Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has been a busy man lately. Yesterday, he huddled with President Bola Tinubu in the recesses of Aso Villa. Three days ago he visited jailed Independent Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, at the Sokoto Correctional Centre where he's serving a life term for terrorism.
All the toing and froing is ostensibly to facilitate the release from prison of a man who was sentenced barely two weeks ago. The governor grandly assured him his plight would be resolved administratively and the convict set free.
Otti isn't the only prominent Southeastern political leader to make such promises. Shortly before the Abuja High Court presided over by Justice James Omotosho was to deliver judgment, 44 members of the House of Representatives largely from the Southeast released a statement urging Tinubu to invoke his constitutional powers and spring Kanu from detention.
They asked him to convene a roundtable to find a lasting political solution to the trial of the secessionist leader which had lasted ten years.
Given that the president has no powers under the constitution to halt to an ongoing judicial process, the lawmakers' statement was clearly targeted at something other than justice. Inevitably, judgment was handed down in a trial which had seen Kanu jump bail and flee the country at some point.
Much has been made of his extraordinary rendition from Kenya without speaking about his flight from justice. In the end he was convicted on seven terrorism charges. The verdict rested on evidence from broadcasts inciting violence, recorded instructions encouraging attacks on security personnel and civilians, threats against foreign missions, and incitement to manufacture weapons.
At that moment, one might have expected the debate to pivot toward rehabilitation, peace-building, and reintegration. Instead, what keeps popping up are open calls for Kanu's release, as though political calculations can erase a terrorism conviction resulting from mountains of evidence and testimonies of witnesses who lived through the tragic chapter in the Southeast.
Some said his imprisonment amounted to jailing an entire ethnic as though his agenda and methods had universal approval throughout Igboland. This is nothing more than cynical opportunism - a ploy to turn tragedy into political currency. It bears pointing out that for every noisy call for easy solutions, there was also the pregnant silence of uncountable powerful voices.
The trial was neither cursory nor symbolic. It spanned a decade: initial arrest in 2015, bail and subsequent flight, re-arrest in 2021 via extradition from Kenya, multiple hearings, defence and prosecution, and a full judgment.
In the final days in court, the IPOB leader sacked his lawyers and repeatedly shunned appeals by the judge to defend himself. Rather than do so he chose theatre: parading through court each time screaming "Show me the law. You don't know the law!"
With the benefit of hindsight it was clear that Kanu and the sentimental brigade had no defence for his actions, nor rebuttal for what was presented in court as evidence. The only way left for them was to politicise the trial - a dodge that failed spectacularly in the end.
So why then - only days after the verdict - are some Igbo leaders saying "all hope is not lost," promising a "political process" to secure Kanu's release? Clearly, for them, Kanu was never primarily a man or a movement - he was a bargaining chip.
What the "political solution" rhetoric does is keep them relevant. In a region grappling with insecurity, disillusionment, and weak political structures, invoking Kanu's name draws attention - especially among younger, aggrieved Igbo and the diaspora.
It allows them to profit from emotion. Sympathy, outrage, anger are powerful mobilisers. For politicians and some "elders," they translate into leverage: whether for electoral campaigns, appointments, contracts, or diaspora fundraising.
But the same people now demanding "justice" never stood up when violence raged, property was destroyed, livelihoods disrupted, or citizens killed in the wake of IPOB/ESN sit-at-home orders. Their insistence on a "political solution" is a refusal to confront Kanu's culpability and a denial of the deeper structural failures of the region.
When militants or criminal gangs ravage communities elsewhere in Nigeria, these same elites demand swift law enforcement. But who will deliver justice for the likes of the late Dr. Chike Akunyili, presidential aide Ahmed Gulak, Okechukwu Okoye - a member of the Anambra State House of Assembly kidnapped and later beheaded in May 2022.
Who will atone for Harira Jibril and her children: a pregnant woman of Hausa descent and her four young children ambushed and murdered in Anambra State in May 2022. What about Justice Stanley Nnaji - a former judge of the Enugu State High Court shot and killed in May 2021?
A witness for the Department of State Services (DSS) testified in court that between 170 and 200 security agents, including police officers, soldiers, and personnel from other agencies died due to incitement to violence by Kanu and his soldiers.
Orji Uzor Kalu, who represents Abia North constituency at the Senate, recently lamented that secessionist agitations tied to the activities IPOB and Kanu, led to the death of over 30,000 people and destruction of businesses across the Southeast. Don't the lives of these mostly Igbo victims matter? Who accounts for the devastation of their livelihood?
What is profoundly shocking is the indecent haste of so-called leaders and influencers who cannot even allow for a period of reflection before shoving their political solution down everyone's throats. It is now evident that they would gladly shut their eyes to IPOB atrocities to appease Kanu.
Just as they are pressuring Tinubu, they made similar demand for Kanu's release to former President Muhammadu Buhari. He replied that they had asked for a hard thing seeing as the matter was before the courts, but he would consider their request. It was a diplomatic way of saying "no!"
A political solution so soon after a criminal conviction is a mismatch. What would be the occasion for it? That sort of intervention only happens under certain conditions. For one thing, there's no groundswell of pressure for it either from the Southeast or rest of Nigeria.
People can't pretend not to notice Igboland didn't go up in flames because Kanu was jailed. Where was the outpouring of anger on the streets if truly there was a connection with the goals and methods of IPOB? Instead what we've seen is people carrying on with their lives.
The president isn't under any pressure to free the convict and there's no political gain for him to do so. One celebrity bar man warned that he would receive less than 10,000 votes in the Southeast in 2027 if he failed to release Kanu. But Buhari and Tinubu have proven there's a pathway to the presidency without winning the zone. So, there's no incentive for the president to needlessly pick up a hot potato when the judiciary has given him a convenient way out.
There's no pressure on the rest of the country because Kanu and IPOB focused their violence on their own people and home territory. They didn't bomb the Southwest, South-South or North. They couldn't export their every Monday economic paralysis to other regions. So what's the incentive for other zones to split hairs over his legal troubles when they have no bearing on their lives?
Kanu spent much of heydays denigrating other sections of the country. Unfortunately, for him any so-called political solution would require national consensus and the buy-in of a country he repeatedly referred to as a zoo.
When socio-economic adversity hits Igboland, his apologists are quick to cry marginalisation and demand redress. But when his broadcast fuels terror and disruption, they call for "mercy," "dialogue," and "political solution." This selective deployment of indignation reveals a deeper hypocrisy. For many of these figures, the rule-of-law applies only when it serves their interest.
What was evident in court was that Kanu isn't remorseful for his actions and those of his followers. Even if the so-called "political solution" somehow secured Kanu's freedom, it would deliver neither justice nor stability. It would simply reward a man and an organisation convicted of terror, by lifting him back onto a platform of martyrdom.
What the region needs is not a convenient political bypass, but healing - some sort of truth commission. The elite should be talking of an inquiry into the tragedy that tore communities apart and led to the loss of thousands of lives. The region also needs a genuine political strategy - infrastructure investment, economic inclusion, good governance, security reform, and credible dialogue rooted in statecraft, not theatrics.