Nnamdi Kanu – Nigeria’s Quagmire
By: Deji Yesufu
Yesterday, 20th October, 2025, was exactly five years since Nigeria sinned against its young people, with the dastardly act of mowing down peaceful protesters at Lekki Toll-Gate in Lagos. All kinds of cover-ups have followed that unfortunate event, but the blood of those young people continues to hunt those in power. Until the question is answered: who authorized the dispatching of soldiers to Lekki, who then oversaw the killing of tens of peaceful protesters, it is safe to say that their killers will not have peace, both in this life and in the life to come. Already, a number of the men who were in power then are already dead – all men will receive the reward for their ways in the life to come. Let us be clear about this matter: nobody kills a nation’s young people, especially when they were protesting peacefully, and goes scot-free. And when such a thing happens, those in authority owe the people of this country answers.
It was in a quest to get answers that Omoyele Sowore led a group of protesters in Abuja to demand the release of Nnamdi Kanu from detention. Kanu is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and has been in detention since 2019. He has been in and out of court, and on a few occasions, he has been granted bail by the judges, but the Nigerian government has decided not to release him. Nnamdi Kanu poses too great a security risk to Nigeria, and those in power believe it is better that he is clamped in jail than allowed freedom, given his potential to destabilize parts of the country. Every country reaches a position in its national life where it must weigh its options. Do we obey the courts and release an individual to the public, and then risk his raising an uprising against the government? Or, do we clamp him in detention, and retain the peace – regardless of whether the peace is one of the graveyards? This is the reason why Wole Soyinka was placed in detention throughout the period of the Nigerian civil war, and this is the reason why El-Zakzaky is still in detention to date. The question remains, however, what does Nigeria do with the Nnamdi Kanu quagmire?
EndSARS, IPOB, Boko Haram, Bandits, Fulani Herdsmen, Niger Delta Youth, etc., are all products of a failing state. A few months ago, Reno Omokri said that the sciences are better than the arts. He argued that people who major in science as a discipline make more money than those in the arts. Now, such puerile thinking is the reason why Nigeria is where it is today. When a people reduce life to only pecuniary gain, you will end up with a failing state. I should remind my readers that Reno Omokri has today been nominated as an ambassador for Nigeria by the Tinubu government – that is if that nomination is not scuttled by his recent gaffe, where he invited an American politician for fact-finding on the question of killing of Christians in northern Nigeria, and this man ended up making the point that there is indeed genocide against Christians in northern Nigeria. I have totally digressed.
My point in bringing Reno Omokri to this essay is to make the argument that society is divided along two major disciplines: the sciences and the humanities. The humanities are what some people call the arts. The long-debated question of all time has never been how much money people can make in life. There are many people who are content with just enough through life; it is not everyone who has it as a goal to be rich. But most of us want to live in peace, some prosperity, and to enjoy health. We look up to countries in the West, and we hope to imitate their systems of government. Most people in the USA and Europe, including Russia, are living in peace and prosperity because they have learnt the art of the humanities. They recognize problems that are peculiar to their countries, and they offer practical solutions to solve them. Nigeria has forever been beleaguered by the North/South dichotomy. Northern Nigeria, even in the time of the British, was fundamentally Muslim, and they were not open to much Western civilization. The opposite was the case with the South. Today, we have Boko Haram breathing down the nation’s neck. A working society should look into this question. Our fathers suggested a federal system of government. Are we practicing true federalism, or are we just doing what we like? In a truly federal state, each state in the country will have a level of autonomy, while at the same time contributing to the center for the development of the whole country. If all the federalism we practice as a country is to only divide and share gains from oil sales, we have not started to practice true federalism.
The question of Nnamdi Kanu’s continual detention brings us face to face with two realities. First, every person in our nation today is striving to survive, and we all make up theories that will aid this survival process. Nnamdi Kanu’s theory of dividing Nigeria and extricating Eastern Nigeria is a doctrine he has sold to the people of Eastern Nigeria, and he is earning good money in the process. This doctrine thrives in that region of the country because the people there have reasons to feel marginalized. Despite efforts by the federal government to invest in the East, its state governors have not helped matters. The evil of corruption has eaten deep into that region and thus renders many of its people poor. The side effects of all these are that the people turn around to blame the Nigerian government for lack of development. In the same vein, many terrorist cells are growing among the youth of that region. Recently, Simon Ekpa, the young man leading terrorist activities in that region but who lives in Finland, was arrested and jailed for this by the Finnish authorities. Kanu continues to claim that these terrorist activities are going on outside his purview – a story that only the gods should believe. What is the way forward?
The founders of Nigeria believe that this country will thrive more as a united entity than a splintered one. By the sheer providence of God, the British saw wisdom in bringing the northern and southern parts of this country together as one whole. Our fathers suggested federalism as a means of welding the desperate parts of this country together. The way forward for this country will lie with how we practice federalism in this country. Federalism suggests two things: first, equal representation of each part of this country within any political establishment in the nation. Secondly, it also suggests the rapid development of individual units of the country at their own rate. It means that the Nigerian government would need to encourage states to become increasingly self-sustaining. It might require that these states have their own security. Because of the increase in the population of Nigeria, there is a need for the creation of more states; but this time with a de-emphasis on collecting resources from the center, and more and more states utilizing agriculture to develop their states and regions. It will mean that states in Nigeria that are oil-producing will get a larger share of the resources that come from their land, and those states that do not produce oil will have to find other resources to depend on. For example, Lithium is quite abundant in Northern Nigeria, and the people there might want to invest more in exploring those resources. If this country can find a leadership that will radically change the process of revenue division in this country, the over-dependence on the center will reduce, and the clamor for secession will be a thing of the past. Because each people group will now look to their state governors. The Federal government will get its resources from the states to fund defense and federal infrastructure developments.
In other words, what will save this country is a scientific exploration of the humanities, especially with regard to how different people groups should live together. Obafemi Awolowo made it clear in his book “Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution” that only a federal system of government can serve Nigeria. He also made it clear that the vision for a united Nigeria must not stop on our shores alone. We must begin to look at bringing the different parts of Africa, at least black Africa, together through a federal system of government. If Africa manages to unite under a working government and then takes advantage of the vast expanse of land it sits on, there will be no continent in this world that can stand up to us.
When protests line the streets of a country, and people begin to agitate either peacefully or violently, thinking government must bring out the carrot and the stick. The stick is law enforcement – clamping down on unruly behaviors, arrests, jailing, etc. All these are what functioning governments do to keep the peace of the land. There is also the carrot. We must suggest ways forward. We must find a middle ground with these agitators. We must appreciate the fact that Nnamdi Kanu today has a cult following in Eastern Nigeria, and we must do everything to appease them. Governance is not child’s play. Those who seek elective offices should understand that they are there to solve problems, not to line their pockets with stolen funds or feed their ego. It is when the latter abounds more in government that the agitators possess moral high ground to make noise on the streets. A word, they say, is enough for the wise.
Deji Yesufu is a pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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