BRITISH OFFICIALS’ PLANNED VISIT: NNAMDI KANU, SHINE YOUR EYES!
We have been told that officials of the British High Commission in Nigeria would be meeting the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, who is now in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS).
Lawyer to Nnamdi Kanu, Aloy Ejimakor, who disclosed this said: “about the British High Commission officials, I spoke with them too. They request to see him too after the Monday experience. So, all of these things we’re working on, and hopefully, we will get them. They are desirous to see him. It was mentioned during my talk with the Consular some moments ago.”
Some people may be very excited about this reported planned visit by the British High Commission officials to Nnamdi Kanu. But we are not in anyway excited. Rather, we are circumspect, hesitant, cautious and suspicious.
If we may ask: when have the British officials suddenly woken up from slumber and remembered that they should visit their fellow citizen who was abducted and kept in confinement for over one month now?
Nnamdi Kanu holds a British citizenship. He had travelled to Kenya with a British passport. In Kenya, he was abducted, tortured and flown to Nigeria blindfolded. He was brought to court without taking any plea, and then sent to confinement. The day they were to bring formal charges against him, they failed to produce the man in court.
All these while, the British officials were asleep. They would not do or say anything. All we had heard was that the British High Commission would provide “Consular services to Nnamdi Kanu, if requested”. We see this as just a diplomatic language that means nothing.
Now, take this: in the heat of the Nnamdi Kanu saga, the Kenyan Government and the United Kingdom Government decided to organize “a global education summit” in London, and invited Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, to the summit. President Buhari who closed his eyes to the rot in education system in Nigeria, joyfully accepted the invitation and travelled to London for the “education summit”.
Obviously, as part of this “education summit”, Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari; United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson; and Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyetta; might have discussed the Nnamdi Kanu issue. Nobody knew what they discussed, but it was after that London education summit, that the British High Commission in Nigeria decided that their officials should visit Nnamdi Kanu in DSS cell.
But, if we may ask, why have the British High Commission suddenly remembered that their officials could visit Nnamdi Kanu, their fellow citizen, who has been in detention for more than six weeks now? For what purpose? Is it to solidarize with Kanu, or to mock him, or even to eliminate llhim?
Our only advise for Nnamdi Kanu is to beware, to “shine his eyes” well well. He should not “drink any tea”, nor take anything from the British officials, if and when they eventually come to visit him. Let him remember what happened to MKO Abiola, in 1997, after he took “tea” brought to him by the American officials, who visited him in detention.
Nnamdi Kanu should live with this immortal word of Frantz Fanon to: “Leave this Europe where they are always busy talking about man, yet murder man anywhere they see him”.
By Dr. Dons Eze, KSJI
