Urgent Plea: Traditional Rulers’ Demands to Tinubu on Nnamdi Kanu Revealed

Urgent Plea: Traditional Rulers’ Demands to Tinubu on Nnamdi Kanu Revealed

NewsReport stated that Lawrence Agubuzu, Eze Ogbunechendo of Ezema Olo Kingdom in Enugu State, urged President Bola Tinubu to release Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), or to send him back to Kenya, where he was detained before his transfer to Nigeria.

Agubuzu spoke on Tuesday during a goodwill message at the 2026 National Traditional and Religious Leaders Summit on Health, held at the State House Conference Centre in Abuja.

The traditional ruler said Kanu’s continued detention is fuelling agitation among youths in the south-east.

“Please do something about this. We cannot make progress in this country if we don’t tell ourselves the truth.”

Agubuzu added that he was unhappy that Tinubu was absent when the Ooni of Ife delivered the opening remarks at the summit.

“I must tell you, Mr. President, that personally I don’t feel very happy because you were not here in the morning when the Ooni of Ife gave the opening remarks and was encouraging us to work as one,” he said

NewsReport understands that He accused the Ooni of hypocrisy, alleging that the monarch plans to confer an honour on Sunday Igboho, the Yoruba nation agitator.

“This same Imperial Majesty is arranging to confer a very high honour on Sunday Igboho, who, in my own part of Nigeria and the South-East, we see him as a counterpart of Nnamdi Kanu,” Agubuzu charged.

“The ball stops on your court. Bring this man out. If we don’t want him in Nigeria, return him to Kenya or London where they took him from,” he insisted.

Urgent Plea: Traditional Rulers’ Demands to Tinubu on Nnamdi Kanu Revealed

Agubuzu said traditional rulers in the south-east are facing pressure from aggrieved youths over Kanu’s continued incarceration.

“Some of us here are being asked to go and work, but the young people in the South-East are so agitated they can even beat us,” he said.

“They see us as sell-outs. We come to Abuja; they may think we come to collect money and then we keep quiet.”

The IPOB leader was first arrested in 2015 on treason charges and granted bail in 2017. He later fled the country but was rearrested in Kenya in 2021 and returned to Nigeria.

His case has since gone through multiple rounds of litigation, including proceedings before the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

Kanu is currently serving a life sentence in Sokoto prison following his conviction on a seven-count terrorism-related charge by a federal high court in Abuja on November 20, 2025.

The federal government has proscribed IPOB as a terrorist organisation.