By Adadareporters
Barr Jude Ugwuanyi, a member of the legal team of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, has lent his voice to alleged hindrances being encountered by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s lawyers in accessing him ahead of his April 17, 2024 trial at a Federal High Court, Abuja.
Kanu is being held at the custody of the Department of State Services in Abuja since he was renditioned from Kenya to Nigeria in 2021. He is being tried over alleged running a proscribed organisation, jumping bail and treason.
Barr Ugwuanyi stated that, “We are ready to defend Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The offences he is standing trial are not such that he has no defence. But our fear is the way and manner we are being denied access to him as lawyers.
“We are entitled to be meeting with him. We should hear from him what defence he has against those charges preferred against him. But each time we make efforts towards seeing him, we are restrained by the DSS. I am a victim. The allegations against Kanu are personal allegations. He is the only person that can tell his lawyers what he did and what he did not do, and the line of defences he would rely on.
“Section 36, sub-section 6, paragraph C of the 1999 Constitution, says an accused person is entitled to a lawyer of his choice. In an attempt to utilise that opportunity, we go to him to hear from him and to get his line of defences because we were not there when these allegations were made. He is the only one that can tell us what defences he has, but we are restrained. If we go with documents for him to tell us his reactions from those documents, those documents are seized from us, they are scanned and photocopied, and in the long run, we may not even get those documents back.
“If we want to take notes, they say this is the limited number of pages we can write from what he is telling us. These things affect the facilities from what the constitution says he is entitled to. That is our fear. We are deposed to accelerated hearing. But where we are not allowed access to him, or even the little access we are allowed, we are not allowed to get information from him, we are constrained to say this is not how it is done elsewhere.
“Where two parties are contesting a case in a court of law, and there is no equality, and somebody has an upper hand, I doubt if such is the best to be done in every other country. If they allow us access as required by law, we will come here and celebrate with you when Kanu will be discharged, acquitted and compensated.”
Kanu’s lead counsel, Barr Aloy Ejimakor, said, “Too many bad things have happened, and we are hoping that it has come to a full circle where people and government will sit back to look again at this case, and see whether it has merit at all or whether the case is, as it were, politically motivated to the point that the present administration shouldn’t have any business inheriting it. When someone says he does not want to belong to a country anymore, you don’t lock him, pursue him with bullets and manacles and all kinds of things to prosecute him. You try to talk to him. That I think is the more sensible to do than this law enforcement that is not going to be the solution to it.”
He said ahead of the hearing of the case on April 17, 2024, Kanu’s team of lawyers would present an application to restore his bail, adding that, “We have done a fresh bail application where we raised objections to his trial. Kanu deserves his unburdened right to counsel. He also deserves to have adequate facilities to defend himself. These two things are denied, and they are constitutional rights. It is called right to fair hearing, and I don’t see why Mazi Nnamdi Kanu should be an exception.
“But the High Court denied our objection, and ordered for accelerated hearing. The matter is scheduled for hearing on 17th of April. We have to bring some other applications to restore his bail. One is an application for a new bail while this one is an application to restore his bail under the conditions that it was previously granted. The application is pending.”
