By our reporter| Follow the money! That time tested route threaded by security hounds all over the world came through again on Sunday in far-away, Addis-Ababa, the Ethiopian capital as the self-styled leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu was lured to a location in the East African country with a promise of huge cash donation in millions of dollars.
The offer was so tempting that Kanu, “because of the huge amount involved” decided to collect the money himself, according to security sources.
He was, however, arrested by Ethiopia’s security agencies and Interpol, on arrival at the location where he was to collect the ‘donation’ and deported to Nigeria.
Kanu who had been reportedly having a crisis of confidence with some of his key associates, kept them in the dark about the mission, as the top hierarchy of the proscribed group did not know his whereabouts on the day he was arrested.
Security sources told several media outlets that the operation to re-arrest and put Kanu back on trial had been “ongoing for a while” until success was recorded on Sunday, June 27.
“He was not arrested in the UK or Brazil or Czech Republic. He was not crated either, contrary to speculations,” the source said.
According to TheCable, Kanu was tracked through some members of IPOB who were recently arrested following a massive military operation in the south-east.
THISDAY report also confirmed that Kanu was rearrested in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by Interpol following an intensive search for him by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) in collaboration with its foreign counterparts.
Security sources told the publication that there were strong suspicions that Kanu got the support of the United Kingdom High Commission in Nigeria for his escape and that assumption was later proved to be the case.
Kanu, according to her, was able to travel to many countries around the world because he holds a British passport.
“With that, he thought he was invincible. From wherever location, he was operating from (and I can tell you that he has not been to the UK in the past two years), he used the power of social media to cause havoc by making incendiary broadcasts,” she said.
With the money Kanu reportedly garnered through fundraising to “establish his phantom Biafran Republic”, according to the source, Kanu lived large, and that eventually proved to be his undoing, the source told the publication.
“What he did not know was that the security agencies were on his trail. His lifestyles consisted mostly of going out with different women, buying expensive pieces of jewelry, chartering aircraft, and drinks. And because he got many gullible people who were donating to his so-called IPOB, he had so much money to play with such that he even hired lobby groups for his propaganda activities,” she said.
According to her, the security agencies have intercepts of how Kanu formed the Eastern Security Networks (ESN) and how the members became a terror group as well as his directives to IPOB operatives that bordered on incitement to violence. “We know those he collaborated with to instigate the killings against the police in the South-east,” said the source who added that it was on Kanu’s instruction that certain prominent politicians from the Southeast should be visited with violence whenever they are sighted abroad.
After trailing Kanu for several months and infiltrating his ranks, the security agencies finally pinned him into Addis Ababa where he was arrested by Interpol and then extradited to Abuja last Sunday.
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