Protesters Demand UK Must produce Nnamdi Kanu for Trial, Like Iranians Did At US Embassy
The Oasis Reporters
October 7, 2017
While the egregious violation of the principles of international law, which grants diplomats immunity and make diplomatic compounds inviolable was ongoing in Teheran, Iran in 1979 with the occupation of the United States embassy there, secret photographs were being taken and the Americans were taking note of the student occupiers of it’s grounds.
Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981.
Over 37 years after, America didn’t forget. Therefore when some of those same students sought further studies opportunities in the United States decades after, they hit paydirt, and America had the last laugh.
Dozens of protesters have flooded the British High Commission in Abuja urging the United Kingdom to produce the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.
The protesters also said they will continue to occupy the British High Commission until Nnamdi Kanu is produced.
The protesters led by Venantius Torkuma, the executive director of Advocates of Social Justice for All (ASJA) said, Kanu must be brought back to Nigeria to face his trial and the group called on the British government to release the leader of the IPOB immediately to Nigerian authorities. But it is not known whether they have at least a nod or a wink from the federal government to do what they are doing.
Torkuma said: “We had clearly stated that we shall occupy this High Commission if the UK fails to produce Kanu.”
“Our stance was informed by the knowledge that the UK was instrumental to the escape of the terrorist leader only for it to turn around to ask Nigerian authorities for clarification on the state and status of Kanu.
“Because Nnamdi Kanu holds dual citizenship of Nigeria and the United Kingdom, we do not refute the High Commission’s right to inquire about its “citizen” so to speak.
“But we do have issues with what the High Commission did in the period preceding when Kanu’s IPOB was declared a terrorist organization and what it did afterwards. It smacks of the worst case of double standard possible,” Torkuma said.
Torkuma also accused the UK government of keeping mute when her citizen, Kanu, was peddling hatred across Nigeria.
He said: “It did not see this time as a period to negotiate for him to return to London as its citizen to go peddle his terrorism there. But it had the resources to provide emergency travel documents for the IPOB leader the moment a Nigerian Federal High Court ruled that he leads a terrorist organization.
They colluded with other terrorist to ferret him away under the cover of darkness only to turn around to ask the Nigerian government to account for his whereabouts,” he concluded.
Ifeanyi Ejiofor, the lawyer to the leader of the IPOB had accused the Nigerian military of either killing his client and taking his body away or abducted during soldiers’ raid at his residence in Umuahia.
Ejiofor said the client was in his bedroom when he last spoke to him during the military raid.
He also urged the Nigerian army and the federal government to produce Kanu in order for him to face his trial before a Federal High court in Abuja.
What is not so clear to the protesters is that no serious government would willingly give it’s citizen up for humiliation or possible execution in cases they do not deem deserves extreme punishment, and in like manner, the United Kingdom rather preferred to sever diplomatic ties with Nigeria than extradite Alhaji Umaru Dikko who was a Nigerian fugitive in London in 1984, when then Major General Muhammadu Buhari was a military head of state. The government at the time was accused of using Israeli rogue secret service agents to kidnap and return Dikko to Lagos. The mission was an unmitigated failure.
The international community was incensed and the then Buhari military junta put on a bold and recalcitrant face with an aggressive demeanor as if it had no care in the world.
In a twist of irony, now President Muhammadu Buhari has been described by an American newspaper as the United Kingdom’s frequent resident who has spent more days in the year outside of his country on medical vacation that has cost the nation several millions in foreign exchange, even though the actual figures remain a secret document till date.
Meanwhile, budgetary allocations to the nation’s health sector remains humongous yet top Nigerian government officials often seek medical attention in hospitals abroad leaving it’s vast majority of citizens to make do with “mere consulting clinics”, as General Abacha who announced the Buhari take over 34 years ago said in his coup broadcast.
Protesters see nothing wrong in this, but are demonstrating against a country that genuinely cares about the welfare of it’s citizens whether for good or bad.
It is naturally assumed that photographs of the protesters are being secretly filmed, and as American intelligence revealed a photo of Ahmeddinajab as one of the student occupiers of its embassy grounds, British intelligence may make uncomfortable revelations of today’s protestors in future when it would seem uncomfortable in the future.
Source: Naij
CNN
Web
