New Telegraph

IPOB: I’ll still stand for Kanu if need arises, says Abaribe

…insists he didn’t feel betrayed

Speaking on Kanu’s re-arrest when he featured on a programme on Television Continental (TVC), ‘Journalist Hangout’, Abaribe said he didn’t feel betrayed by Kanu, since the IPOB leader didn’t jump bail but fled for his life. Abaribe, who reiterated that he would be willing to stand as surety for Kanu again if the need arises, said: “If the circumstances are the same, then why not? “The first circumstance was that the judge said they needed a senator to be part of his sureties. So if a judge says that again, I don’t see why I won’t. “I am a senator and I come from the South-East.

I don’t think we will run away from our responsibility. He’s our son. He’s from our state.” Recall that Kanu, who jumped bail after he stood as his surety, was granted bail in April 2017, after 18 months in detention but eventually fled Nigeria later same year, after soldiers reportedly invaded his residence in Abia State during a military clampdown on IPOB members. He was, however, rearrested in June and extradited to Nigeria to face trial for treasonable felony. The IPOB leader has since been remanded in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) pending the continuation of his trial. But speaking on the development further, Abaribe, who is the Senate Minority Leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said he stood as a surety for the IPOB leader because he (Kanu) was from the South-East and as such, was his responsibility to do so. He said: “There is a difference between jumping bail and escaping for your life. I think we have to make that very clear. At that time, I went back to court and went to the judge.

“We made a deposition and said on the basis of the principle of ‘last seen’, that the last people seen with him were the soldiers of the Nigerian army who were invading his father’s residence and therefore, they have the responsibility of talking about what happened.” “The judge ultimately ruled that they are revoking bail and issued a warrant of arrest, thereby removing us from the responsibility of providing him.” Speaking further, he said: “A lot of Nigerians didn’t know this when they were shouting that Abaribe should be brought to produce him. “I didn’t feel betrayed. He escaped for his life.

If he is running for his life, how would he communicate with me? “I was surprised like everybody when he surfaced in Israel. I immediately wrote a letter to our foreign affairs ministry asking them to instruct our Nigerian ambassador in Israel to ascertain whether the person we saw in the photograph is actually this person but I never got a response.”

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