[OPINION] Nnamdi Kanu: Our Collective failure, By Peter Agba Kalu

As expected, fingers are being pointed, I told you, I warned you, I knew this will happen are flying around. Even people who were too afraid to speak out are going to start claiming of being more vocal than Okoko Ndem.

The right questions are not going to be ask, as a result, the right answers will be suppressed. Facts are going to be twisted, truth is going to be the first causality. Like it's in our culture, there's not going to be a research into what makes a nation to keep on repeating one single mistake. Because, to research is to face reality, to face reality is to face the truth, to face the truth will lead to addressing the truth, to address the truth will lead to addressing injustice, to address that injustice is to address that very issue that makes us to keep on repeating the same mistake.

So, clothed in false sense of cancerous greatness we are going to go back as usual, living the life of deceit that makes Lucifer to die in envy. That's who we are, that's the Nigerian reality.

Then, that's where we miss it as a nation and wandered in this inglorious path of self deceit that has been leading in self destruction. The path that springs forth Isaac Boro, Ojukwu, Siro Wiwa, Asari Dokubo, Nzegwu and Boko Haram. The path that set the ground for mentally damaged uncivilized illusionists that presented self as Messianic missionaries on the path of national redeemsim to, without experience of navigation, overthrew the captain and set the ship upon a storm. From Ironsi, Gowon, Murtala, Obasanjo, Buhari, IBB to the most disastrous of these uniform rapist, Abacha.
Blame Kanu all you can, but facing the truth will help us faster to heal and grow great as a nation. The truth is that Kanu's emergence is because there was a leadership failure and injustice that remained undressed, a wound that was being atmospherically dressed and beautified before the world, which was getting rotten inside.

That leadership failure from our legislatures, judiciary, traditional and religious down to executives  created a big vacuum for Uwazurike to emerge with MASSOB thirty years after Odimegwu. And, there couldn't have been Nnamdi if there wasn't Uwazurike. That there is injustice against my people, the Igbos; a lot of my Igbo people agrees to, but just quarrel with the methodology of Ojukwu, Uwazurike and Kanu to address it.

Some think the solution is Nigerian president of Igbo extraction, some think it's in restructuring others think it's in Biafra. Reality is, we all accept that the Igbo question remains unaddressed.

So, to brutally suppress Kanu without addressing the root cause of why there was an Nnamdi, is to in the usual Nigerian style, live in self denial.

In his element, he made his mistakes being human and imperfect,  But truth be told, he touched on the deep sensitivity of the people. As a result, they decided to over look his shortcomings and rally round him. There must be something from Ojukwu, Uwazurike to Kanu that made intellectuals, students, mothers and traders to always sympathize with the Biafran ideology.

Therefore, to always rise and suppress the individual without addressing the root of the ideology is to miss it.

Like  Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn’t murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn’t murder lie; it doesn’t establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn’t murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn’t murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn’t solve any problems."

Until we forego violence and handle the sociopolitical, economic cum social challenges that makes an Ijwa to carry gun, OPC to rise, Boko Haram to spring forth and Biafran agitation to be so popular, we will keep on repeating the mistake.

The solution lies in dialogue not violence.
If the governors past and present has been governing us well, there won't have been a Kanu.

If funds given to the local councils were well utilized, there couldn't have been people available for this massive followership.
If there was no discriminations nation wide in school cutoff marks, employment, job recruitments, there won't be supporters ready to die.

That there was an Uwazurike after Ojukwu and Kanu who followed means there was a serious vacuum created by our leaders.
And if this injustice and bad leadership continues the next Nnamdi might be a violent person, who figured out that all we hear,  fear and respect is violence, and he will emerge in few years time.

Kanu represents our collective failures as a people, from our bedroom to office. Kanu is equally a reflection of our classrooms were we tutor injustice as a sense of national pride by upholding 25 against 185 cutoff marks.
So, to mock Kanu, blame him, point accusing fingers without a plan for a sincere round table national discuss is to miss it once again.

The real victory lies not in violence suppression, the real victory  lies in making sure that when another Kanu calleth the people will be too engaged to answer.

I have never seen where using violence to suppress injustice succeeded in suppressing the people who are being unjustly treated.
Nigeria just postponed the evil day and kept a date for another agitation. I fear because the hurts has become generational as kids are building toy Biafrian houses and the hurts getting deeper