Kanu’s Rights Do Not Add Up By Mahmud Jega
AREWA AGENDA – Something does not add up in this business of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
Some people have rushed to the press and are sending petitions to foreign governments and international organisations trying to portray him as a victim. They said he was “illegally” seized in a foreign country and brought back to Nigeria, which made me to wonder which legality Kanu respected when he jumped bail from a civilian court and fled the country through an illegal route.
Maybe Nnamdi Kanu’s capture in an unnamed foreign country was not legal, as his supporters now allege, but what was legal about his wild escapades on social media space, cursing his country of birth, denigrating its people and leaders, spewing hate speech and urging his militiamen to attack leading politicians, state institutions and to kill security operatives?
Where was legality when Kanu claimed credit for violent incidents, ordered people in the South East to remain indoors [though the Constitution guarantees free movement], and firmly stated that there will be no elections in the region? Was it legal that his venomous speeches goaded his supporters to launch 55 attacks across the South East and South South and kill 60 persons within four months, according to the Federal Government, majority of them soldiers and policemen?
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Nigerian leaders and clerics have told communities to defend themselves from bandit attacks. How about the Nigerian state defending itself against a social media and foreign-based radio bandit attack? What the Nigerian state did was no different from May 1960, when Mossad agents captured the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann on the streets of Argentina and secreted him to Israel to stand trial. He was hanged afterwards.
Certainly Kanu cut his pitiful figure when he reappeared before the Abuja Federal High Court on Tuesday, four years after jumping bail, in handcuffs, stooped, unusually silent, visibly in shock at the sudden turn of events.
The equally incendiary Femi Fani-Kayode says government must respect Kanu’s “constitutional right to fair hearing” and that he “must not die in custody.” Very well. But Kanu did not respect the right to life, not to mention the right to fair hearing, of the cops and other people that he ordered killed in the streets.
He doesn’t want to die in custody but he had no compunction killing people who were NOT in custody. He wants to enjoy constitutional rights even though he repudiated the Federal Republic and the Constitution along with it.
Many things do not add up here.
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Mahmud Jega is a respected writer
