The 'Terrorists' Of IPOB - Femi Fani-Kayode Speaks

 

THE "TERRORISTS" OF IPOB

I watched my brother Mazi Nnamdi Kanu's interview with my brother Chief Dele Momodu on Thursday nighttime and I turned into inspired and encouraged. 

Nnamdi spoke with such eloquence, ardour, courage and strength. He is extraordinary and irrepressible. He can not be underestimated or unnoticed. 

Every African ought to pay attention to that interview. He cleared loads of misconceptions about himself and made his function clear on such a lot of problems. 

Most important of all is the truth that he had the decency and humility to gentle his regrets and apologies in which he may have got matters wrong. That is the mark of a terrific chief. 

I actually have cherished and relied on him dearly ever because the first day we met and spoke for three hours whilst we have been each incarcerated at Kuje prison in 2016. 

From the primary minute we got on like a residence on fire and we were close ever considering that. There is not anything that binds men collectively greater than being locked up together in prison or being at the battlefield collectively and fighting side through aspect and shoulder to shoulder towards a common enemy. 

The truth is that Nnamdi is not just a friend but a brother. We do no longer agree on the entirety however we agree on many stuff and the truth that we can inform each other the blunt and bitter reality on every occasion we experience both of us has long gone wrong is the supply and energy of our dating. 

Most importantly we stand as a moderating have an effect on on one another both in our public and personal affairs and consider me after I tell you that this man is a stabilising pressure, a very good own family man and a peacemaker. 

Yet something anybody chooses to say or feel about him the reality is that he received thousands and thousands of new buddies and supporters after that interview from all over the us of a. 

I thank Dele for giving this exquisite man the opportunity to explicit himself to the Nigerian human beings on a mainstream platform including his which has a large attain. 

After taking note of the dialogue I turned into prompted to meditate and ponder on how IPOB is improperly perceived by using many Nigerians and to put in writing the subsequent. Fasten your seat belts and experience the ride. 

You call contributors of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) terrorists but you refuse to convey to justice people who have slaughtered or illegally detained and incarcerated 30,000 in their participants in the final five years. 

This wide variety was given to me by Barrister Ifeanyi Ejiofor, IPOB's attorney, whose domestic and community in Orifite, Anambra kingdom was additionally attacked, burnt down and plundered whilst many of his people were slaughtered in a joint operation via the Nigerian army and police in a remember of hours.

I changed into there to spend the day with him and mourn the lack of his brother on a Sunday and the tanks rolled in on Monday morning just a few hours when I left! 

When Ifeanyi known as me early in the morning to mention that they were beneath attack, that his house and his overdue brothers house had been burnt to the floor, that his elderly mom were crushed to a pulp, that the Church building that I had given a speech in the day earlier than had been pulled down and destroyed and that lots of his humans were killed for no simply cause, tears rolled down my cheeks. 

Had he no longer fled for his life and long past into hiding Ifeanyi himself could had been killed on that day. 

Any group of humans which have been subjected to that kind of barbarism from the Nigerian nation might have resorted to an open armed war by means of now however Nnamdi Kanu's IPOB have refused to achieve this. 

Their conflict and quest for Biafran independence has remained distinctly non violent in spite of the provocation from the Nigerian country and the big persecution they had been subjected to for 5 years. 

Now tell me among IPOB and the Nigerian country who're the real terrorists? Who has finished the killing? Who has terrorised? Who has spilled the blood of the innocent? Who has operated unlawfully and committed genocide and crimes towards humanity? 

Who has subsidized and guarded the Fulani herdsmen and refused to scale down and condemn their barbaric sports or claim them as a terrorist corporation? 

Who has been soft on ISWA and Boko Haram and released and reintegrated hundreds in their contributors into our Armed Forces even after they slaughtered loads of hundreds of defenceless Nigerians, together with girls and youngsters? 

Who has unleashed their troops and protection forces on their very own human beings and killed thousands in their personal citizens? Who has overwhelmed and destroyed the lives and families of the innocent? 

Who has burnt down Churches, slaughtered clergymen on the alter and who has sacked, pillaged, levelled, captured and renamed cities and entire communities? 

Who has seized the land of farmers and raped their other halves and youngsters, butchered Christians and Shia Muslims and slaughtered thousands in Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and the core North. 

Who has hacked to pieces hundreds in Southern Kaduna, Taraba, Plateau, Adamawa, Benue and murdered protesting youngsters in Mushin and at the Lekki Toll Gate? 

Was it IPOB or individuals, pals and friends of the Buhari regime and people they encourage and defend?

I am not a person of violence and I do no longer help the usage of palms. Where each person or institution of humans, which includes IPOB, includes themselves in violence I am the first to condemn it. 

I despise those who shed harmless blood and people that unleash mayhem, havoc and tyranny on innocent people. 

Yet the bitter reality is that those that have completed greater of this than each person else on this united states over the past 5 years are the Federal Government and their friends, friends and allies and not IPOB, OPC, YOLICOM, MASSOB, YWC, Yourba Summit Group, MEND, NDVF, IYC, the Lower Niger Congress or any of the alternative regional or self-dedication organizations. 

I am not a coward and neither am I chook-hearted. Truth is my sword and the Lord is my protect and armour. I worry nothing and no person aside from God. 

It is for this reason that I refuse to be cowed or browbeaten into joining the gullible and ignorant herd of lily-livered cheerleaders who take pleasure in attacking and demonising the sufferers of the country like IPOB instead of condemning the fantastic cruelty and crushing wickedness that has been unleashed upon them via marketers of the nation. 

And the best motive they do that is because IPOB has now not been given good enough honest listening to inside the international locations media or the public area to provide an explanation for and shield themselves or inform their personal facet of the tale to the Nigerian humans. 

The sour fact is that extra than some other organization on this u . S . Over the past 5 years IPOB had been misepresented, villified, attacked, demonised and subjected to the finest and maximum horrendous form of misrepresentation and poor propaganda. If each person is attacked in the south or any police station burnt, in keeping with our media, it ought to be IPOB. 

Thousands of their members are in cells everywhere in the u . S . A . As we communicate and but no-one speaks for them, nobody cares for them and no one empathises with them. This is unacceptable. This is inhuman. This is unfair. This is unjust. This is evil. 

Worse nevertheless to examine IPOB to Boko Haram, ISWA or the Fulani herdsmen is like evaluating Little Red Riding Hood to the hungry and starving wolf or like evaluating Mother Theresa to Jack the Ripper: it simply does no longer make experience. 

Some have alleged that IPOB youths dedicated acts of violence at some stage in the East and parts of Rivers nation in the course of the #EndSARS protests. Unconfirmed reports recommend that some of them even killed policemen and other harmless Nigerians. I find these reviews troubling however I do but query them. 

The Nnamdi Kanu that I understand may be impulsive and say a few very harsh things at instances however he isn't a killer or a violent man. He is an impressive intellectual and a visionary chief and no longer a merciless, bellicose, violent, murderous and bloodthirsty barbarian. 

God forbid the sort of factor however if he become a man that took satisfaction inside the spilling of blood he would have put 1,000,000 Ak 47's in the arms of his followers by using now and all hell would have damaged loose. Violence isn't always in his blood and nor is it in his hobby. 

On several occasions he has advised me privately and has said publicly that IPOB's war is and have to usually be a non violent one and he is wise sufficient to understand that some thing outdoor of so one can be counterproductive and would lose him a whole lot of assist and sympathy. 

If indeed IPOB youths, instead of thuggish hoodlums that are claiming to be IPOB or rogue factors inside the employer, have killed all and sundry everywhere then I wholeheartedly condemn it and such barbaric behaviour need to forestall forthwith. 

Two wrongs can by no means make a proper. The fact that the Nigerian nation indulges in mass homicide does no longer imply that their sufferers ought to additionally soil their arms with innocent blood. 

And if each person doubts that the Nigerian country is certainly a brutal and bloodlusting killing system which seeks to crush dissent and silence the ones that don't key into its inherent barbarism then I project them to discover how many younger harmless Igbos are being focused and killed by using protection forces in Obigbo, Rivers country these days in the call of combating IPOB.

According to Amnesty International in Obigbo harmless humans have been kept in inhuman situations in a 24 hour curfew for the final 10 days without get admission to to medicare, food, water and strength and there are reports of extrajudicial killings with lifeless bodies all around the streets.

The institution torture, mental trauma and mass murder of Igbo humans for whatever motive and below some thing guise in Obigbo is unacceptable. I condemn it in the strongest phrases.

Where is our humanity? Must the Igbo constantly be slaughtered like flies in Nigeria? Do they not have pink blood too? Does any race or human being deserve this sort of targetting and remedy? 

I condemn the killing of security agents by way of every person in that community however does that suggest that each Igbo there ought to be handled like a prisoner of war or massacred? 

What ethical proper do we have as southerners to bitch while northerners kill our human beings when we in the south are so equipped to kill one another in the sort of barbaric and cruel manner? Today I weep for the South and I weep for Nigeria.

Children and teenagers were massacred by using squaddies at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos just  weeks in the past and these days kids and teens, of Igbo extraction, are being centered, hunted down like animals and massacred with the aid of soldiers in Obigbo in Rivers state. This inexplicable MADNESS and unconciable BLOODLUST ought to stop!

If the truth be told the actual terrorists in this united states of america are in Aso Rock and not on the streets of Igboland or in the ranks of IPOB. 

Calling for a referendum and seeking to peacefully exercise your proper of self-willpower after being subjected to and faced with 60 years of subjugation, homicide, ethnic cleansing, tyranny and genocide does no longer make you a terrorist, it makes you a courageous man of conscience and a freedom fighter. 

I am now not from the antique Eastern Region of Nigeria and consequently I am no longer a member of IPOB. I hail from the vintage Western Region in which we have our personal struggles and where we additionally seek to chart our very own route and decide our very own future. 

That warfare is for both restructuring of the u . S . Or, failing that, the non violent status quo of our very own kingdom which we shall name Oduduwa Republic. 

This is a noble quest due to the fact Nigeria has failed us simply as it has failed all people else. And if matters do no longer exchange quickly it is a quest with a purpose to be executed sooner than later. 

Yet the battle for freedom is not for the Biafrans and the sons of Oduduwa by myself: it is also for the normal humans of the core North who've been via hell and who have been subjected to unprecedented tiers of carnage and savagery. 

Again it's also for the humans of the Middle Belt and the so-referred to as minorities of the north who have suffered for so long and who have been denied, deprived and suppressed greater than some other human beings in Nigeria. They too shall be unfastened from the yoke, bondage and cruelty of imperial Nigeria. 

Permit me to finish this contribution with the subsequent. No matter how many IPOB contributors you torture, jail and kill and irrespective of how lots of them you misrepresent and demonise, they can not be stopped because an idea whose time has come cannot be efficaciously resisted. 

Like the wonderful Libyan warrior Omar Al Mouqthar who turned into called the 'Lion of the Desert', their conflict cry is "we win or we die". 

Like the gallant and brave Patrick Henry, who led the American human beings of their struggle for independence from Great Britain, their song is "deliver me freedom or give me demise!"

That is their story, that is their tune and it is ours too. Freedom calls and liberty beckons: 1,000,000 tanks can not prevent them and all the misrepresention, disinformation, misinformation and lies inside the global can not deter them.