By: Nnamdi Kanu’s Legal Team
PRESS RELEASE: 9th May, 2024
The attention of Nnamdi Kanu’s Legal Team has been drawn to certain misinformations being published about his case in the media. For the reason that such inaccurate publications are prejudicial and likely to mislead the general public, it has become imperative to issue the following clarifications:
First, Nnamdi Kanu is not currently facing any Treasonable felony charge. The correct information is that – from 2015 to late 2021, he was facing two treasonable felony charges. However, even as he was renditioned particularly for the treasonable felony offenses, both charges were dropped by the Federal government after Kanu’s rendition from Kenya. Another charge that was dropped was the misdemeanor bordering on some allegation of defaming 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.
Second, Kanu is at the moment facing charges wholly related to broadcasts alleged to have been made in “furtherance of Terrorism”. This does not mean the same thing as Kanu facing charges for personally committing any physical terrorist act, as aspects of the media often mistakenly suggest. 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 legal complications as Kanu hankers down to defend himself against charges that carry the death penalty.
Third, the declaration of IPOB as a terrorist group by the Buhari regime 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 in October 2023. 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.
Fourth, the judgment of the Supreme Court in December last year unequivocally exonerated Kanu from any notion of having jumped his bail in 2017. To be sure, 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 ruling that rather than Kanu, it is the Federal Government that is responsible for Kanu’s inevitable flight to exile. For this reason, the Supreme Court held that Kanu’s bail should not have been revoked, that the revocation and bench warrant were obtained by deception and that his extraordinary rendition was a “criminal act” by agents of the Nigerian State. It is therefore a double whammy that those who committed these grave criminal acts against Kanu are amongst those detaining and prosecuting him.
Finally, let it be clear that the kernel of this whole case right from its inception in 2015 was Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s professed commitment to self determination. In other words, Kanu is possessed of a protected political opinion 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 Kanu’s unconditional release and discontinuation of his trial. Other international Tribunals have also weighed-in against his trial and continued detention. Thus, 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.
Accordingly, we hereby urge the esteemed members of the media to be guided by these verifiable facts in their future publications regarding this case.
Signed:
Aloy Ejimakor, Esq
For Nnamdi Kanu’s Legal Team
