So where is Olisa Agbakoba? So,
where is Femi Falana, the tireless campaigner for our human rights? The
“inheritor” of the distinguished mantle of the irrepressible icon of the
defence of citizens right and conscience of the nation, the late Gani
Fawehinmi? This moment is when Gani is sorely missed.
This was his signature
moment, when he would rise fearlessly, and confront the Nigerian government and
its armada of forces, and compel them to produce, dead or alive, the body of
the missing IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu. Gani would be unstoppable. He would go to
the ends of the legal earth, and he would file tons of briefs, until it becomes
a public issue of the sort that would make even a deaf regime hearken. But Gani
is no more. And Chima Ubani – that tireless organizer too.
The Nigerian space
for critical organizing seems empty and limited with the gaping absence of
those two. But where are the new kids on the block? Did public advocacy end
with one generation? Are Nigerians now suffering from “human-rights fatigue?” I
hope surely not.
Because we need to raise this important question and we need
the answers from the Buhari administration, and the security services: where
the hell is Nnamdi Kanu? This question is urgent for two reasons: one, an
opponent of government cannot just disappear without trace, and without
accounting. Once we permit that, and ignore the important questions, then the
lives of every Nigerian citizen, particularly those of journalists, opposition
lawyers, human rights advocates, political opposition of any hue, and simply
put, any citizen of this nation who is presumed even without a scintilla of
cause, to be an “opponent of government” is potential candidate for
disappearance. Governments are powerful institutions.
They have resources of
persuasion and violence. Because governments have such unlimited resources,
civilized societies place a chain on their waists to tug them back from
excessive use of these instruments of state terror; because such instruments
can be misused, and once it becomes routine to deploy excessive coercive methods,
we slip into normlessness and fear and tyranny.
As citizens we come to
recognize that we are now “acted upon” and no longer conscious agents of our
own. We begin to fear for our lives and our loss of agency. Fear breeds its own
response: one, it drives people to acts of brinkmanship. Two, it seeks
vengeance. Three it deregulates violence, and the greatest victims are those in
society who are unable to arm themselves in their own self-defence. It is
therefore in the general interest of society to make certain that governments
to do not acquire, or appropriate, or utilize the power, outside of the law, to
make its opponents “disappear.” The second reason we must ask this government
about the whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu is because it has an obligation to Nigerians
to explain, and give a concrete sense of what to expect with Kanu. Kanu is the
leader of a movement of secession.
The government has tagged that movement, and
Kanu himself a “terrorist.” Many people have of course pointed out to the
Nigerian government that this is not quite so. To tag IPOB a terrorist
organization, is to reduce the entire meaning of nation to a joke. The
government might just as well declare the APC the only legal political party,
and other parties, including the PDP which conceded government to it following
an election defeat, a terrorist organization, simply because its aim now is to
rouse a crowd to “overthrow the APC government” even if by the use of
democratic means – the electoral votes. We have pointed out serially that the evidence
before us, until the government produces stronger, countervailing facts, shows
that IPOB very clearly makes the case for separation and secession, but through
the use of a plebiscitory process, and not by arms. That it in fact publicly
disavows the use of arms. The Buhari administration first arrested Nnamdi Kanu
on the claims that he wished to commit treason; they held him in detention, and
brought him to court.
The Federal High court granted him a bail and upheld that
the Federal government did not have the powers to hold him indefinitely in
detention. The courts released him on a bail, took sureties from the ranking
senator from Abia, Senator Enyinnia Abaribe and a Jewish Rabbi, and sent Nnamdi
Kanu home with a gag. But the gag rule was an unjust and unenforceable rule. It
basically tied Kanu’s hands backwards, and gaged his mouth, and sent him home,
with a pre-condition that limited his rights of movement by confining him to a
small radius of his home in Afara-Ukwu Umuahia.
He did break his conditions,
but the courts did not order his re-arrest. It just so happened that on
September 14, the Buhari administration authorized the use of force to contain
Kanu and his movement. Using the coverage of a military operation, the
“Operation Python Dance” in the South East, the Nigerian military attacked
Nnamdi Kanu’s home in Afara-Ukwu Umuahia. At home during the bombardment that
day were Nnamdi Kanu’s parents, none of whom have since been seen alive.
No one
has heard from them. Nobody as yet knows whether they were killed in the
attack, or whether they just simply escaped. They have denied custody of either
Nnamdi Kanu’s parents or Nnamdi Kanu himself since the attack. However, on
September 18, the IPOB released a statement claiming that the Nigerian military
may have killed Nnamdi Kanu and his parents in that operation, and may have
seized their bodies.
This is very serious allegation. But it is increasingly
necessary to ask this question about what government knows about the
whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu. His silence, since the attack, and the silence of
his parents is getting ominous and suspicious, and thickening the conspiracy
that the military may have allegedly killed them and burnt their bodies.
Government sources have since denied this, but have refused to make further
clarifications on this question. Mr. Orji Uzo Kalu, a former governor of Abia
state did come out, it was reported, to say that Nnamdi Kanu had escaped to
London, by way of Asia.
He has since denied making this claim, especially since
the UK government had raised the question, themselves, of the whereabouts of
Nnamdi Kanu. This past week, the courts convened to try Nnamdi Kanu in
absentia. It all felt like hollow ritual, as though the government was embarked
on a wink-wink gimmick, and the larger absurdism of such gimmickry was when
Justice Binta Nyako, summoned Senator Abaribe and those who had stood sureties
for Kanu to court, to produce him or lose their deposits or worse.
Now, the
question that I thought should be raised before the court is, whether Abaribe
and co, still had a responsibility to the court, if the subject of the
litigation was attacked, disappeared, or even forced to flee, were it to be the
case, by the same government trying him, thus putting his bailers in jeopardy.
It is incumbent on Abaribe and his lawyers to force the Federal government to
account exactly for Nnamdi Kanu.
He cannot just disappear without trace. Even
if Nnamdi Kanu escaped, Nigeria has an Intelligence services which ought by now
to know the foot marks of that escape, and to where, and would by now have
placed a tag on Kanu and his whereabouts.
That is, suppose, in fact he escaped.
But there is no evidence that Kanu escaped or left the country either alone or
with his parents. It is a troubling question, and the IPOB has said that it
would give the government a minimum time within which to produce Kanu or his
body, after which they’d embark on a series of direct retaliatory actions,
starting with the governors of the East who allegedly invited the soldiers, as
they alleged, to kill their leader.
This is very dangerous development. And
this is not a time to say “wanka” and leave it at that. If the IPOB is forced
to arms, this government would have opened a very dangerous front the end of
which no one can legitimately foresee. Where is Nnamdi Kanu? The governors of
the East and President Buhari must give us answers, and quickly too.
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