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From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
Convicted leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has insisted that the Biafran question can only be settled by a referendum, or else by a unilateral pursuit of Biafran sovereignty.
Kanu made the declaration in a message from Sokoto prison, read at the 2026 convention of the American Veterans of Igbo Descent (AVID) in the United States.
He said he would not abandon the struggle despite his conviction and imprisonment. “Hear my demand. It has not changed. It will not change. Referendum, or the unilateral pursuit of Biafran sovereignty. There is no middle ground,” he said.
“I will discuss referendum and nothing else”
Kanu rejected any negotiation short of a vote. “I will not negotiate the existence of my people. I will not bargain our homeland into a committee,” he said.
He dismissed talks on appointments, restructuring or “another conference that ends in a communiqué and a banquet,” saying those who want such conversations “may hold that conversation without me.”
According to him, his only subject is “the right of Biafrans to say, in a free vote, whether they will live as a people under their own roof.”
He said he had spent eight years in detention in pursuit of “a peaceful homeland called Biafra,” adding: “Not a slogan. A country. Not revenge. Safety. Not chaos. Order under our own law.”
Kanu recalled his previous arrests, saying he was first picked up in 2005 at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, and again in Lagos in 2015. He claimed he was later “kidnapped in Kenya” in an act authorities called an arrest.
“Each time the charge was the same beneath the paperwork: a people must not name themselves,” he said.
He said solitary confinement was meant to break him and his movement, “It failed. A life sentence was meant to close the file. The file is open.”
Commenting on his conviction, the IPOB leader said “a rogue judge with a limited understanding of the law stood in the way of justice.”
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“A conviction built on repealed statutes and on the wreckage of an earlier acquittal is not justice. It is power pretending to be a court. Power expires. Principle does not,” he added.
Kanu commended AVID and its leader, Dr Sylvester Onyia, for standing by him during his trial and supporting the Biafra struggle.
“Walls do not cancel a mandate. Distance does not cancel gratitude,” he said. “If this address reaches you, it is because the cause still lives.”
He said Onyia travelled to Abuja repeatedly while he was held in solitary confinement, attended court sittings and accompanied him to hospital. “Those journeys were not tourism. They were sacrifice,” he said.
He also credited AVID, together with Rising Sun and Ambassadors for Self-Determination, with supporting his well-being, and urged them to continue the push for his release and that of other detained Biafrans. “Do not grow weary. The work is not finished,” he said.
Kanu said AVID also took his case beyond Abuja by writing to British officials, including the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the United Kingdom High Commission in Nigeria. He described himself as a British citizen who was “abducted, rendered, isolated, and then tried as if paper can cancel law.”
He also referred to what he called the Nigerian government’s penetration of the “Third Administration of our Directorate of State,” which he said had been dissolved.
“Those who betrayed the family have been sacked and expelled from the IPOB worldwide family,” he said.
He praised AVID for recognising only “the command of the people through the office I still hold” and for pledging to engage only those he appoints. “That is discipline. Veterans understand discipline. Biafra needs that discipline,” he said.
Referring to the convention’s theme, “Maka Odi Nma Ndi Igbo” (for the good and benefit of the Igbo people), and the delegates’ planned visit to Igbo Landing, Kanu said the site “is not a picnic ground. It is a verdict.”
He urged the veterans to apply the principle of self-determination, which he said the United States claims as a founding creed, to the Igbo homeland, and to fight “by lawful and honourable means” for those still in custody “because they asked for a vote.”
“Do not outsource the struggle to a future generation that will inherit our fear if we donate it,” he said. “I am not available for any bargain that leaves Biafra unnamed. I am available for a referendum. I am available for the work of a free people.”
