The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has said Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir’s declaration that Nigeria is a Muslim country, his description of Christians as “infidels”, and his demand that those opposed to a Muslim-Muslim political arrangement should leave the country have vindicated Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and should not be brushed aside as meaningless rhetoric.
The group, which said it viewed the remarks with profound alarm, described them as not a slip but an open confirmation of what it called the very agenda Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had warned against for more than a decade.
In a statement issued by Comrade Emma Powerful, spokesperson and Media and Publicity Secretary of IPOB, the group declared that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was not a terrorist but a whistleblower who, it claimed, had exposed an organised design to alter Nigeria’s religious character and reduce indigenous Judeo-Christian peoples to second-class status in their own homeland.
IPOB said Sheikh Jingir’s declaration did not arise in a vacuum but provided further public evidence that, in its view, required international scrutiny of the danger about which Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had warned for more than a decade.
Powerful said Sheikh Jingir’s words now raised the question that Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had always asked: what future awaits Nigerians when powerful actors proclaim that the country belongs to one religion and that others should leave?
The group challenged those who had mocked Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, branded him a troublemaker and dismissed his warnings as imaginary to provide answers.
Emma Powerful recalled that Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was abducted in Kenya and extraordinarily rendered to Nigeria and had remained imprisoned despite the Court of Appeal’s October 13, 2022, judgment discharging him.
He also recalled how Kanu was allegedly illegally re-arraigned by a contemnor, denied a fair hearing, convicted under what he described as non-existent or repealed statutes incapable of sustaining any trial or grounding any conviction, sentenced to life imprisonment and transferred to Sokoto, which he described as the heart of the Jihadist Caliphate.
He said the United States Congress and the Israeli Knesset had been fully informed of what he described as jihadist plans to Islamise non-Muslim populations in Nigeria and details of the persecution and prosecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
IPOB insisted that the persecution of Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was inseparable from the jihadist violence ravaging Nigeria and the Islamisation agenda about which he had repeatedly warned.
He said: “Is Nigeria a secular constitutional republic belonging equally to Christians, Muslims, traditional worshippers and citizens of no religion, or is it a religious fiefdom in which one constituency may claim ownership of the country and tell everybody else to vacate?”
The group frowned at Kanu’s continued detention after the Court of Appeal discharged him, the unprecedented use of a civil stay of execution to negate a criminal discharge, his alleged illegal re-arraignment, the denial of a fair hearing, his conviction under what it described as non-existent or repealed statutes incapable of sustaining any trial or grounding any conviction, his life sentence and his transfer to Sokoto.
According to Powerful, the constitutional issue in the case of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was equally stark, adding that no citizen could be tried and convicted unless the offence and penalty were prescribed by a written law in force.
He said: “A non-existent statute creates no offence. A repealed statute cannot be resurrected. Yet Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was convicted on precisely that foundation. No judicial sophistry can turn a dead law into a living penal enactment.”