He took Nigeria by storm and became the most discussed personality. He wielded no gun, yet he was labeled a terrorist. He was both feared and respected. He was feared by those who hated his gutts for speaking the truth and respected by those who admired his intelligence and courage. He was a stormy petrel.
When Mazi Nnamdi Kanu arrived the Nigerian political scene in 2014, he was not known by many people. They only thought him to be one of those obscure propagandists trying to sell the Biafran dream to the outside world.
Actually, Nnamdi Kanu was said to have first been recruited by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), to man the Biafran radio station in London. He later broke ranks with Uwazuruike over the way he was piloting the affairs of MASSOB and founded the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Nnamdi Kanu was very passionate about Biafra, and threw himself, body and soul, into the project. Soon, he began to draw thousands of youths who were obviously dissatisfied with the Nigerian political environment, to his side. They began to shout Biafra to the rooftops throughout the length and breadth of the country.
The authorities were worried and began to panic. They saw Nnamdi Kanu as a threat and began to plot how to deal with him once and for all, hoping thereby to destroy Biafra.
On September 14, 2017, they sent heavily armed soldiers under the code name of Operation Python Dance to the South East and specifically to Nnamdi Kanu’s house at Afara-ukwu, Abia State, to destroy Biafra and deal with Nnamdi Kanu. Every moving object seen in Nnamdi Kanu’s house was either gunned down or abducted. Since then, nothing had been heard about Nnamdi Kanu, while some rumour peddlers claimed that he had been sighted in different places across the globe.
But the Federal Government owes Nigerians explanation about the actual whereabouts of Nnamdi Kanu since it was after the Python Dance attack that he started missing. It is the right of Nigerians to know where Nnamdi Kanu is, whether he had been killed, abducted, or simply disappeared from thin air. We must continue to ask the question.
Meanwhile, the belief that if Nnamdi Kanu was done away with and IPOB proscibef, Biafra would seize to exist, has become a mere wishful thinking. Since Nnamdi Kanu’s disappearance, the quest for Biafra has continued to wax even stronger and more forceful. Those who identity themselves as members of IPOB have continued to parade the length and breadth of the country. The other day, they carried the battle to the backyard of their chief opponent when they opened the Hausa Service of Radio Biafra.
Biafra is a symbol. It is a resistance against injustice. If there was no injustice in Nigeria in 1967, there would have been no Biafra. And if that injustice did not continue, Nnamdi Kanu would not have resurrected it. Unless you deal with injustice in Nigeria, you cannot deal with Biafra. So far there is injustice in the country, there must be Biafra. No force of armies can extinguish it.
