The legal team of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to hold a private meeting with the IPOB leader.
This, the team noted will help find solution to the frequent agitations in the South-East.
In a Thursday statement signed by its Head, Nnaemeka Ejiofor, the legal team asked Tinubu to show statesmanship in the handling of Mr Kanu’s continued detention.
The lawyers argued that Tinubu and Kanu share similar characteristics as “democrats and freedom fighters”, citing roles played by the President during the annulment of 12 June 1993 presidential election by the Nigerian military regime.
“It is imperative that President Tinubu holds a private meeting with Kanu so that he can hear from the man his theories of how Nigeria can forge ahead,” Ejiofor said.
They urged the President to investigate the root cause of the agitations and find a solution.
“Silencing IPOB now is sweeping the dirt under the carpet. Find the root cause, Mr President, and solve it in collaboration with Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” they stated.
The legal team also appealed to Tinubu for Kanu’s release.
They argued that Kanu is perceived from the prism of being a separatist, but inwardly he is a “detribalised Nigerian who had helped to pay the fines of prisoners of various tribes, especially northerners” while he was detained at Kuje Correctional Centre, Abuja.
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“This amiable humanity in him is what many people are not unaccustomed to because of the persona built up around him, some of which are wide off the mark,” they stated.
According to them, the IPOB leader has a “stunning intellectual mind” and is zealous about ensuring that Nigeria functions well.
“Anybody who has had a one-on-one encounter with him will see that he has a great passion for the turnaround of Nigeria’s fortune as well as the fight against corruption and other forms of social ills in the country so that Nigerians can have a better future.”
The legal team recalled how several Igbo leaders, such as the late President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, and a First Republic minister, Mbazuluike Amaechi, unsuccessfully appealed to the then President Muhammadu Buhari to release Kanu.
They contended that the call for Mr Kanu’s release gained traction after Mr Tinubu’s government freed other agitators like Omoyele Sowore, Sunday Igboho and Miyetti Allah’s Kautal Hore, Bello Bodejo, who were charged with similar offences.
“The conciliatory attitude of the government to Boko Haram terrorists who killed, kidnapped and raped Nigerians during Kanu’s incarceration, coupled with the fact that several courts had ordered his release, all make a compelling case for a reconsideration of Kanu’s case,” the legal team argued.
IPOB is a group agitating for the independent state of Biafra which it wants carved out from the South-east and some parts of South-south Nigeria.
The group emerged after Ralph Uwazulike’s Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, a similar pro-Biafra group, became inactive.
