Kanu’s displeasure was made known by his special counsel, Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, after his associate whom he simply identified as Barrister Mandela visited Kanu in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) on Thursday.
The detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has described as travesty, the Nigerian government's use of civil proceedings to overturn an order of the court that discharged and acquitted him from criminal charges.
Kanu’s displeasure was made known by his special counsel, Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, after his associate whom he simply identified as Barrister Mandela visited Kanu in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) on Thursday.
Explaining what the detained IPOB leader meant, Ejimakor said that the order of discharge from all criminal charges and the companion order that Kanu 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,” he said.
According to Ejimakor, Kanu “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, Kanu 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 Kanu’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.”
Recall that Kanu was arrested in Kenya and returned to Nigeria in June 2021 by the Nigerian government for continuation of trial of treasonable felony and terrorism charges preferred against him by the government.
Kanu has since his arrest been held in detention in the DSS custody in Abuja, but in October 2022, the Court of Appeal discharged and acquitted the IPOB leader of all the criminal charges and ordered his immediate and unconditional release from detention.
However, the Nigerian government through the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF), Abubakar Malami, rejected the appellate court ruling, obtained a stay of execution of the court order from the same court and appealed the judgment at the Supreme Court, while Kanu remained in detention.