Frederick Forsyth, a British best-selling novelist, journalist, and political analyst, has called for Nigeria’sNigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth over the incarceration of IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
In an Express.co.uk piece, the octogenarian lamented the UK government’sgovernment’s indifference to British citizen Kanu’sKanu’s suffering.
He stated that if the UK Government could be indifferent to its citizens being humiliated and tortured overseas, any British person might face the same fate as Kanu.
“Nnamdi Kanu, a British citizen, is being imprisoned in Nigeria, and his family believes he is in terrible health, refused all medical treatment, and constantly beaten,” Forsyth wrote.
Forsyth, the author of The Day of Jacal, Dogs of War, and others demanded that Nigeria free and repatriate Kanu to Britain, where his family lives.
The 84-year-old suggested numerous ways the British Government might have pressured Nigeria to comply with court orders for Kanu’sKanu’s unconditional release.
We have two viable options if our cocktail-circuit bureaucrats could rise from their well-funded bums.
One is to raise Cain, which may be extremely alarming to their High Commission in London, which has access to its Government at the highest level, given the vast amounts of money we pour into Nigeria through the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.
“The other is to raise, via the Commonwealth Secretariat under Baroness Scotland, the whole question, bearing in mind the horrors of brutality now taking place not just in Eastern Nigeria but across the country amid universal corruption, of that country’scountry’s continued membership of the worldwide organisation.
After all, the Commonwealth previously expelled South Africa, Pakistan, and Fiji for far less than what is happening in Nigeria, of which Nnamdi Kanu’sKanu’s misery is a microscopic particle.”
“A few days ago, I had never heard of Nnamdi Kanu, and the odds are neither had you,” Forsyth wrote. So briefly. He is 55 and was born and reared in eastern Nigeria, a civil war with the Federal Government in Lagos.
His Igbo people, the majority in eastern Nigeria, wanted to form a new nation of Biafra. He has dedicated his life to reviving Biafra, which was vanquished and absorbed.
“So far from us all. Nonetheless, he is a British citizen and lives in south London, which gives him some rights and protections.
The Consular Service is designed to aid us if we encounter difficulties overseas. My hard blue passport in my breast pocket has comforted me many times.
“Whether his ambition for a separate state for his ethnic homeland is a pipe dream or not, his writing, speaking, and militating for his cause is or should be no more illegal than what the SNP is doing up in Scotland and Nigeria is a leading member of the Commonwealth, a privilege that forbids dictatorships from membership on pain of expulsion.
“But two years ago, Nnamdi was seized in Nairobi by the frightening Nigerian secret police, rushed to the airport with the apparent connivance of the Kenyans, and taken to Nigeria. He’sHe’s been in Abuja’sAbuja’s subterranean jail ever then.
He’sHe’s a few hundred yards from our High Commission’sCommission’s Consular section. His family claims he is ill, refused medical care, and mistreated.
With Nigeria’sNigeria’s secret police brutality, no surprise. According to my understanding, British authorities had made “representations” twice to him.
“Seemingly representations. Yet, Africans see British concerns as annoying as houseflies. His Nigerian Supreme Court appeal is in the stratosphere.”
After his “abduction” in Kenya and extraordinary rendition to Nigeria, Kanu has been in solitary detention at the DSS headquarters in Abuja since June 2021.
Notwithstanding repeated court judgements and the UN Opinion, Kanu should be unconditionally freed and repatriated to Kenya, where he was imprisoned, or Britain, where he lived.
Kanu visited Kenya on a British passport before his “abduction” and rendition to Nigeria.
The Abuja Court of Appeal found that his rendition breached all international regulations.
