Following the allegation of denial of fair trial, the legal team of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu has threatened to pull out of the trial if the operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS), refuses it unfettered access to Kanu, held in their custody since 2021.
Speaking to newsmen in Abuja on Wednesday, the lead counsel to the IPOB leader, Mr. Alloy Ejimakor said the legal team will not participate in any process that would bring injustice to Kanu.
The lawyers lamented that it is difficult for Kanu to effectively defend himself against the alleged treasonable felony and terrorism charge when he can hardly access his lawyers or have any discussion without interference by operatives of the security agency.
Kanu has been in the custody of the DSS since 2021 when he was arrested in Kenya and forcefully brought back to Nigeria to continue his trial.
He was first arrested in 2015 in Lagos, shortly after he entered the country on a visit and was later arraigned in 2016, alongside four others on offences bordering on treason.
However, trial judge, Justice Binta Nyako, of the Federal High Court, Abuja, in 2017, admitted him to bail in the sum of N100 million and three sureties in like sum, on health grounds to enable him to prepare adequately for his trial.
The bail was however revoked in 2019 and a warrant of arrest was issued against him, for jumping bail in late 2019 and abandoning his trial.
But Kanu has maintained that he did not jump bail but fled for his life after soldiers attacked his family’s home in Abia State, killing several persons in the process.
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Although Justice Nyako had at the resumed trial struck out eight of the 15 amended charges filed against him by the federal government, she, however, refused to admit Kanu to another bail.
According to Kanu’s legal team, each time they try to meet with Kanu to prepare for trial, either the security agency denies them access or monitors their private conversations.
“Under the present circumstance, our hope of getting a fair trial is zero. There is no way that Kanu can get a fair trial under the present condition of his detention. It is impossible,” Ejimakor insisted.
The lead counsel said, Kanu’s legal team will not be part of murdering justice in a Nigerian court over the head of Nnamdi Kanu and added that “We will refuse to be part of the programmed injustice”, and decried the DSS’s denial of access to Kanu by his legal team, making it difficult to properly prepare for his defence in the terrorism charge slammed against him by the Federal Government.
Also speaking, another member of Kanu’s legal team, Nnaemeka Ejiofor said the unlawful rendition of Kanu from Kanya by the Federal Government was an international crime committed by the federal government using its security agents.
He said, “If Nigeria was to be a human being, it would have been committed to prison for committing the heinous crime. The Federal Government sent people to Kenya to kidnap Kanu, those people should be arrested and punished.
“Until Nigeria purges itself of the crime of kidnapping Kanu, it remains a crime country”, he said and added that Kanu never committed any crime as such did not do anything to warrant his “persecution by the government of Nigeria.”
According to Ejiofor, calling for self-determination and a referendum on whether the nation should stand as Nigeria is not a crime that should lead to the incarceration of the IPOB leader.
He said Nigeria as of today, does not have a valid Constitution to rely on, pointing out that the1999 Constitution is an extension of the decree of the military junta in power at that time.
“To avoid a vacuum, we are managing it as a country and yet the government is not respecting it until the people of Nigeria come together to decide whether to exist as a nation there cannot be a Nigeria”, he said and stressed the need for the review of the 1999 Constitution which he said Nigerians are forced to adopt.
He alleged that Kanu was in detention under the instruction of the federal government in breach of the order of the court, especially the Supreme Court’s decision which held that Kanu’s detention had no basis or legs to stand on.
