By Adadareporters
Barr Aloy Ejimakor, lead counsel to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, weekend, said the declaration of the United States Government that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was unlawfully renditioned to Nigeria from Kenya was ‘appreciated’.
Kanu was arrested in Kenya in 2021 and allegedly tortured for eight days before being renditioned to Nigeria. He is being detained at the custody of the DSS in Abuja. He is charged with jumping bail in 2017, treason and running a proscribed organisation.
Ejimakor, in a statement on behalf of Kanu’s counsel, “expresses the team’s profound appreciation to the Government of the United States including, in particular, the US Mission in Nigeria. It is indeed a demonstration of diplomatic courage.”
Recall that a few days ago, the United States Government, in an official publication captioned: “2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Nigeria”, acknowledged that, “Nigeria’s secret police had violated Kanu’s rights during his arrest and extradition”, adding that, Kanu was a victim of “arbitrary arrest” in June 2021.
Efforts to stop his trial because of the manner he was brought to Nigeria from Kenya without following international rules failed as the Supreme Court ruled he could face prosecution. The apex court however ruled that he was not lawfully renditioned to Nigeria.
Ejimakor said, “It needs to be emphasized that this laudable position the US government has waited for almost three years to take and make public is surely well-considered and thus important for two reasons.
“First, it affirms the case-in-chief we have adduced since June 2021 that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was unlawfully renditioned, not lawfully extradited. These are two opposite concepts that bear dissimilar legal implications.
“Second, it is expected that, coming from a respected and an influential foreign power like the United States, this public acknowledgement will likely encourage the Government of Nigeria to also acknowledge that it had gravely violated Kanu’s inalienable human rights by subjecting him to a horrendous extraordinary rendition.”
The legal luminary said one way the Government of Nigeria could come clean and acknowledge “this egregious wrong done to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is to banish any further temptations to impunity and summon its powers and discretions under the Constitution to bring the prosecution of Nnamdi Kanu to closure, without further ado”.
In his words, “This is the most sensible thing to do because Kanu’s prosecution has, by effluxion of time, become attritional and questionable to boot, given that it was initiated almost a decade ago in 2015 and for alleged offences that are no longer in play.
“There are other cogent reasons, including the open and notorious fact that it is becoming increasingly clear that Nnamdi Kanu may never get a fair trial by dint of the grave complications created by the locale of his current detention.”
