The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has appealed to the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government not to succumb to any attempt demanding the release of Nnamdi Kanu without prosecution, saying such a move will reduce Nigeria to a completely lawless state where criminals can freely commit crimes against the country.
The group lamented a situation where traditional rulers and other regional or tribal leaders of any region in the country would press for the release of their people that commit crimes against the country.
The coalition, through its spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, while taking stock of events unfolding since the arrest and repatriation of Nnamdi Kanu said, “We warn that any attempt by the President to accede to the demand to release, without prosecuting and punishing Kanu, will inadvertently reduce Nigeria to a completely lawless state where criminals of all shades will commit crimes against the country, and then ask their traditional rulers and other regional or tribal leaders to press for their release.”
The CNG in a statement titled, “Igbo leaders’ demand for release of Nnamdi Kanu and President Buhari’s response”, advised Buhari to reclaim his statesmanship by refusing to be cajoled into interfering with the standard principle of separation of powers and independence of the judiciary in the case of Kanu.
The statement warned that the North would no longer remain idle when its people are deliberately targeted and massacred and the perpetrators are shielded by what it called “criminal tribal bigots” that posed as leaders.
It reminded President Buhari that the North has realized how he places more premium on the pursuit for votes and political popularity for his party than he does for the sanctity of lives of northerners and security personnel who stake their lives and welfare of families in the service of the nation.
The statement observed that the North would hold Buhari responsible for the blood of its people alleged to be unlawfully shed through the activities of Kanu in the event he succumbs to the Igbo pressure to release him.
The group demanded the arrest and prosecution of those Igbo leaders and any other group or individual that are involved in the complicity to get Kanu freed by subverting the course of justice in spite of atrocities and crimes he committed against humanity and the Nigerian state.
According to the statement, the composition of the Igbo elders has vindicated the position CNG exposed in 2017 that the diabolical scheme planned and exhibited in the criminal actions of Kanu and IPOB, is fully supported morally and politically by the vast majority of the pliant Igbo elders, elites, politicians, religious leaders, traditional rulers, business persons, and the larger population of the South East.
The statement stated that from 2017 to 2020, at the peak of IPOB’s dangerous campaigns, CNG alleged that Nnamdi Kanu had instigated the killing of more than 1,230 northern Nigerian citizens living in parts of the South East.
It also alleged that several businesses, properties, and valuable assets belonging to northerners and other Nigerians were destroyed across the Southeastern cities on the instructions of Nnamdi Kanu within the same period.
The coalition also claimed that from early 2020 to date, Kanu had instigated the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to mastermind mindless attacks and destruction of national security assets, democratic symbols, and killings of about 400 security personnel and orphaned their families.
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