By EMAMEH GABRIEL
A forest does not grow in a straight line. It twists, it turns, it tangles. Roots break rock through persistent, searching pressure. The discourse surrounding Nnamdi Kanu that has taken over the conversation in every space of the country, is such a forest—a dense, shadowed thicket where truth is often choked by the undergrowth of fear, sentiment, and opportunism. To observe it from the outside is to see only a uniform canopy of green. But within, the ecosystem is complex, a silent struggle for light and survival.
In this woodland, many have learned the wisdom of silence. To speak a contrary word is to disturb a nest of wasps; the fear of a swift, painful sting is a powerful deterrent. This silence is not born of apathy, but of a primal understanding that the state, the promised guardian of the forest, is too weak to shield any single tree from the ensuing swarm. So, they stand mute, their opinions falling like seeds on barren ground, unwilling to germinate in such hostile soil.
Yet, paradoxically, others speak from that very same soil of fear. They know the scars left on the land—the atrocities, the violence, the fellow Igbo lives lost to the enforcers of sit-at-home orders. In their hearts, they acknowledge the damage. But they raise their voices in support nonetheless, not out of conviction, but as a protective incantation. To speak against the current is to risk being uprooted; it is easier to bend with the wind, to avoid becoming the next target of the very chaos they decry in private.
This is compounded by a deep, resentful sense of tribal solidarity, a sentiment that grows like a hardy, invasive species. When terrorists in other forests are negotiated with, even called “our children,” a bitter question takes root: why are our own sons, our own agitators, not treated with the same political consideration? It is a flawed and dangerous equivalence, but in the shadow of perceived national inequity, it flourishes. If one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist, then why, the sentiment goes, must ours always be the terrorist?
This corrosive “us versus them” sentiment is a poison pill for national security. By framing violence through a purely tribal lens, we do not neutralize the threat of extremism; we merely grant it a license to metastasize in a different part of the body politic. The fight against insecurity is fractured into a hundred petty, partisan battles when what is needed is a unified, national front. We cannot condemn terror in one breath and, in the next, justify its mirror image simply because it speaks our dialect or shares our tribe. This hypocritical stance does not make any group safer; it only ensures that the cycle of violence and counter-violence continues to consume us all, rendering a coherent and effective national security strategy impossible.
Then there are the true believers, the ones possessed by the idea of Biafra as a sacred, untouchable sapling that must be protected at any cost. For them, Kanu is not a man but a symbol; the struggle is not a political process but a divine mandate. In this worldview, any criticism of the leader is blasphemy. The dead, those fellow Igbos slaughtered by Kanu’s more fervent followers, become mere collateral damage—unfortunate, but necessary fertilizer for the sacred tree to grow. Their allegiance is to the idea, not to the humanity it supposedly serves.
And weaving through all these groups are the opportunists, the political climbers using the agitation as a ladder. They position themselves to be the future VIPs and ministers in a promised land; their support for Kanu is a calculated investment. For established politicians, it is a chance to burnish their credentials, to be seen as ‘true Igbo sons’ in the public square, even as they may secretly view Kanu as a dangerous liability. For them, the agitation is not about freedom, but about future portfolios.
What emerges is a profoundly saddening picture. The land of the brave, known for its fierce spirit of industry and debate, has been rendered a place where honest conversation is the rarest of commodities. An issue that has crippled the economy, stained the streets with the blood of innocents, and cast a pall of fear over daily life, remains shrouded in a conspiracy of silence and performative outrage. The region is trapped in a thicket of its own making, where the machete of truth is too dangerous to wield.
Nothing will change until brave people start telling the full story. We have to hold two ideas in our heads at once: that a figurehead can represent a real struggle yet be a destructive force. True progress isn’t about picking a side and sticking to it no matter what; it’s about having the courage to tell the difference between a just cause and unjust actions.
Discussion about this post