Shehu Sani Wrong, Biafran Agitators Are Not Targeted Against Buhari’s Administration

Buhari

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) also known as the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) were not targeted against the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari as alleged by Senate Shehu Sani based on my study of the group’s history.

It would be recalled that recently the senator representing the Kaduna Central Senatorial District at the National Assembly, Senator Shehu Sani, said that agitators of Biafra under the aegis of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra are forces of former President Goodluck Jonathan who lost out in the March 28 presidential election.

Sani claimed that the new Biafra agitators   were merely executing the ‘plan B’ of the pro-Jonathan forces. He said the plot was simply to destabilise the President Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress administration.

Sani, who spoke to journalists   in Kaduna, said the Biafra agitators were aggrieved that the former President, they considered theirs, lost the 2015 presidential election and conceded defeat.

He argued   that the new agitation was not only misguided, ill-conceived and ill-fated but also an ill-wind that would blow no one any good.

However from my understanding of these agitators they are not bitter losers who suddenly began their campaign because former President Goodluck Jonathan lost the 2015 presidential election to President Muhammadu Buhari as alleged by the senator because even Jonathan was against what the group (MASSOB) stands for.

Recall that on May 31, 2013, President Goodluck Jonathan, branded MOSSAB to be one of three extremist groups threatening the security of Nigeria. Jonathan declared that “the Nigerian state faces three fundamental security challenges posed by extremist groups like Boko Haram in the North; the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra in the South-East; and the Oodua People’s Congress in the South-West." It is therefore obvious that there was no love lost between MASSOB and former President Goodluck Jonathan.

In any case MASSOB did not come into existence on May 29, 2015, the day that President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn into office. MASSOB has been in existence before 1999 and operating as a separatist movement like the OPC, and Niger Delta self actualisation groups who were emboldened by the dictatorship of late head of state General Sani Abacha and were supported in one form or the other by pro-democracy groups like NADECCO who campaigned for the end of tyrannical rule of Abacha. It would also be recalled that in May 2008, the group released a list of 2020 members alleged to have been killed by security agents since 1999. That was seven years before Buhari became president in 2015.

Followers of contemporary political development of the country especially with respect to national security would recall that MASSOB leader, Ralph Uwazuruike was arrested in 2005 under President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration and detained on treason charges, and was later released in 2007 under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. The MASSOB who were campaigning for release of Uwazuruike in 2005 also campaigned for the release of  Mujahid Dokubo-Asari who also faced similar treason charges at the time.

It should be noted that in several interviews the MASSOB leader had emphasised that the philosophy underpinning their campaign was hinged on principle of non-violence as propagated by Mahatma Gandhi. Which was why you often hear the group members claiming in the social media that they have been accepted as an indigenous group within the United Nations, which the Nigerian government had never made effort to clarify whether Biafra had gotten such favourable ear from the UN and thus allowing the group to determine the narrative on such sensitive claims.

 Even though that it is obvious that majority of the South East people whom the group claim to represent do not share in their enthusiasm for resurrection of Biafra, the group has made it clear that they want independence from Nigeria, which has nothing in particular to do with Buhari as a person or as the incumbent president, but has everything to do with Nigeria as a sovereign state whose institutions appear to favour centrifugal forces (force pulling away from centre)  like discrimination and marginalisation among others, over centripetal forces (force pulling towards centre) like fairness, justice and equity among others. The agitators believe rightly or wrongly that Nigeria would never treat them fairly claiming that they have been consigned as second class citizens whose liberation depends on independence state of Biafra, which successive governments have done little to address.

Which now begs the question, why the increase in Biafran agitation since Buhari became president given that Radio Biafra and the Biafran agitators have been around even before the return of democracy? I think this has to do with the too much attention the administration was paying to Radio Biafra to the point that the president’s spokesman had to respond to allegations made by the radio station against the president, which at least confirmed to its operators that Abuja is also tuning in. Closely following presidential rebuttal of Radio Biafra’s claims as one of the reasons why the group is growing in popularity among some disaffected youths of the South-East and parts of the South-South is the ill-advised detention of the radio’s director, Mr Nnamdi Kalu without trial which automatically makes him a prisoner of conscience and drawn world’s attention to the agitators. How can the government get out of this quagmire? Charge Nnamdi Kalu to court and let the court determine his fate since Nigeria is a democracy where the rule of law is supposed to be respected.