Ayomidele Oluwasusi
Nigeria’s Abia State Governor Alex Otti has assured that the illegally detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, would soon regain his freedom.
Speaking at the banquet hall in the government house in the state capital Umuahia during his monthly media chat with journalists and citizens of the state, Otti said he would not make public some of the steps he took to push for the release of the IPOB leader.
The governor disclosed that he has been engaging the presidency over Kanu’s continued detention, stating that Kanu would soon regain his freedom.
Kanu is facing trial on terrorism charges levelled against him by immediate former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration over his call and agitation for a sovereign state of Biafra. He was extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya in June 2021 by former President Buhari’s government and has remained in detention since then.
His initial arrest in 2015 triggered protests by his supporters. In 2017, Justice Binta Nyako of a Federal High Court in Abuja granted Kanu bail.
Upon his release, a military invasion of his ancestral home in Umuahia, Abia State, in September 2017, forced him into exile, hence he did not attend his trial on the next scheduled date and thereafter. From then till June 2021 when he was abducted from Kenya and was subjected to “extraordinary rendition”, and brought back to Nigeria, there has been a robust public debate as to whether he jumped bail or not.
But an Appeal Court had discharged and acquitted Kanu of all terrorism charges, the judgment was later overturned by the Supreme Court which transferred the case back to the Federal High Court.