The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has issued a warning to the presidential candidates vying to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2023 to refrain from making use of its detained leader Nnamdi Kanu in their campaigns in preparation for the election that will take place next month.
In response to the promise made by the People Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, to grant Kanu’s unconditional release if elected, IPOB issued the warning on Wednesday in a statement issued by its Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful.
Yesterday, Professor Obiora Okonkwo, Director-General of the PDP Presidential Campaign Council, stated that one of Atiku’s strategies for restoring peace in the Southeast is the release of the IPOB leader.
Okonkwo made this claim less than 48 hours after Bruce Fein, Kanu’s international spokesperson and American lawyer, asked Atiku, Bola Tinubu, and Peter Obi to promise to release the self-determination leader from the Department of State Services (DSS) if any of them become the next country’s leader.
IPOB said that PDP should demand that the federal government release their leader and not use it in the campaign in response to Okonkwo’s statement.
In the statement, it was stated that “IPOB leadership wish to state that its leader should on no account be used as a political bargaining chip for Nigerian election.”
It stated, “Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been judicially declared an innocent man, and as a result, he must be released from his ongoing illegal detention and torture by this current APC government.” We do not anticipate anything to the contrary other than the execution of the Court of Appeal’s decision.
In addition, the IPOB leadership wishes to inform the PDP that, despite our disagreement with their statement, their primary goal ought to be to demand that the Nigerian government obey the verdict of their own court.
No matter who is in charge of Aso Rock, the Nigerian capital, we will continue to demand the same things. We have demanded a referendum, a democratic process, to allow Biafrans to decide their fate and where they want to belong—in Nigeria or in a free and sovereign Biafran nation—because our self-determination agitation is an inalienable right.