Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has stated that his only issue with the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, was his use of disrespectful and inciteful language.
In a recent interview with Noble Nigeria, Soyinka noted that Kanu did nothing wrong by calling for a separate nation of Biafra, emphasizing that the separatist leader “was never accused of physically bombing any place or killing anyone.”
He said, “He is one of the younger generations who inherited a burden of defeat, of resentment, and a determination in their view not to make the mistakes of their predecessors. They have a new will, they have a new understanding of history. The only problem I had with it was the language Nnamdi Kanu used over Radio Biafra. I listened to some of it, very incendiary and also disrespectful, I thought, of even his own people. I don’t want to go into details, but all you have to do is listen to it.”
Soyinka continued, “I used a certain expression in recent contributions. Those of us who stood on that side, we fought for a Biafra of conscience, and for me, that is very critical. People like Nnamdi Kanu should not, IPOB or MASSOB (Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra) for that matter, should not act against what I call the core of our humanity, which is one of conscience.”
He also described the detention of Kanu by the Nigerian government as a mistake. Kanu was extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria from Nairobi in June 2021 by former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration with the help of the Kenyan government. The separatist leader has been detained by the Department of State Services since then and is facing charges related to broadcasts alleged to have been made in furtherance of terrorism. However, Soyinka characterized the Nigerian government’s actions as “kidnapping.”