By Tobias Ekirika
A human rights activist, Dede Uzor A. Uzor, has called on the federal government to stop playing politics with the present health condition of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who has been in DSS detention for about two years.
Dede Uzor, who is the executive director of the Human Rights, Liberty Access and Peace Defenders (HURIDE) and the South East chairman of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), told journalists in Onitsha that the continued detention of the IPOB leader was against his fundamental human rights, which are protected by the Nigerian constitution.
According to the vibrant human rights activist, “Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has been in detention even when competent courts of the land had ordered for his release. His continued detention by DSS on the orders of the federal government is a flagrant disobedience to the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
Uzor disclosed that the present health condition of the IPOB leader has taken a worrisome dimension now that it has been reported by his lawyer that a tuberculosis patient has been brought in to share the same cell with Nnamdi Kanu.
He lamented that the plan was hatched in order to infect the IPOB leader with the deadly disease.
He urged all human rights activists, the European Union, the United Nations, the media and other international organisations to pressure the federal government to order the unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu immediately.
While recounting the sufferings experienced by the IPOB leader, Dede Uzor said that Kanu has continued to be in detention even after his parents’ deaths and should be granted freedom as a Nigerian citizen to enjoy his fundamental human rights.
He concluded that his contemporaries like Sunday Igboho and even Asari Dokubo, who publicly brandished sophisticated arms against the government, have since been granted freedom by the federal government.
