There will be no tears shed for Nnamdi Kanu – Farooq Kperogi

Nnamdi-Kanu

There will be no tears shed for Nnamdi Kanu – Farooq Kperogi

NewsReport June 30, 2021

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Since the beginning of the month, I’ve known that Nnamdi Kanu will be detained and sent to Nigeria, but my informant promised me confidentiality, so I kept the information to myself. He was apprehended today and extradited to Nigeria.

NewsReport gathered that while the Southeast’s enormous animosity of Buhari is warranted in response to his systematic marginalization and blatant verbal and practical antagonism to the region, Nnamdi Kanu is NOT a reflection of the region’s legitimate unhappiness. He is a distinct but related issue.

This online information learned that Kanu is a violent, rude, venomous-tongued thug who should never have been allowed to grow to prominence by exploiting the legitimate concerns of the Southeast. His intolerant, mindless IPOB cult has become a problem not only for Nigeria but for the vast majority of Igbo people worldwide.

I took the opportunity to listen to Kanu on Radio Biafra when he was thrust to the forefront of national and international attention in July 2015 as a result of the Buhari regime’s careless handling of Radio Biafra. I came across a man yelling rude, aggressive, incomprehensible, hate-filled but amusing ranting. He referred to Nigeria as a “zoo” or “zoological republic,” and Nigerians as “monkeys” or “illiterate vagabonds.”

He referred to Igbos who did not share his stupidity as “Hausa-born children in Igboland.” His rants were also replete with racial self-hatred and neophobic rhetoric, such as statements that black people were naturally intellectually inferior and incapable of serious thought. He identified himself as a “Jew.” Since then, he hasn’t changed.

Read also: FACTS ABOUT NNAMDI KANU REAREST THAT SHOULD BE KNOWN 

He makes no attempt to persuade. He merely enjoys tasteless abuse, deliberate deception, infantile tantrums, and a histrionic show of vile, laughable illiteracy. In my July 2015 column, I stated that the only people who would take him seriously and be affected by his message were those who already shared his twisted, vile ideas, making shutting down his station unnecessary. “I’m sure that doesn’t speak for or reach the majority of Igbo people, and I’m sure most Igbo people would snigger if they heard it,” I wrote.

But the Buhari regime made Kanu more popular than he is worth. He was spewing his rib-tickling inanities on the fringes of the Internet and on a barely known radio station. Then, suddenly, when he started attacking President Buhari, Nigerian authorities moved in swiftly to contain him. They announced that they had successfully jammed his radio station but came back a few days later to refute an alleged libelous falsehood the station made against Buhari!

Of course, news of the “jamming” of the radio and the press release refuting what the station reportedly said against Buhari (after it was supposed to have been jammed!) caused the station—and the ideology it espouses—to make national and international headlines. And there was an enormous spike in the number of searches for “Radio Biafra” and “Nnamdi Kanu” on Google and other search engines.

This, combined with Buhari’s unambiguous antipathy toward the southeast, has sparked a resurgence of Biafran and neo-Biafran movements and periodic sanguinary communal upheavals. This was completely avoidable. If the government had ignored (or quietly diluted) Kanu and his Radio Biafra and demonstrated even token large-heartedness toward the southeast (and the deep south) in the immediate aftermath of Buhari’s epochal electoral triumph in spite of opposition from the region, we wouldn’t know of Kanu and IPOB. But Nigerian authorities couldn’t stomach an insult at Buhari.

Whatever it is, I have no tears for Kanu. No reasonable person should. But I think the man needs more sorrow than anger because he is obviously mentally unhinged.