According to a report by Premium Times, the one-year deal would cost Kanu and IPOB $750,000.

The report said the deal was signed in February with Kanu’s signature for the service of BW Global Group (BWGG LLC), co-owned by Jeffrey Birrel and Alan White, registered in Washington D.C.

It added that the agreement took effect from March 1, 2021, months after an earlier deal with a U.S.-based lobbying firm, Mercury Public Affairs LLC, expired.

The details of the deals were sourced from the contractors’ registration statements and agreements filed at the Foreign Agents Registration Unit of the U.S Department of Justice.

The filings by BW Global Group (BWGG) after negotiations were concluded in February show that the firm was engaged by Mr Kanu to undertake “political activities” in the U.S. and provide management support to IPOB.

The political activities described include engaging the U.S. government, Congress and the Department of State, and engaging policymakers on behalf of IPOB.

The agreement, signed on February 24, 2021, by Mr Kanu, another representative of IPOB, Rita Eze, and a co-owner of BWGG, Mr White.

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Several locals have shared videos of military planes hovering over their communities with reports of airstrikes and casualties.

In one video shared by a Biafra activist Emeka Gift, military aircraft can be seen hovering above with the sound of chaos in the background.

He captioned the video “There is currently air bombardments in Orlu Imo State by Nig soldiers. Many innocent people have been killed with airstrikes. We also learned that market places were affected.

Nig military is currently looking for #ESN who are checkmating the activities of killer Fulani herdsmen”

https://twitter.com/EmekaGift/status/1362270113991434243

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The writer shared her thoughts when she joined television personality, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu at the Bounce Radio Live studio for an extensive conversation on the BlackBox Interview.

Over the course of their three-hour chat which premiered on New Year’s and January 3, 2021, respectively, the pair touched on Adichie’s literary work; devotion to the arts, Catholicism, feminism, Biafra, and Nigeria as a whole.

The 43-year-old writer who belongs to ethnic Igbo tribes of South-East Nigeria said she fears her people won’t be able to unite politically should it come to selecting an Igbo president for the country.

According to her, the Igbo people need to rethink how they strategize politically before talking about secession.

“There is no Biafra. There are new movements but, for me, it’s a question of being practical. Where would the border be? What is propelling these movements is a sense of marginalisation, which I think is completely valid,” she said.

“But this idea that the answer is independence is what I’m not convinced of. Nobody has made a logical case for me. Quite frankly, I’ve observed the terrible leadership that we have in the southeast (scoffs).

“Igbo people cannot unite if, for example, we say we want an Igbo president. And then we’re talking about Biafra. There is a lot of political work we need to do in the southeast.

Chimamanda who is a global icon of feminism also spoke of the movement in Nigeria with regards to the Igbo subculture, the novelist said that one of the things she battles with is what she termed the “misogynistic” tendencies of many cultural practices in the east.

“There are things I quarrel with, in Igbo culture. It’s misogynistic, as are many cultures. That’s the problem. The world is misogynistic. At my father’s funeral, they showed where the widow (my mother) would sit,” she explained.

“And they showed where the sons in the extended family (Umunna) would sit. That’s where those coming would go to present whatever they bring. It’s the sons’. And that was the end. My father had three daughters.

“There was no place for them. I raised the question and a man in my umunna said we would have to loiter around. There’s a problem with that.

Chimamanda is a wildly successful literary writer, she has bagged nothing less than 15 honourary doctorate degrees from respected universities around the world including Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from Yale University; Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa from Georgetown University.

Her 2009 TED talk, The Danger of a Single Story, is currently one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time with over 7.7 million views.

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Kanu revealed this during his New Year message, in a broadcast on Radio Biafra on Friday.

In a statement made available to newsmen on Saturday by the group’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Comrade Emma Powerful, Kanu described the British government as hell-bent on supporting the unity of Nigeria, at the detriment of the “South-East region that is part of the components that hold the centre”.

“You people think we are fighting the Fulani. Who is Fulani? Those stopping Biafra is Britain because they know what Biafra is all about. Because (Governor Dave) Umahi wants to be the vice president, then I must allow Fulani from Mali to come and kill our people?”

Nnamdi Kanu is a London based Nigerian activist and the leader of IPOB. The main aim of IPOB is to achieve an independent state of Biafra from the old Eastern region of Nigeria through a referendum.

In September 2017, the Federal High Court in Abuja gave judicial backing to the executive order of President Muhammadu Buhari, outlawing IPOB and its activities in Nigeria.

But Nnamdi Kanu and his group have remained defiant, in December Kanu launched a security outfit in South-Eastern states of Nigeria describing it as a move to solve the regions security crisis.

He said, “Having waited for many years for our governors to secure our land as Yoruba governors did to no avail, we, the people of the East comprising of South- East and South-South have resolved to defend our land from the ravages of terrorism and extrajudicial killings.

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Shortly afterward, rumors began online that the president has died and was replaced by a clone.

The man who started those rumors was Nnamdi Kanu, a British-Nigerian political activist. He is also the leader of the separatist group; The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and director of London-based Radio Biafra.

The main aim of IPOB is to create an independent state of Biafra for the people of the old eastern region of Nigeria through the referendum.

To many Nigerians, Nnamdi Kanu is a trouble maker, while to those who believe in the Biafran dream, he is a hero and a leader. He is seen as almost a messianic figure; one chosen to lead the struggle to the Promised Land of Biafra.

To understand how one man can inspire thousands into giving their absolute devotion to his cause, we have to go back to the very beginning of the Nigerian state.

Bitter history

In 1914, the British amalgamated a number of their West African colonies largely for administrative conveniences.

Then in 1960, Nigeria became independent of the British, and as with many other new African states, the borders of the country did not reflect precolonial ethnic, cultural, religious, or political boundaries.

The northern region of the country has a Muslim majority. The southern population is predominantly Christian, primarily made up of territories of indigenous Yoruba and Biafra Kingdoms in the west and east respectively. Following independence, the country was demarcated primarily along ethnic lines.

In 1967, civil war broke out after Igbo military general and governor of the Eastern region Chukwemeka Ojukwu proclaimed independence from Nigeria and the creation of the Republic of Biafra.

It was a brutal war that lasted almost two and a half years, during which about two million Biafran civilians (most of them small children) died from starvation caused by the total blockade of the region by the Nigerian government.

Wrong political calculation

In February 2013, a new political party the All Progressives Congress (APC) was formed in anticipation of the 2015 general elections. The party was the result of a merger of the country’s three biggest opposition parties; the Action Congress of Nigeria ACN (popular in the west), the All Nigeria Peoples Party ANPP (popular in the north), the Congress for Progressive Change CPC (also popular in the north) and the new PDP, a faction of the then ruling People’s Democratic Party.

This new party and their candidate Muhammadu Buhari would go on to win the general elections defeating the then incumbent Goodluck Jonathan of PDP by53% to Jonathan’s 44% of votes cast.

The elections would underline an old divide in Nigeria’s politics.

See states in the south-east and south-south parts of the country that made up the old Biafra voted massively against the APC. This is the point at which Nnamdi Kanu entered politics.

In July 2015, reports began to emerge in the media that the frequencies of Radio Biafra have been jammed. Radio Biafra is an online radio station based in London and it is owned and operated by Nnamdi Kanu. On it, he shares his opinions on how a group of southern states of Nigeria should break away and form an independent state of Biafra. Kanu does not hide his tribalism, he often uses derogatory terms to describe other Nigerian tribes, and in fact, labeled the rest of the country a zoo.

Radio Biafra, the medium that brought Kanu to the limelight would also be his biggest undoing. Through deliberate and sustained seeding of incorrect information, once a week he addresses his followers, many of them spread in countries across the world. His claims are always aimed to support the Biafran narrative, even when those claims negate reality.

To Nnamdi Kanu, Nigeria is a failed state and the only solution is to dismember the country along ethnic and religious lines. But to other Igbos, Kanu is a megalomaniac using the history of Biafra to enrich himself.

Saint or megalomaniac, the Nigerian state has avoided answering questions about the civil war, and to many Kanu is the only person trying to find answers.

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