Releasing Nnamdi Kanu Without Prosecution Will Reduce Nigeria To Lawless State — Northern Coalition To Buhari
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has urged President Muhammadu Buhari’s government to reject any demand for Nnamdi Kanu’s release without charge, claiming that doing so would turn Nigeria into a lawless state where criminals could freely commit crimes against the country.
Traditional rulers and other regional or tribal leaders in any section of the country would press for the release of their people who commit crimes against the country, according to the group.
The coalition, through its spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, while taking stock of events unfolding since the arrest and repatriation of Nnamdi Kanu said, “We warn that any attempt by the President to accede to the demand to release, without prosecuting and punishing Kanu, will inadvertently reduce Nigeria to a completely lawless state where criminals of all shades will commit crimes against the country, and then ask their traditional rulers and other regional or tribal leaders to press for their release.”
The CNG in a statement titled, “Igbo leaders’ demand for release of Nnamdi Kanu and President Buhari’s response”, advised Buhari to reclaim his statesmanship by refusing to be cajoled into interfering with the standard principle of separation of powers and independence of the judiciary in the case of Kanu.
The statement warned that if the North’s people are deliberately targeted and slaughtered, and the criminals are protected by “criminal tribal bigots” posing as leaders, the North would not stand by.
It served as a reminder to President Buhari that the North has noticed how he prioritizes the quest of votes and political popularity for his party over the sanctity of lives of northerners and security personnel who risk their lives and the welfare of their families in the service of the country.
In the event that Buhari succumbs to Igbo pressure to free Kanu, the North will hold him responsible for the blood of its people allegedly shed unlawfully through Kanu’s activities, according to the statement.
The group sought the arrest and punishment of those Igbo leaders, as well as any other group or individual, who were complicit in Kanu’s release by perverting the course of justice, notwithstanding his atrocities and crimes against humanity and the Nigerian state.
According to the statement, the composition of the Igbo elders has vindicated the position CNG exposed in 2017 that the diabolical scheme planned and manifested in Kanu and IPOB’s criminal actions is fully supported morally and politically by the vast majority of the pliant Igbo elders, elites, politicians, religious leaders, traditional rulers, business people, and the greater population of the South East.
CNG said that between 2017 and 2020, when IPOB’s hazardous campaigns were at their peak, Nnamdi Kanu encouraged the deaths of about 1,230 northern Nigerian residents living in portions of the South East.
It further claimed that under Nnamdi Kanu’s orders, multiple companies, residences, and precious assets belonging to northerners and other Nigerians were damaged across the Southeastern cities during the same time period.
Kanu had pushed the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to plan reckless attacks and destruction of national security assets, democratic symbols, and the killings of about 400 security men and orphaning their families, according to the coalition.
