About
Early Life
Nnamdi Okwu Kanu was born in Umuahia, Abia State on 25th September 1967, just a few months after the creation of the Independent Republic of Biafra. His father Eze Israel Okwu Kanu, became the traditional leader of his district and Nnamdi was instilled with respect for the people of Biafra and their traditions of justice. His father, in a recent interview, described his son growing up: “… he was not a troublemaker. In fact, he went out of his way to avoid trouble… He was actually peace loving and gentle… But what I noticed about him, as he was growing up, was that he detested injustice. He did not like to a see a fellow human being victimised. He would never be part of anything that involved the persecution, or victimisation of a fellow human being.”
He attended university in Nsukka, Nigeria, but travelled to Europe to complete his education. He first moved to London in 1990 and later studied political economics at London Metropolitan University. He became a British citizen in xxx, working as a consultant for Alpha Phoenix Consulting.
Nnamdi Kanu’s Extraordinary Rendition from Kenya to Nigeria June 2021
The violence in Biafraland perpetrated by the Nigerian security forces escalated over 2020 and 2021. In the summer of 2021, while on a visit to Kenya, Nnamdi was kidnapped and returned to Nigeria by a process of extraordinary rendition.
His family have been working tirelessly since to obtain his release.
This website was set up, not only to highlight the work that Nnamdi Kanu does but also to help campaign to #FreeNnamdiKanu.
Biafran Activism
He then joined the movement for Biafran self-determination, at first working with Ralph Uwazuruike of MASSOB until he disagreed with his way of doing things. He then set up Radio Biafra which broadcast to Nigeria from London, and in 2014 founded the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB, which has worked both internationally and across Biafraland calling for a referendum on Biafran self-determination.
First Incarceration and Escape
A year later, in 2015, while visiting his family, Nnamdi was arrested by the Nigerian State Security Services on spurious charges of treason and terrorist activities. He was kept incommunicado for eighteen months. Court orders that he be released on bail were ignored until eventually, in April 2017, he was released pending a court hearing in November of that year.
Before the hearing, however, Nnamdi’s family home in Umuahia was attacked by the Nigerian Army and Air Force and he was forced to flee for his life. Over the following year he travelled to Benin, Ghana and the Ivory Coast before seeking refuge in Israel and finally returning to the UK in late 2018. As he wrote after his ordeal “the Nigerian army was sent to kill me… [s]o I wouldn’t have a judge decide on my case in a free and open hearing. I wouldn’t be able to expose the attempts by the Department of State Security to silence me. I wouldn’t have the chance to turn the spotlight of the media on to Nigeria itself.”