Beyond The Imprisonment Of Nnamdi Kanu: The Real Message To The Igbo
By Dr Jarlat Uche Opara
Few days after Nnamdi Kanu decided to defend himself and the powerful oratorical skills, confidence and courage he exhibited I did a piece eulogizing him.
Many didn’t see it from my prism and concluded that he had actually shot himself on the leg. I guess he knew what he was doing and possibly had the premonition of how it would end.
The truth is, the judgement of justice Omotosho was cast in stone. A script written long a ago and would have panned out same way if Kanu’ lawyers defended him. Only Kanu alone would be able to say exactly what pushed him to make such decision.
The worst hasn’t happened. There is still life. The worst hasn’t happened it can still be appealed. The worst has not happened, it can still be resolved through the instrument of political engagement.
However, there is still something many do not realise in the life imprisonment of Nnamdi Kanu. It is beyond rhetorics and also beyond the hate of Kanu by some Igbo and non Igbo alike. Many do not like him because of his unfailing air of arrogance, bravery , courage dressed with the garment of brilliant impeccable communication skills.
Whatever your disaffection is about him, especially the Igbo, the truth which is very immutable is that, the imprisonment of Kanu is salt to the injury of the civil war. Not many will see it in this direction but that is our reality.
It is said that history never dies; it only changes the clothes it wears. For the Igbo, history has worn the same tattered garment for more than half a century, one woven with threads of suspicion, marginalisation, and a quiet but relentless attempt to break a people whose only crime has been audacity: the audacity to dream, to build, to rise, and to rise again even after being pushed down.
The imprisonment of Nnamdi Kanu is not a lone event standing in the middle of Nigerian politics like an isolated tree in an empty field.
No!! it is the latest chapter in a long chronicle of suffering, a message wrapped in iron bars, echoing beyond the confines of a prison cell. It is the state once again whispering, “Know your place,” in the same voice that boomed over the ruins of Biafra in 1970.
For many Igbos, Kanu’s imprisonment is not merely about the man. It is about the symbolism. It is about a people who have endured the cold winds of subjugation from every corner of the national space. It is about a tribe that lost three million souls to war only to be rewarded with policies that clipped their wings, abandoned properties, £20 settlements, quota ceilings, and a political structure designed to remind them, every waking day, that victory belongs to others.
It is about the humiliation wrapped in national appointments where the Igbo seat remains either empty or handed out sparingly like charity. It is about the roads that lead into the East, roads that crack, break, collapse, and wait years for repair as though the region exists on borrowed land. It is about mothers who send their sons to the military only to watch their promotions evaporate into the thin air of selective recognition. It is about thriving markets burned in the night and labelled “security operations,” while culprits roam the dusk freely.
And now, Nnamdi Kanu sits in a cell, another reminder. His incarceration is a message encoded in the language the Igbo have grown accustomed to: the language of power that bends justice, of courts that speak today and are silenced tomorrow, of selective outrage and selective peace.
And now, Nnamdi Kanu sits in a cell, another reminder. His incarceration is a message encoded in the language the Igbo have grown accustomed to: the language of power that bends justice, of courts that speak today and are silenced tomorrow, of selective outrage and selective peace.
But beneath this message lies a deeper truth: the resilience of the Igbo is a flame that refuses to die. They mourn, but they rebuild. They are pushed to the edges, yet they dominate the spaces they fall into. The country shuts doors; they carve windows. The system breaks their backs; they straighten themselves like palm trees after a storm.
The real message to the Igbos is not the one intended by his imprisonment. The real message is one they have written for themselves through decades of survival: that no chain, political, economic, or psychological, has ever been strong enough to silence a people whose spirit has mastered resurrection.
If anything, the imprisonment of Kanu is a mirror reflecting Nigeria’s unfinished business with justice. It calls out the hypocrisy of a nation that claims unity while nursing old wounds and creating new ones. It exposes the fear that grips a country whenever the Igbo begin to ask the questions others are too timid to raise.
In truth, the message to the Igbo is two-fold:
One written by the state, of power, force, and intimidation.
The other written by history, of endurance, identity, and unbreakable will.
And if history has taught anything, it is that the Igbo never allow the message of suffering to be the final word. They rewrite it, with enterprise, with brilliance, with community, with survival.
So beyond Nnamdi Kanu’s imprisonment lies a deeper story, one the nation must one day confront. For a country that continues to bruise one of its strongest limbs should not be surprised when it struggles to stand.
He sits in the dark and unconducive Sokoto prison not because of his personal ambition of selfishness but because of his passion to fight for his people. He may have gone about most times in a wrong way, however, his good intentions cannot be doubted.
He sits in the cold cell of Sokoto prison, far away from the cuddle of his wife and smiles of his children. A huge sacrifice, it may seem bleak today, but the raising of the sun, dazzling brightly into the future unknown with the assurance of good tidings and better stake in the affairs of our nation is assured.
Be strong Mazi Nnamdi Kanu! This too would pass and it wouldn’t lead to death. The joy of the Lord would be your strength until help comes.
