MY PROBLEM WITH NNAMDI KANU

NOTE: First published on February 10, 2019. The “Published” date on the tab is the date that it was uploaded on this new site. Though some issues in this piece may still be current (depending on…), this is to avoid mistaking this piece as current news.

This is “No Bullshiting” by Harry Agina.

Greetings, folks!

From his exile locations, Nnamdi Kanu is causing a commotion in Nigeria again. This time, he says that Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of Nigeria’s major opposition party, PDP, is not Nigerian. “Atiku is Cameroonian,” says Kanu; and, to him, this and other ‘sins’ of Atiku make him unfit to be Nigerian president. Kanu is the head of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). His IPOB organization agitates for the resuscitation of the defunct Republic of Biafra. Once upon a blog in 2016, I bared my mind on my views about Kanu and his IPOB. You may want to read it first before you get into this piece; if so, here is the link: https://nobullshiting.com/who-is-nnamdi-kanu/

Kanu has in various ways declared “war” against Nigeria. In response, President Buhari’s federal government proscribed Kanu’s IPOB as a terrorist group. I call Buhari’s proscription nonsensical, and I’ll tell you why. Buhari is destructively clannish, that’s why, and that’s what gave rise to Kanu’s IPOB in the first place! Some of his Fulani tribe jihadist herdsmen are far worse terrorists than IPOB, and that’s a fact. But, in his extreme clannishness and bigotry, Buhari refuses to proscribe them as terrorists, meeeeeeeeeeen!!!

Now, Kanu extends his war of words to Buhari’s major presidential race opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar. With this and in other ways, Kanu is actually hurting the Igbo race of southeast Nigeria that he claims to want to liberate. He urges the Igbo people to boycott Nigeria’s 2019 elections, in the name of his pursuit for Biafra Republic. The first thought that hit me about this news was: Wait just a doggone minute, will you!!! Is this dude Kanu against Buhari’s government, or not? He needs to make up his mind on his priorities, meeeeeeeeen!!!

The last time that I checked, President Buhari was Kanu’s avowed enemy, and he would do anything to remove Buhari from Nigeria’s federal seat of power. Now, he is being counter-productive. He is making a huge blunder, in fact, a monumental blunder of starting a campaign against Atiku Abubakar. This could achieve quite the opposite of his primary cause of getting rid of Buhari, meeeeeen!!!!

From his exile in Israel, or/and Europe, Nnamdi Kanu says that Atiku is actually Cameroonian, and not Nigerian. For this and his other reasons, Kanu maintains that, like Buhari, Atiku is not fit to lead Nigeria. He urges the people he refers to as Biafrans, the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, to boycott the coming 2019 elections. I see Kanu’s ‘fight’ against Atiku, and the call for election boycott as very silly and counter-productive. He is working against his avowed ‘war’ against the incumbent President Buhari.

The self-proclaimed Commander-In-Chief of a non-existent Republic of Biafra, Kanu, apparently, did not think through his election-boycott “war” strategy. If he did, he probably would have reconsidered his position. He needs to realize, for instance, that Nigeria’s 2019 presidential race will happen, no matter what he does. And, it is actually between Atiku Abubakar and the incumbent Buhari. If only Kanu had the right sense, maybe he would not have considered his trending missile at Atiku. Kanu believes that both Atiku and Buhari are corrupt and bad for Nigeria. So many Nigerians have expressed this too, some of whom did so long before him. Kanu has made it clear that he hates Buhari, and I assume that he does not hate Atiku that much. I wish that “Commander” Kanu had thought through his battle strategy well. If he did, maybe he would have paid attention to the fact that a man that was born in Nigeria over 70 years ago, as Atiku Abubakar was, is a Nigerian, and qualifies to be president. Kanu should have known that it does not matter if Atiku’s parents migrated from Cameroon. What matters is that they gave birth to him in Nigeria, and that qualifies him as a full Nigerian. The father of America’s former president, Barrak Obama, migrated to America and had him there, and he grew up to become America’s first black president, meeeeeeeeeeeen!!!

Even if Atiku did not qualify, Kanu should not bring it up at all, if only he had thought through his overall strategy. He should understand that he is contributing to destroy his own primary goal to see Buhari out of office. If Kanu was smart, he would know that the exigency of the time requires him to go into horse-trading. He should go into an alliance with Atiku. His goal should be to beat his primary “enemy,” Buhari. If only he had thought it right, he would support the better (or lesser) of his two “evils” (Atiku), in order to get rid of his worse “evil” called Buhari. I am fund of the phrase ‘better of two evils,’ or the ‘best of all known evils’ when I talk about Nigeria’s politicians. This underscores the fact that there is really no Mister or Miss Saint out there. Kanu should have considered the fact that the election battle is between Buhari and Atiku, and one of them must win. Hence, he should support his lesser evil candidate, Atiku. He may then come up with the strategy for the next move against the lesser “evil,” if still necessary. I say “if still necessary,” considering that Atiku promises to restructure Nigeria for equity and fairness to all if he wins. If so, then there should be no more need to pursue Kanu’s agitation for Republic of Biafra. Indeed, with true Federalism, which will institute equity for all the races in Nigeria, there would be no need for Oduduwa Republic either, nor any of the other secession-agitations. They all arose from Buhari’s evil clannishness and ethno-religious bigotry.

If only Kanu thought of the age-old notion of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” he would support Atiku. He would aim to remove Buhari strategically and legitimately through the polls, rather than insist on his unacceptable war-mongering posture. It has not occurred to Kanu that Igbo people should support Atiku, because of his Igbo running mate, Peter Obi. Such support would get rid of his avowed enemy, Buhari. Kanu needs to understood that the loss of Igbo votes by Atiku would achieve absolutely nothing for his (Kanu’s) cause. Instead, it would only help his avowed enemy, Buhari, to win and remain in office!!! After all, his boycott will never, ever nullify the elections! If only Kanu had good sense about this, he would ease up a little on his north-against-south dichotomy mentality for a while. Indeed, Kanu did not think through his new strategy for the Republic of Biafra. Hence, he does not recognize these points.

At this juncture, I want to state an overview of my attitude about the entire Nnamdi Kanu phenomenon in Nigeria. I believe that Nnamdi Kanu is a young man, among many, with a good idea to resist Buhari’s ethno-religious bigotry-cum-nepotism. Specifically for Kanu, it is about equity for the people of the Igbo race. Naturally, like all humans, Kanu sometimes overlooks some palatable principles that go with his noble, courageous cause. Hence, on the one hand, I agree with his IPOB’s basic fight against “Igbo-people-marginalization” problem in Nigeria. On the other hand, I strongly disagree with some of his methods. Indeed, I disagree with how far he is taking the agitation, and how fast he is pushing to have Biafra Republic!!! I initially was hoping that his goal is to attain equity for Igbo people of Nigeria within Nigeria, and not necessarily the resuscitation of the Republic of Biafra. But now, it is obvious that he simply wants Republic of Biafra so that he may become a president.

For me and many other Igbo people that I know, the focus of his quest is absolutely wrong. Worse, his self-serving, radical and autocratic approach is unacceptable. All that he is achieving is to kill the Igbo people that he claims to be liberating from Buhari’s evil bigotry and persecution. In essence, for the Igbo people, he has become worse than Buhari. The agitation of the Igbo race was initially a means to demand equity in the Nigerian project. The threat of resuscitation of the defunct Biafra Republic was mild. It was contingent on the failure of successive Nigerian governments to heed the call for equity for Igbo people. This equity has eluded the race since the end of Biafra war in 1970.

President Buhari’s extremely bigoted leadership from 2015 has made the injustice worse than ever before. Hence, the agitation for equity and fairness has escalated to a serious demand for the Republic of Biafra. Notwithstanding, I did express my strong disagreement with Nnamdi Kanu’s approach, when he started in 2016 what many Igbo people see as war-mongering pronouncements. He made statements and took actions that unnecessarily endangered the lives of Igbo people. Following his utterances, the lives of Igbos were threatened in northern Nigeria. And, subsequently, he started his trouble-making in Igbo land. In response, the bigoted Buhari sent Nigeria Army to massacre Igbo people in Igbo land. The evil military operation was named “Python Dance.” Kanu’s troublemakers were massacred, along with scores of innocent Igbos.

Like the late Saddam Hussein of Iraq that foolishly dared America to a war without matching armaments, Kanu had been senseless. He virtually declared a war against the Federal Republic of Nigeria without any matching weapons. In fact, the man actually declared that he was ready to rain fire and brimstone (war) on Nigeria to break Biafra Republic away from Nigeria. Like many other Nigerians of the Igbo extraction, I was truly offended by Kanu’s impunity. He unilaterally declared a war on my behalf without any consultation. He has no such right!!! I said so in my blog back then when the Nnamdi Kanu phenomenon went sour. One Biafra war (1967 – 1970) was more than enough for my lifetime!!! If there will ever be a Biafra again, I opine that it has to be through a referendum and proper consultations. I don’t want it through another war…God forbid!!! I saw the Biafra war as a little boy; Nnamdi Kanu didn’t; and, he probably thinks it is a child’s play. Whatever he thinks, he has no right to plunge me into another war without my consent; that’s my position. If he wants my support, then, he has to ask for it in a referendum, and go about it the civil diplomatic way, not through a war.

Now, check this out: when Kanu and his IPOB compatriots were jailed by Buhari and he alone was later granted bail, he quickly accepted the bail and abandoned his compatriots in prison. That was disgusting to me. Heroes do not so easily dump their followers at the first sight of trouble. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela stayed 27 years in South African prison because he was fateful to his colleagues and followers. South Africa offered him freedom from prison, but he refused, because they did not free his followers.

As I said, I initially supported Kanu’s cause, until his speeches and acts started to endanger the lives of Igbo people. When the heat that he created got hot, Kanu ran away to safety outside the country. Meanwhile, he has continued to brainwash his unarmed followers to commit havoc, which result in the massacre of many of them by Buhari’s evil soldiers, along with innocent Igbos. To Kanu, it is okay to sacrifice scores of lives in order to draw global attention to the injustice to Igbo people of Nigeria. That is not acceptable in the modern world. If anybody wants to support such sacrifice, I challenge that person to put himself and his own family on the war front and die first. Nobody should sacrifice other people’s lives in pursuit of their dreams. Goodluck Jonathan said in 2015 when he was president that not one single drop of blood should be shed for his political ambition, and I love him for it. Any leader who thinks otherwise is pure evil, and he should go to hell and reign there!!! The time is now, to stop leaders all over the world from such sacrifices. They must tow the line of legality, diplomacy, and negotiations, meeeeeeeeeeen!!!

In all, I believe that Buhari is not fit to stay in office as president; and, Kanu himself is not fit to be a leader either. Kanu is talking absolute nonsense in calling for boycott of the 2019 elections in southeast Nigeria. Really, I do think that he should just keep quiet with his boycott nonsense. Like me and many Nigerians, Kanu doesn’t want the government of Buhari any longer. He should support whatever it takes within the law to get Buhari out of power. He should not embark on some nonsensical campaign of election boycott. That would only help Buhari to remain in power if the anti-Buhari voters should hearken to his nonsense and hold back their votes for Atiku.

In conclusion, I opine that anybody, whosoever, is better than having President Buhari to continue to rule Nigeria. Even a dog would be better than Buhari. The man does not even remember anything anymore. He fumbles in speeches every fucking day that he goes out to campaign. Any vote for him is a vote for APC’s “Next Level” of poverty and hunger for Nigerians. It would mean the next level of atrociously lopsided anti-corruption war; next level of shielding the biggest looters and criminals in Nigeria by APC; next level of the APC Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, who is among the most evil of the Nigerian looters. He has been indicted by several constituted authorities, including the nation’s Intelligence agency, the DSS. Buhari’s continuation in power will also result in the next level of acute disunity in the nation, caused by his self-confessed and obvious extreme ethno-religious bigotry and atrocious nepotism. Indeed, reelection of Buhari would result in the next level of everything bad for Nigeria. So, Nnamdi Kanu should just shut the fuck up about Atiku. It is important to support Atiku to displace the evil Buhari in the coming presidential election…No Bullshitting!!!

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