“Mercy is the compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm. The object of our mercy may be grotesquely flawed. He may appear so inhuman as to be considered subhuman. But spiritual masters in all the known religions and mystic houses agree that the needle of human amity can only be shifted with the fingers of compassion.
May I plead, therefore, with all my readers today that you put on your agbada of compassion or kaftan of mercy, and don your cap/gele of forgiveness in addressing the issue of granting Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), clemency as Nigeria marks 65 years of Independence.
I am not unaware of the fact that many people who had been roundly insulted in the past in the sweeping and reckless broadcasts of the 57-year-old activist, are looking forward to jeering at him when he bags the sentence reserved for those who levy war against their fatherland. However, I plead mercy still.
Blessed Are The Merciful
You may say that this is too great a sacrifice for the society to make for a villain who derided the country of his birth as a zoo, who called fellow countrymen animals, cows, baboons, and sowed seeds of hate between different tribes and ethnic nationalities. Yes, he did all that and more. And that is why I am stressing mercy and compassion. Only the sick need a doctor. A transgressor needs compassion and forgiveness more than the upright.
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy,” says the holy Bible. Similarly, the Hadith says, “God made mercy one-hundred parts. He held back nine- ty-nine parts, and sent down one part to earth. It is from that part that creatures show mercy to each other…”
Martin Luther King Jr enjoins us, in all circumstances, not to repay hate with hate: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
I am not unmindful of the fact that Kanu’s erstwhile co-traveller, Simon Ekpa, commander of the “Biafra Government in Exile,” “Biafra Liberation Army,” and “Biafra Defence Force”, has won the right to go and eat ‘iron beans’ for six years at the Kylmäkoski vankila (Kylmäkoski prison), one of the world’s toughest prisons in Vanhamaantie, Akaa, Finland. Ekpa was fuelling the fratricidal war going on in the southeast of Nigeria between IPOB elements and the larger society under the guise of enforcing an illegal curfew. Many people wondered what kind of revolution makes a point of eating its own children first?
Hate
The mantra of hate against the Ijaw, Hausa, Yoruba, Fulani and others in this internet age is an everlasting totem to divisiveness, generational repugnance and everlasting odium.
But you have to excuse my seminary background which taught me, “Irascimini nolli peccare”, meaning,
“Be angry, but do not sin”. Whereas it is okay to be angry at Kanu’s hateful utterances, it is infra dig on our part to exact vengeance from the same grimy gutters of hate.
Kanu was barely three years old when the Nigerian Civil War ended. Having admired Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu all his life, he saw a chance to play hero when the first Igbo separatist group, Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) was on its back foot. He stepped in with his own outfit. Operating from London and allegedly raking in quite a fortune in foreign currency, he raised the stakes several notches in terms of violently challenging the Nigerian state which promptly banned IPOB as a terrorist organisation. The rest is history.
The Buhari government was understandably desperate to repatriate Kanu at all costs. When I plead for mercy to be extended to Kanu today, I am not unmindful of the raw nerves he continuously bruised when he seized the opportunity of President Buhari’s illness to declare the president dead.
According to the now-infamous rumour, Buhari had died during a prolonged medical trip to London in 2017 and had been replaced by a body double, allegedly a Sudanese man, named Jibril al Sudan or some other variations of it.
Jibril Al Sudan
IPOB claimed that a cabal in Aso Rock, desperate to retain power, had smuggled in a double to replace the deceased president. Social media was rife with “evidence,” including supposed differences in Buhari’s handwriting, changes in his earlobe shape, and inconsistencies in his spoken Hausa.
Fake news broadcasts rented the airwaves: “The man you are looking at on the television is not Buhari… His name is Jibril. He’s from Sudan. After extensive surgery, they brought him back”, said an IPOB operative.
They even broadcast a purported confession by Buhari’s wife that her husband had died in 2017 and that her family was forced to accept the body double from Sudan as the authentic Buhari. In the history of Nigeria, disinformation had never covered as many miles as it did with the Buhari death rumours. Nothing spreads rumours faster than the many platforms of social media with their notorious immediacy and global reach.
Judging from Buhari’s antecedents, especially from his botched attempt as military head of state to kidnap Umaru Dikko and expatriate him from London to face justice in Nigeria, something told me that Buhari would not allow Kanu to continue running riot — not if he could do anything about it.
Principalities & Powers
So, when Kanu was kidnapped and illegally rendered back to Nigeria, I didn’t need a marabout to tell me that the would-be freedom fighter would be made to rue the day he was born. Up till now, it seems Kanu himself has not realised that his battle is not against Buhari who has since completed his mortal race and is interred in his native Daura; nor is it against President Tinubu, but against principalities and powers, and godlets in high places.
I didn’t miss the subliminal message embedded in the recent reposting by a popular rabble-rouser, of one of the hateful quotes allegedly authored by Kanu: “We don’t want any Yoruba churches in Igboland. Tear down their posters, raid their places of worship, the day Kumuyi or Adeboye visits Aba, I will personally make sure he ends up dead.”
I am not sure that Kanu himself still subscribes to that kind of nonsense! I therefore plead that we forgive his cerebral fever or whatever was egging him towards self destruction— as long as he renounces his sovereign pretensions. We have solid grounds to stand on in calling for mercy and compassion.
The Igbo section of Nigeria is still largely marginalised. As a nation, we still have quite a bit of ground to cover. Now that the northern states are rehabilitating their bandits and terrorists through non-kinetic negotiations and the Southwest activist, Sunday Igboho, is back to continue serving his people (I also appeal that his name be expunged from the Wanted list), I plead that, as we mark 65 years of Independence, we extend the prerogative of mercy to Nnamdi Kanu. May God heal our nation!
As Shakespeare wrote, “The quality of mercy is not strained;/It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;/It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
Though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood I stand. Happy 65th birthday, Nigeria!
Congratulations, Olubadan
Congratulations to Oba Rasheed Ladoja, the 44th Olubadan of Ibadan on his coronation. May your reign be long, peaceful, and prosperous, Kabiyesi.
