Anya told Realnews in an exclusive interview in Lagos, in July that Kanu is not something that just emerged. He recalled that Kanu’s case has continued to dominate discussions, especially with the abduction, re-arrest, or the ‘extraordinary rendition’ as some people will call it.

“Anybody in the Southeast that is anxious to discuss what to do about Nnamdi Kanu, my advice is to watch and pray first because what happens to him does must fit in the pattern of what we are aware of.

“Anybody who encourages the shedding of blood and is Igbo you cannot have my endorsement and the reason is simple – Igbos abhor blood. We are not known for killing. Therefore, if you are working in my interest, then I do not expect you to be looking for who to kill,” he said.

Although Prof. Anya agrees that there are problems in the southeast that demands urgent attention, he explained that there are other ways of dealing with such issues. According to him, there is a distance between those who govern and those who are governed in Igboland. He, therefore, urged the Igbo political leaders and elders to first try to bridge the huge gap that currently exists between the youths and the elders.

“There is a wide gap between the governed and the governors. That is one. Second, and that is the one that is worrying because it is the one that created Nnamdi Kanu. We have not taken enough interest in our youths to understand their problems and to start thinking about what we ought to do. And the result, of course, is that we have the masses of young people, they come out, there is unemployment, there is poverty, and you could have said okay let them go to school, but they can’t even go to school because they don’t have the resources to train the people.

“So what you do with the youth and the gap between the youth and the elders is wide. Unless Ali-Igbo deals with those two problems, everything else to return our society to what we used to be proud of will be difficult to achieve.

He added that the Igbo society is run by communities, in the spirit of empathy and compassion and those are ingrained in the Igbo psyche because “that was the basis of running of the Igbo society, which is why when people say:  Igbo enwe Eze (Igbo have no King), it is not true.

“There is an Eze, but the fact that you an Eze doesn’t mean you run roughshod over everybody, no! Find out what your people want, what they regard as their priorities, and you shape your governance to fit that. This is why when the central government came under Okpara, he still retained that empathy and compassion and still asked the ordinary people what are your priorities. And where and when he thought that there were other priorities, he explained and recruited people to carry the placard to say this is where we are going.

He said that as a result of this style of leadership, data from Michigan State University in 1964 showed that development was taking place and that Eastern Nigeria was the fastest growing economy in the world. “I didn’t say in Nigeria, I didn’t say in Africa, in the World. We were ahead of South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia.

“And when you look at the development history of these countries, including China, you will find that there are no complications. The things that make nations develop are clear, and the things that become obstacles are clear. But because of what you may call the inequalities in Nigeria and the contradictions of that, it is not easy therefore, you could do what you did to the Southeast, in Igboland, in Eastern Nigeria, but you cannot necessarily export it to the other parts of Nigeria because the value systems may be different,” he said.

He added that the development in one region was able to influence the other regions and vice-versa. “If the Eastern Nigeria experiment had succeeded or was succeeding, it would have started influencing the other parts. For example, in terms of education, the north did better in the days of Ahmadu Bello than at any other time in their history. Why, because the North saw what was happening in the western Nigerian with Awolowo and free education and what was going on with education in Eastern Nigeria with Okpara’s government consistently voting 40% of the resources for education.

Prof. Anya, however, condemned the actions of the government, especially in the way they have handled Nnamdi Kanu’s case and the insecurity in the southeast, stating that the government has not for once showed wisdom in her decisions.

“We forget that Nnamdi Kanu was moving around this country, going to Britain and coming back and shouting about his Radio Biafra. Did anybody take notice? Then suddenly he comes to Nigeria, you pick him up and you lock him up. You created a hero, especially for the young ones.

“This government is not a new government. It has been there since 2015. It has done six complete years. It’s now in its seventh year. Is it easy for you to point to one or two cases let me not say three, where they have shown wisdom in the running of this government? Is it in the economy? Is it in the North itself where you have bandits, insurrectionists, kidnappers, and you have people who do not want education for the young, and in the meantime, the number of the uneducated young is increasing?

“Are the priorities you see with this government in accord with these problems I have mentioned, which are the problems on ground? So, you can’t ask me of wisdom in a situation where wisdom has not been a way of life. Even the way that the president has dealt with the Southeast doesn’t show wisdom. He announced that those who gave him 5 percent will not be treated the same way as those who gave him 95 percent and he has been true to his word.

“I had in August 2015, in a lecture I gave at the University of Lagos, when the first indications of his first appointment came out, I not only drew attention to it and what it portends, but gave him the benefits of the doubt that he would change, but I sounded the note of warning with the way he was going. Now the government has been there for six years. Seventeen units of the security services, there is none that contains any southeasterner.

“Even if you were dividing it turn by turn, at least by the time you deal with the five geopolitical zones, one will come the way of the Southeast. But it hasn’t happened. Not only are the 17 northern and Muslim, the other times when they have picked somebody from another geopolitical zone has always been when they have no alternative. When you look at it closely, you will find that even in the North, as we are complaining about his sectional and sectarian priorities in recruitments, northerners, who are not Hausa-Fulani are complaining as bitterly as we were because we are all in the same soup as it were. Isn’t this short-sightedness? You are talking about wisdom.

“Wisdom includes identifying who are your potential friends, who are your potential enemies, but there is no differentiation in this government between friends and enemies. All are treated the same way. If you have evidence to the contrary, let me have it. As we are complaining about his sectional and sectarian priorities in recruitments, northerners, who are not Hausa-Fulani are complaining as bitterly as we were because we are all in the same soup as it were. Isn’t this short-sightedness?,” he asked.