A coalition of United States-based pro-Biafra activists have declared that the jailed chief of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, did not commit any crime by demanding a referendum on the Biafra query in Nigeria.
This is because the activists requested the Nigerian authorities to be taught from the self-determination push within the United Kingdom which has led to calls for for referendum by the individuals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The activists spoke in a joint assertion issued by the American Veterans of Igbo Descent, AVID, Rising Sun and Ambassadors for Self-Determination, signed by Dr Sylvester Onyia, Mazi Evans Nwankwo and Rev. Dede Maxwell.
In the joint assertion titled ‘Nigeria should be taught from the UK: Referendum is a democratic proper, not a crime – our stand on Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’, the activists famous that no one has been arrested and charged with treason within the UK for championing a referendum.
“We have watched with cold fury the recent events in the United Kingdom, the very country that imposed its parliamentary system on Nigeria and then abandoned every principle it claimed to teach us.
“On 14th September 2026 in Cardiff, the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland signed a joint accord declaring their inalienable proper to self-determination. On twenty second September 2026 the Scottish Parliament voted 84–18 that “Scotland is a nation that has a right to decide its own future.” Even a tiny English village, Piddington in Oxfordshire, held a referendum to determine its personal destiny.
“In every single one of these cases the British Government did not drag anyone to court for treason neither were people shot dead. The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, debated them. No one was abducted. No one was thrown into a dungeon and left to rot. No one’s health was deliberately allowed to collapse in custody. That is what democracy looks like when the powerful are forced to respect it,” the activists acknowledged.
Stating their place, the activists confused: “If the United Kingdom can allow open debate and parliamentary votes on self-determination in 2026, by what twisted logic does Nigeria criminalise the same demand? We demand the immediate inclusion of referendum as a constitutional right. When a people stand by their own candidates and vote according to their collective will, that is already a form of referendum.”
According to them, it’s the respectable expression of a individuals’s proper to be ruled by these they belief and not by those that occupy them
Also stating their place on Nnamdi Kanu, the activists condemned what they described because the deliberate neglect of the IPOB chief’s well being in detention. They mentioned the event is not merely inhumane however a calculated act of cruelty.
“Let it be stated for the world to hear without apology: Mazi Nnamdi Kanu asking for a referendum is not a crime. In Scotland it is called democracy. In Wales it is called self-determination. In Northern Ireland it is protected by the Good Friday Agreement. In Nigeria it is branded terrorism so that a British citizen can be silenced.”
The activists additionally faulted the British authorities’s silence on Nnamdi Kanu’s case, particularly the delay in listening to the enchantment he filed to problem his conviction.
“Britain has abandoned the most basic tenet of the common law it forced upon Nigeria: justice delayed is justice denied. Why has Britain not demanded an explanation from Nigeria for refusing to hear the appeal against a conviction that rests on no clear written law? Britain’s calculated silence and deliberate docility amount to active complicity in the extraordinary rendition and illegal conviction of its own citizen,” the activists acknowledged whereas accusing the British of betrayal.
They added that Kanu referred to as for a referendum as a result of he envisioned a Nigeria of justice, fairness and true federalism — or the liberty to stroll away if that Nigeria proved inconceivable.
They demanded the quick medical evacuation and remedy of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, full respect for his basic human rights, “and the unconditional end of his unjust detention for demanding precisely what Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are freely demanding in the United Kingdom today”.
