Nearly 50 years after the Biafra war, Nnamdi Kanu fights for the secession of Southeast Nigeria. Public provocations he takes ethnic tensions. The DW documented his view of the world in the Interview.
DW: you are the leader of the movement “Indigenous People of Biafra”. Why fight 47 years after the end of the civil war for the independence of Biafra?
Nnamdi Kanu: We are fighting for independence, but we do not fight physically with guns and bullets. We fight in the spirit of our movement, of our faith and of our resistance. We do not fight because we are free. As a free people, we could improve life for our fellow human beings. But the way Nigeria is structured, we can’t. If we want to improve life for our people, then we must continue to fight for Biafra. Biafra is the freedom to live as civilized people. And this is not possible at the moment.
You require no later than November of this year a Referendum. From the looks of it now, will not agree to the government.
Then there will be no elections in Biafra Land. You can then put in Power whomever they want. You can in your political Offices, they do what they want, but we will not engage in political activities.
You say it’s a peaceful fight. However, there are Videos of them in which they say that they need weapons to defend themselves. How can we understand this?
Surely you have heard of the Fulani herdsmen, the people kill. How are you supposed to defend themselves without weapons against these shepherds? You kill our people, rape our women, destroy our farms and no one does anything about it. Civilized people live like this?
How to defend you against this threat?
Not at all. You kill us and there is nothing we can do about it. None of which has ever been made responsible in court, not even arrested. Even if you are arrested for the murders of our people, they just left the next day.
And therefore you think that you have the right weapons to upgrade?
Self-defense is recognized even by the United Nations as legitimate. Now if someone would with a Machete, this Interview under the break, he should just come away with it? We do not seek to fight with anyone, but if our peaceful state of mind is interpreted as cowardice, then you have to consider ourselves wrong.
Biafra activists at a Pro-Trump-rally Harcourt in January 2017 in Port
They were without trial for nearly two years in prison. In spite of the court to decide were not in your favor, you released. You think you have been treated by the government fair?
No, I was not treated fairly. Nigeria is not a civilized country. The people here behave like animals. You are not rational, they are not disciplined, they are not developed mentally to the extent that you can have a transparent civil society. You have a feudal mindset of the ruling class, and a majority of the population lives in poverty and does not even their plight in question. This is one thing that we want to tackle.
Do you not think that you offend so many Nigerians?
No, I’m not even very nice. I could have used much harsher words to describe them.
Obviously, you don’t have to think very positively about your country people.
Certainly there are a few good people among them, but as a collective it is an absolute disaster. Have you not seen the streets, how terrible are you? Have you seen how scruffy and dirty it is everywhere? This is the product of the Nigerian system, which is unique, also for the third world Standards of sub-Saharan Africa. These are the facts and people need to stand up to the.
Nigeria is a very unstable country, especially when it comes to ethnic Affairs. As a reaction to the new aspirations for independence of Biafra activists of some youth groups have set the Igbos an Ultimatum to leave the North of the country until October. Do you not think that the Situation is heating up and has the Potential to plunge the country into a civil war?
When the war comes, he comes. But the one who prays for the war? I don’t want a war. I have no weapons, and ammo, I’m not fighting with anyone. All we are trying to do is have a civilized conversation. They have brought the whole process deliberately in an uncivilized direction, by having me locked up for almost two years without a court hearing. Therefore, it is up to the world, to judge and to decide whether this is a country that is supposed to exist at all. A country, the laws passed and this but not followed.You have really exist right? I don’t think.
In the North, many Igbos live together very peacefully with the other people there. You don’t think that you will bring these people and their peaceful co-existence in danger?
If you live there so peacefully together, as they say, why are you hear again and again of this unrest in the North, where Christians from the South are being slaughtered, and no one to do something about it? We are here is as an annual Ritual, and no one is held responsible. This is not normal. It may look for you on the surface peacefully, but people are executed. These people are migrated out of their Plight in the North, in order to earn their livelihood. Here in the South all the production processes of the policy, aware of the lame, in order to ensure that our people continue to live in poverty. We will not accept it. We are by nature very peaceful people. All we want is for the world to recognise that we want to live in peace. So Biafra is allowed to exist. Biafra existed before the British came, and so allows us to return to our old structures. It is also no Africans to Europe, there to create easy countries. If someone comes to us and to a few ethnic groups and says ‘you are now Nigeria’, is simply laughable.
Nnamdi Kanu is a British-Nigerian activist. He is the leader of the separatist movement “Indigenous People of Biafra”, which is fighting for the independence of the South-East of Nigeria. Canoe is the Director of the London-based radio station Radio Biafra. In 2015, he was accused in Nigeria of high treason, and without trial for almost two years locked up in prison. In the April of 2017 he was released on bail.
In 1967 the Republic of Biafra was declared under the leadership of the ethnic group of the Igbo to their independence, but was incorporated after the end of the Biafra war in 1970 and again in Nigeria. Up to two million people died as a result of the war – most of them starved to death.
The Interview was conducted by Adrian Kriesch.