Biafra: You can’t kill Biafra, IPOB lawyer tells Buhari, Ideology cannot be destroyed

• Urges him to write memoirs of his war experience

From Magnus Eze, Abuja

Counsel to the Independent People of Biafra (IPOB), Amobi Nzelu, yesterday expressed displeasure  with  President Muhammadu Buhari for using the occasion of Sallah homage by some National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members to his Daura country home to talk about his civil war escapades.

Nzelu, in an interview with Daily Sun, described the forum chosen by the president to pass his message as most inappropriate, urging him to document his civil war experience in a memoir.
He also implored Buhari to toe the path of diplomacy, as according to him, utterances like this further exacerbate the already fractured polity.

Buhari had specifically told corps members from the south-eastern states to tell their colleagues who want Biafra to forget about it.
Nzelu further appealed to the president to release IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, because his continued incarceration will not end the agitation.

“They should engage in a meaningful dialogue. Ideology cannot be destroyed by might or force but by what I call constructive and Pentecostal persuasion. You cannot destroy an ideology. Even if you kill the person, it is an ideology, it’s not a movement. Anything that is settled politically, the wound heals faster.

“It was the most inappropriate forum to have said that. Let me restate it  in unmistaken term that the issue of Biafra is not what you can settle with a wave of hand. To celebrate what he did over 40 years ago before those young corps members was uncalled for. He should better put his war experience in a book form.

“Buhari has done well in fighting corruption, but he is mishandling the issue of Biafra and other ethnic agitations.
“He should do the needful. Nnamdi Kanu has been in detention for over 18 months now. Let the president release him.

“When Mohammed Yusuf started Boko Haram, he was arrested and he died in their hands. If the issue was properly handled, we would not have had the ruin we have in the North East today,” Nzelu stated.


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