A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has called on the Federal Government to immediately release the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu; and stop what it called the “long-term destruction of the South-East” geopolitical zone.

HURIWA is of the opinion that Kanu’s indefinite detention in an alleged underground dungeon of the secret police was responsible for the ongoing insecurity in the South-East which was resulting in destruction of lives and property.

HURIWA, in a statement on Sunday by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the “abduction” and perennial detention of Kanu, since he was brought back to Nigeria in June 2021, were illegal and inconsistent with international human rights practices.

HURIWA dismissed as erroneous, the verdict of Justice Binta Nyako justifying abduction and illegal rendition which offends international law and international human rights law.

The rights group said “since Kenya denied any involvement in the arrest of Kanu in its jurisdiction, his abduction remained irregular and illegal because if a judge sees white and tries to call it black, it is in the self-enlightened interests of the citizens to oppose an unjust verdict of a court.”

Onwubiko said: “Despite the extreme and heightened state of insecurity in the South-East, President Muhammadu Buhari has been nonchalant and unresponsive to popular and legal opinion on how to deflate the worsening situation.

“If we may ask, what has become of the negotiations initiated by some ‘wise men from the East,’ including a 90-year old first Republic Minister of Aviation of Igbo extraction who risked it all to fly into Abuja to plead with Buhari on behalf of Nnamdi Kanu?

“We don’t want to believe that although President Buhari respects Fulani Emirs, he has no respect for elders from the Igbo speaking South East of Nigeria, so much so that he deceived them or so it seems, to hope that Nnamdi Kanu will receive immediate reprieve only to realise that the President may have played a fast one on respected elders and statesmen only because they are not Fulanis?

“On IPOB and the South-East, criminal elements are using Nnamdi Kanu as a reason for upgrading their attacks of security assets and citizens of South-East and there is the need for the President to work out a political solution to the illegal detention of Kanu. HURIWA calls on security forces to up their game and adopt law based professional style to arrest the real perpetrators of violence in the South-East and stop arresting Igbo youths arbitrarily.

“HURIWA calls for the (conditional or otherwise) release of Nnamdi Kanu because what he is being charged for is not anywhere near terrorism. Kanu has never been caught with guns nor has he ever killed anyone. His advocacy, using Biafran radio, can only, at best, be termed spreading defamation but not terrorism and defamation is civil not criminal.

“Kanu must be released except President Muhammadu Buhari plans for a long-term destruction of South-East in anger over his allegation that Igbos did not vote for him.

Update news