That is a major factor that has made the struggle to free him after he was renditioned into Nigeria three years ago, a very daunting process.
According to John Maxwell, the renowned leadership expert, there is a difference between disagreement & disrespect. Apparently, the problem is not just a disagreement between the IPOB leader and the Nigerian nation.
But it appears to be a disrespect problem because he tended to be disrespecting other tribes. The point being made is that, when one disagrees with another, they can talk it out. They will just sit there and probably agree to disagree, by never coming to an agreement on anything but they will keep talking. So when we disagree, we’ll talk it out.
But if one disrespects another, it puts a wall between them. This may result in what can be identified as a confirmation bias. In other words, people seek to listen to only people they agree with. Instead of confirmation bias, what is needed is a collaboration bias. Based on Maxwell’s philosophy, Igbos need to seek out people who are different from them to build relationships with others to achieve full integration.
Before Obasanjo and Anyaoku’s visit in the company of the Obi of Onitsha, Igwe Nnaemeka Achebe, to confer with the five governors of eastern Nigeria in Enugu, on Tuesday 3rd July, in November of 2021, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, led a delegation of Igbo leaders to visit then President Muhammadu Buhari to appeal to him for the unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu.
During that meeting, Chief Amaechi was in the company of Dr. Chukwuemeka Ezeife, former governor of Anambra State; Bishop Sunday Onuoha of the Methodist Church; Chief (Barrister) Goddy Uwazurike, former President of Igbo socio-cultural group, Aka Ikenga, and Mr. Tagbo Mbazulike Amaechi, the nonagenarian 2nd Republic minister of transport (who have now passed away along with Dr. Ezeife) had described the situation in the South-East as “painful and pathetic,” lamenting that “businesses have collapsed, education is crumbling, and there is fear everywhere.”
He then committed to then President Buhari that if Kanu was released to him as the only First Republic Minister still alive, “he would no longer say the things he had been saying,” stressing that he could control him, “not because I have anything to do with them (IPOB), but I am highly respected in Igbo land today.”
Then he concluded by making a solemn wish: “I don’t want to leave this planet without peace returning to my country. I believe in one big, united Nigeria, a force in Africa. Mr. President, I want you to be remembered as a person who saw Nigeria burning, and you quenched the fire.”
Unfortunately, that wish never came to pass, before the 93-year-old Amaechi and 86-year-old Ezeife joined their ancestors in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Fortuitously, although the late Mbazukike Amaechi had offered himself to then President Buhari as a guarantor of Kanu’s good behaviour if released to him, a deal which the former president declined, reportedly Nnamdi Kanu himself and IPOB leadership have now undertaken to abide by whatever rules that are given as precondition for his freedom currently being negotiated.
So an out-of-court settlement is on track even as a few days after the eastern states’ governors resolved to take their plea to President Tinubu, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe of Abia State has led his colleagues from the South-East to meet with the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, to negotiate the release of Kanu so that peace would reign in the eastern region like it used to before the agitation for a sovereign nation of Biafra raised the tension that has made the region a boiling cauldron of sorts.
It is such a paradox that only in 2016 the eastern region merited being granted by the United Nations Development Programme, UNDO, the status of the safest region in terms of human security in Nigeria.
Today, that geographical location has become so blighted that it is a shadow of its old self as the agitation to separate the Igbos from the rest of Nigeria has taken a very violent and bloody turn with thousands of the youths going to their graves prematurely.
That high level of violence had made Igbo land a no-go area for people who cherish peace and tranquility as the space that was in no distant past a bastion of commerce and industry has become a cauldron of sorts.
Before proceeding further, a bit of historical background of the three figures who have influenced Igbo nation the most and have been the major drivers of the Igbo struggle would be in order.
The three notable leaders in the annals of the modern Igbo nation are Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
It is striking that two have passed away at ripe age and one is incarcerated.
Azikiwe’s passion for the freedom of the oppressed people transcends Igbo land extending to his fight for independence of Nigeria and indeed the entire African continent. That is because he was one of the purveyors of Africa’s independence from colonial rule, which is a mission he embarked upon his return from acquiring education from Lincoln University, Connecticut, USA.
The second is Chief Odimegwu Ojukwu, who in a bid to separate Igbos from Nigeria, as a Colonel in the Nigerian army serving as the military administrator of the then Eastern Region declared it as the nation of Biafra on the 30th May 1967.
The third is Nnamdi Kanu who was driven by the zeal to conclude the liberation of Igbos from the injustice. He zealously continued with the struggle that was started peacefully by Azikiwe before and continued after 1960 when Nigeria became an independent country and which Ojukwu pursued violently via a secession attempt in 1967 that degenerated into an unfortunate civil war that raged on for three years and left in its trail the loss of estimated three million souls and massive destruction of infrastructure in Igboland.
The IPOB leader who had relied on fiery anti-Nigeria speeches which authorities regarded as hateful and seditious and was thus apprehended by law enforcement agencies has been fighting for his freedom through the judiciary for over three years period.
The Igbos in pursuit of their quest to become more active participants in the mainstream political leadership of our country or be allowed to go their separate way have been “shaking the table”, be it via the civil war or the socioeconomically strangulating activities of IPOB in a bid to attract the attention of the FGN and the world.
It is remarkable that only one of the three Igbo leaders highlighted earlier pursued the goal of liberating Igbos peacefully and that personality is Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe. Notably, he was an intellectual and preferred a non-violent approach to conflict resolution.
To underscore his preference for dialogue over violence, it is worth recollecting a narrative in an interview he had in 1995 at the age of 90 and in which he revealed how he admonished his protégé in Ghana, the late Kwame Nkrumah (who later became the prime minister of Ghana) to eschew violence in seeking change.
As a direct opposite of Azikiwe’s approach, Chief Ojukwu who was an army Colonel, adopted the use of force which was why he attempted to secede relying on the instrumentality of guns and war.
Likewise, Mazi Kanu’s modus operandi is the resort to fiery and incendiary speeches that fired up the youths of Igboland who as a result felt obliged to pursue their freedom from the marginalisation or ostracisation by the Nigerian government as it were through confrontation of the nation’s security forces.
My guess is that each of them leveraged their skills based on their areas of expertise, which is okay.
Perhaps due to the notion of the average Igbo person influenced by the experience of the civil war and non-implementation of the end-of-war remedies promised which are— Reconciliation, Reconstruction, and Rehabilitation— the so-called three Rs that were supposed to help re-absorb the Igbos back into the system, they have somehow become isolated in the scheme of things in our country.
Worse of all even they too have been affirming that inequity by also increasingly distancing themselves or drifting away instead of building friendship bridges across the River Niger to other like or unlike-minded Nigerians.
The above view is my assessment and a lot of hardliners have been debating that point of view with me over the years. I have been making the case that the imminent release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from detention and subsequent readmission of the Igbo nation into the mainstream of Nigerian leadership can only be attained through intensive and continuous negotiations which diplomacy is all about and not the nzogbu nzogbu (forceful) approach which has been the approach in the past decade or thereabouts.
The truth is that we cannot continue to allow our unarmed youths to confront security forces that are fully armed in the manner Palestinians confront Israeli Security Forces, and IDF with bare hands and stones.
It is unwise that they would continue to throw stones at security forces hoping that when they are mowed down and prematurely sent to their graves for a cause that can be negotiated, the powerful countries would come to their rescue.
Based on experience, diplomacy preferred by Nnamdi Azikiwe has always proven to be the best way of resolving conflicts no matter how complex.
Nigeria attained independence without firing a shot against Britain. Similarly, India secured independence not through the barrels of the gun nor did apartheid end in South Africa via a war, but through a negotiated agreement which democracy is all about.
It is only through diplomacy that the raging Israeli-Hamas conflict and the Russian-Ukraine war would have been avoided and would eventually end.
That is a clear affirmation of the fact that diplomacy is the best solution for conflict resolution no matter how complex.
It is in light of the above that the working title of this intervention is: ‘Imminent Release Of Nnamdi Kanu. Triumph of Diplomacy Over Nzogbu Nzogbu Approach To Conflict Resolution.’
That is exactly what this piece is about, but because that title is too wordy, I searched harder until I found the current title which is equally apt.
When, not if peace returns to Igbo land, sooner than later through diplomacy it will be a tribute to the memory of my senior friend, the late Prof. George Obiozor, who was the immediate past President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo who tried very hard to infuse the conversation on Igbo exclusion and the need to bring the ethic group into the mainstream with the fervour of diplomacy.
I can recall his passion for reconciling the Igbo nation with the rest of Nigeria with nostalgia. As far back as the mid-1980s, Prof. Obiozor alongside Prof. Ukandi Damachi, Dr. Stanley and Mr. Tom Fabian (all of blessed memory) used to converge on my apartment at 1004 Estate, on Victoria Island, Lagos.
They used to do so even if I was much younger than them in age, academics and every material in particular. But I felt honored to enjoy the privilege of sharing space and rubbing minds with some of the best brains in Nigeria as they were products of some of the best universities in the United States of America, USA, from MIT, Princeton, and Harvard. They often engaged themselves in discussions that dug deep into the essence of our country from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
Having operated at very high levels in both the academia and top echelons of government and the private sector they had highly valuable insights which I was happy to absorb from them.
Restoring the South-East into the bastion of industrial development that it used to be was an overarching desire of Prof. Obiozor, who had been Director General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Nigerian Ambassador to Israel and Cyprus and lastly Nigeria’s ambassador to the United Nations before his retirement after which he took over the reins of leadership of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, the apex Igbo socio-cultural group.
It’s trite to state that Prof. Obiozor would be rejoicing in the other world on the day that Kanu is set free and his beloved Igbo land once again, regains its privileged status of being UNDP’s most secure geographical region in Nigeria.
So, it is very likely in my estimation that all men and women of goodwill who have been craving peace in Igbo land cannot wait to exhale and exclaim ‘victory at last’ when President Tinubu greenlights the freedom for Kanu initiative and welcome the Igbos into mainstream Nigeria.