Nnamdi Kanu: I never Jumped Bail, Nigeria Army came to Assassinate me

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Court stalls Nnamdi Kanu trial over Late service

Nnamdi Kanu

Nnamdi Kanu has reacted to the call by Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe for Nigeria President to resign, Although Nnamdi Kanu is to Garba Shehu who said he jumed bail and disappeared into thin air: reacting to the tweet of Garba Shehu he said “On 29/01/2020, in his response to #BuhariResign @GarShehu tweeted that I jumped bail and disappeared ”into the thin air.” WRONG!‬

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‪Nigerian Army invaded my home to assassinate me, read my story and join the heated discussion on the Independent’s website:‬

Soldiers came to kill me: I’d be shot in the head and dumped in a shallow grave with my dead companions’

It was 14 September 2017. I woke up with a start. It was about 4pm. I was still recuperating, and I was sleeping that afternoon in my room, and someone was shaking me and calling my name. I blinked. I might have started involuntarily. I was in my old home in Umuahia. My parents and other members of my family were there, brothers, nephews, nieces, cousins. We had friends and supporters outside and inside. I had felt safe, secure.

Then I heard the gunfire and I understood what the man standing over me was trying to tell me. I had to get up. I had to get out now. Soldiers had come. They were attacking the compound, shooting, killing my friends and family.

But I refused to go. I suppose for a minute or so I refused to believe what they were telling me: that the soldiers had come to kill me; I would be shot in the head, dumped among my dead companions in a shallow grave on the side of some road. They would say I had resisted arrest. That we had opened fire on the soldiers. That we were to blame. But we had no guns in the house. We only had our voices. And my men had been telling the soldiers they had no right to enter.

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My name is Nnamdi Kanu. I am the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). All my life my colleagues and I have been working for Biafran self-determination, the right for the people of Biafra to choose their own destiny, to be free from persecution. You may remember the Biafran war, 50 years ago. In May 1967 Biafra was left with no choice but to secede from Nigeria only to face a vastly superior invasion army and a blockade of food supplies supported by governments as diverse as the UK and the Soviet Union.

AUTHENTIC ALSO POSTED: How Nnamdi Kanu escaped from Nigeria

You may remember those photographs of starving children, their bellies distended, crying with hunger, crying without tears because their tear ducts had dried up. Dying mothers, Biafran youth dead on the roads around Port Harcourt. How many Biafrans were killed because of this deliberate policy of starvation has been argued ever since. But it is in the millions. We believe five million. Other estimates are anything between one and eight million. But a handful of adults and children would have been too many, never mind millions.

It was a terrible and inglorious beginning to post-colonial African history. But that was 50 years ago. Now, today in 2019 the violent, brutal persecution of the Biafran people by the Nigerian state and their supporters continues unabated. I will give you facts and figures. I will tell you about the murders, the beatings, farmers driven from their land, young men unarmed except with the flag of our country, shot dead in the streets by those ostensibly sent to ‘protect’ us. I will tell you all these things.

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But first… My men began to drag me from the bedroom. I protested. I didn’t want to leave my home. I wanted to confront the soldiers and ask them what they had come for. In just less than a month I had a court hearing. I was determined to be there. My story would be told. The world would know how the Nigerian Security Forces tried to keep me imprisoned without trial on trumped-up charges. How they refused to bring me to court when a judge demanded it. How they ignored the bail that had been posted. How there was still some faint ghost of independence among Nigeria’s judiciary. I would stay for that.

Overhead I could hear helicopter gunships, their propellers whirring with that sick, lazy beat they have when they hover. More gunfire. Shouting. Soldiers shouting. My men shouting. I realised the soldiers were not here to arrest me – they could have done that at any time. These were crack troops; they’d called in the air force. They were not here to negotiate my surrender.

AUTHENTIC ALSO POSTED: Facebook Republish Nnamdi Kanu Facebook Page

I was being bundled down the stairs and out into the compound at the back, away from the soldiers who had forced their way into the front of the house. My men pushed and pulled me towards the high perimeter wall which ran the full circumference of the compound. Ten feet high. Somehow, they man-handled me to the top of this and I fell to the ground the other side.

A sharp, sharp pain literally took my breath away. My limbs flailed. My mouth opened but I couldn’t take in air. I had fallen on my left rib cage. I gasped, convinced that I had punctured my lung in the fall. I heard footsteps and people talking, more gunfire. And always the sound of helicopter blades ripping up the air above me. Then I blanked out.

 

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