By PAMELA EBOH, Awka

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has drawn the attention of Nigerians and the international community to what it described as a dangerous lie that has been carefully constructed to justify the continued detention and conviction of its leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

IPOB in a statement by its Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, on Monday, recalled that immediately after the extraordinary rendition of Kanu in June 2021, desperate political actors, many of whom have long envied his influence, unleashed violence and chaos across the South-East, with the aim to create insecurity and blame it on Kanu.

It explained that the end game was for them to later claim that they were right to abduct, detain, and jail him.

According to the group, these were the same people who rushed to proscribe IPOB, after Ekwulobia and Aba mega rallies in mid-2017 where millions trooped out just to catch a glimpse of its leader, despite the earlier ruling by the Abuja Federal High Court in March 2017 declaring that IPOB is not a terrorist organisation.

The statement partly reads: "In plain terms, a group declared lawful by a court was later branded “terrorist” through ex-parte for political convenience.

"These are the same people that killed IPOB members that organised and attended President Trump Solidarity Rally in Igweocha (Port Harcourt) on 20 January 2017. Again, Biafrans killed without justification.

"It is painful to note that yet again, the same forces behind the manufactured insecurity are the same ones who unleashed Operation Python Dance, a military operation that targeted Mazi Nnamdi Kanu for assassination and led to the killing of unarmed civilians across the South-East with 28 murdered in his country home.

"Most shocking of all is what followed in court. In his judgment, Omotosho repeatedly cited insecurity in the South-East from 2022 onwards and blamed it on Mazi Nnamdi Kanu despite the fact that Mazi Kanu had already been abducted, rendered to Nigeria, and locked in underground solitary confinement.

"Let Nigerians and the world pause and think. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was held incommunicado in the custody of the (DSS) in Abuja. He had no phone, no visitors, no access to the outside world. Yet he was blamed for events said to have happened in the South-East, outside prison walls. This is not justice. It is judicial nonsense.

"Let us state the absurdity clearly: A man in total state custody was convicted for crimes allegedly committed while he was in chains.

"In any sane country, such reasoning by a supposed learned judge would attract instant condemnation from fellow judges and the legal fraternity. But in Nigeria, the plot was so well executed that many people stopped asking basic questions."

While wondering who Kanu killed, IPOB queried:

“Who did Mazi Nnamdi Kanu kill?

“Who came to court to say Kanu killed their brother, sister, or parent?

“Where is the evidence of bodies, witnesses, forensic proof?”

Answering the questions, the separatist group said: “There is none. Absolutely none.

"Those who planned this deception did a thorough job. They confused the public, silenced questions, and drowned the truth in propaganda. But no lie lasts forever.

"If these Igbo politicians and their external sponsors had been honest enough to admit that the insecurity story was deliberately created just to jail Kanu, our leader would have willingly sacrificed himself if it would have saved the innocent Biafrans who were killed simply to build a case against him.

"Their blood cries out."

IPOB called on, “the international community, foreign governments and parliaments, human rights organisations, lawyers and judges of conscience to look beyond propaganda and confront the truth, insisting that Kanu's conviction was built on manufactured insecurity, with no evidence and laced with the criminalisation of political dissent.”

It added: "History will remember those who spoke the truth—and those who used chaos to silence a man."