Nnamdi Kanu: Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

By Charles Nnaebuka

Nnamdi Kanu’s conviction and sentencing to life in prison marks not just the end of a chapter in Nigeria’s uneasy secessionist saga but a vindication of the view that his brand of defiance was not freedom-fighting but a toxic mix of arrogance, recklessness and a willful courting of violence.

He is, in the starkest sense, a good riddance to bad rubbish.

To those who really know him, Nnamdi Kanu was never just a dissident. He was a swaggering provocateur whose rise was built on historical grievance, his own myth-making and a kind of hubris that finally destroyed him.

Born in 1967 in Nigeria’s southeast, Kanu came of age in a region haunted by the spectre of Biafra, the short-lived secessionist state that sparked a civil war. That war killed more than one million people and its memory became the fuel for Kanu’s long, volatile evolution. For years, Kanu wrapped his separatist ambitions in the language of self-determination, historical injustice and opportunism.

He spoke of Biafra not merely as a lost dream but as a moral imperative.

In that regard, he launched Radio Biafra around 2009 from London broadcasting not just a separatist message, but a combative, almost messianic call: the Igbo people would no longer tolerate their status at the mercy of a Nigerian state they saw supposedly as corrupt, oppressive and irredeemable.

Riding on that faulty illusion, he formed the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) (which would later be proscribed a terrorist group by the courts due to violent activities), turning a radio station into a movement.

Over time, he hardened his message, daring to turn resistance into an existential fight. By exploiting the ignorance of many in the Southeast, he mobilised thousands via Radio Biafra, calling on his followers to sit at home, to resist, to hate the Nigerian state. But that lofty narrative belied something more brittle: a man intoxicated by his own importance, certain that his convictions placed him above accountability.

His antecedents, both real and self-styled, laid the groundwork: Kanu tapped into deep-seated Igbo frustration, historical trauma and a longing for self-determination.

But rather than moderate or negotiate, he doubled down and saw himself not just as a leader, but as the voice of a people allegedly long wronged and his role rapidly grew into something grandiose. He did not just agitate for change, he believed he was indispensable to it.

When he was first arrested in 2015 on treason charges, he seemed to relish the spotlight. But after a dramatic military raid on his home in 2017, he fled while on bail and his disappearance only elevated his status among his followers. In 2021, he was re-arrested in Kenya and controversially extradited back to Nigeria, moves he would later decry as illegitimate and part of an alleged broader conspiracy against him.

However, when the court finally delivered its judgment, Justice James Omotosho did not mince words. He described Kanu’s behavior during the trial as “arrogant, cocky, and full of himself,” a man who refused to recognize the limits of his power. Kanu’s pride was not just in his speech, it was in his refusal to engage with the court’s processes.

As self style activist and freedom fighter ala Obafemi Awolowo, Nelson Mandela and Martin Lurther King, he dismissed legal representation, challenged the court’s jurisdiction and eventually refused to mount any defense. That obstinacy amounts to more than ideological posturing but a strategic miscalculation, a self-inflicted wound.

Kanu’s charges were serious. The court found him guilty on seven counts related to terrorism. Prosecutors presented evidence that his broadcasts on Radio Biafra were not mere political speech, but calls to violence, that he incited attacks, gave instructions related to bomb-making and directed “sit-at-home” orders in the Southeast that paralysed movement and threatened and ended innocent lives of those who defied his orders.

His orders and style infringed on the rights of citizens. Kanu’s violent nature is not a footnote but a raging reality: media reports tie his sit-at-home orders to almost a thousand deaths in the Southeast between 2021 and 2025, as armed actors enforcing those orders killed civilians and clashed with security forces.

In court, a key witness testified that Kanu’s broadcasts directed his followers to “deal decisively” with security operatives, estimating 170 to 200 killed in attacks allegedly tied to his Eastern Security Network (ESN). Another prosecution witness accused ESN fighters of grotesque acts, claiming they desired to bury a dead member with “2,000 human heads” and used human flesh in ritualistic practices. This is not mere agitation, it is the architecture of terror.

Notably, the judge pointed out that by ordering people to stay home, Kanu violated their freedom of movement and that he lacked any constitutional basis to demand a people’s shutdown the way he did.

Even more stark, during the trial, the court admitted a video recorded statement by Kanu from 2015, in which he denied any link to violence, yet security operatives testified they had evidence to the contrary. There were suitcases seized at his arrest containing broadcasting equipment, suggesting his “struggle” was anchored in real world operations, not just rhetoric.

During sentencing, the judge could have imposed the death penalty, but opted for life imprisonment, citing global opposition to capital punishment and invoking mercy. That mercy came despite what the judge described as Kanu’s ongoing “tendency of violence” even in court. In fact, at one point, he was ejected for unruly behaviour.

What finally brought Kanu down was not just the state or the weight of the charges; it was his own hubris which made him a tragic hero. He became a man consumed by own unbridled pride and error of judgment. As typical, he was a man who thundered at crowds, who believed his cause justified every excess, but who could not or would not respect the formal structures of law when they turned against him. He may have projected an image of invincibility, but in reality, he built his power on a foundation of confrontation without compromise.

Kanu’s downfall is human, not mythic. He was not a martyr with clean hands; he was a provocateur who toyed with fire until it burned him. He refused to repent, refused to adapt, refused to play by any rules but his own. And now, at the end, justice has caught up. His conviction is more than a legal outcome. It is a warning: no matter how righteous a cause, defiance without discipline, conviction without humility, arrogance without accountability, that’s a recipe for ruin.

A man who cast himself as a liberator became undone by his own arrogance. His cause may have been rooted in historical injustice, but the method, the refusal to bend or compromise, the constant drama, all of it built a tower whose base was too narrow. And in this case, the ruin is complete. He became the provebial grasshopper that went to the grave with the corpse simply because he lacked tact, wisdom and discernment. Kanu is indeed a good riddance to bad rubbish.

*Charles Nnaebuka, PhD, a public affairs analyst, writes from Lagos.