The Indigenous People of Biafra(IPOB) has reiterated its allegation that some prominent politicians in the Southeast zone collaborated with the federal government and intentionally “manufactured insecurity” in the zone in order to justify the continued incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu.
IPOB stated this in a statement signed by its Media and Publicity Secretary, Comrade Emma Powerful, saying that “a dangerous lie was carefully constructed” to further justify the conviction and detention of its leader.
It said that there was need for the international community to be aware of the evil plot in the process leading up to the trial and conviction of Kanu following his extraordinary rendition in June 2021.
According to the IPOB spokesman, “desperate political actors” envious of Kanu’s influence had “unleashed violence and chaos across the South-East, with the sinister aim of creating insecurity and blaming it on Kanu.
He said that the contrived insecurity was fostered and stamped on Kanu “so they could later claim they were right to abduct, detain, and jail him”.
The spokesman pointed out that those behind the contrived insecurity were “the same people who rushed to proscribe IPOB, after Ekwulobia and Aba mega rallies in mid-2017 where millions trooped out just to catch a glimpse of our leader”.
He stated that the proscription of IPOB was carried out in defiance to the ruling of an Abuja Federal High Court which had earlier in March 2017 held that IPOB is not a terrorist organisation.
“In plain terms, a group declared lawful by a court was later branded “terrorist” through ex-parte (application) for political convenience.
According to Powerful, the people behind the proscription “are the same people that killed IPOB members that organised and attended President Trump Solidarity Rally in Igweocha (Port Harcourt) on 20 January 2017”.
“It is painful to note that yet again, the same forces behind the manufactured insecurity are the same ones who unleashed Operation Python Dance, a military operation that targeted Mazi Nnamdi Kanu for assassination and led to the killing of unarmed civilians across the South-East with 28 murdered in his country home,” he said.
The IPOB spokesman noted that the “most shocking” of all the conspiracies against Kanu happened during the court trial by Justice James Omotosho, especially in his judgment.
He lamented that Omotosho “repeatedly cited insecurity in the South-East from 2022 onwards and blamed it on Mazi Nnamdi Kanu—despite the fact that Mazi Kanu had already been abducted, renditioned to Nigeria, and locked in underground solitary confinement”.
The IPOB spokesman invited Nigerians and the world to pause and think how it was possible for Kanu, who was held incommunicado in the custody of the DSS in Abuja to cause insecurity in the Southeast zone.
“He(Kanu) had no phone, no visitors, no access to the outside world. Yet he was blamed for events said to have happened in the South-East, outside prison walls,” he said, adding that there was no justice in position of the judge but “judicial absurdity”.
Poeerful wondered how “a man in total state custody was convicted for crimes allegedly committed while he was in chains”, noting that “in any sane country, such reasoning by a supposed learned judge would attract instant condemnation from fellow judges and the legal fraternity”.
However, he lamented that in Nigeria, the plot against Kanu “was so well executed that many people stopped asking basic questions” such as who did Mazi Nnamdi Kanu kill? Who came to court to say Kanu killed their brother, sister, or parent?.
The IPOB media and publicity secretary asserted that “there is absolutely no evidence linking Kanu to the insecurity in the Southeast and the attendant killings, yet he was blamed, convicted and jailed for that.
“Those who planned this deception did a thorough job. They confused the public, silenced questions, and drowned the truth in propaganda. But no lie lasts forever,” he said.
IPOB called on the international community, foreign governments and parliaments, human rights organisations, ljawyers and judges of conscience “to look beyond propaganda and confront the truth”.
He insisted that Kanu’s “conviction is built on manufactured insecurity with no evidence, and the criminalisation of political dissent”, adding that “history will remember those who spoke the truth—and those who used chaos to silence a man”.
