An Igbo Christian group, the Concerned Igbo Ministers’ Commission, has condemned the recent wave of deadly attacks in Kwara State, arguing that the continued detention of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, reflects Nigeria’s failure to take early warnings about violent extremism seriously.
The clerics spoke against the backdrop of renewed violence in parts of Kwara, where reports indicate that more than one hundred people have been killed in coordinated assaults on rural communities, allegedly by Islamist extremists.
In a statement released on Friday, the 6th of February, 2026, the President of the Commission, Rev. Tony Uzor, lamented that Kanu had been imprisoned for cautioning against what he described as a looming “Jihadist incursion” into southern Nigeria warnings the government allegedly dismissed until bloodshed occurred.
Uzor said it was troubling that instead of investigating or acting on those early alarms, authorities opted to jail the separatist leader, a decision he described as misplaced and tragic in hindsight.
He criticised the federal government for focusing its energy on silencing Kanu, whom he said carried no weapons but a microphone, while violent groups responsible for widespread killings across the country continue to operate with relative impunity.
According to Uzor, the state’s priorities appear deeply distorted, insisting that for the Nigerian government, “words are treated as deadlier than weapons, and warnings are punished more harshly than mass murder”.
The association further alleged that Kanu’s arrest, prosecution, and incarceration stemmed from the discomfort his broadcasts caused to entrenched power structures, which the group claimed benefit from preserving a caliphate-friendly status quo.
Questioning the legitimacy of Kanu’s conviction, the cleric stated: A man who spoke who warned, provoked, irritated, unsettled was caged as though he had spilled blood. Meanwhile, blood was actually spilled elsewhere, in industrial quantities, and the nation barely blinked.
“Justice James Omotosho, presiding over the Federal High Court in Abuja, sentenced Nnamdi Kanu to life imprisonment in November 2025 for terrorism charges inciting violence through his broadcasts and calls for Biafran independence. Kanu, the very man who had long warned of this exact impending doom in Yorubaland: the spread of religious extremism, the unchecked jihadist incursions into Southern territories, the failure to protect communities from the reach of these terrorists. He was convicted not for wielding weapons, but for wielding words that unsettled the status quo.
“Justice Omotosho handed down concurrent life terms, ensuring Kanu rots in isolation at Sokoto Correctional Centre of all places, the seat of the caliphate itself. All while the real killers in Kwara and countless other places evade the same zealous pursuit.
“It is apparently safer to wield an AK-47 assault rifle than a microphone provided the AK-47 aligns with the unspoken hierarchies of power.”
The ministers also expressed alarm that mass killings linked to armed extremist groups continue to occur across rural Nigeria with little decisive or sustained response from the authorities.
They argued that the intensity and urgency applied in the crackdown on Kanu and IPOB have not been replicated in the fight against jihadist violence, despite the heavy toll on civilian lives.
The statement continued: “The dead are absorbed into statistics and forgotten.
Take Kwara State, where just this week, Islamic terrorists slaughtered at least 170 people in the villages of Woro and Nuku just as Nnamdi Kanu predicted many years back. Gunmen stormed in, executing residents at close range, many bound and shot, others burned alive for refusing to submit to extremist Sharia rule. Homes razed, shops looted, families shattered. The attackers, linked to genuine terrorist groups from Northern Nigeria and not proscribed, left a trail of mass graves and missing loved ones.
“President Tinubu deployed troops after the fact, blaming jihadists, but where was the same preemptive fury that accompanied Monday sit-at-home civil disobedience?
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“But let one man (Nnamdi Kanu) speak inconvenient truths, invoke history, or challenge the emotional comfort of the state, and the system awakens with ferocity tagging him a terrorist when he has not killed anyone. Those who kill are managed. Those who speak are crushed.”
The group accused the federal government of prioritising political unity over human life, alleging that Nigeria punishes dissenting voices while shielding those responsible for mass violence.
Describing Kanu as one of the nation’s modern-day “prophets,” the clerics said the government has chosen repression over moral responsibility.
They concluded with a scathing indictment of state policy: “The stability of the murderous state matters more than the sanctity of life. Preventing uncomfortable ideas is more urgent than preventing funerals.
Silence in the face of killings is preferable to noise in the face of injustice.
“Because a society confident in its moral foundations does not jail prophets and tolerate killers. It does not obsess over speech while normalising graves,” the statement added.