By Adadainfo
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, weekend, condemned the use of a civil proceedings to stop execution of an order that discharged him from a criminal proceedings.
Recall that the Court of Appeal discharged and acquitted Kanu on the grounds that the manner he was brought from Kenya to Nigeria amounted to extraordinary rendition. The court ruled that Kanu be restituted.
However, the federal government has refused to obey the order, rather it went to the Supreme Court to obtain stay of execution. Kanu is accused of running a proscribed group, jumping bail and treason.
Kanu’s position was contained in a tweet by his special counsel, Barr Aloy Ejimakor. Ejimakor tweeted, “My associate, Barr Mandela, met with Onyendu #MNK at DSS. Through him, MNK directed me to publicly express his abiding condemnation of the use of a civil proceedings to stop execution of an Order that discharged him from a criminal proceedings. He considers this a travesty.”
Throwing more lights on what Kanu meant, Ejimakor told our correspondent that, “It meant the Order of discharge from all criminal charges and the companion Order that #MNK should never be tried in any Nigerian court (because of the extraordinary rendition) emanated from a criminal proceedings, not a civil proceedings.
“But that the Attorney-General resorted to the use (or misuse, if you will) of a CIVIL process (the application for stay) to obtain an Order from the same Court of Appeal to stay the execution of the Order of discharge, emanating from a criminal process.
“In other words, criminal and civil processes are not supposed to mix, especially in a case such as this. It is more egregious where a civil process was used to overthrow or overturn a criminal process.
“#MNK considers this (and I agree totally) to be a procedural and fundamental anomaly that never should happen where the liberty of a criminal defendant, under Chapter IV of the Nigerian Constitution, is at stake. It is thus a profound assault on his fundamental rights.
“Additionally, #MNK is dismayed that it took mere few days to obtain this infamous Order of stay (which temporarily destroyed the Order of discharge), whereas it has taken him nearly eight years from when he was initially arrested and charged in 2015 to get justice, including particularly that it will now take almost one year for the Supreme Court to hear his appeal from when it was filed in October last year to September this year when the appeal is set to be heard.
“All these things have now resulted in a manifestly unjust situation where #MNK’s detention has turned extrajudicial and extra-constitutional, because he is neither currently facing any trial, nor does he have any charges pending against him.
“Therefore, his detention is now tantamount to serving a sentence of imprisonment without a conviction or even a trial. That’s what makes it a travesty of justice (and even a trial by ordeal), and it should not be allowed to stand.”
