Former Secretary-General of the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), Chief Anthony N.Z Sani, has claimed that had IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu not been rearrested and tried, his activities would have emboldened non-state actors to take the law into their hands and perpetrate criminal activities against Nigeria.
The former ACF scribe however cautioned that the Federal Government and its agents should not torture the leader of IPOB in the process of his trial, adding that all that is required is a just and fair trial.
He said tose comparing the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) with Boko Haram insurgents and bandits in the basis of the treatment meted out to Nnamdi Kanu were misguided by ethnic nationalism and religious bigotry.
The Arewa former Secretary spoke in an interview with journalists in Kaduna, adding that if the security agents were yet to put an end to the activities of the bandits, kidnappers, and insurgents in the North, that does not suggest they are treated with kid gloves.
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‘Those people who compare IPOB with bandits, kidnappers and insurgents in the North are most unfair. This is because the bandits, kidnappers, cattle rustlers and insurgents are not known and they use guerrilla methods of warfare. Also, they do not have well-established organizations, they are just criminals operating in cells with no common adhesive among the disparate groups. As a result, one cannot pin down their Leadership and their aims besides the economic factors.
‘The narratives that Miyetti Allah be arrested and prosecuted presupposes that Miyetti Allah leads the violent herders. Miyetti Allah leads herders most of whom are law-abiding citizens. The violent elements among the herders are in the minority. It would therefore be unfair and amounts to a miscarriage of justice to criminalize the leadership for the sins of their few violent elements. That is why we discourage ethnic and religious profiling of purely criminal acts.
‘And so, those who put IPOB on even scale gunmen, bandits, kidnappers, cattle rustlers and insurgents are misguided by ethnic nationalism and religious bigotry. More so that the security agents are seen fighting and killing them in the North. And in the course of such campaigns, many security agents have paid the supreme price of their lives,’Β he said.
‘I advise vised other separatist agitators like Sunday Adeyemo, otherwise known as Sunday Igboho, to desist from violent agitations, no criminal non-state actors would get away with their heinous activities however long it takes.
‘No nation can tolerate and accommodate people who seek to destroy their country. IPOB is not the first to engage in agitations for separation. Many countries have separatists who pursue their aspirations peacefully and legitimately.
‘Such countries include some groups in the state of Alaska who wish to leave America and join Russia. We also have such groups which wish to separate from their countries in Quebec in Canada, Scotland in Britain, Catalonia in Spain, Xinjiang in China, and Aceh in Indonesia. You do not see separatists in those countries killing innocent people in the name of separatist activities’, the ACF concluded.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
