Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has maintained that IPOB is neither an unlawful organisation nor a terrorist group.
The IPOB leader made this known in a statement issued on Tuesday through his legal team led by his Special Counsel, Barrister Aloy Ejimakor.
He accused the Nigerian government of sidestepping a 2016 Federal High Court judgment that declared that IPOB is not a terrorist group or unlawful organisation.
Ejimakor emphasised that the treason and treasonable felony charges initially brought against Kanu were all struck out on October 14, 2021, at the behest of the Nigerian government due to the absence of any evidence to sustain them.
He stated that despite enduring an 18-month detention and six years of trial on these charges, the Nigerian government pivoted to new terrorism-related allegations following Kanu’s extraordinary rendition from Kenya.
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Ejimakor described this shift from treason to terrorism as a dubious move by the Federal Government aimed at shifting the goalpost and prolonging Kanu’s detention.
He noted that under Section 41 of the Criminal Code, treason requires proof of an intent to overthrow the State, a high threshold that was previously tied to Kanu’s pre-2017 self-determination activities.
Ejimakor noted that following Kanu’s controversial 2021 abduction, the Nigerian government reframed the case around terrorism, citing IPOB’s 2017 proscription by then Attorney-General Abubakar Malami and the late Justice Kafarati.
According to him, the move was designed to criminalise Kanu’s post-2017 broadcasts and leadership, despite self-determination being a right protected under Article 20 of the African Charter, which was enacted by the National Assembly in 1983.
Ejimakor further stressed that Kanu was not arrested in Kenya but was instead abducted in what the Nigerian Supreme Court—per Justice Emmanuel Agim—condemned as a “criminal abduction” and an act of “executive lawlessness.”
He compared the manner of Kanu’s rendition to the tactics used by kidnappers to seize their victims.
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