Kanu’s lawyer blames Gowon’s rejection of Aburi Accord for Nigeria’s security challenges

Crime Diary, Investigation

ABUJA, Nigeria (NPA) — Special Counsel to the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Mr Alloy Ejimakor, has blamed Nigeria’s lingering security challenges on the failure to implement the 1967 Aburi Accord.

Ejimakor made the assertion in a statement titled, “How the Ghost of Aburi Came Back to Haunt Nigeria,” in which he criticised former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (retd.), for rejecting the agreement reached between Nigerian and Eastern Region leaders in Aburi, Ghana.

According to him, the decision contributed to the outbreak of the Nigeria-Biafra War and the deaths of millions of people during the conflict.

The lawyer argued that the insecurity currently affecting parts of the country, particularly North-Central communities, reflects concerns that were raised by the late Biafran leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, during the Aburi negotiations.

“Had the Aburi Accord been fully implemented, regions might have had the constitutional tools to secure their people. Instead, the resort to a utopian unity has produced a state where violence once directed against the East in 1967 has now spread to the very people that had fought against Aburi,” he said.

Ejimakor pointed to recurring attacks, killings and displacement of communities in Plateau State and other parts of the Middle Belt as evidence of what he described as the consequences of excessive centralisation.

He also referenced comments by former Defence Minister and retired General, Theophilus Danjuma, who had previously urged communities to defend themselves against attacks.

Quoting Danjuma’s warning that, “If you depend on the Armed Forces to protect you, you will all die,” Ejimakor said the statement reflected frustrations over the country’s security architecture.

He further argued that the concerns expressed by Danjuma mirror the fears that informed Ojukwu’s position during the Aburi talks.

The lawyer also claimed that the centralised security structure has repeatedly failed to protect vulnerable communities and accused successive governments of not addressing underlying structural issues.

According to him, ethnic and communal violence has spread beyond the South-East and North-Central regions to parts of the South-West, where some groups have advocated stronger regional security arrangements.

Ejimakor maintained that the Aburi Accord represented a practical framework for managing Nigeria’s diversity through decentralisation rather than an attempt at secession.

“History has rendered its verdict. Aburi was right and beyond reproach. Ojukwu was the Nostradamus that saw the tomorrow of Nigeria, and that tomorrow is here,” he said.

The Aburi Accord was reached in January 1967 during talks between Nigerian military leaders in Ghana, but was never fully implemented, a development widely regarded as one of the factors that preceded the Nigerian civil war.