Abimbola Adelakun
Watching Attorney-General of the Federation and minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, slogging through a written speech to announce the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra, I got the impression that this was a triumphalist moment for him and the regime he fronted. The Philistines have finally bagged Samson, and you can expect them to backslap themselves into weariness. Considering no one else has yanked their chain more than Kanu, this must be the peak of their achievements. Not only did they sacrifice administrative dignity to pursue him, but they also invested a disproportionate amount of effort into hunting Kanu than they committed to fighting bandits, irredentists and, fundamentalists. In the process, they built him up into what he was not supposed to be: a cult hero.
By dogging him and persecuting his followers, no one contributed to the astronomical social relevance of Kanu more than the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), himself. The other day, a coalition of northern groups placed a bounty of N100m on Kanu, unwittingly demonstrating how much of a high-prized target he had become. His arrest might be the climax of Malami’s undistinguished career as a lawyer and a public servant. However, the real test of their leadership sagacity will come from how they handle his trial and their subsequent relationship with his supporters. Given how frequently Buhari misses the chances to assert himself as a nationalist with enough sagacity to forge a nation out of the shards of its histories, I will not be surprised if he bungles even this chance to critically reflect on the multiple historical discontents and increasing disillusionment that led Nigeria to this point.
There is something about the Biafran war and Buhari’s participation in it as a neophyte soldier that still traumatises him on a personal level. Nothing else that happens in Nigeria rattles Buhari like the mention of Biafra, and no, his dis-ease with Biafra does not manifest as critical reflection but an opportunity to speak the only language he understands: brutality. You can deduce that the ghosts of Biafra haunt Buhari from his humiliating treatment of southeasterners right from the moment he attained power. His Igbophobia percolates all the levels of his nepotistic regime. Nigeria is currently going through one of its darkest periods in history; issues of insecurity and economic crunch are squeezing the life out of Nigerians, but all the complexity of what beguiles Nigeria has been reduced to IPOB and Kanu. In his interview with Arise TV, Buhari made some excuses for the young men in northern Nigeria that turned to banditry but did not extend a similar exculpation to the disillusioned youths in the South-East who joined IPOB.
In 2017, when Buhari went on medical tourism in London for 103 days, he arrogantly ignored questions about his condition from Nigerians. When he eventually jumped on a plane and ran back home, it was to warn IPOB against their secession campaign. Again, unlike his fellow “patriots” who fought in the Biafra War in similar capacities as he did, Buhari is about the only one whose retrospective assessment of that war remains unnuanced 50 plus years after. An elder is expected to look back to that episode in Nigerian history with the wisdom and insight that eluded him and his colleagues in their younger years when they decided on a war, but Buhari remains permanently unreconstructed.
We can rightly argue that it is untypical of Buhari to demonstrate moral evolution by profoundly reflecting on any issue whatsoever, but his attitude towards the mere whisper of Biafra around him is on another level. Even his misguided fight with Twitter revolved around IPOB and, of course, Kanu. In his mind, the Biafra War is still ongoing, and he is pursuing the cause with the same messianic zeal with which they justified many reprehensible acts in the ’60s.
For a regime heavily invested in looking good at the expense of reality, Kanu’s sheer existence and continued defiance of their repressive machinery of power are an open shame. In trying to assert their authority, they tactlessly animated his cause. Buhari came into office as a supposed strongman who would rid the country of all elements that threatened its corporate existence, but Kanu’s constant pester undermined him. Unable to stand up to bandits or Boko Haram whom they now pay humongous sums from the public purse, Kanu came to symbolise for them everything wrong with Nigeria; a convenient deflection from their serial failures in issues ranging from the economy to security.
One can, of course, argue that Kanu was a face of criminality missing in the banditry that currently plagues the northern regions. So, while bandits do not have a recognisable leader that could be targeted, the IPOB separatists had one in Kanu. But then, in their extreme anxiety to prove to Buhari’s devotees that the man’s force is not spent, they turned Kanu into a formidable force and exposed their anxieties about the fragility of their power. In trying to denounce him by claiming he spends as much as $85,000 monthly to de-market Nigeria, they officially announced his relevance. Subjecting him to trial will not undo the damage.
As of the time of writing this, Malami has yet to state how Kanu was “intercepted” or where it happened, but given the regime’s penchant for reaching into their bag of old tricks and gratuitously repeating their own history of military authoritarianism, it is probable this is the Umaru Dikko episode all over again. It is possible that Kanu was abducted by Nigerian government officials or mercenaries who operated outside the rule of law. He is a British citizen, and if he would be extradited for any offence by the UK, there should be at least a court hearing to determine the validity of such request. Malami at least owes us an account of how Kanu was renditioned so we can determine if the process meets legal standards or not. Even if you take Kanu for a rogue and a charlatan, that should not subsume the valid questions of how he was apprehended and the possible abuses of official power that made it possible. That someone is deemed a nuisance and we want them gone should not blind us to the broader picture of the legitimacy of their tactics. Also, he deserves a fair trial.
While I am not exactly sympathetic to Kanu as an individual, I am able to candidly separate his antics from both the sensibilities that he speaks to and the over-investment of the Buhari regime into destroying it. I also refuse to allow them use Kanu to metaphorise everything wrong with Nigeria presently. Kanu’s agitations gained ground because there was legitimate discontent among the people.
For the discerning, Kanu’s arrest is joyless. We are looking at a man whose needless rise into prominence was sponsored by the abject lack of prudence that has defined Buhari’s regime from day one. Buhari breathed life into the IPOB flame and should be concomitantly held responsible for turning Kanu, a man who was regularly dismissed among his own folks as a mere pretender, into a leader of a Nigerian separatist movement with an appreciable measure of international recognition.
Quite likely, Kanu will be interminably detained along with his key followers. That will set back their movement, but some destroyed temples tend to rise again after three days with an even greater force of determination. It could also happen that his arrest will test the resolution of his followers and radicalise even those previously agnostic about him. Their attempts to push back against the build-up of insults will escalate existing tension, further giving the regime the impetus to use a disproportionate amount of violence on virtually anyone deemed a security threat. Every form of violence will become justifiable in the guise of preserving national integrity. To think that none of this should have happened if only Buhari and his stalwarts had enough mental character to understand that agitations for separation resonate with discontented people, and they could have resolved issues through means other than violence.
