Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka has criticised the Nigerian government over its arrest of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.
Soyinka, while fielding questions from the BBC, disclosed that Kanu was rather ‘Kidnapped’ not ‘arrested’ or ‘intercepted’ as widely reported. He said;
“It’s not for me to tell the president to prepare itself because it’s going to be a huge squawk when the truth about how Kanu was arrested comes out. People are alleging this or that. That is one phase whether Nigeria has acted outside international law,”
“The second issue, however, has to do with Kanu’s conduct outside the nation. There’s been a level of hate rhetoric which has been unfortunate, from Kanu. Hate rhetoric is an issue that can only be judged by the laws of any nation.”
“Was it right ‘to have been kidnapped?’ You can say intercepted as much as you want but I think Kanu was kidnapped. That is wrong internationally and morally.”
He stated further that the government has not shown the same eagerness for capturing Kanu in going after bandits and killer herdsmen.
“The Government can not wash itself clean on what seems to be a kind of comparative energy in pursuing the destabilised forces in the nation,”
“If we take ourselves back, once when I threw a challenge to Buhari, what I expect from a true leader is to issue an order, give a deadline that any illegal occupant of any villages, farms is given 48hours to quit after which the mighty forces of the nation will be unleashed on them. It was ignored. Years later, he came to say ‘we will respond to these people in the language they understand’. This is what I expected him to have said years ago, at the beginning of the insurgency.”
“Their leadership–the Miyetti Allah, should have been arrested years ago, long before IPOB was declared a terrorist organisation.”, he said.