The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has spoken of how he managed to escape from Nigeria.
Kanu, who spoke in an interview with an Isreali TV Station posted on YouTube on Monday, said his relatives helped him out of the country.
“Nigerian Army came to my house to kill me,” Kanu said of the military exercise carried out in Abia State just before his disappearance. “They killed 28 people in the process. My people evacuated me before they could get to me and they smuggled me out of Nigeria. I would say, I ’m relieved that I managed to make it to the only place that I feel safe in the whole world.”
Kanu, who also has a British passport, claimed he would have loved to go to England but would not feel safe there.
The separatist leader, who by fleeing out of the country violated his bail conditions, claimed there were tens of millions of Igbo Jews in Nigeria who Israel must defend.
“Israel has to live up to their obligation to defend Judaism and Jewish faith all over the world,” he said. “We are being persecuted. We are suffering as a people and I believe it is the responsibility of Israel to make sure that Biafra stands as an independent entity in Africa.”
“Biafra has over 70 million people scattered all over the world . They have called us the wandering Jews of Africa. Those that identify themselves with their Jewish heritage are about 50 million people,” he said.
When asked how the ‘millions’ of Nigerian Jews he said exists practice their religion, Kanu said they practice Judaism in “terms of their prayers, in terms of the Torah that they read.”
“A significant number of the population practise Judaism as we do in IPOB. When Christianity came with colonialism, a lot of our Jewish practices were suppressed. We were made to feel ashamed of our Jewishness. We want to go back to the way we were before the British came. Most of our problems were basically made by the British.
“We want an independent Jewish State, a Biafra that is absolutely independent of anything that has to do with Nigeria, for the simple reason that we were independent before the British came. There is a paranoia that, should Biafra get closer to Israel, 70 million people would somehow flock to the land of Israel, but that is not the case…”
“When I got to Nigeria in 2015, I was arrested and sued. I was asked to be freed twice in court. We are seeking Biafra, so we can get and return to Biafra.”
Kanu has been at the limelight demanding an independent Biafran country from the Nigerian state through referendum. He is facing charges of treasonable felony at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
He was arrested alongside three others on October 14, 2015 in Lagos and was granted bail by Justice Binta Nyako on April 25 on health grounds. The judge adjourned the matter to November.
The army and IPOB clashed before the adjourned date. The judge has since frowned at his disappearance and blamed his sureties for jumping bail.
The Nnamdi Kanu’s interview on Israel’s national TV