As reactions continue to trail the continued detention of the Director, Radio Biafra and leader of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, Ohaneze Diaspora, an Igbo group, comprising Igbo in the Diaspora, has called on the Federal Government to unconditionally release him and other detained activists in the spirit of Christmas.
The group noted that the failure of government to holistically address the underlying issues of marginalisation and restructuring to true federalism, gives impetus to the agitations for Biafra.
President of the group, Biafra Buchi Diboh, in a statement on Thursday, said that the continuous incarceration of Kanu by the Department of State Security, DSS, after a Federal High Court granted him bail, was undemocratic and illegal.
According to the Diboh, the Nigerian constitution guarantees freedom of speech and association, the right to self-determination, which is an inalienable right of all indigenous people by virtue of which they can freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
“It is weird and intolerable that the Nigerian state won independence from the British Colonial Government in the first instance on the basis of the right to self-determination such that Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo and other self-determination agitators were never arrested by the British colonial authorities in the course of advocating self-rule”, he said.
“The Nigerian state has oddly chosen to maim, detain and kill those seeking self-rule on the same premise as the founding fathers did. We warn that no nation can ultimately be built or held together by force just as no marriage/association should be by force”, Diboh said.
