By Valentine Obienyem

I have read some of our people’s responses to Mr. Peter Obi’s reaction to the conviction of Mr. Nnamdi Kanu. From Obi’s viewpoint, the conviction is an unfortunate development that risks inflaming national tension at a time when Nigeria is already struggling with severe economic hardship and insecurity. He maintained that Kanu should not have been arrested in the first place, arguing that the government failed to address legitimate grievances through dialogue and inclusive governance before resorting to force. Obi cautioned that rigid legalism without political wisdom only deepens division, noting that many countries adopt negotiated or political solutions when legal outcomes threaten national stability. Calling for calm, he urged the Presidency and respected national elders to choose healing over hostility and to pursue a path grounded in justice, fairness, and reconciliation.

I appreciate your viewpoint, as well as the concerns raised by others. They are understandable and rooted in genuine pain. However, to properly frame the issue and avoid conclusions driven by emotion rather than context, a few important clarifications are necessary.

To begin with, Peter Obi has consistently condemned violence and commiserated with families affected by insecurity across Nigeria, not just in the South-East. Each time there was a kidnapping, bombing, or attack anywhere in the country, he issued statements mourning the victims and urging the government to act. His reaction to the abduction of schoolchildren in the North followed the same pattern — condolence, empathy, and calls for decisive action.

On the specific case of Dr. Chike Akunyili, Obi did not treat it as a distant tragedy. He personally led the effort to secure Dr. Akunyili’s remains and take them to the mortuary. He was part of the grieving community.

Now, to the central issue: political solution.

Seeking a political solution does not mean excusing crimes or overlooking victims. It means recognizing that certain crises — especially those with political, ethnic, or ideological roots — cannot be resolved by force alone. This is neither unique to Nigeria nor new in global governance.

Throughout history, nations have resolved seemingly impossible tensions through dialogue, negotiation, and calibrated political compromise:

• Northern Ireland’s “The Troubles” — a 30-year conflict that killed over 3,500 people — ended not by continued military force but through the Good Friday Agreement, a political settlement between the British government, Irish authorities, and previously armed groups.
• South Africa confronted decades of violent apartheid with a political settlement that freed Nelson Mandela and initiated national reconciliation, instead of clinging to punitive measures that would have plunged the nation into deeper bloodshed.
• Colombia’s peace deal with FARC, after over 50 years of guerrilla warfare, was achieved not because crimes were ignored but because political dialogue offered a path that military action could not.
• Rwanda, after the genocide, deliberately pursued national healing through reconciliation courts and political reintegration, not endless cycles of retribution.
• Even the United States, after its Civil War, adopted political and reconstruction measures in place of pure punitive logic, because sustainable peace demanded more than justice — it demanded stability.

These examples underscore a simple truth:

Nations do not solve political crises through force alone. They solve them when courage meets wisdom.

Why was amnesty granted to Niger Delta militants? Not because their actions were condoned, but because the cost of a purely military response was destroying the nation. At some point, the government recognized that negotiations, reintegration, and amnesty were the only pathways to peace.

The same logic applies here.

Whether we like it or not, more people died after the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu than before it. The reprisals, radicalisation, and breakdown of order that followed his detention were painful realities. And we must ask: What concrete steps has the Federal Government taken to secure the South-East since his arrest?

In Anambra, most active security interventions today are from Agụnaechemba forces, not the federal authorities. If a region feels abandoned by the centre, what moral argument remains against exploring political settlement?

If continued detention keeps escalating violence — and the government lacks either the will or capacity to decisively contain it — then political solution becomes not a favour to the offender, but a duty to the innocent.

Consider the sit-at-home crisis.

For years, the South-East lost billions, schools were paralysed, businesses crippled, and fear became a way of life. Much of this worsened because of a leadership vacuum created by Kanu’s detention.

If freeing him through a political resolution can immediately end the sit-at-home, restore normalcy, and save lives, why should a responsible government refuse that option?

Governance is not only about punishment —

it is about preventing avoidable suffering.

Under the balance of probability, any leader must weigh:

• How many more lives will be lost?
• Can the security forces actually enforce stability?
• What is the economic cost of continued tension?
• What path restores peace the fastest?

We all grieve the lives lost — every innocent person, every family shattered. But we must also confront the collateral damage created by the current approach. If political resolution will save more lives than continued force, restore trust, and give the region breathing space, then it is not only a practical choice — it is the moral one.

A political solution is not about the offender.

It is about the nation.

It is about ending bloodshed.

It is about healing a wounded region.

It is about restoring stability where force has failed.

That is the context many people are arguing from — not denial of atrocities, but a desperate search for what will finally stop them.

Obienyem writes from Awka, Anambra State

By Ifeanyi Ejiofor

Justice became a performance. Nnamdi Kanu’s trial was tragically turned into content. Instead of  crafting legal strategy, they crafted Instagram stories. Instead of mastering case law, they mastered camera angles”

I had genuinely intended, out of sheer exhaustion and out of respect for the sensitivity of the moment, to refrain from revisiting the saga. But the avalanche of calls, messages and trembling voices from our people has made silence no longer an option.

I am, therefore, compelled to offer sober introspection, especially, as someone who successfully steered this very case for nearly a decade, securing landmark victories, unassailable legal milestones, and enduring a long trail of threats, assassination attempts, and brushes with death. Through all of this, Grace remained my only constant protection.

However, after Thursday’s spectacle, correcting the wild conjectures, poorly manufactured narratives, and brazen misinformation now circulating like a digital epidemic, has become absolutely necessary.

The First Revelation They Won’t Tell You

During the period out team handled this case, from 2015 to 2023, up until Prof Mike Ozekhome, SAN, assumed leadership of the legal team in 2022, we were on the threshold of securing yet another major relief for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, particularly after the Court of Appeal discharged and acquitted him in 2022. Sustained pressure, strategic diplomacy, and airtight legal maneuvering had placed us on the verge of another monumental breakthrough.

Regrettably, certain sensitive details of this progress were, perhaps, innocently, disclosed by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to some of these clueless clowns. Rather than support a strategy they barely understood, they seized the information as an opportunity to derail the entire process and treacherously orchestrated a change in the status quo.

Consequently, we exited the team, gloriously, and with our integrity intact.

Instead of crafting Legal strategy, they crafted Instagram stories.

Instead of mastetering case law, they mastered camera angles. At every Court session, their priority wasn’t research or preparation, it was posting, filming, updating, grandstanding, and “going viral”.

Meanwhile, the accused man’s fate hung by the thread.

The Most Tragic Part Of All

Even after the Court explicitly warned that self- representation in a complex constitutional and criminal matter was dangerous, these “consultants” encouraged it, clapping like paid spectators in a village arena.

And so, the unthinkable happened:

1: A trial that could have been paused, or avoided, ab initio, had the proper methodology and engagement been applied.

2:  A conviction that could have been prevented.

3: An outcome that was entirely avoidable, yet allowed to proceed under the guidance of legal lightweights intoxicated by social media relevance.

They railroaded him, knowingly or unknowingly, into the savage pit of a full criminal trial, fully aware that other lawful avenues existed.

Even while the trial was ongoing, they busied themselves with dishing out falsehoods, half- truths, and misleading “updates” to an unsuspecting public.

Every lie told outside the court room became a landmine inside the courtroom. Every exaggerated “update” became a contradiction the prosecution gleefully documented. Every camera stunt became a professional embarrassment.

And now, instead of remorse, they have resumed their post trial routine: fresh videos, fresh lies, fresh false hopes, desperate for clicks.

The tragedy continues because the vulnerable still believe them.

The greatest puzzle of all

How did foremost legal minds, globally respected Senior Advocates of Nigeria such as Chief Kanu Agabi, SAN, Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, and other erudite members of the Inner Bar, men fully versed in the anatomy of high-wire criminal litigation, become disengaged at the most critical moment of the trial, only for mediocre adventurers to hijack a matter of international significance, and reduce it to a Tik Tok legal carnival?

Who replaces world class physicians with herbal storytellers during brain surgery? Who replaces strategic diplomacy with reckless grandstanding?

Who replaces law with theatrics?

Only a system already preparing for disaster.

Where do we go from here?

For any meaningful rescue effort by globally respected  legal experts, the first task must be to clean up the monumental damage by these self-advertising jesters. A comprehensive review of methodology, effective engagement and drastically reduced publicity must precede any intervention. Only then can a coherent, sophisticated legal and political strategy be fashioned.

This is not the time for comedy. Not the time for inflated egos. And, certainly not the time for social media theatrics.

It is time for soberness.

Time for competence.

Time for real advocacy.

#EnoughIsEnough.

Ejiofor (KSC) was the first publicly known Kanu and IPOB’s Lawyer