South East: Kanu’s lawyers tackle Army over insecurity claim

From Godwin Tsa, Abuja

The Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Defence Consortium has dismissed claims by Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters that insecurity in the South East has reduced since the imprisonment of the agitator.

The consortium, a group of lawyers fighting for the freedom of the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, alleged that the Nigerian government was behind the insecurity that has plagued the South East in recent years, rather than Kanu and IPOB.

Director of Defence Media Operations, Major General Michael Onoja, noted in a recent statement that Kanu’s incarceration and intensified military operations have brought stability to the region.

However, in a statement titled, ‘The Nigerian military cannot whitewash history – their hands are too soaked in blood’, Onyedikachi Ifedi, on behalf of the lawyers, described Onoja’s claims as an attempt to rewrite history.

According to them, Onoja’s recent claim that security has improved in the South East because of intensified military operations and the imprisonment of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is merely false, a cynical rewriting of history, and an insult to every life destroyed by state violence in Nigeria.

The consortium stated that the narrative collapsed under one simple truth, alleging further that the Nigerian state created the crisis it now pretends to fight.

“Long before anyone uttered the word ‘separatist’, the Nigerian military had already turned peaceful, unarmed citizens into targets,” the statement said.

The Kanu defence team pointed to the ‘Nkpor massacre’, during which peaceful mourners and demonstrators were gunned down; the killing of unarmed youths at National High School, Aba; the bloodbath that trailed a Trump solidarity rally at Port Harcourt, and the invasion of Kanu’s home in Umuahia, where 28 people were allegedly killed, to justify its claim that the Nigerian government was behind the violence and insecurity in the South East.

“For the Nigerian military to now declare itself a ‘stabilising force’ is grotesque. The same institution that repeatedly opens fire on civilians cannot turn around and present itself as the guardian of peace.

“Rather than confront its own record, the Nigerian state reaches for the same tired scapegoat; blame IPOB, blame Biafra, and blame Nnamdi Kanu. This is propaganda, not security analysis,” the statement added.

The defence team insisted that it was not IPOB that organised the cult wars, political militias, and criminal networks unleashed across Igboland. According to the group, the incidents were engineered and funded by politicians and security collaborators, who found chaos politically profitable.

The group also demanded an independent investigations into ‘massacres’ carried out by the Nigerian military across the federation, as well as an end to the “deliberate criminalisation of peaceful political expression in the South East.