UMUAHIA, Nigeria (Reuters)
- A secessionist leader seeking independence from Nigeria has been missing
since an alleged military raid more than two weeks ago left his house in the
city of Umuahia riddled with bullet holes, its windows smashed and doors
hanging off hinges.
The disappearance of Nnamdi
Kanu, after the raid the army says did not happen, threatens to ignite
separatist unrest capable of destabilizing southeastern Nigeria, a region where
a million people died in a 1967-70 civil war over the short-lived Republic of
Biafra.
Kingsley Kanu, 48, said he was
with his older brother Nnamdi, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader,
at their family home on the evening of Sept. 14 when soldiers stormed in.
"They were shooting
everything they saw," he said, pointing to bullet holes in walls and
windows.
"They came here just to
kill everybody," he said, adding that around 20 IPOB members were shot
dead but most of the bodies were taken by soldiers.
Reuters witnesses - a reporter
and TV cameraman - on Sept. 27 saw six corpses with bullet wounds in a morgue,
who IPOB said were among their members.
Two resembled men in photographs
held by weeping relatives who told Reuters their brothers were killed in the
raid, though nobody could verify the identities of the four others.
"The military did not raid
Nnamdi Kanu's residence," a military spokesman told reporters in the
capital, Abuja. "Nnamdi Kanu is not in the custody of the military."
The allegation and denial are
the biggest flashpoint of a military deployment in the southeast that began in
September.
Civil society groups and
analysts say the military presence, last month's designation of IPOB as a
"terrorist organization", and its leader's disappearance could prompt
the separatists to abandon their policy of non-violence.
President Muhammadu Buhari, a
Muslim northerner, made a crackdown on secessionists the focus of his first
speech in August after returning from three months of medical leave in Britain.
He then held talks with armed
forces chiefs who days later launched Operation Python Dance, which the
military said was intended to reduce violent crime and "secessionist
agitations".
Soldiers with rifles are present
across Umuahia, capital of Abia state, in armored vans and at checkpoints where
motorists are routinely questioned.
Buhari is already contending
with Boko Haram's jihadist insurgency in the northeast and seeking to maintain
a ceasefire with militants in the southern oil-producing Niger Delta.
But some say the former military
ruler risks exacerbating the situation, just as militant attacks in the Niger
Delta surged last year after troops were deployed.
HEAVY-HANDED?
"The government's
heavy-handed approach will only shore up local support for a radical group that
previously struggled to broaden its base," said Malte Liewerscheidt of
global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.
Ryan Cummings, director of
Africa-focused risk management company Signal Risk, said the Igbo ethnic group
that dominates the region, and has long spoken of being marginalized, felt
targeted.
"The government has allowed
insecurity to burgeon in other areas of Nigeria without similar
deployments," he said, citing attacks by Fulani herdsmen that have killed
hundreds of people in central Nigeria over the last few years.
Tension followed the arrival of
troops in the southeast.
Abia's governor imposed a curfew
in the city of Aba last month. Several days of tension between IPOB members and
troops led to claims by the group that Kanu's house had been besieged by
soldiers, which the military denied.
Videos circulating on social
media including footage purportedly showing troops in Abia using sticks to flog
men stripped to the waist, which the army said it was investigating, have
heightened anger.
"The presence of the army
scared our people. People spoke about what happened during the Biafran
war," said Onyebuchi Ememanka, a special adviser to the state's governor
who is a member of the opposition People's Democratic Party (PDP).
"There were no serious
security challenges that would justify the deployment of troops," said
Ememanka.
He said he never saw IPOB's
members carrying weapons, though he added that a uniformed national guard and
secret service had held parades in the last few weeks, which he called a
"new dimension".
Red, black and green paint - the
Biafran flag's colors - daubed on walls and tree trunks across Umuahia follow
calls for a referendum on independence.
Kanu's release on bail in April,
after being held for nearly two years on charges of criminal conspiracy and
treasonable offences, brought attention back to the issue.
However, talk of secession among
people on the streets of Umuahia mostly hinged on whether or not they had the
right to make a democratic choice about their future rather than aligning with
IPOB's belief in a need for a separate state.
Opinions tend to be divided
along generation lines, with younger people born long after the war expressing
an interest in a referendum while older people who remember the war or grew up
hearing stories about the conflict are often wary of even discussing the
subject.
However, a pronouncement earlier
this year by activists in the northern state of Kaduna that Igbos, who are
mainly Christian, should be evicted stirred ethnic tensions. The dispute acted
as a lightning rod for frustrations against Buhari, who fought in the civil war
on the government side as a young soldier.
A lack of development in the
southeast for decades has cemented a belief among Igbos that they have been
marginalized.
IPOB ARRESTS
Michael Ogbizi, Abia state
police commissioner, said 74 IPOB members had been arrested since Sept. 12 and
charged with offences including murder and arson.
Many charges related to the
burning down of a police station in mid-September in Aba where nine people
died. Ogbizi said police had no records of IPOB members being killed.
An IPOB spokesman denied the
group was involved in the fire.
Amid differing opinions about
the group's past conduct, Kanu's disappearance has created uncertainty about
its future.
"If they [the army] have
killed him, let them give us the corpse," said the IPOB leader's brother,
adding that his missing 82-year-old father and 67-year-old mother should be
released if they are being held.
Liewerscheidt said if Kanu were
to die at the hands of the authorities parallels could be drawn with the
origins of the Boko Haram insurgency that began after the death of Mohammed
Yusuf, the Islamist militant group's founder, in police custody.
"This would likely
transform IPOB into precisely the terrorist organization the military claims it
already is," he said.
(Additional reporting by
Camillus Eboh in Abuja and Anamesere Igboeroteonwu in Onitsha; editing by Giles
Elgood)
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