President Bola Tinubu has been asked to set the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, free the same way he ordered the release of the minors detained following their protest against bad governance.
A former Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Enugu State, Dr Ben Nwoye, stated this in Enugu on Tuesday.
According to him, President Tinubu should extend the same gesture to Kanu “since he has powers to order the release of those incarcerated after the bad governance protest held between August 1 and 10”.
Even though Nwoye said the order by the president was a violation of the judiciary process, releasing Kanu using the same presidential directives would make the justice dispensation in Nigeria not to appear selective, he said.
Also speaking, a human rights lawyer, Nnadume Afforkansi, said the attorney general of the federation ought to have taken proper legal steps to free the minors, rather than Tinubu giving the directives.
Quoting him, “The presidential intervention is not proper. How about Biafran agitators who are being held in prisons, some of them under-aged? Why is Kanu still in prison? Tinubu is becoming the supreme judge of the nation. We can’t have a judiciary system for different people. The same way he ordered the release of the kids, he should also order the release of Kanu. This is the only way not to make a certain people feel segregated in a country of theirs. Why are we dispensing justice differently?”
Recall that President Tinubu had after the arraignment of the minors ordered their release from detention. The FG had Tuesday withdrawn the terrorism charges preferred against those detained, who are mostly northerners. They were arrested for participating in the bad governance protest, particularly for hoisting a flag of a another country in Nigeria.
Kanu is charged with terrorism for championing the secession of Biafra from Nigeria’s structure. He has been detained at the custody of the Department of the State Services since 2021 when he was transferred from Kenya to Nigeria.
The federal government, during the regime of former president Muhammadu Buhari, refused to free Kanu when the Appeal Court discharged him, rather he was kept in detention while FG sought superior court ruling to try him, a request the Supreme Court granted.