Lasun Alagbe
The recent renewed battle for the actualisation of the Biafran nation has suffered a major setback as its arrowhead, Nnamdi Kanu, has bagged life jail.
Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday sentence the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) to life imprisonment some four years after he had been in detention facing trial.
The struggle for Biafra had led to the Nigerian Civil War that ran between 1967 and 1970.
Lead by the late Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, the battle ended in favour of the Nigerian government led by General Yakubu Gowon.
The separatist agitation has, however, never completely died down, with the call for secession getting louder with the coming of IPOB.
Meanwhile, Justice Omotosho delivered the judgment four years after Kanu was arrested in Kenya under contentious circumstances and brought back to Nigeria.
Earlier, the judge convicted Kanu, on on all the seven terrorism charges filed against him by the Federal Government.
Omotosho, cited prosecution evidence, including video interviews in which Kanu made violent threats against Nigeria and its citizens, as the basis for the conviction.
The court found Kanu guilty of counts one and two of making a series of broadcasts to incite violence and killings, in furtherance of his separatist agitation for Biafra.
