Military Created South-East Crisis It Claims To Be Fighting — Kanu Defence Team

The legal team representing the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has accused the Nigerian military of creating the insecurity it now claims to be combating in the South-East, describing recent claims of improved security as false and historically dishonest.

In a statement signed by Onyedikachi Ifedi, Esq., for the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium, the group dismissed remarks credited to Major General Michael Onoja, who reportedly attributed improved security in the region to intensified military operations and Kanu’s continued detention.

According to the defence team, such claims amount to “a cynical rewriting of history” and an insult to victims of alleged state violence across the country.

“The Nigerian military cannot whitewash history. Its hands are too soaked in blood,” the statement said.

“To claim that security has improved because of military operations or the imprisonment of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is not only false, it is an insult to every life destroyed by state violence in Nigeria.”

The lawyers argued that the crisis in the South-East did not begin with separatist agitations, insisting that long before the emergence of IPOB, peaceful and unarmed citizens were allegedly targeted by security forces.

“Long before anyone uttered the word ‘separatist,’ the Nigerian military had already turned peaceful citizens into targets. The state created the very crisis it now pretends to be fighting,” the statement added.

The group cited several incidents it described as “documented atrocities,” including the Nkpor killings, the shooting of unarmed youths at National High School in Aba, the Trump Solidarity Rally incident in Port Harcourt, and the 2017 military invasion of Kanu’s residence in Afara-Ukwu, which it claimed left at least 28 people dead.

It also referenced past incidents outside the South-East, including the 2015 Shiite killings in Zaria, the Odi and Zaki-Biam military operations, and the 2020 Lekki Toll Gate shootings, arguing that these events demonstrate a pattern of excessive use of force against civilians.

“These are not rumours. They are documented atrocities,” the defence team stated. “For the same institution to now present itself as a stabilising force is grotesque.”

The group rejected what it described as attempts to blame IPOB, Biafra agitation or Kanu for insecurity in the region, insisting that criminal violence in the South-East was largely driven by political actors and compromised security operatives.

“It was not IPOB that organised cult wars, political militias or criminal networks across Igboland. Those were engineered and funded by politicians and security collaborators who found chaos politically profitable,” the statement alleged.

The defence team further cited comments previously made by former Chief of Army Staff, General T.Y. Danjuma (rtd.), who had accused elements within the military of colluding with armed groups, arguing that such allegations reinforce doubts about official narratives.

“Even General T.Y. Danjuma openly accused elements of the military of colluding with killers and turning their guns on innocent citizens. Is Major General Onoja more informed than Danjuma, or simply more willing to lie?” the statement queried.

Questioning claims of improved security, the group said peace cannot be measured by what it described as repression, fear and prolonged detentions.

“Security cannot be measured by silence created through fear, disappearances, arbitrary detentions and military occupation. That is not peace; that is repression,” it said.

The defence team alleged that the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu was part of an attempt to suppress the Biafra self-determination movement.

“What the military calls ‘gains’ are communities terrorised into silence, courts manipulated to justify indefinite detention, and endless efforts to break Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s spirit and force the abandonment of the Biafra question,” the statement read.

The group maintained that international observers were increasingly aware of what it described as systemic failures and propaganda by the Nigerian state.

“The world is not fooled. The international community understands that the Nigerian state frequently manufactures enemies to distract from corruption, insecurity and elite failure,” it added, claiming that countries such as Canada were aware of the origins of the violence.

Reiterating its demands, the defence team called for the unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu, independent investigations into alleged massacres by security forces across the country, and an end to what it described as the criminalisation of peaceful political expression in the South-East.

“Until Nigeria confronts its own crimes, no military press conference will restore legitimacy,” the statement said. “History is watching, and history does not forget.”

Military Created South-East Crisis It Claims To Be Fighting — Kanu Defence Team is first published on The Whistler Newspaper