Timeframe: September 2017
Location: Afaraukwu, Umuahia, Abia State
Key Actors: Nnamdi Kanu, The Nigerian Army (82 Division), Eze Israel Kanu, Justice Benson Anya
Epigraph:
“The invasion of the Applicant’s home… by the Respondents or their agents is illegal, unlawful, unconstitutional and amounts to infringement of the Applicant’s fundamental right to life.”
— Justice Benson Anya, High Court of Abia State Judgment (January 19, 2022) [1].
Between the “Call for Arms” in Los Angeles and the arrival of the tanks in Umuahia, there was a brief, volatile season of freedom. The timeline is crucial to understanding what followed. Just weeks after the World Igbo Congress in Los Angeles (September 2015), Kanu returned to Nigeria. On October 14, 2015, he was arrested by the DSS at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Lagos (as detailed in Chapter 8). He spent the next 18 months in detention at Kuje Prison, a period that would transform him from a radio host into a symbol of resistance.
In April 2017, after 18 months in Kuje Prison, Nnamdi Kanu was granted bail by Justice Binta Nyako based on “extreme health grounds.” The conditions were draconian: he was forbidden from being in a crowd of more than ten people; he was forbidden from granting interviews; he was required to report regularly to the DSS; and he was barred from leaving the country. The bail conditions were designed to neutralize him while keeping him technically free. They failed spectacularly.
Kanu did not just break these conditions; he shattered them. He returned to his father’s palace in Afaraukwu, a traditional Igbo royal compound that had served as the seat of the Eze (king) for generations. The palace was not a fortress; it was a home, with family quarters, a courtyard, and the traditional meeting hall where the Eze received visitors. But in the months that followed, it would become something else: a symbol of defiance, a staging ground for a parallel government, and eventually, a target for military assault.
Between April and September 2017, Kanu famously violated these conditions—holding massive rallies, granting interviews, and walking the streets like a de facto Head of State. He returned to the South East not as a defendant, but as a conquering hero. The transformation was visible. In April, he emerged from prison thin and pale, his health visibly deteriorated. By August, he had regained his strength, and his confidence had returned. He held rallies attended by thousands in Aba, Onitsha, and Umuahia. He granted interviews to Al Jazeera, where he declared that Biafra was “inevitable.” He established the Biafra Secret Service (BSS)—a symbolic, unarmed paramilitary group that paraded in broad daylight, wearing uniforms and conducting drills in public squares.
The BSS was particularly provocative. Its members, young men in their twenties and thirties, wore black uniforms with Biafran insignia. They conducted mock drills, saluted Kanu as he inspected them, and maintained a visible presence around the palace. To the Nigerian State, this was an intolerable provocation. A man standing trial for Treason was inspecting guards of honor. The “State” had released a prisoner, and the prisoner was now running a parallel government. The symbolism was deliberate and dangerous.
The Generals in Abuja decided they would not wait for the next court date in October. They would not send the Police to revoke his Court bail. They would send the 82nd Division to “dance” in his backyard. Operation Python Dance was about to begin.
The Camera Lens
The road to Afaraukwu is narrow, lined with palm trees and the modest bungalows of a royal community. On September 10, 2017, the peace of this ancient kingdom was shattered by the roar of armored personnel carriers (APCs). The sound began in the early hours of the morning, around 5:30 AM, when most of the community was still asleep. The APCs rumbled down the narrow roads, their tracks tearing up the asphalt, their engines drowning out the morning prayers from the local church.
The Nigerian Army had launched “Operation Python Dance II” (Egwu Eke II). Officially, it was a training exercise to combat kidnapping. The press release from the Army’s 82 Division headquarters in Enugu stated that the operation was designed to “rid the South East of criminal elements” and “restore peace and security.” But the coordinates of the “training” were curiously precise: the palace of Eze Israel Kanu, the father of the IPOB leader. The operation would span five states in the South East, but its epicenter was unmistakably Afaraukwu.
Nnamdi Kanu was inside, on bail, awaiting his next court date scheduled for October 17, 2017. He was not in a camp; he was in his bedroom, in the family quarters of the palace. The palace was not a barracks; it was a home, a traditional Igbo royal compound with multiple buildings arranged around a central courtyard. The main building, where the Eze and his family lived, was a two-story structure with a red-tiled roof. The courtyard was where Kanu had held his rallies, where the BSS had conducted their drills, and where thousands of supporters had gathered to hear him speak.
The video footage from that day is chaotic. Multiple cameras captured the events from different angles: one from a nearby building, another from a supporter’s phone, a third from a news crew that arrived after the shooting began. The footage shows soldiers in full combat gear advancing on the gate. They are not police officers; they are soldiers, armed with assault rifles, wearing body armor, moving with the precision of a military operation. The footage captures the sound of live ammunition cracking through the air—not warning shots, but sustained fire directed at the palace compound. It records the panic of civilians—unarmed palace guards and family members—scrambling for cover as bullets chipped the walls of the royal residence, shattering windows and leaving pockmarks in the concrete.
This was not an arrest. An arrest requires a warrant and handcuffs. This was a siege. The soldiers did not knock on the door. They did not announce their presence. They surrounded the compound, cut off escape routes, and began firing. The operation lasted for several hours, during which time the palace was effectively under military occupation. When the smoke cleared, the question on everyone’s lips was: Where was Nnamdi Kanu?
The Disinterested Observer must analyze the legality of the military’s action. Nnamdi Kanu was a defendant on bail. He was under the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court. If he had violated his bail conditions, the legal procedure was for the police to arrest him, not for the army to invade his home with heavy artillery. The military’s involvement in a civilian matter, particularly one involving a defendant awaiting trial, represented a fundamental breach of the separation of powers and the rule of law.
The timeline of events reveals the premeditated nature of the operation. On September 4, 2017, the Nigerian Army announced the commencement of Operation Python Dance II. The announcement came just days after Kanu had held a massive rally in Umuahia, where he had addressed thousands of supporters and declared that Biafra was “inevitable.” The timing was not coincidental. The operation was designed to coincide with the period when Kanu was most visible, when his defiance was most public, and when the state’s patience had been exhausted.
The Forensic Evidence tells a story of disproportionate force and civilian casualties. The Casualty Count, compiled from multiple sources including civil society groups, IPOB records, and media reports, indicates that at least 28 people were killed during the raid and the subsequent crackdown in the vicinity [2]. The victims included palace guards, family members, and bystanders who had gathered near the compound. The exact number may never be known, as many families were too afraid to report their losses, and the military denied any civilian casualties.
The Judicial Verdict, delivered five years later, would provide legal validation of what many had suspected from the beginning. The Abia State High Court ruled that the military invasion was an assassination attempt. The court ordered the Federal Government to pay N1 billion in damages and issue a public apology [1]. The judgment was damning: “It is the view of this Court that the agent of the Respondents set out as pythons to terminate the life of the Applicant… The invasion was disproportionate and amounted to an attempt to assassinate the Applicant.”
The State’s defense—that they were “testing military equipment”—collapsed under scrutiny. You do not test APCs in a residential compound unless the objective is kinetic. The military’s claim that the operation was a routine training exercise was contradicted by the evidence: the precision of the targeting, the use of live ammunition, the duration of the siege, and the specific focus on the palace compound. This was not training; this was an operation designed to eliminate a perceived threat.
For months after the smoke cleared, the question on everyone’s lips was: Where is Nnamdi Kanu? The uncertainty began immediately. The military claimed they had not captured him, but they also did not confirm his death. His lawyers claimed he had been killed or “disappeared” by the Army. His family members, who had been in the palace during the siege, were themselves uncertain of his fate. The vacuum created by this uncertainty was filled by myth, speculation, and hope.
To his followers, he became a supernatural figure—the man who walked through walls, the leader who could not be killed by bullets. Social media was flooded with theories: he had been spirited away by divine intervention; he had used mystical powers to become invisible; he had been rescued by international agents. The more time passed without confirmation of his death or capture, the more powerful the legend became.
The Reality, pieced together from multiple sources including family members, palace guards, and later, Kanu’s own accounts, suggests a less supernatural but equally dramatic escape. The sequence of events appears to have unfolded as follows: When the soldiers began their assault on the front gate, Kanu was in the main building of the palace. The palace compound had multiple exits, including a back gate that led to a network of footpaths through the surrounding bush. Kanu fled through these back exits as the soldiers breached the front, aided by his guards who stayed behind to hold the line and create a diversion.
The escape route took him through the bush, across creeks, and eventually to a safe house where he remained hidden for several days. From there, he made his way out of Nigeria, likely through one of the porous border crossings in the South East. The journey was dangerous and required the assistance of a network of supporters who risked their own lives to help him escape. The exact route and timeline remain unclear, as those involved have been understandably reluctant to provide details that could incriminate themselves or others.
This “Vanishing” had a catastrophic strategic effect. It removed Kanu from the reach of the Nigerian judiciary and placed him beyond the control of local elders. He was now a ghost, free to radicalize the movement from the safety of Israel and later, the UK. The state had aimed to kill the man; instead, they birthed the Legend. The disappearance transformed Kanu from a local leader into a global symbol, from a defendant into a martyr, from a man into a myth. The operation that was meant to end the Biafra agitation had instead given it new life, new energy, and new international reach.
Court: High Court of Abia State, Umuahia Judicial Division.
Suit No: HIN/FR.14/2021.
Date: January 19, 2022.
Presiding Judge: Hon. Justice Benson C. Anya.
The Ruling:
“It is the view of this Court that the agent of the Respondents set out as pythons to terminate the life of the Applicant… The invasion was disproportionate and amounted to an attempt to assassinate the Applicant.” [1]
The Consequence:
This judgment legally redefined Kanu’s flight. He did not “jump bail” as a fugitive from justice; he fled for his life from an illegal assassination attempt. This distinction destroys the government’s argument for revoking his bail.
The Closing Argument
Operation Python Dance was the single greatest strategic error of the Buhari administration regarding the Biafra agitation. The operation was intended to neutralize Kanu, to demonstrate the state’s resolve, and to send a message to other potential dissidents. Instead, it achieved the opposite: it transformed Kanu from a local leader into a global symbol, it radicalized the movement, and it provided the justification for the formation of an armed wing that would plague the South East for years to come.
By deploying the army against a man on bail, the State violated the sanctity of its own judicial process. They turned a legal defendant into a victim of state terror. The operation sent a clear message: the rule of law was subordinate to the will of the executive, the judiciary was powerless to protect defendants, and the military was a tool of political repression. This message would echo through the years, undermining the state’s legitimacy and strengthening the case for secession.
More importantly, the invasion radicalized the “Biafra Security Service” (BSS), which was largely unarmed, and paved the way for the formation of the Eastern Security Network (ESN)—a fully armed paramilitary wing. The BSS had been a symbolic organization, a way for Kanu to demonstrate his authority without actually engaging in violence. But after Operation Python Dance, the logic changed. If the state was willing to use military force against unarmed civilians, then self-defense required actual weapons. The ESN, formed in December 2020, would be the result: a paramilitary organization armed with assault rifles, operating in the forests of the South East, and engaging in direct combat with Nigerian security forces.
The Python danced, but it bit the wrong target. It killed the peace process. The operation that was meant to end the Biafra agitation had instead given it new life, new energy, and new justification. The state had shown that it was willing to use overwhelming force against civilians, and the movement had responded by arming itself. The cycle of violence had begun, and it would continue for years, claiming thousands of lives and destabilizing an entire region.
How does a non-violent movement respond when the State brings tanks to a knife fight? The answer, as the next chapters would reveal, was that the movement would no longer be non-violent. Operation Python Dance had crossed a line, and there would be no going back.
[2] Amnesty International. (2025). Nigeria: A decade of impunity: Attacks and unlawful killings in South-East Nigeria. (Contextualizing the casualties of Python Dance). [URL: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr44/9363/2025/en/]
[3] Premium Times. (2022). Court orders Nigerian govt to pay Nnamdi Kanu N1 billion, issue apology. [URL:
https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/506643-just-in-court-orders-nigerian-govt-to- pay-nnamdi-kanu-n1-billion-issue-apology.html]