The directive by the United Nations to Nigeria to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu with immediate effect affirms that separatist agitation is legal, and that referendum is a legitimate tool for settling it, Barr Aloy Ejimakor said Friday.
The report of the UN Working Group on Human Rights, three weeks ago, directed that Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, be released, adding that he was exercising his rights in calling for a referendum for the actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra.
He is currently being detained by Nigerian government on alleged jumping bail in 2017, running a proscribed group and treason.
Advertisement
He was abducted from Kenya to Nigeria by the combined forces of Nigeria and Kenya last August, an approach some lawyers said was in violation of international laws.
An Umuahia High Court however ruled that Kanu did not jump bail and awarded damages against the federal government.
Kanu’s special counsel, Barr Aloy Ejimakor, instituted the case.
Explaining the implications of the UN directives on Kanu, Ejimakor told our correspondent that referendum was adopted in Nigeria, which led to the excision of the southern Cameroun from Nigeria, and retaining of Adamawa as part of Nigeria.
According to the him, without the referendum, former VP Atiku Abubakar would not have been a Nigerian.
Quoting him, “Nigeria gained Adamawa and lost Southern Cameroun through referendum, and nobody was detained, killed or extraordinarily renditioned.
“It is referendum that made Abubakar Atiku a Nigerian and which may as yet make him President. It’s through referendum that Midwest Region came into being in 1964.
“This is all within Nigeria, not counting the many nations that were created through referendum, such as Eritrea, Kosovo, South Sudan.
“The problem is not the separatist agitation, IPOB or Nnamdi Kanu. The problem is the misguided militarist response to it which, instead of containing it, is actually validating the agitation and convulsing Southeast and Nigeria to boot.”
Findings show that a UN-supervised plebiscite in February 1961 led to the unification of the southern part of Cameroun with the former French Cameroun, creating the Federal Republic of Cameroun.
The north voted to join the Federation of Nigeria.
The south was until then a part of Nigeria.