By Adadareporters
The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, currently has no treasonable felony charges against him.
Barr Aloy Ejimakor, Kanu’s lead counsel, stated this in a statement on Friday. Ejimakor said Kanu however faced two treasonable felony charges between 2015 and late 2021.
According to him, “However, even as he was renditioned for the treasonable felony offences, both charges were dropped by the federal government after Kanu’s rendition from Kenya. Another charge that was dropped was the misdemeanor having to do with the defamation of former President Buhari.
“Thus, from 2015 to 2021, Kanu was arrested, detained, charged, prosecuted, nearly killed (in Python Dance), exiled, disappeared and infamously renditioned for charges that were all later dropped or withdrawn.”
Ejimakor said Kanu currently faces “charges wholly related to broadcasts alleged to have been made in furtherance of terrorism”, adding that, “This does not mean the same thing as Kanu personally committing any physical terrorist act, as aspects of the media often mistakenly suggest.”
According to him, “This is not semantics, as the mere uttering of words or making a broadcast is, at law, markedly different from committing an overt physical act.
“Suffice it to say that this is one of the obscurations that will as yet create profound complications as Kanu hankers down to defend himself against charges that carry the death penalty.”
He stated further that the declaration of IPOB as a terrorist group by the Buhari administration in 2017 was not driven by any evident act of terrorism but by “a discriminatory tendency which was later declared unconstitutional in a landmark judgment by the High Court of Enugu State in October 2023”.
Ejimakor continued, “It was therefore expected that the present government – being more committed to rule of law as it were – would have, pursuant to this judgment, taken administrative measures to formally de-proscribe IPOB on its own volition.”
He also stated that the judgment of the Supreme Court in December last year “unequivocally exonerated Kanu from any notion of having jumped his bail in September 2017”, adding that, “The Supreme Court, which was made aware of the pertinent judgment of Abia State High Court of January 2022, quoted copiously from that judgment in making its determination that rather than Kanu, it is the federal government that is solely responsible for Kanu’s inevitable flight to exile”.
The Supreme Court, Ejimakor explained, further determined that Kanu’s bail should not have been revoked; “that it was obtained by deception and that his extraordinary rendition was a criminal act”.
He said it was therefore “a dilemma and an oxymoron that those who committed grave criminal acts against Kanu are amongst those detaining and prosecuting him”. In his view, Kanu’s ordeal began in 2015 when Mazi Nnamdi Kanu professed commitment to self determination for his people.
He said, “Kanu is possessed of a protected political opinion which Buhari’s government timidly considered criminal and thus sought to suppress it by means of punishment of some sort. This is exactly the reason the United Nations Human Rights Council had, in July 2022, directed for Nnamdi Kanu’s unconditional release and discontinuation of his trial.”
Ejimakor added that copious international tribunals had also weighed-in against Kanu’s trial and his continued detention, averring that, “As the trial is docketed to proceed apace, it remains to be seen if Nigeria will ultimately succeed in insulating itself from its treaty obligations.”
He urged the press to be guided by the foregoing verifiable facts in their future publications regarding Kanu’s case.
Our correspondent reports that Kanu is being detained at the custody of the DSS in Abuja, and being tried at a Federal High Court in Abuja.
