Despite the Thursday’s heavy downpour in Abuja, protesters numbering over 1,000 stormed the Bristish High Commission to demand the extradition of Nnamdu Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra back to Nigeria to face charges.
The protesters expressed disappointment with the British Government that despite the overwhelming evidence that Kanu is currently hiding in the UK, the embassy is feigning ignorance the it does not know about his whereabouts.
Recall that a former Abia State governor, Orji Uzor Kalu, had claimed that Kanu fled to London through Malaysia.
The ex- Abia state governor had said, “Kanu was not taken away by the military. Kanu went to Malaysia from where he travelled to the United Kingdom.
Advocates of Social Justice For All (ASJA), who championed the protest said its stance was informed by the knowledge that the UK was instrumental to the escape of the IPOB leader only for it to turn around to ask Nigerian authorities for clarification on the state and status of Kanu.
Addressing newsmen during the well-attended protest, Patriot Venatius Asongo, Executive Director of ASJA wondered why the United Kingdom had no qualms with its citizen peddling hate speech and directing IPoB members that allegedly bombed innocent citizens in Delta state, burnt a police station and killed a policeman in Abia state, attacked troops on official assignment, raped women, extorted traders, robbed and commited other atrocities against humanity.
Asongo said that at no time did the UK, through its High Commission call Kanu to order while he was spewing crude and derogatory statements about Nigeria.
He said, “It is most Satanic of the UK to continue according Kanu celebrity treatment when it cannot condone its own equivalent of IPoB. National Action, NS131 and Scottish Dawn are proscribed as extremist groups in the UK even when they have committed a tenth of the atrocities IPoB has unleashed on helpless Nigerians. There was a clampdown on members of National Action, NS131 and Scottish Dawn but no country has interfered in the UK’s internal affairs and freedom to run its own business. Yet, we are not allowed to promptly address a growing terror group among us when extremist groups are getting the sledgehammer treatment in London.
“We find this not only irresponsible but also an attempt to precipitate crisis in Nigeria and catalyst IPoB into something as ferocious as ISIS, which the UK was instrumental to creating and strengthening through its support for supporting terrorists against a country’s government as it did in Syria. In our view, this calls for concern because it implies that the UK is desirous of plunging Nigeria into crisis so that it can again return as a colonial master.
“In the most shameful exposure of its duplicity yet, the United Kingdom that is sponsoring IPoB separatist terrorists against Nigeria had no words for the harsh riot police clampdown Catalonians in a bid to prevent them from holding a referendum that the government had declared illegal. As opposed to Nigeria’s military, which observed rules of engagement in countering IPoB terrorists, in Spain the world was confronted with images of excessive use of force, brutalization that left 888 people injured in just one day. The United Kingdom was apparently blinded to this as it found nothing condemnable there since it cannot occupy Spain as a colony; Nigeria is fair game that the UK wants to conquer through Kanu.”
The group insisted that the High Commission of the United Kingdom to immediately hands over Kanu, the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra over now to face charges leveled against him.
“As we make this demand, may we also specify that the High Commission returns the fugitive terrorist alive; its request for a status update on Kanu flags its potential to kill or maim him for any possible set of objectives,” Asongo added on behalf of the group.
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