The President of Igbo Community in Ogun State, Chief Ernest Mbah, yesterday, called on President Bola Tinubu to release the separatist Leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, from prison to douse the uprising in the South East region of the country. Recall that Kanu, who was repatriated from Kenya, was sentenced to life imprisonment over terrorism charges.

Chief Mbah while speaking to journalists in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital said that the continuous detention of Kanu would further escalate agitations in the region, expressing regret over the rate at which security forces were being deployed to the zone to maintain peace and order.

He called for President Tinubu’s intervention to prevail on the presidency to give the IPOB leader a listening ear, stressing that until the Federal Government engages in dialogue with the separatist leader and ensures his release from prison, the unrest in the region would not be abated.

While stating that both Kanu and the Yoruba nation agitator, Sunday Igboho, were on the same page agitating for a separate nation, before Igboho was later released, wondered why Kanu was still in prison, stressing that releasing the IPOB leader from detention would give the southeast a sense of belonging to the Nigerian state.

He said, “What I am trying to say is that Nnamdi Kanu should be released. President Bola Tinubu is our father, you should when a child is crying for a particular thing in your house, you just don’t go and put him behind bars, you give him a listen hear and come to conclusions that I may not go your way but let’s go this way, what I am trying to say is that he as the president of Nigeria should find a way to release Nnamdi Kanu let him go and meet his family.”

“He may have seen the way his people have been marginalised. If Nnamdi Kanu is released today, the uprising, the tension will go down, we all know that, it will go down because he is a person that our people love, once he is free, everywhere will calm down.