By Johnbosco Agbakwuru

ABUJA—FORMER Minister of Health, Prof. Alphonsus Nwosu, popularly known as ABC Nwosu, has alleged that sources outside the South East are behind the insecurity in the area.

Prof. Nwosu also said that the continued detention of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, despite court judgements that he should be released also compounded the situation.

Speaking exclusively to Vanguard in Abuja, Prof. Nwosu, who also served as Political Adviser to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, berated governors of the Southeast for not working in unity to harness the abundant economic potentials in the zone.

Fielding questions on what should be responsible for the insecurity in the Southeast and the solution to it, he attributed the non release of the IPOB leader, as a contributing factor.

He said: “The matter of insecurity in the South-East is also another very painful one. There was a time South-East was the most secure. There are many causes. The non-release of Nnamdi Kanu is one of the causes.

“Not that Nnamdi Kanu is causing it. That this person has not done any harm more than the others that you have released in other places. Even in places where it started, like Boko Haram, what have you done? You have released them. You are reintegrating them. You are retraining them. You release them to society. What did they do? They did worse. So, release our own. Let us see. You are just telling us, okay, do your worst. That feeling is contributing.

“Two, there are forces from outside the South East that have been paid to go and put fire to kerosene there, to exacerbate the insecurity in the South-East.

“Asari Dokubo said it and keeps saying it, he hasn’t been arrested. It hasn’t been said that he is lying and if he is not lying, that may be one of the forces. I have been telephoned in this house, I was to have been the key lecturer at the Dora Akunyili lecture in Onitsha by UNN (University of Nigeria, Nsukka), old Boys, Alumni.

“And after it happened to one of the gentlest, non-troublesome, fine human beings I have known, Chike Akunyili (husband of Dora Akunyili), who I begged personally, I have witnesses, to allow me to recommend his wife, Dora for NAFDAC.

“And seeing Chike Akunyili, terrific, very good physician, head split open, we don’t know whether that was to provoke the Igbo into doing what they are not supposed do. Almost like saying, okay, we will pick out their people.

“So I was sitting, just like in this sitting room as we are now. a call came and said, ‘aren’t you ABC Nwosu’? I said, shut up, you bastard. You are threatening me for what? For carrying one and a half lungs in Biafra from my war injury, for leaving the university, I fled Ibadan to Nsukka and we were the first set that graduated after the war in 1971. Don’t call me again. If you have to kill me, kill me.”

The former Minister of Health told governors of the Southeast to come together and take up the South East Development Initiative for the good of the people.

According to him: “A long time, even when we were in government. We tried, we were meeting in the Senate President’s house to think as one. I blame governments of the South East that they are not thinking along the line of South East Development Initiative, SEDI.

“We have produced two Chief Economic advisers to Mr. President. We have had Soludo. We have had Prof. Osita Ogbu, brilliant economists. And we have very strong, even though older than we are, somebody like Kalu Idika Kalu, We can’t sit down.

“We can’t imagine a project that one economy can’t handle, neither Anambra, Imo, Abia, Ebonyi nor Enugu, you sit down, put the five states together and they will meet and solve the problem, it becomes an Eastern problem. M.I  Okpara was once a governor, official records is that Eastern Nigeria under Okpara was the fastest growing economy in the world. That’s why you have farm settlements. We had farm, our agricultural products, we didn’t have cocoa. But at the stage, we started producing some of these.

“So they should get on, at least one of the governors, I am certain, who knows well about SEDI. Why can’t them buy it themselves? I don’t know. And Ohaneze had asked Osita Ogbu to produce a blueprint, he did. Why they can’t all buy into it?

“One of them was chief economic adviser and governor of Central Bank. It’s his duty. Nobody is going to beg him. He’s not bigger than any other governor. So the fact that I can work with you is more of my quality than yours because I’m asking you to follow.If I try to suffocate you with my knowledgeability, you will go to your place and I go to mine. So I place more onus on the person who knows, for not bringing the person who is as well-educated and who knows.”

Further asked his take on the continuous detention of Nnamdi Kanu, Prof. Nwosu wondered why the authorities are still keeping him even when the courts have ruled that he should be freed.

He said: “Painful, very painful and his detention is completely senseless to me. People have forgotten what it is supposed to achieve, or not achieve even. The court has said release him, release him.Any detention of that man, you can’t call him a boy, even though he’s a boy. Wasn’t Nnamdi Kanu the chairman of APGA (All Progressive Grand Alliance), London? Wasn’t Nnamdi Kanu a member of MASSOB (Movement for the Survival of Biara)?

“What are you detaining him for? The court has said release him, release him.In my sickness, illness, about midnight, I read an apology by Godwin Kanu Agabi, SAN and I cried and I called him about midnight and said thank you for all of us. When he was apologizing for Nnamdi Kanu and urging the federal government to release him, everything that Godwin Agabi said is exactly how I feel.

“I have to go and find him and thank him.What is it that you think Nnamdi Kanu is going to do that the bandits haven’t done in the North West? What is it that Boko Haram hasn’t done? Anybody who thinks that once you release Nnamdi Kanu, Biafra will spring up from the blues, from the roots, from the stem, the leaves fall down, release him, we are not saying it will not fall down, release him, court said release him, release him.

“Not releasing him is like asking somebody, what can you do? So court said release him. I won’t release him. Do your worst. That’s how many people feel.”