A chieftain of the Labour Party (LP), Kenneth Okonkwo has claimed that ethnic bias is responsible for the prolonged detention of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu.
Okonkwo insisted that there was nothing special about the agitator’s crime, adding that he has not done anything that other people from other zones have not done.
The LP chieftain stated this on Wednesday during an interview on Arise TV.
NATURENEX reports that the IPOB leader is currently facing terrorism charges filed against him at the federal high court.
He has been in the Department of State Services (DSS) since he was extradited from Kenya in June 2021.
Recently, political stakeholders have been calling for the release of the IPOB leader.
Sharing his thoughts, Okonkwo argued that Kanu’s crimes are not worse than other separatists whose cases in court have been dropped.
He said, “Nnamdi Kanu has not done anything that other people from other zones have done.
“We know about Sunday Igboho of the Yoruba nation agitator. We know of the Boko Haram people who say that they want a different country where Western education is an abomination.
“These people have been released, not just that they have been released; in the case of Boko Haram, they have been reassimilated into society and given plum jobs.
“Why is Nnamdi Kanu’s case different? There is an ethnic and some unnecessary bias that is keeping that man in jail.
“The government should be wise enough to release this man. You can release him conditionally or unconditionally.
“As a lawyer, I have watched the legal issues very clearly, and I saw that even in the courts, from the high court to the supreme court, there are discordant tunes amongst them.
“Even in the issue of bail, some of the tiers of the court have granted him bail. Even in the issue of the charges, some tiers of the court have quashed all the charges.
“So, you can see that the government has a lot of places it can stand to release the young man and bring peace to the South-East.
“He is now more like a political prisoner. The longer Nnamdi Kanu is in prison, the taller he becomes and the shorter the government becomes.
