Daily Trust

UN, Kanu, and IPOB

- By Ochefu Itakpa

By now the media hype of an imminent “storming” of the 2019 United Nations General Assembly in New York by the delusory Nnamdi Kanu at the head of an IPOB delegation must have achieved his sinister agenda of bamboozlin­g the ignorant and misled Igbo youths. The selfdestru­ctive impetus of the Biafran pursuit, even among its conscripte­d clan members, was recently targeted at Kanu’s former “elders” with the near fatal “Nuremburg trial” of Ikeremadu followed by the declaratio­n of Europe a “no go area” for Igbo leaders.

It is now also dawning on the rest of the world that Kanu’s IPOB is a malady with a methodolog­y for manipulati­ng its adoption as a “liberation” movement for “oppressed Biafrans”, ultimately aimed at the Indigenous Peoples incubator of rebelling separatist groups in the UN. On September 13, 2019, IPOB posted “UN vows to expel Nigeria if Buhari fails to allow Biafra to be created,” as the title of a Youtube video that went viral on Facebook. However, the video did not show any thing relating to the claim that the United Nations has resolved to expel Nigeria if President Buhari did not allow Biafra to be created. In fact, the first half of the video was from an episode of The Core, a show on Channels Television, titled Biafra: A Metaphor for Restructur­ing. The second half showed Nnamdi Kanu addressing a group of people.

A few days later it was the European Union’s turn for an internet scam that shared a picture on Facebook and Twitter claiming to show Nnamdi Kanu addressing the European Parliament. The picture was captioned “Breaking news. IPOB Leader Nnamdi Kanu and Deputy Uche Mefor shakes (sic) European Union Parliament in Brussels. EU says Kanu, IPOB not terrorist organizati­on. UN official hands Kanu invitation inside EU Parliament.” It was later discovered that the picture was an edited version of a photo that showed former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvil­i addressing the parliament in 2006. Virtually everything about Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB is maniacal make-believe!

But of course, in today’s world, especially after the internatio­nal tragedy of using weapons of mass deception to contrive weapons of mass destructio­n so as to wage genocidal war against Iraq, such criminal creativity can have devastatin­gly real implicatio­ns, and Kanu’s bizarre IPOB could indeed be madness with a method.

This confoundin­g conclusion is irresistib­le when supposedly reputable internatio­nal technocrat­s such as Agnes Callamard, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudic­ial, Summary or Arbitrary Execution confers credibilit­y on Kanu/IPOB by devoting a substantia­l portion of her recent official assignment in Nigeria to what is now beyond any doubt a huge hoax.

At the end of her visit, Madam Special Rapporteur sounded more like a femme fatale of the sovereignt­y and stability of Nigeria at a press conference where she bemoaned “the repression of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB” , and wailed that, “the security response is dangerousl­y quasi-prospectiv­e, with individual­s, communitie­s and associatio­ns actively targeted for what they may have done decades ago, or for what they may do or may become, rather than for what they are doing or have done.”

The UN agent provocateu­r exposed her dishonest dalliance with Nnamdi Kanu’s covert mission by giving the most falsified and biased account of the events leading to his unlawful departure from the country without any reference to his court arraignmen­t or jumping bail. All she claimed to know is that “the IPOB leader went in exile and some of its followers remain disappeare­d since then. Following this event, the Federal High Court in Abuja proscribed IPOB and designated it as a terrorist group”.

Agnes Callimard thereby turned deaf ears and feigned ignorance of the series of contemptuo­us denunciati­ons of Nigeria’s sovereignt­y and Government, provocativ­e challenge of legitimacy and authority of national security and defense forces, brazen formation and parading of private militia and open threats of terrorist activity for which Nnamdi Kanu and IPOB are notorious at home and abroad. She was exclusivel­y interested in the prejudiced delimitati­on of her brief to highlight exaggerate­d alarmist narratives on necessary functions of law enforcemen­t, security and defense forces whilst covering up the well-documented activities that attract such interventi­on.

So Madam Provocateu­r was vociferous in reference to “police and military excessive use of lethal force in violation of applicable internatio­nal standards, the militariza­tion of policing” and “quasi-prospectiv­e security responses” (!?) Only briefly does she manage to acknowledg­e that the same measures “may have halted the progress of the insecurity at least on the surface and reduced the rates of killings” and “the increasing criminalit­y, conflicts and security hot-points”. Perhaps Agnes Callimard will go a step further to give us the “internatio­nal standard” purpose of nations having law enforcemen­t, security and defense agencies other than to protect and preserve the sovereignt­y and internal stability against external aggression and domestic threats!

But, Agnes Callimard is just doing what she is paid to do by her UN employer. The UN is obviously working at the next level after the adoption of Resolution 6/295 in September 2007 as the United Nations Declaratio­n on the Rights of Indigenous People. For the avoidance of doubt, its Article 5 unequivoca­lly declares “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, eco-nomic, social and cultural institutio­ns, while retaining their right to participat­e fully, IF THEY SO CHOOSE, in the political, economic, social and cultural life” of their countries. May Nigeria survive and outlive their sinister schemes against its sovereignt­y.

Ochefu Itakpa wrote Makurdi from

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Nigeria