The IPOB leader’s legal team also recalled that he was then charged with offenses relating to his broadcasts on Radio Biafra from its location in London.
The legal team of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has insisted that it is unconstitutional to continue Kanu’s trial without restoring his bail revoked by the Federal High Court.
The legal team led by Kanu’s Special Counsel, Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, recalled that Kanu’s case started over nine years ago when he was first arrested in Lagos on October 14, 2015, a few days after his arrival from his base in London, UK.
The IPOB leader’s legal team also recalled that he was then charged with offenses relating to his broadcasts on Radio Biafra from its location in London.
Speaking at a world press conference held in Abuja on Thursday, Ejimakor and his team said, “You can imagine what it means for someone to be on an endless trial that never really happens for almost ten years.
“And being detained without conviction for 18 months from 2015 to 2017 and again for over three and half years from 2021 to the present day. This alone is a grave injustice of its unique kind.”
The legal team further recalled that after Kanu was freed on bail, “The Nigeria Army levied lethal attacks at his home in September 2017.
“Those attacks claimed many lives, including that of Kanu’s late parents who later succumbed to their physical and psychological injuries emanating from the military invasion.
“In the course of time, a high court pronounced these attacks unconstitutional and awarded damages to Mazi Kanu.”
They said, “An African continental tribunal with jurisdiction, in a Decision reached in March 2018, also condemned the military invasion and the subsequent proscription of IPOB which was prompted by the then Southeast governors before the Federal Government drove the final nail.
“Later in time, the proscription was - by a high court - pronounced as discriminatory on the basis of ethnicity and thus unconstitutional.
“In the same vein, an organ of the United Nations pronounced against the proscription and equally termed it an action driven by an ethnic discrimination against the Igbo.
“Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was in June 2021, brazenly abducted in Kenya and extraordinarily renditioned to Nigeria in such an egregious manner that drew the condemnation of two human rights organs of the United Nations, a Federal High Court and the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
“To be sure, the Federal High Court awarded damages to Mazi Kanu and declared his continued detention at the DSS in Abuja as unconstitutional.
“Despite this, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is still detained to this day. That is not right and it is unconstitutional to boot.”
The legal team recounted that on June 29, 2021, following his rendition to Nigeria on June 27, “Kanu was secretly produced before the Federal High Court in Abuja and the said Court, in violation Section 36(3), Section 36(4)(a) and Section 36(6)(c) of the Constitution, in that without notice to/and presence of his former counsel, conducted a hearing that led to his remand in the custody of the State Security Services that was directly and vicariously complicit in his extraordinary rendition and disappearance/torture in Kenya for eight long days.
“Further, the said hearing also ran afoul of Section 169 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015.”
However, in October 2022 the Court of Appeal discharged Kanu from all charges pending against him.
But the legal team noted that in a strange judicial somersault, it took the same Court of Appeal of a different panel only two weeks to pedal back and undo the judgment by staying its execution, thus seemingly sitting on appeal over its own judgment.
“Suffice to say that while this judgment lasted or was still extant before being stayed, the Federal Government brazenly disobeyed it by refusing to free Kanu.
“In other words, the stay of execution of the judgment related back to bestow legality on an illegality committed by the Federal Government. This is absurd and perverse to boot,” Kanu’s legal team noted.
The legal team insisted that Kanu’s bail must be reinstated before any trial can ensue.
They backed their position by quoting from the December 2023 judgment that sent Kanu’s case back to the Federal High Court for trial, when the Supreme Court in case number SC/1361/2022 held, “…it was therefore wrong and malicious for the appellant that had caused the respondent to flee from his home and country to secure his life and had therefore caused his unavoidable absence from court, to inform and thereby deceived the trial court that the respondent had jumped bail.
“On the basis of this deception, the appellant applied to the trial court for an order revoking the respondent’s bail, forfeiting the amount securing his bail bond of his sureties and an order issuing a bench warrant for his arrest.
“It is glaring from the record of the proceedings in the trial court that it granted the said orders prayed for by the appellant with the knowledge of the fact that the respondent’s absence from the court was caused by the invasion of his home by army officers of the appellant.
“Therefore, the trial court knew that the said extra judicial and illegal actions of the appellant made it impossible for the respondent to be in court for his trial, that the respondent’s absence is not intentional or deliberate absent and that the respondent is not running from prosecution or running to avoid prosecution…the orders were made in the false assumption that the respondent jumped bail”.
The legal luminaries said that regarding the December 2023 judgment of the Supreme Court, “Much ado has been made by detractors that the judgment remitted Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s case for trial.
“In doing so, they mischievously ignore the cold fact that the same Supreme Court (in the same judgment) also ruled against the revocation of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s bail.
“The Court even went as far ruling that the impartiality of the Federal High Court who revoked Kanu’s bail was suspect.”
They recalled that Kanu had raised objections to the trial because the DSS “being the locale of his detention” is allegedly grossly interfering with his right to fair trial by hindering his access to his lawyers and to documents crucial to preparation of his defense.
According to them, the DSS also plants secret devices to monitor Kanu’s consultations with his lawyers.
“This objection was also outrightly denied, thus foisting a situation where conducting the trial will break several cannons of the Nigerian Constitution.
“On December 5, 2024, the senior lawyer prosecuting the case on behalf of the Federal Government wrote a letter suggesting that the case be calendared for trial before the same Judge that was recused by an extant court order.
“We are also hearing that the Chief Judge, whose duty includes assigning cases, has sent back the case to the same judge that was recused.
“To this, we must go on record to state that both actions of the prosecutor and the Chief Judge are wrong and liable to fail constitutional muster.”
The legal team stressed, “Despite this true state of affairs, the Federal Government and the High Court persisted in subjecting Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to trial without reinstating his bail.
“The question to ask then is this: Are the Federal Government and the High Court allowed by the law or the Constitution to cherry-pick which part of the Supreme Court judgment to obey?
“The answer is of course, no. In other words, if Kanu is to be subjected to trial because the Supreme said so, he must also be restored to his bail because the Supreme Court also said so."
The legal team added, “We make bold to state that this case has turned from the legal or the judicial to the political.
“Be that as it may and judging from 2015 when this case began, there is a trove of evidence that suggests that the only way to correctly describe what Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has passed through for almost a decade is to say that his case, even though bereft of any merit, has turned from a trial by the Constitution to a trial by ordeal. This is perverse and it will not stand.”
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