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One of the three great philosophers it was who said when a man finds himself compelled to obey and he obeys, he does well; but the moment he is strong enough to throw away the yoke and he does, he does better: For no man is ever strong enough to always be master unless he transforms power into right and obedience into duty. Based on the above saying of the sage, IPOB talisman, Nnamdi Kanu, was right to have accepted the stringent bail conditions imposed on him to get out of the oppressors’ gulag; but the moment he was outside and breathed the air of freedom and gathered steam, he did better throwing away the oppressive conditions of the bail. Were he to keep himself down, there would have been little difference between Kanu behind bars and Kanu liberty. The bail conditions subverted our Constitution by abridging the fundamental human rights of Kanu to freedom of association; freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom to freely hold and propagate opinion, among others. To the extent that the bail conditions assaulted Kanu’s fundamental human rights as enshrined in our Constitution, it is to that extent null and void and of no effect whatever. It also portrays the judge who made such patently unconstitutional order as anti-democratic and anti-human and people’s rights.
Kanu must have learned from the unfortunate example of the late MKO Abiola, who was carted into incarceration after the June 12, 1993 presidential election he won free and square was annulled by the North. Abiola rejected a stringent and demeaning bail condition granted him and later was murdered in detention. It remains in the realm of conjecture what would have been had Abiola accepted his bail conditions, regained his freedom and fought his mandate-revalidation battle from outside rather than inside prison. History is replete with examples of political prisoners who fought from inside the prison and eventually gained political power or influence, the most famous of them being Nelson Mandela. So also is history replete with those who perished in incarceration, the most famous of them also being Patrice Lumumba of the Congo. As vicious as the apartheid regime in South Africa was, it kept Mandela in good condition, allowing him to still come out to become the first post-apartheid Black president of South Africa at old age; whereas the more vicious and bestial feudal autocrats of Nigeria terminated Abiola’s life and that of many others in detention. So Kanu was right to have learned from the history of his own immediate environment. Those who fail to learn from history, it has been said, are often condemned to repeating its mistakes.
This is not to say, however, that I am in support of all of Kanu’s moves and utterances since he started his IPOB business or since he came out of detention. I disagree, for instance, with the condescending attitude of IPOB or Biafra to the minorities of the South-south. If the Igbo are fighting for self-determination, and want to be taken seriously, it behoves them to grant the same rights to the other peoples of the South-south. Otherwise, they will become laughable like President Muhammadu Buhari, who supports, defends, and promotes the self-determination struggles of the Palestinians and Western Sahara but denies same rights to his own Nigerian people at home. To Buhari as well as to Kanu, charity must begin from home. I also take serious exception to the broadsides Kanu and other Igbos always fire at the Yoruba, based on a deliberate manipulation and distortion of our recent history, like Chinua Achebe consistently did, or outright ignorance of the role and statements of Yoruba leaders. You cannot demand respect for your own people and in one and same breathe pour undeserved expletives on other peoples. Having said that, I am of the view that the Federal Government drop its ill-advised pursuit of the revocation of Kanu’s bail. It is an ill-wind that will blow us no good. What is needed here, as in all other agitation theatres, is dialogue; not strong-arm tactics. Those who think they will get the other parts of the country to queue behind them to demolish the Igbo, as was the case in 1967/1970 should do a re-think and re-assess their permutations. The goal-posts have since shifted. Things have fallen apart amongst hitherto allies and the falcon can no longer hear the falconer.
