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Nnamdi
Kanu is a man of theatrics and he never fails to entertain. My problem
is that his jokes are becoming too expensive and they have been taken
too far.
Nnamdi Kanu
Let me start this article with a very short story about a personal
experience. One day, I was at a bar at the Festac Town area of Lagos
State in 2016 watching a football match when a potbellied full-figured
man passionately unloading some empty bottles of alcohol started
analyzing politics with his friends in a very distracting tone. His
voice was so reverberating, and he reiterated his views with so much
confidence. Gradually, he started to win over the attention of everybody
including me. The latest way of winning or dominating arguments in such
places is to shout on top of your voice and remain defiant even if you
are not making sense. It works like magic.
"The solution to the problems of Nigeria is to gather all our leaders and set them on fire, burn them to ashes!" he echoed.
His friends whose eyes and brains must have been failing them
gradually due to alcohol intake cheered him. As I walked home from the
bar after the match that night, I thought about his extreme
'revolutionary solution' and disagreed fundamentally. For every corrupt
politician that dies in Nigeria, there is a competent replacement
amongst us, in fact, we have a clone or a replica. The Nigerian State is
a reflection of its people. My usual prayer is that God should save
Nigeria from Nigerians. A perfect example of such a cantankerous figure
masquerading around as a freedom fighter, history maker and game-changer
is Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The South-easterners are very religious people;
predominantly Christians and I believe they are special in the sight of
God. Confirmation of my view is the failure of the secession cause of
Nnamdi Kanu under the banner of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB.
If Biafra had worked, Nnamdi Kanu in the bid to reap the 'fruit of his
labour' would have forced his way to the driver's seat and a fatal
accident would have been the case. Biafra and South Sudan would have
been competing for the best case study for why secession is never the
solution to the challenges of a minority group in a country. I trust my
colleagues in academia to jump on it and win awards with the research.
Nnamdi Kanu is a man of theatrics and he never fails to entertain.
My problem is that his jokes are becoming too expensive and they have
been taken too far. The world has seen 'good comedians' in politics.
While some have failed, others have gone to achieve great things. The
41-year old president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky was a
comedian and actor who brought his role in a movie to reality, beating a
sitting president at the polls this year to gain power. He is presently
reforming his country and commendably secured the release of some
Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia. Others with clownish antics are
President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and maybe President
Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. The 51-year old Nnamdi Kanu who has
secured himself with a British passport is far below the class of these
world leaders. He seems to be reading the playbook of a former Iraqi
diplomat and politician, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf nicknamed Comical Ali
who came to worldwide prominence around the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He
successfully did a 'Lai Mohammed-like job' while he was the Iraqi
Information Minister under Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, acting as a
spokesperson for the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and Saddam's
government.
Nnamdi Kanu is quite smart but I must say he isn't smart enough. He
understands how fragmented the Nigerian society is due to identity
crisis. He knows how much we all play the victim card; every Nigeria
feels cheated and has a justification for every unscrupulous act. He
also knows trust in government is considerably low due to corruption
over the years. He understands that there is always an information gap
coupled with a high level of illiteracy and ineffective educational
system. The loopholes are well exploited by him and he has been feeding
fat on them making money from his sympathizers. Using the power of the
new media, Kanu smartly leveraged on the secrecy of the medical
treatment of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2017 at a London hospital to
announce that he was dead. As his proclamation started to gather
momentum, Buhari surfaced although looking like he just rose from the
grave. Nnamdi Kanu must have felt disappointed but accepting defeat was
not an option. He later went on to announce that Buhari was actually
dead and the man that is the leader of Nigeria is one Jubril Al Sudani
from Sudan, a body double in simple terms.
Kanu went on to make a series of YouTube videos buttressing his
views and the blogs gave him the needed audience. The media system in
Nigeria is so flawed and you have everybody competing for traffic and
advertising revenue at all costs. Nobody really pays attention to
credibility anymore and Kanu became an instant beneficiary. He pushed
that Jubril narrative until it gained not only national attention but
became a global issue.
The Vice President Atiku Abubakar must have been enjoying the hit
on Buhari when Kanu attacked him and claimed he is a Cameroonian who
isn't constitutionally qualified to be the president of Nigeria. That
joke of a claim later ended in court with Buhari's lawyers alluding to
that view probably as delay tactics.
Nnamdi Kanu urged IPOB supporters never to participate in the
electoral process but in the last minute made a U-turn. Rumours have it
that some political stakeholders cut a moneyed deal with him. According
to analysts, Kanu's initial campaign for the boycott of elections
accounted largely for the low turnout of voters during the 2018
presidential election in the South-east. He threatened most
South-eastern governors with political annihilation but all that failed
and his morale dropped. Kanu faded and started to feel irrelevant but
later gained resurgence in a more dramatic and daring fashion.
His present charade is taking 'Biafra to the world'. He announced
recently that he spoke to the European Union parliament in Brussels,
Belgium and circulated his speech among mainstream media platforms. The
Punch, Vanguard and The Guardian brazenly published it without due
diligence. Till date, there is no video of Kanu meeting with the EU
leaders, no photo-ops, no details of the event on the EU website and no
information about the proceedings of such a gathering. In fact, the EU
parliament never convened on the 10th of September which is the said
date he allegedly delivered his speech. One wonders when the EU whose
scope is largely economical with a focus on Europe has now developed an
interest in local politics in Nigeria.
When questions were asked, his supporters photoshopped a picture of
him purportedly delivering a speech at the EU parliament. The quack job
that can't even convince a blind fool looked him he was making a rap
song presentation on the floor of the parliament. Kanu's camp went on to
further mock his audience by releasing a video of him delivering an
informal speech outside the EU headquarters. Isn't that loopy?
The latest move is that he will be visiting the United Nations
office in Geneva, Switzerland. As usual, the details are very unclear.
The UN whose body language hasn't favoured reasonable secessionists like
the Catalonians has maintained a deafening silence while Kanu's team
continues the lap of honour over a phantom achievement that could be
better imagined than actually realized. IPOB's reasons for the unclear
details is to deter any form of sabotage by the Nigerian government. One
might be forced to think Kanu might be going to pay a personal visit to
his friend who works at the UN and is using that avenue to hoodwink the
public.
My only concern is that some people actually buy these works of
fiction and they might be contributing their hard-earned money to fund
it as Kanu has admitted. Kanu is really blessed with such an easy life!
All of a sudden, Nnamdi Kanu's father rumoured to be missing and
probably dead has returned quietly to his palace two years after it was
invaded by the military. One wonders when all these lies will end. Will
Kanu ever run out of lies? When will his supporters realize that he is
just a 'political entrepreneur' exploiting the system ridden with
despondency?
Kanu's jokes are actually not funny anymore. He needs to be stopped
through proactive measures to protect his followers from him. With
someone of Kanu's nature on the prowl, nobody will take Nigeria
seriously. An intelligent and vigilant foreigner who encounters him will
see more danger looming through his deceitful eyes.
Osayimwen Osahon George is a journalist and a PhD student at the University of Ibadan. He can be reached via g.osayimwen@gmail.com
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