By CHARLES IWUOHA

A human rights lawyer, Onyedikachi Ifedi Esq, has called for solidarity among the people of Southern Nigeria amid the ongoing detention and trial of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ifedi, who is part of the IPOB legal team, particularly urged the Yoruba and Igbo, two of the largest Southern Nigerian nationalities, to unite against the "British legacy of distrust" - which he said has kept the South under Fulani-led Northern domination.

According to the lawyer, one of the most enduring tragedies of Nigeria?s post-colonial history is that the southern nationalities - which he described as the most educated segment of the country - "remain trapped in the colonial vortex of ethnic suspicion".

Ifedi, while stressing the need for the Yoruba and the Igbo to unite, noted that the seeming conflict between the two nationalities was created by the British colonial masters.

According to him, detractors are behind unfounded claims that IPOB is fighting the Yoruba.

"The historical record is clear: the enmity between the Yoruba and the Igbo was neither natural nor inevitable. It was cultivated by the British colonial administration, which found it convenient to keep Nigeria?s most dynamic ethnic blocs at each other?s throats. When Lord Lugard described the South as a ?collection of mutually suspicious tribes,? he was not observing a fact?he was creating one.

"In truth, IPOB is not at war with the Yoruba nation. IPOB is at war with oppression ? colonial or post-colonial, foreign or domestic. The movement?s central achievement, often ignored by its detractors, is that it made it impossible for the Fulani expansionist agenda to overrun the East as it has overrun large portions of the North-Central and South-West.

"The truth, however unpleasant, must be told: IPOB stands today as the only mass movement in Nigeria that has successfully defied the twin empires of corruption and cowardice. To dismiss it as a ?terrorist organization? while ignoring the terror of bandits, herdsmen, and state violence is hypocrisy of the highest order," the statement said.

Calling for a "New Southern Consciousness", the lawyer stressed that it is time for "southern intellectuals of conscience to abandon the colonial game of divide-and-rule and to embrace the larger struggle for liberation from northern domination and foreign manipulation".

"The Igbo do not seek competition; they seek justice. IPOB is not the enemy of the Yoruba; the real enemy is the mindset that mistakes submission for wisdom and silence for peace.

"Nigeria will remain a colony ? whether of Britain or of its internal satraps ? until her southern nations rediscover the solidarity that once made them formidable. That begins with truth."

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