The lead counsel to Nnamdi Kanu has called for a peaceful partition of Nigeria and a referendum to decide how many new countries should emerge from the federation.
Aloy Ejimakor made the call in an opinion piece published this week.
Kanu is the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), a secessionist movement in South East Nigeria.
He is serving a life sentence in Sokoto State after his conviction on terrorism-related charges.
His appeal against the judgment is still pending at the Court of Appeal.
Ejimakor serves as Special Counsel to the IPOB leader and has represented him throughout his trial.
His intervention comes as the debate over Nigeria’s structure intensifies ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Counsel Says Restructuring Has Become Hackneyed
Ejimakor wrote that Nigeria’s founding compact has been broken for far too long.
“For far too long, Nigeria’s founding compact has been broken, and there’s no sincere person that will make any bones about it,” he wrote.
He said the only honest path left is a peaceful, orderly partition.
“As it stands, the only honest path left is a peaceful, orderly partition, not another round of ‘restructuring’ that will continue to maroon disparate peoples inside a forced union,” he added.
He argued that Nigeria was built on an unwritten tripod of rotational power among the Igbo, Hausa-Fulani and Yoruba.
He said the North monopolised power through successive military administrations after Independence.
According to him, the 1999 civilian zoning arrangement produced presidents from the North and West but never an Igbo president.
He also pointed to lopsided state creation, noting that the Southeast has five states while the Northwest has seven.
He said boundary adjustments carved ancestral Igbo territories, particularly oil-bearing areas, into non-Igbo states.
Counsel Cites Czechoslovakia, Soviet Union as Models
Ejimakor said Nigeria must borrow from other multi-ethnic states that chose orderly separation when foundational principles failed.
He cited Czechoslovakia’s 1993 Velvet Divorce, which divided the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia through negotiation.
He also cited the Soviet Union’s 1991 dissolution, which produced fifteen successor states largely by elite agreement, adding that Serbia and Montenegro separated peacefully in 2006.
“These cases show that clear procedures, asset division, minority protections, and political will can produce stable outcomes that birth new nations out of the old,” he wrote.
He proposed possible configurations including an Eastern or Biafran entity, one or more Northern entities, a Yoruba West, and autonomous minority homelands.
He warned that Yugoslavia’s contested breakup produced wars, ethnic cleansing and roughly 140,000 deaths.
Counsel Wants National Assembly to Postpone 2027 Elections
Ejimakor urged the National Assembly to enact a special Act postponing the 2027 general elections by six months.
He said the Act should extend the tenures of the President, Vice-President, Governors and all legislators by the same period.
“Holding the elections under the present constitutional and fiscal arrangements simply entrenches the status quo,” he wrote.
He said the temporary measure would create space for a properly constituted national conference or a series of referenda.
He argued that the alternative is not permanent unity.
“It is an increasingly probable, and far more costly, violent or chaotic disintegration,” he wrote.
He concluded that the peoples who constitute Nigeria should be allowed to decide, soon and peacefully, how many new countries should emerge from the present federation.
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