By Abubakar Yakubu, Abuja
A lawyer in Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s legal team, Nnaemeka Ejiofor has called on President Bola Tinubu to dig deep into the root cause of the Indigenous People of Biafra’s (IPOB) agitation and find a lasting solution instead of silencing the group.
He advised the president to collaborate with IPOB’s leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu in solving the matter and arriving at a positive result.
Ejiofor, who stated this in Abuja, noted that a democrat like President Tinubu should wonder why Chief Chukwuemeka Ojukwu led the Biafrans during the civil war and Chief Raphael Uwazurike also led the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, noting that Kanu is doing same under IPOB.
He said, if the president holds a private meeting with Kanu, he would be amazed at his intellectual prowess, patriotism and theories on how to solve Nigeria’s corruption as well as economic problems.
According to him, the leader of Ohaneze Ndigbo, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu before he died, met with Kanu at the Department of State Service detention facility and emerged from the meeting in amazement of Kanu’s keen intellect and clear-headedness, which made the elder statesman weep and he immediately went to see the president to appeal for his release.
He said the same amazement also struck Chief Amaechi Mbazulike (a First Republic minister), who led a delegation to then President Muhammadu Buhari but unfortunately after Iwuanyanwu and Mbazulike met both presidents respectively, they died not seeing their wishes actualised.
“Anybody who has had a one-on-one encounter with Kanu 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,” Ejiofor added
The lawyer urged the federal government to extend the same pardon to Kanu as was granted other agitators like Sunday Igboho, Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore leader, Abdullahi Bodejo, and Omoyele Sowore in order to improve the peace and security situation in the South East and to hasten the redeployment of the military to the north to tackle the problem of banditry that has led to food crisis in the country.