According to the Northern group, such a move will reduce Nigeria to an absolute lawless state where criminals can freely commit crimes against the nation.
The Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has told the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government not to grant any demand to release, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu without prosecution.
According to the Northern group, such a move will reduce Nigeria to an absolute lawless state where criminals can freely commit crimes against the nation.
The group disclosed this in its reaction to the call by the Igbo elders that Buhari should give an unconditional release to Kanu.
The coalition, through its spokesman, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, while taking stock of events unfolding since the arrest and repatriation of Nnamdi Kanu, said this.
“We warn that any attempt by the President to accede to the demand to release, without prosecuting and punishing Kanu, will inadvertently reduce Nigeria to a completely lawless state where criminals of all shades will commit crimes against the country, and then ask their traditional rulers and other regional or tribal leaders to press for their release,” Suleiman said.
The CNG in a statement titled, “Igbo leaders’ demand for release of Nnamdi Kanu and President Buhari’s response,” advised Buhari to reclaim his statesmanship by refusing to be cajoled into interfering with the standard principle of separation of powers and independence of the judiciary in the case of Kanu.
The statement warned that the North would no longer remain idle when its people are deliberately targeted and massacred and the perpetrators are shielded by what it called “criminal tribal bigots” that posed as leaders.
It reminded Buhari that the North had realised that he placed more premium on the pursuit for votes and political popularity for his party than he did for the sanctity of lives of northerners and security personnel who put their lives on the line in the service of the nation.
The statement noted that the North would hold Buhari responsible for the blood of its people alleged to be unlawfully shed through the activities of Kanu-led group in the event he succumbed to the Igbo pressure to release him.
The group demanded the arrest and prosecution of those Igbo leaders and any other group or individuals that are involved in the complicity to get Kanu freed by subverting the course of justice in spite of atrocities and crimes he committed against humanity and the Nigerian state.
The coalition alleged that several businesses, properties, and valuable assets belonging to northerners and other Nigerians were destroyed across the Southeastern cities on the instructions of Nnamdi Kanu within the same period.
The coalition also claimed that from early 2020 to date, Kanu had instigated IPOB to mastermind mindless attacks and destruction of national security assets, democratic symbols, and killings of about 400 security personnel and orphaned their families.