Igbo politicians, led by former First Republic Aviation Minister Chief Mbazulike Amaechi, had paid a visit to President Buhari at Aso Villa, pleading with him to free Kanu, who had been detained in Kenya in June.

Even though the Igbo leaders’ desire goes against the theory of separation of powers between the government and the judiciary, and their demand is extremely large, the president indicated he will take it into consideration.

 

He said: “The president has no pow­er to release him. Is he in the judiciary? On the one hand, people say there should be in­dependence of the judiciary, on the other hand, they are saying the president should in­tervene in the judicial process. So, what do Nigerians want?

“On the other hand, when there is a small indication that executive is interfering in judicial matters, the whole country will go up in flames because at that point, they will feel that because of their political interest, the president is trying to intervene and pro­mote one political interest over another.

“Now, being a respecter for the rule of law, the president has allowed the judicial pro­cess to go on and yet, people are still complaining and go­ing to him to interfere. I don’t understand. There is a matter in court. You can’t tell the pres­ident to go and intervene in the judicial process”.

“One very crucial ques­tion I want to ask is that, these same people who are pushing for the truncation of the judi­cial process, can they also do well to lead a delegation or to apologise to members of fam­ilies of those people who have been killed?

“Can they talk to them and appeal to them too? Families have been bereaved, people are dead and those are Nigerian people too that the president also presides over. Just for the sake of equity, can they just is­sue a statement, apologising to all those who have been killed as a result of utterances by some of these people? I have not heard them apologise or say something of empathy to those people.