Ndi Igbo, Onye Aghana Nwanne Ya: Nnamdi Kanu and the Curse of the 2027 Election -By Vitus Ozoke, PhD

Many issues will be on Nigeria’s ballot in 2027. Hunger will be on it. Insecurity will be on it. Unemployment, corruption, collapsing institutions, the weaponization of poverty, and the steady suffocation of the Nigerian middle class will all be on it. But in the Southeast, there must be one additional name written in invisible ink on every ballot: Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

He may not be running as a candidate, but he must be present in every Igbo voter’s conscience. His prison cell must follow Bola Tinubu to every campaign ground in Igboland. His chains must rattle over every promise the APC makes. His ordeal must sit at the head of the table whenever Hope Uzodimma, Peter Mbah, Francis Nwifuru, and Chukwuma Soludo gather their people to campaign for the very government that has kept their brother behind bars.

The 2027 election must, among other things, be a grievance election. For Ndi Igbo, Nnamdi Kanu must be one of the foremost grievances. This is not an argument that Nnamdi Kanu is above the law. It is an argument that the Nigerian government must never be above the law.

Kanu was first arrested in Lagos in October 2015 and charged with treasonable felony and other offenses stemming from his agitation for Biafran self-determination. After about eighteen months in detention, he was granted bail in April 2017. In September of that year, soldiers invaded his family compound at Afara-Ukwu during Operation Python Dance II. Kanu maintains that he fled Nigeria to save his life. Even a subsequent Nigerian Supreme Court judgment acknowledged serious illegality in the government’s conduct in his case.

Then came Kenya.

In June 2021, Kanu was seized in Nairobi, held incommunicado, and forcibly transported to Nigeria without the extradition proceedings through which one sovereign country lawfully surrenders a person to another. No warrant was presented to a Kenyan court, no extradition hearing was held, no opportunity to challenge his removal was afforded, and no recognizable due process was observed. He simply disappeared in Nairobi, Kenya, and reappeared in Nigerian custody in Abuja. Call it rendition if you prefer diplomatic language. Call it extraordinary rendition if legal precision is preferred. In plain English, it was an international abduction.

The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention examined the case and concluded that Kanu had been subjected to enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention. It called for his immediate and unconditional release and for compensation. In October 2022, Nigeria’s Court of Appeal held that the extraordinary rendition violated both domestic and international law, discharged Kanu, and barred further prosecution on the charges then before the court. But the Nigerian government did not release him. Instead, it appealed.

In December 2023, the Supreme Court condemned the government’s unlawful conduct but ruled that the rendition’s illegality did not, by itself, deprive the trial court of jurisdiction. It reinstated the prosecution, overturning the Court of Appeal’s discharge. That distinction must be stated honestly: the Supreme Court allowed the trial to proceed. But allowing a prosecution to proceed did not transform an illegal abduction into a lawful extradition. It did not erase the days when Kanu was held outside the protection of the law. It did not disinfect the poisoned origins of the case.

Then, in June 2025, the High Court of Kenya independently ruled that Kanu’s abduction, incommunicado detention, torture, and forcible removal from Kenya violated his constitutional rights. The court awarded him ten million Kenyan shillings in damages. Thus, in the country from which he was taken, the rendition was judicially declared unlawful. The Kenyan judgment did not rely on Igbo emotion, IPOB propaganda, or political sympathy. It applied the law to state conduct and found it wanting.

Yet on November 20, 2025, a Federal High Court in Abuja convicted Kanu on seven terrorism-related counts and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Since then, Kanu has filed a 22-ground appeal seeking to overturn both his conviction and sentence. His lawyers argue, among other things, that grave procedural violations denied him a fair trial. The appeal remains the legal avenue through which the conviction must now be tested.

But the political and moral questions cannot be confined to a courtroom. Why has the Nigerian state been so determined to make an eternal example of this man? Sunday Igboho openly championed Yoruba self-determination. Nigerian security forces raided his Ibadan residence in 2021, and he later fled to the Benin Republic, where he was arrested. By October 2023, he had regained his freedom. He returned to Nigeria and continued to speak publicly about the Yoruba cause.

Meanwhile, Nigeria operates Operation Safe Corridor, a federal deradicalization, rehabilitation, and reintegration program for low-level Boko Haram defectors and others deemed eligible participants. They receive counseling, education or vocational training, and reintegration assistance. One may defend the program as a pragmatic counterterrorism measure – and it is important to distinguish conscripts and low-level defectors from commanders responsible for atrocities. But the contrast remains politically devastating.

A country that can offer rehabilitation to people associated with an insurgency that bombed churches, mosques, markets, schools, and motor parks cannot find a political solution for an Igbo agitator. A government that can speak the language of reintegration to former Boko Haram members has spoken mainly the language of rendition, prosecution, and perpetual imprisonment to Nnamdi Kanu. Why is the door of national mercy visible in other parts of Nigeria but concealed behind iron bars when the prisoner is Igbo?

That question does not stand alone. It arrives carrying history on its back. It carries the anti-Igbo massacres that preceded the Nigeria–Biafran War. It carries the starvation of Biafran children. It carries the postwar seizure of property under the abandoned-property policy. It carries the insult of the twenty-pound policy, under which many Igbo people emerging from the devastation of war received only twenty pounds, regardless of how much they had held in Nigerian banks before the conflict. It carries decades of political exclusion, federal imbalance, military repression, and the suspicion with which legitimate Igbo grievances are too often treated.

It underscores that the Southeast has only five states, while most other geopolitical zones have six and the Northwest has seven – a structural disadvantage that affects legislative representation, federal appointments and allocations. It underscores that, more than half a century after the declaration of “no victor, no vanquished,” Nigeria has still never entrusted its presidency to an Igbo person through a national election.

It carries the blood of peaceful pro-Biafran demonstrators. Amnesty International reported in 2016 that Nigerian security forces had killed at least 150 peaceful pro-Biafran activists and supporters, describing a pattern of extrajudicial executions and excessive force.

This history does not excuse violence committed in the name of Biafra. The murder of civilians, attacks on security personnel, forced sit-at-home orders, and the destruction of the Southeast’s economy must be condemned without equivocation. No liberation movement liberates its people by terrorizing them. Criminal acts must be investigated, and individuals against whom credible evidence exists must receive fair trials.

But collective punishment is not justice. Abduction is not extradition. A political grievance cannot be erased by labeling every expression of it as terrorism. And the Nigerian government cannot demand obedience to its laws while treating those same laws as inconveniences whenever Nnamdi Kanu is involved.

That brings me to the Igbo governors.

Hope Uzodimma of Imo and Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi are APC members. Peter Mbah of Enugu defected to the APC. Charles Soludo of Anambra, though an APGA governor, has publicly urged the Southeast to support Tinubu’s reelection. Alex Otti of Abia rejected Uzodimma’s claim that all five Southeast governors had collectively endorsed Bola Tinubu.

The other four may offer whatever explanations they wish. They may speak of “political alignment,” access to Abuja, infrastructure, federal presence, or the strategic benefits of joining the party at the center. But they cannot explain away one image: Nnamdi Kanu is serving a life sentence while Hope Uzodimma, Peter Mbah, Chukwuma Soludo, and Francis Nwifuru gather around Tinubu’s political table – the same Tinubu who is behind their brother’s ordeal. Tufiakwa!

They will tell Ndi Igbo to be pragmatic. In the vocabulary of Nigerian politicians, pragmatism often means people must forget every injury once a politician has secured power. They will say the Southeast must not “waste its votes.” But what could be more wasteful than using Igbo votes to reward a man who refuses to pursue a just and politically intelligent resolution of one of Igboland’s deepest wounds?

If these four Igbo governors believed Kanu’s freedom was non-negotiable, they had leverage. They had meetings, platforms, access, and bargaining power. They could have made a political resolution of his case a condition of their support. Instead, they appear prepared to deliver Igbo votes first and ask questions later – if they ask any. That is not negotiation. It is capitulation. It is not leadership. It is betrayal dressed in the agbada of political strategy.

Bola Tinubu cannot separate himself from Kanu’s current fate. Buhari’s government carried out the rendition and revived the prosecution, but Tinubu assumed both the power and the responsibility to resolve the case. He has had years to choose statesmanship over vengeance. Instead, he has continued the prosecution that culminated in Kanu’s life sentence and is defending the state’s position as Kanu pursues his appeal.

Tinubu, therefore, cannot arrive in Igboland seeking votes as though the prisoner in Sokoto were someone else’s son. He cannot ask Ndi Igbo to forget the chain while admiring the hand that holds it.

Peter Obi, by contrast, has repeatedly called for Kanu’s release and argued that the matter requires a political solution. No candidate can unilaterally guarantee the outcome of a pending appeal, and no responsible argument should pretend otherwise. But voters are entitled to judge which candidate is most likely to pursue a lawful political resolution, to respect judicial independence, and to address the grievances that fuel separatist agitation. That comparison belongs in the election.

Ndi Igbo, onye aghana nwanne ya. Let no one leave a brother behind. This ancient Igbo ethic is not a decorative proverb for speeches and cultural festivals. It is a moral obligation. It is tested precisely when solidarity becomes inconvenient – when the abandoned brother is controversial, when associating with him carries a political cost, and when powerful people offer rewards for looking away.

Nnamdi Kanu is that test. One need not accept every word Kanu has spoken. One need not endorse IPOB or support secession. One need not excuse threats, inflammatory broadcasts, or violence attributed to separatist factions. The question is simpler: will Ndi Igbo reward a political establishment that abducted their son across an international border, disregarded international demands regarding his detention, prosecuted him through years of legal controversy, and now keeps him under a life sentence?

Every ballot carries an answer.

The governors have made their choice. Let them bear it personally. Let those who traded fraternal solidarity for presidential proximity bear the political burden of that bargain. Let no one transfer their compromise to the Igbo electorate. And let the ancestral language be properly understood.

The “curse” awaiting betrayal need not descend as thunder from the sky. It lives in historical memory. It lives in the disgrace attached to those who traded their people’s wounds for invitations to the ruler’s table. It lives in the judgment of children who will one day ask what Hope Uzodimma, Chukwuma Soludo, Francis Nwifuru, and Peter Mbah did while a brother was unlawfully seized abroad and condemned to spend his remaining years in prison. Ndi Igbo must not inherit that shame and curse.

In 2027, remember the compound’s invasion. Remember Nairobi. Remember the enforced disappearance. Remember the Court of Appeal judgment. Remember the United Nations finding. Remember the Kenyan court’s condemnation. Remember the life sentence. Remember the four governors and other politicians who found their voices when they needed votes but lost them when Kanu needed justice. Above all, remember onye aghana nwanne ya.

Nnamdi Kanu may be locked in a prison cell, but his ordeal must stand freely in the voting booth. Let every politician who asks for Igbo support first answer one question: Where do you stand on the brother Nigeria left behind?

Dr. Vitus Ozoke is a lawyer, human rights activist, and public affairs analyst based in the United States. He writes on politics, governance, and the moral costs of leadership failure in Africa.