Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, Special Counsel for the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has said that Nigeria’s northern region has agreed with the IPOB leader that Nigeria as a country has expired.
Ejimakor said this on Tuesday while reacting to a statement attributed to the convener of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Prof Ango Abdullahi, who on Monday said that the legal instrument that established Nigeria as a country in 1914, expired 10 years ago and that Nigeria is in dire need of fundamental political and economic reforms.
Abdullahi was reported to have made the statement while speaking at the National Dialogue on a Home-Grown Parliamentary System of Government held in Abuja.
He reportedly said that the edict which led to the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates by the British colonial authorities in 1914 was meant to expire after 100 years.
According to him, the British brought together the diverse ethno-lingual groups they met on the ground and named the territory Nigeria, on the projection that the people would develop into a model nation state.
Abdullahi said the edict setting up the country gave a time frame within which the country will grow into an indissoluble state or fail and the groups go their separate ways.
Reacting to the statement, Ejimakor said the statement by the prominent Northern leader is a significant departure from what was the stance of the North and former President Muhammadu Buhari-led Nigerian government when, some years ago, Kanu made the same statement in a broadcast on Radio Biafra.
Ejimakor added, “To be sure, Mazi Kanu’s position then, just as the North has now conceded, was that the legal instrument upon which Nigeria was founded in 1914 has a fixed duration of one hundred years which expired in 2014.
“It will be recalled that this very broadcast was one of the major reasons Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was then charged with the offense of secession which was later escalated to incitement of terrorism for which he was renditioned and remains in incarceration for over three years, awaiting some trial.
“So, one might ask: Now that the North has said the same thing for which Mazi Kanu was arrested, renditioned, detained and charged to court, is it not time for the Federal Government and even the North to show some contrition by apologizing to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu or acknowledging that he was right all along.”
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