UMUAHIA, Nigeria (Reuters) - A secessionist leader seeking independence
from Nigeria has been missing since an alleged military raid more than two
weeks ago left
his house in the city of Umuahia riddled with bullet holes, its
windows smashed and doors hanging off hinges.
The disappearance of Nnamdi Kanu, after the raid the army says did not
happen, threatens to ignite separatist unrest capable of destabilizing
southeastern Nigeria, a region where a million people died in a 1967-70 civil
war over the short-lived Republic of Biafra.
Kingsley Kanu, 48, said he was with his older brother Nnamdi, the
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, at their family home on the evening
of Sept. 14 when soldiers stormed in.
“They were shooting everything they saw,” he said, pointing to bullet
holes in walls and windows.
“They came here just to kill everybody,” he said, adding that around 20
IPOB members were shot dead but most of the bodies were taken by soldiers.
Reuters witnesses - a reporter and TV cameraman - on Sept. 27 saw six
corpses with bullet wounds in a morgue, who IPOB said were among their members.
Two resembled men in photographs held by weeping relatives who told
Reuters their brothers were killed in the raid, though nobody could verify the
identities of the four others.
“The military did not raid Nnamdi Kanu’s residence,” a military spokesman
told reporters in the capital, Abuja. “Nnamdi Kanu is not in the custody of the
military.”
The allegation and denial are the biggest flashpoint of a military
deployment in the southeast that began in September.
Civil society groups and analysts say the military presence, last month’s
designation of IPOB as a “terrorist organization”, and its leader’s
disappearance could prompt the separatists to abandon their policy of
non-violence.
President Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim northerner, made a crackdown on
secessionists the focus of his first speech in August after returning from
three months of medical leave in Britain.
He then held talks with armed forces chiefs who days later launched
Operation Python Dance, which the military said was intended to reduce violent
crime and “secessionist agitations”.
Soldiers with rifles are present across Umuahia, capital of Abia state,
in armored vans and at checkpoints where motorists are routinely questioned.
Buhari is already contending with Boko Haram’s jihadist insurgency in the
northeast and seeking to maintain a ceasefire with militants in the southern
oil-producing Niger Delta.
But some say the former military ruler risks exacerbating the situation,
just as militant attacks in the Niger Delta surged last year after troops were
deployed.
HEAVY-HANDED?
“The government’s heavy-handed approach will only shore up local support
for a radical group that previously struggled to broaden its base,” said Malte
Liewerscheidt of global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.
Ryan Cummings, director of Africa-focused risk management company Signal
Risk, said the Igbo ethnic group that dominates the region, and has long spoken
of being marginalized, felt targeted.
“The government has allowed insecurity to burgeon in other areas of
Nigeria without similar deployments,” he said, citing attacks by Fulani
herdsmen that have killed hundreds of people in central Nigeria over the last
few years.
A wall at the family home of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu features a painted flag of the former Republic of
Biafra and holes purportedly caused by bullets, in the city of Umuahia,
southeastern Nigeria September 27, 2017. REUTERS/Alexis Akwagyiram
Tension followed the arrival of troops in the southeast.
Abia’s governor imposed a curfew in the city of Aba last month. Several
days of tension between IPOB members and troops led to claims by the group that
Kanu’s house had been besieged by soldiers, which the military denied.
Videos circulating on social media including footage purportedly showing
troops in Abia using sticks to flog men stripped to the waist, which the army
said it was investigating, have heightened anger.
“The presence of the army scared our people. People spoke about what
happened during the Biafran war,” said Onyebuchi Ememanka, a special adviser to
the state’s governor who is a member of the opposition People’s Democratic
Party (PDP).
“There were no serious security challenges that would justify the
deployment of troops,” said Ememanka.
He said he never saw IPOB’s members carrying weapons, though he added
that a uniformed national guard and secret service had held parades in the last
few weeks, which he called a “new dimension”.
Red, black and green paint - the Biafran flag’s colors - daubed on walls
and tree trunks across Umuahia follow calls for a referendum on independence.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Kanu’s release on bail in April, after being held for nearly two years on
charges of criminal conspiracy and treasonable offences, brought attention back
to the issue.
However, talk of secession among people on the streets of Umuahia mostly
hinged on whether or not they had the right to make a democratic choice about
their future rather than aligning with IPOB’s belief in a need for a separate
state.
Opinions tend to be divided along generation lines, with younger people
born long after the war expressing an interest in a referendum while older
people who remember the war or grew up hearing stories about the conflict are
often wary of even discussing the subject.
However, a pronouncement earlier this year by activists in the northern
state of Kaduna that Igbos, who are mainly Christian, should be evicted stirred
ethnic tensions. The dispute acted as a lightning rod for frustrations against
Buhari, who fought in the civil war on the government side as a young soldier.
A lack of development in the southeast for decades has cemented a belief
among Igbos that they have been marginalized.
IPOB ARRESTS
Michael Ogbizi, Abia state police commissioner, said 74 IPOB members had
been arrested since Sept. 12 and charged with offences including murder and
arson.
Many charges related to the burning down of a police station in
mid-September in Aba where nine people died. Ogbizi said police had no records
of IPOB members being killed.
An IPOB spokesman denied the group was involved in the fire.
Amid differing opinions about the group’s past conduct, Kanu’s
disappearance has created uncertainty about its future.
“If they [the army] have killed him, let them give us the corpse,” said
the IPOB leader’s brother, adding that his missing 82-year-old father and
67-year-old mother should be released if they are being held.
Liewerscheidt said if Kanu were to die at the hands of the authorities
parallels could be drawn with the origins of the Boko Haram insurgency that
began after the death of Mohammed Yusuf, the Islamist militant group’s founder,
in police custody.
“This would likely transform IPOB into precisely the terrorist
organization the military claims it already is,” he said.
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