Nigeria‘s
authorities need to disclose the whereabouts of pro-Biafran leader Nnamdi Kanu
or risk a mass boycott of next year’s election, his wife said in an interview
broadcast Monday. Uchechi Kanu said her husband, who has not been seen for six
months, should be “the number one issue” in the run-up to the February 2019
vote for a new president and parliament.
“Where is
he? You need to provide him, at least tell us where he is,” she told the BBC
Yoruba language service in an interview in English. “You need to at least do
something before you run an election, otherwise we’re not going to vote.” In a
separate interview to the BBC Igbo service, she said: “I don’t know where my
husband is, whether he is dead or alive, I don’t know.” But she said she knew
he was being held by the military, despite government denials. Nnamdi Kanu
heads the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) movement, which has revived
separatist sentiment in the Igbo-dominated southeast region of Nigeria. The
former London estate agent has not been seen since soldiers raided his house in
the Abia state capital, Umuahia, following a crackdown on his supporters in
September last year. Kanu is on bail and facing trial on treason charges in the
capital Abuja but was not in court at the resumed hearing of the case in
October, leading to an adjournment. The IPOB leader was first arrested in
October 2015, prompting a wave of protests in the southeast and a crackdown by
the police and military. A previous declaration of an independent republic of
Biafra in 1967 sparked a bloody, 30-month civil war. The conflict left more
than one million dead, most of them Igbos, from the effects of starvation and
disease, as federal forces blockaded the fledgling state. Kanu, who is in his
40s, has said his aim was “civil disobedience”, including shut-downs and
boycotts of elections, to force a referendum on self-determination
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