Why Nnamdi Kanu won’t be released again – Buhari reveals

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari has ruled out the option of pardoning the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, Top Naija reports.

Though he acknowledges the possibility of a political resolution, he believes the IPOB leader must answer for his actions over the years, especially while he was out of the country.

“Nigerians know that I don’t interfere with the judiciary,” the President told Channels Television in an exclusive interview that aired on Wednesday. “Let him be listened to. For those who are saying that we should release him, no we cannot release him.

“There is a possibility of political solution; if people behave themselves, all well and good, but you can’t go to a foreign country and keep on sending incorrect economic and security problem against your country and thinking that you will never have to account for what you have been doing. Let him account for what he has been doing.”

In November last year, President Buhari had promised to consider the request of some leaders from the South East region to release Kanu who is facing treason charges preferred against him by the Nigerian Government.

Although he told the Igbo leaders under the aegis of Highly Respected Igbo Greats that they had made an extremely difficult demand, he insisted that the best thing was to subject the IPOB leader to the judicial system.

In his interview with Channels Television, the President doubted if Kanu was willing to return to the country to clear his name from the allegations against him after he fled in 2017.

“There is one institution that I wouldn’t dare interfere with – that is the judiciary,” he said. “Kanu’s case is with the judiciary, but what I wonder is when Kanu was safely in Europe abusing this administration and mentioning too many things, I never thought really he wants to voluntarily come and defend himself on the accusations.

“So, we are giving him an opportunity to defend himself in our system, not to be abusing us from Europe as if he was not a Nigerian. Let him come here to us and then criticise us here.”

Kanu began his activism for the freedom of Biafra as a Radio Biafra director and anchor of Biafra awareness under Ralph Uwazuruike, leader of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), who said while in a meeting in Kaduna, Nige

Radio Biafra however, was established by the defunct Biafran government in 1967 with the aim of championing the Biafran cause. Kanu was a relatively obscure figure until 2009 when he started Radio Biafra, a station that called for an independent state for the Igbo people and broadcast to Nigeria from London.

In 2014, he founded IPOB. On 5 September 2015, Nnamdi Kanu was a guest speaker at the World Igbo Congress which was held in Los Angeles, where he told his audience “we need guns and we need bullets”