NNAMDI KANU: The insect on Nigeria’s manhood

HOW TO KILL A RAT: You don’t go swatting recklessly, an insect perched on your scrotum. That’s Igbo adage. It’s also sheer conventional wisdom. 

Of course, you are liable to destroy your very manhood should you do that.

When therefore, a man finds a little, impudent winged object on his prized asset, wisdom would demand that he managed the situation with utmost care and good sense. 

This allegory underpins the ongoing brouhaha between the federal government (FG) and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu (MNK).

Nigeria’s earthquaking news item of theprevious week was the dramatic nabbing of MNK by the FG and his subsequent arraignment in court penultimate Tuesday.

The entire scenario of Nigerians waking up to find MNK in handcuffs right here on Nigerian soil is grit for a blockbuster thriller movie.

How could that be? The lion of Biafra, the Chukwu Okike Abiama, the Supreme Leader! His mammoth followers must have been thunder-struck by his sudden appearance in Nigeria looking like a rain-drenched chicken!

And the stories around his capture is most unpalatable, if not downright sordid.

According to reports, FG’s spooks had lured MNK to Kenya using a beautiful belle as bait. He couldn’t resist the trap we hear and was therefore captured like a rat and bundled back to Nigeria.

Someday, one of the operatives on this trip would probably write a book titled: How to kill a Rat. It’s actually so easy to kill a rat because the little creature is a forager that would gobble up anything it finds. Rodents are undiscerning beings; they sooner pick off poisoned crumbs.

This is what happened to MNK. This writer has written about half a dozen articles detailing the flaws and unwisdom in MNK’s agitation and the need to change tactics. 

He is fickle, ego-driven and megalomaniac. He is also heedless, hedonistic and hollow. These surely are not the stuff for leadership, much less statesmanship.

PRINCIPLE-CENTRED LEADERSHIP: the ground was prepared for MNK’s agitation as it were but the ascendancy of President Muhammadu Buhari added fertiliser to an already rich soil.

The president became equally heedless in handling the affairs of Ndigbo. Yes, Igbo didn’t vote him, and yes, he too couldn’t rise above electioneering; he actually lost opportunities to assume the father role.

It was under this environment that MNK flowered; he upped the ante of his agitation for Biafra using the instrumentalities of his IPOB (Indigenous People of Biafra) and the ubiquitous Radio Biafra. Of course, he called out the Nigerian State in a most undiscerning manner from his foreign base.

He then showed up in Nigeria in 2015.

The State was waiting for him at the airport entry point. He was pulled in; detention and trial commenced. Upon a protracted trial and incarceration, there was a deafening hue and cry for his release.

Bail was granted to him on certain strict conditions which included an abatement of his campaign for separation. 

MNK flouted all bail conditions, and indeed escalated his quest for Biafra with dangerous agitation-propaganda.

It was at this point MNK may have unhinged as his followership not only grew exponentially;they began to idolise him. To the point that some claimed he had healing powers.

At this point, he lost control. He toyed with Biafra Security Network (BSN) – uniform, parade, guard of honour and all.

He didn’t only challenge all authorities within Igboland but also made the Nigerian State utterly jittery.

This led the military to embark on all such phoney operations like python Dance and Crocodile Smile.

Then the deadly denouement: the invasion of his Abiama, Abia State abode in 2017 by the Nigerian Army.

He made good his escape; meanwhile over a score of his followers reportedly died in that clash. It was needless waste of lives no doubt. Recall that a number of them still languished without bail, in Abuja detention where he left them. Uncountable more litter police cells across Igboland. Upon the military invasion in 2017, he escaped into oblivion only to resurface in Israel in 2019. He would return to England where he had taken up citizenship and residency.

From thence he went gungho, launching a tirade of hate and genocidal propaganda. He drove his now mammoth followership to extreme frenzy.

Finally, he bit the bullet!

MNK raised an army known as ESN – Eastern Security Network, they began to engage State actors in an attempt to balance the incipient state of terror in the land.

For a moment, the dithering, do-nothing state governors of the southeast were in a quandary, caught in the crossfire of their inefficiency; bad politics.

The first test of the federal might between ESN and the Nigerian military was around March in Orlu, Imo State. For about two months, Imo in particular and southeast generally became a war zone – war of attrition. There were fatalities on both sides but Igbo youths got the short end of the stick of course.

This in a nutshell, is the story of MNK’s struggle to liberate Ndigbo which now culminates to this dicey denouement.

It is a struggle driven by angst and infantile rage. It was devoid of principles and the fine ideals of society.

MNK, PMB: TWO OF A KIND?

Had President Buhari understood the ways of statesmen, MNK would have dissipated himself ab initio.  MNK would have been neutered and he would never have attained the idol status he enjoys today.

A wizard propagandist, he was always 10 miles ahead of the president and his media team. At every juncture since 2015, president Buhari made no bone laying it hard on the back of Ndigbo. It was provocation and humiliation all the way.

Beyond blatant verbal assaults, federal appointments, federal strategic projects and multilateral agencies largesse are denied the southeast. All these became fodder for MNK’scannons. The more he fed from Buhari’s relentless Igbo attrition, the more he won Igbo converts and followers. 

A few examples will suffice here:

First, while rampaging herdsmen, bandits and even Boko Haram have not been officially declared terrorists by FG, IPOB was so designated and gazetted overnight.

Second, for over a decade, a certain Shekau who’s within Nigeria’s borders brought the country to her knees with attendant human misery of an apocalyptic kind. Yet the gallant Nigeria’s security agencies which deftly prised MNK from a foreign land could not find Shekau nor defeat him till today. Not even an identified Boko Haram financier had been brought to justice…

For sure, MNK never really spoke for Ndigbo; or shall we say he largely roused the Igbo rabble. Igbo do not seek a separate country… they are only vehemently opposed to Nigeria of Buhari’s vision.

But Buhari’s relentless scourging of Igbo in the last six years earned MNK tacit support from nearly the entire Igbo. So, what is playing out here is a contest between two characters suffering acute messianic syndrome.

END GAME: As has been noted here, a dash of statesmanship from President Buhari could have nipped MNK’s shenanigans in the bud.

The president could have ignored the Biafra protagonist while gradually dealing more equitably to Ndigbo. For instance, he had opportunity recently to appoint an Igbo Inspector General of Police. He fluffed it.

Again, even if the president won’t allow restructure, he could have initiated a national dialogue which could outlast his tenure. This singular move would keep separatist agitators busy while reducing tension in the polity. The president in his obduracy, would listen to nary a whimper.

Now that MNK and PMB are eye-balling each other, what’s gonna happen?

One wagers that the surest way out would be to drag MNK’s trial beyond Buhari’s tenure in 2023 whereupon the new government would work out the needful closure.

But the above options would suffice only if detainees’ management is devoid of fatalities which could lead to spontaneous national eruption!

In the final analysis, sometimes repatriating a fugitive may not be a most palatable option, it may well turn out an insect perched on the private region.