SOME newspapers estimated the crowd that welcomed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, into Ebonyi State last week to be about 100,000 strong. Media establishments in Nigeria lack the scientific tools to confirm that figure. But obviously in defiance and violation of his bail terms, the young revolutionary has continued to travel, address supporters, meet with people in excess of the number specified on his bail, and suggest that it negated his rights as a human being and citizen to be gagged by a court. Mr Kanu is intransigent and impulsive; but he is popular and, more alarming to many Igbo leaders, that popularity is intensifying rather than waning. Except he does something spectacularly and grandly wrong and offensive, it is hard to see his popularity decline as long as Nigeria refuses to recognise the unworkability of the union.
Amazed by the huge support he received from Ebonyi on Monday, especially the almost unmanageable crowd that welcomed him into the state from neighbouring Enugu State, he roared that he would shut down the state for three days on his next visit. He gloated that the visit and the crowd convinced him that Biafra, the cause he and hundreds of thousands of Igbo people have dedicated themselves to in one form or the other, was unstoppable. In fact, many groups dedicated to the same cause have lent support to the IPOB campaign, increasingly assured that Biafra was, with each passing day, becoming a tantalising prospect. And with each passing week, a showdown of some sort appears to be looming between the region’s traditional political leadership and the young revolutionaries for whom Biafra is more than a romantic idea.
A few weeks ago, Mr Kanu made the precipitate announcement that the November Anambra governorship election was untenable without a referendum on Biafra. A few other groups allied with IPOB also suggested that if restructuring of Nigeria did not begin before the November Anambra poll, they would join IPOB to stall it and ground the whole region. That announcement was greeted with derision, with Mr Kanu himself doing a volte face and waffling about listening to the cries of his people and then modifying his opinion on the poll. But as he continues his tours, and as he perceives that power and influence in Igboland appear to be shifting away from the traditional political leaders whom every Nigerian is familiar with, he has stiffened his resolve on Anambra and reiterated his group’s determination to link the poll with a referendum on Biafra.
Igbo leaders have a battle on their hands. If they stare Mr Kanu in the face and blink first, they will lose respect and influence. Yet their minds and instincts tell them that Mr Kanu, despite his huge popularity and uncanny identification with and exploitation of the Biafra concept, is indeed a shallow, pedantic and untested megalomaniac. Their own reluctance to mine popular disaffection in the Southeast years ago, not to say provide the kind of leadership the region needed to secure its rightful place in the nation, made the rise of activists like Mr kanu feasible. If care is not taken, the activists could soon become militants. How to, therefore, confront Mr Kanu is the big dilemma Igbo leaders face. Worse, they must now struggle to reclaim the leadership they took for granted, but which is being chiselled away by groups like IPOB and the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).
The more restrained and diplomatic Igbo leaders were not helped by the unctuous style of the Goodluck Jonathan government, which unreasonably positioned Igbo technocrats to be despised by their competitors in the corridors of power, and by the generally spiteful and antagonistic style of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency, which almost totally alienated the Igbo from the centre of power. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Igbo leaders must now walk a tightrope between coaxing an unwilling presidency to make concessions and kick-start the process of restructuring the federation, and weaning Igbo rank and file from the intoxicating utopia peddled by Mr Kanu. But even if Igbo leaders, in spite of themselves, possess that uncommon talisman, there is nothing to suggest they have the luxury of time. Mr Kanu and other pro-Biafra groups appear dead set on forcing the issue by as early as November when the Anambra election would hold.
Mr Kanu relishes his influence, particularly the manner of its growth. He is the main topic in Igboland today, and a hero among the common people. He knows how to entrance a crowd and give them the opium they crave, the intoxicant the traditional Igbo political leaders despise so ardently and offhandedly. Though his illogic and megalomania are smothered by his dubious eloquence, he has managed to sustain a distinct and irresistible charisma that takes advantage of these times and the people’s frustrations. Unhorsing such a fiery young man will be a tough job. What is even more frightening is that he feels impelled by the mood, if not the spirit, of the time to go for broke. He, therefore, seems smartly unwilling to postpone a showdown with the aging and distracted Igbo leaders, believing unsurprisingly that he could take them on, and defeat and supplant them. For a man so fiery and charismatic but quite intellectually and temperamentally ill-equipped for leadership, it would be a tragedy if that showdown were forced, not to say won by him.
The Igbo have a genuine cause to fight, especially in a dysfunctional nation so dismally unable to govern itself. But that cause requires the leadership of a robust mind (or a collegiate), one that understands what the moment demands, someone able to combine the spirit of an activist and the intellect and judgement of a courageous visionary. Mr Kanu is not that man, though he pretends to be. Igbo leaders have their work cut out for them. The best way to approach that historic responsibility is to ensure that Mr Kanu does not force the issue in November. They must buy time, put their house in order, and produce the right kind of leaders able to gently wean restive Igbo populace off Mr Kanu’s macabre gastronomic delight and ensure that in the ongoing national power and influence struggle the Igbo are not left holding the short end of the stick.
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