In the gospel according to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, fugitive leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the two top contenders to this year’s Presidential election in Nigeria are “foreign nationals”.
These are the Presidential candidate of the All Peoples Congress (APC), General Muhammadu Buhari, and the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
Nnamdi Kanu adduced a number of reasons to back up his claims.
According to him, the APC Presidential candidate, who also is the current occupant of Aso Rock Presidential Villa, Muhammadu Buhari, is fake, or is cloned.
Nnamdi Kanu claimed that the original Buhari had since passed away in London and was buried in Saudi Arabia, while a man called Jubril from Sudan was recruited to act as the Nigerian President.
He adduced a number of reasons to back up his claims, which were based mainly on some physical features, like height, ear lopes as well as a receding hair line.
When Kanu’s claim began to assume a larger than life size, the man in Aso Rock, while in an oversea’s tour, came out to openly deny the assertion. He said that he was not Jubril from Sudan, that he was was not fake or cloned, that he is the real Buhari.
Some people believed him, while some others did not.
Now, the same Nnamdi Kanu has come out to say that a former Vice President of Nigeria and now Presidential candidate of the PDP, Atiku Abubakar, is not a Nigerian, that he is from Cameroun.
Kanu’s claim was based on the fact that the particular place Atiku Abubakar comes from was part of Cameroun, which is a historical fact.
In reality, the entire Adamawa State, where Atiku Abubakar was born, was part of British Cameroun. But that was about sixty years ago, before a referendum was conducted by the United Nations. Following that referendum, Adamawa and Taraba, which were formerly known as Sarduana Province, chose to remain in Nigeria, instead of going to Cameroun, and they have remained part of Nigeria ever since.
So there is no big deal about that. Adamawa, Atiku’s birthplace, is part of Nigeria, and Atiku himself, is a Nigerian, and he will continue to remain so, otherwise he would not have been elected as Nigeria’s Vice President, some twenty years ago.
Here in the East, we are not even happy that due to our “I don’t care attitude”, during that plebiscite conducted by the United Nations in 1961, we lost the Southern Cameroun which used to be part of Eastern Region, while the Northern Region was more practical and fought for the retention of the Northern Cameroun. That’s how we have now lost Bakasi to the same Cameroun.
For us therefore, there is no big deal in Nnamdi Kanu’s claims. Whether it is the “Jubril from Sudan” or the “man from Cameroun”, we have accepted them as bona fide members of this contraption called Nigeria, and they have presented them to us as viable alternatives to chose on February 16.
There will be no sitting at home. And we must all go out to vote.
