Igbo must use 2027 election to free Kanu, Chekwas Okorie tells agitators

The National Chairman of the Igbo Agenda Dialogue, Chief Chekwas Okorie, has appealed to all freedom fighters and Biafran agitators to channel their agitation into massive participation in the 2027 general elections as a political route to securing the release of Nnamdi Kanu.

In a special appeal dated September 15, 2026, Okorie said all groups demanding self-determination or exit for Biafra are exercising their inalienable rights, noting that even President Bola Tinubu once declared he did not believe in one Nigeria.

He recalled the Biafran resistance led by late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, who was pardoned in 1982 and returned home, and said the post-1999 struggle through MASSOB, IPOB and other groups had lasted 27 years with huge collateral and economic costs.

Okorie said the extraordinary rendition of IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya on June 19, 2021 and his prolonged trial remain provocative to Ndigbo, lamenting that appeals for political solution by Ohanaeze leaders including late Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu and Senator John Azuta-Mbata were ignored.

With elections in four months, he urged Igbos at home and in diaspora to deploy their numerical strength – present in all states and FCT and 99 percent of the Southeast – to make a statement and secure Kanu’s unconditional release “without firing a shot.”

“Population and spread are the most potent force for political power,” he said.