The United States based lawyer of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Bruce Fein, has urged the United Kingdom, UK, to enable a referendum in Nigeria.
Fein said the UK should call for a referendum to allow the Igbos in the South East decide if they want to leave Nigeria and actualize Biafra.
He disclosed this in a letter addressed to the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing.
Fein berated Britain for supporting “a lawless united Nigeria for UK’s ulterior motives.”
Laing, in a tweet, had expressed delight over the possibility of a united Nigeria after a meeting with the President-General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, George Obiozor.
However, the US-based lawyer said the international law permits the people of the South-East to seek self-determination.
Fein’s call was contained in a letter made public by Kanu’s Special Counsel, Aloy Ejimakor, on Thursday.
According to Fein: “Even more reprehensible was your tacit enthusiasm for a united Nigeria, indistinguishable from a suicide pact for Biafrans. As you know, Nigeria was artificially created by the United Kingdom at the point of machine guns in 1914.
“Prior to compelled unification in 1914, the British negotiated treaties with Biafra. A jus cogens norm of international law endows the Biafran people with a right to self-determination against a Fulani-controlled Nigerian government that has notoriously excluded all Biafrans but a handful of bribable defectors from the corridors of power.
“Self-determination stands at the apex of all internationally recognized human rights because it is preservative of all others. Self-determination is a shield against oppression by the tyranny of the majority or the ruthless.”
Fein recounted that the UK insisted on self-determination for Protestant Northern Ireland to prevent their persecution by the Roman Catholic Republic of Ireland.
He also pointed out that the UK supported the self-determination referendum in South Sudan in 2011.
Fein said the referendum was to stop the Arab-Muslim governing majority from persecuting the black Christian-Animist in Sudan.
The US-based lawyer lamented that Britain backed a lawless Nigeria, and called on the UK to rather be “advocating a United Kingdom suit against Nigeria in the International Court of Justice for denying the people of Biafra a self-determination referendum as required by Article I of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and an infinite number of corresponding human rights treaties and resolutions.
“It is the least that the UK can do to atone for its egregious crimes and sins against the Biafran people that have persisted for more than a century. Self-determination is too important to be left to temporizing or tergiversation.”
