The Federal Government has been called to consider the pleas of several well-meaning patriots and groups, and release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
The Anglican Archbishop of Owerri Ecclesiastical Province, Most Rev,Dr. David O. C. Onuoha, made the plea weekend, while addressing the Provincial Council Meeting of the Anglican Communion at the Cathedral Church of St. Michael, Ife, Ezinihitte Mbaise local government area of Imo State.
Onuoha said: “We urge the Federal government to be intentional in the effort to maintain the brotherhood we profess and confess, irrespective of tribe and tongue in the country.
“Government should identify all that makes for peace and builds up our common life and be fully committed to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
“It is sad that our leaders are yet to see the need of giving a political solution to the case involving Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, despite repeated pleas from well-meaning individuals and groups, both from within and outside this country.”
Onuoha further reasoned that “the failure to include him in the list of the 175 people, including condemned criminals, murderers, drug barons, as well as those convicted for corruption, in the recent exercise of the right of prerogative of mercy by Mr. President, is very unsettling in the minds of not few people of conscience”.
The cleric recalled with grief that prominent individuals and groups, including but to limited to Mazulike Amaechi, Emmanu Iwanyanwu, Enyinnaya Abaribe, Ohaneze Ndigbo and Igbo Christian Fathers of Faith, have at various times, pleaded for his release, all to no avail.
Continuing, Onuoha said: “In a recent open letter to the President of the federal Republic of Nigeria, Igbo Christian Fathers of Faith, observed that sometimes the logic of our common humanity, must override legal arguments in the pursuit of justice.
“Igbo Christian Father’s of Faith also reminded the Federal Government that history remembers leaders, not only for the battles they fought but for the peace they secured”.
“One is at a great loss why government is reaching out to terrorists and bandits, while every attempt to resolve this particular case outside the court, only meets brick walls.
“Again, the ongoing ethnic profiling of Ndigbo in Lagos State and the wanton destruction of their properties, are a major setback to our prayers for God to help us build a nation where no one is oppressed.
“The silence of the Federal Government in these two cases among others, is deafening. We passionately plead with Mr. President that his kind intervention in these matters will reassure citizens that Nigeria is for us all.
“The biblical injunction to seek peace and pursue it, becomes most relevant here.”
Onuoha urged Nigerians to take cognizance of the fact that truth is relevant to the individual as it is to the society.
While warning that “the future implications of the decisions we take today, especially when seeming immediate benefits becloud our judgment on the danger those decisions portend to the society in the days ahead”, Onuoha equally drew attention to the “consequences of our neglects to the destruction of pillars of a normative society”.
