SaharaReporters had reported that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an Opinion finding that Kanu’s detention violated sixteen (16) international human rights covenants in July 2022.
Bruce Fein, the United States-based lawyer of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, has written to the new British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Dr Richard Montgomery, over the continued detention of his client despite the United Nations’ directive to the Nigerian government to release him, eight months ago.
SaharaReporters had reported that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an Opinion finding that Kanu’s detention violated sixteen (16) international human rights covenants in July 2022.
It consequently, ordered the government to release him unconstitutionally and pay him reparations but eight months later, President Muhammadu Buhari's administration has refused to comply with the order.
However, Fein in the letter dated March 27, 2023, accused the United Kingdom of not doing anything to secure Kanu's release despite the fact that he is a British citizen and had committed no wrong in the offence he was being held in detention.
He said the UK stole something far more valuable than artworks in Nigeria which it sought to make partial amend, adding that the UK stole the right to self-determination and government by the consent of the governed in herding Biafrans at gunpoint in 1914 under a single sovereign umbrella pursuant to a cynical divide-and-conquer colonial policy.
Reminding him that Nigeria had been challenged as a nation since independence from involuntary British colonial rule in 1960 which resulted in the racist scramble for Africa.
According to him, the American Revolution of 1776 carved a universal right to self-determination by distinct peoples into marbles, noting that "Igbos, Hausa-Fulani, and Yorubas were distinct peoples with incompatible religions, histories, traditions, cultures, values, and governing structures. No African was given a voice in the boundaries of Nigeria.
"When Britain hastily decamped in 1960, the merciless 1967-1970 genocide of Biafrans at the hands of the Nigerian government assisted by the UK was as foreseeable as the rising and setting of the sun.
"Nnamdi Kanu is a United Kingdom citizen. He is the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Its mission is to secure the right to self-determination for 70 million Biafrans, which the British filched more than a century ago, through peaceful avenues of redress. The Fulani-controlled, radical Muslim government of Nigeria attempted to assassinate Mr. Kanu in his home in 2017 for his peaceful advocacy of self-determination—a fundamental human right under international human rights laws. Nigerian courts have ordered the government of Nigeria to pay reparations to Mr. Kanu for its attempted assassination.
"In June 2021, Nigeria conspired with Kenya to kidnap and torture Mr. Kanu in Nairobi followed by his extraordinary rendition to Abuja. There, Mr. Kanu has been detained indefinitely in solitary confinement without a trial by the Nigerian government on concocted charges of treason.
"On July 20, 2022, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an Opinion finding Mr. Kanu’s detention violated sixteen (16) international human rights covenants. The Working Group ordered his “immediate and unconditional” release and payment of reparations. The Government of Nigeria remains in contempt of the Working Group’s order more than eight months after its issuance.
"Your predecessor idled in lieu of confronting the Government of Nigeria with its legal obligation to release a UK citizen without tarry. Indeed, she relied on the lawless Fulani-controlled government and Biafran quislings in the Southeast to accept Orwellian propaganda about Nnamdi Kanu and Biafra.
"Compare her anaemic defence of a wrongly accused and detained UK citizen found innocent by an impartial, international tribunal with the muscular United States efforts to secure the release of permanent resident Paul Rusesabagina, “Hotel Rwanda” filmmaker, from Rwandan imprisonment. Mr. Rusesabagina had been convicted of financially supporting violent Rwandan rebels in a Rwandan court. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan exerted unremitting pressure on Rwandan President Paul Kagame to obtain a commutation of sentence on March 24, 2023."
He, however, queried why the UK refused to follow the United States example in Kanu released, adding that great countries are made of "sterner stuff".
"I would respectfully request an opportunity to meet with you in Abuja to explore avenues to secure Nigeria’s compliance with the Working Group’s order for the immediate and unconditional release of Mr. Kanu. The time is propitious because of the impending change in the Nigerian government, and urgent because of Mr. Kanu’s rapidly declining health," it partly read.