Nnamdi Kanu: Like a bubble in a boiling pot

By CHIDI OBINECHE

Leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB Mazi Nnamdi Kanu last Tuesday had a fluffy breadth of freedom.  He got an iron-clad bail. Kanu has been sequestered away from the free world since October 14, 2015. Branded a hell-raiser, he has feathered friends singing away his grief. He has fought in the thick grove of panthers and the rainforest of blight and pains.
Heckled and bloodied, the IPOB leader has lived the words of George Santayana that “a soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world,” that the most courage is to think for yourself. Aloud. Emerging from the Abuja High Court room where he fetched a harried bail that he is still struggling not to thumb down, he and his cohorts like the waterfowl that needs no guide have gone back to their slimy abode of close to two years.
In the minds of his tumultuous supporters who enthrallingly broke into a mixed song of mirth and grime that day, wishing that life had a rewind button, there is no angry way to quit life inside the beltway. But like mermaids, they lose no sleep over the opinion of shrimps. To them, Kanu is the hummingbird that competes with the stillness of the air, and to his captors he is like spirituality: If you hold it too closely, it chokes, and if you hold it too loosely it escapes.
Homecoming for the hummingbird may flutter in flapping wings. Kanu wants and loves his Biafra. He is bright in it like glitter, and bubbly like champaigne.  In him, it doesn’t matter the winding road to his “Eldorado”, it reckons not the bile in it hereafter, it makes no qualms  about  the iridescent bubble that clangs and twists the journey.  He only thirsts for that  sun bath in “the land of the rising sun”. As a romantic realist, he hopes to ride the waves of courage to the dark places where it leads, and yet to the glistening world.  To borrow the words of William Blake, in Auguries of Innocence, “ A robin Red breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage”.
He is the master dreamer, the mocking bird on the pine tree, the billow of flame in a floundering homestead, the lily flower in the fluttering sun and the tangential that senses the undulation of wings. He sings not to please the world, but feels it  to fill it. In the sonority of his song he forgets Bertrand Russel’s counsel that “freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure”, that dead songbirds make a sad meal. Kanu is not a prisoner of fate; he is a prisoner of his own belief.
He intones like Ezra Pound that a slave is that person who waits for someone to come and free him. He pursues his own good in his own way, screaming it clear and loud that the battle for freedom is not for the weak or timid.
He is the bluebird that carries the sky on its back as hope rises like a phoenix for his full freedom. His ordeal shines in the face of his captors’ belief that those who dream by night wake up in the day to realize its emptiness, while day-dreamers are dangerous men, for they may put their dreams into practice with open eyes and full consciousness. And as Tennessee Williams concludes,” Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.”
Kanu was born in Isiama Afara, in Abia state. His parents are HRM Eze Israel Okwu Kanu (JP) and Ugoeze Nnenne Kanu. He attended Library Avenue Primary School (now part of Government House, Umuahia) and went to Government College Umuahia for his secondary education. He gained admission to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN but could not finish due to incessant strikes before he left for London to complete his tertiary education.
Kanu told his solicitors that he was on October 14, 2015 arrested by the Department of State Services, DSS in his hotel room at Golden Tullip Essential Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos state before it was made known on October 18, 2015. The news of the arrest generated protests across parts of Delta, Enugu, Rivers, Cross Rivers, Abia, Imo, Akwaibom, and Anambra states.
He was arraigned on November 23, 2015 in an Abuja magistrate court on charges of “criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership of an illegal organization.”  He is married to Uchechi Okwu Kanu and has a brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu and a sister, Princess Chinwe Kanu.

Share

from The Sun News http://ift.tt/2oU2qAF
via IFTTT