Nkwo) 20th November, 2025, a Federal High Court, presided over by Justice James Omotosho, sentenced Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to a Life Imprisonment on alleged charges of terrorism.
No doubt, yesterday was a discomforting Thursday in the whole of the South-East, and amongst the Igbo wherever they were.
When it is considered that in the North-East and North-West Governments negotiate with fulani terrorists that are fully armed, it becomes extremely difficult not to conclude that the Igbo are deliberately designated and kept as an endangered tribe in Nigeria.
Be it as it may, Equity Global Reporters Ltd wishes to advise the Igbo, especially their youths, not to take laws in their hands. Adversaries of the the Igbo Ethnic Nationality will be waiting to hear that aggrieved Igbo youths have started killing their Igbo brothers and damaging assets and properties in Igbo land. Those enemies of the Igbo should be proved wrong and utterly disappointed. Every person that means well for the Igbo, should consider this development with equanimity of the mind.
The case of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu should be seen more from the lens of Political Chastizement than from Legal or Judicial Sophism. At a time like this, patriotic and genuine Igbo Leaders should be able to put their acts together in order to pull themselves out of the woods. They should know that any person whose rag is being laughed at is, indeed, the one being mocked.
A late Igbo businessman and industrialist from Abiriba, Chief Onwuka Kalu, alias Onwuka Interbiz, manufacturer of Onwuka Nails, admonished the Yoruba during the Chief M K O Abiola June 12 crisis that when a shot is fired in someone’s father’s compound, running away from the compound would produce no solution rather than the men in the compound teaming up in order to bring down the menace.
A shot has obviously been fired in the compound of the Igbo. The solution can not be found in actions that are taken higgledy-piggledy. There must be a concerted systematically coordinated social political civil approaches to rewrite this calamity.
Political and Economic Advisers of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should not underestimate the likely implications of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s Imprisonment on President Tinubu’s 2027 reelection bid. His political opponents, especially in the North, will certainly like to leverage this imprisonment to a maximum advantage, surely to his disadvantage.
It is, therefore, the request of Equity Global Reporters Ltd that President Tinubu directs the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice to invoke a Nolle Prosequi for the total withdrawal of the charges against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, even as his Lawyers approach the Court of Appeal.
Such Presidential Intervention will engender National Unity, Justice, Peace, Development and Growth in Nigeria.
Sir Don Ubani is a former Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Abia State, and Publisher, Equity Global Reporters Ltd.
