Kanu seeks inclusion of case in NBA’s annual conference agenda

The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu asked the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to include his case in its agenda at the 2025 Annual General Conference of the association holding in Enugu State.

Kanu made the plea in a letter titled: “Re: Miscarriages of Justice in the Case of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu”, addressed to the NBA president on August 18, 2025, received at the national Secretariat on August 22, 2025 and made available to newsmen on Friday in Abuja.

The IPOB leader, in the letter he personally signed said, the NBA, as one of the guardians of the legal profession and the promoter of the rule of law, cannot continue to turn its face the other way. 

In the letter, Kanu said, he is the IPOB leader, an organisation which is a lawful human right organisation registered in over 18 countries of the world with peaceful agitation for a Biafra Republic which is a fundamental human right of association guaranteed both in local and international laws and human rights. 

The letter reads, “May I inform you that this is not merely a letter of a persecuted man; it is a bill of indictment against a segment of the Nigerian judiciary that has, in my case, converted courts of law into arenas of impunity. 

“What has been done to me in Abuja courts amounts to nothing less than the judicial lynching as against constitutional order and I am calling on the NBA to incorporate this as one of your discussions in the ongoing NBA conference going on in Enugu State.

“Audi alteram partem – the sacred maxim of fair hearing has been shattered beyond recognition.  Section 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), Sections 169 and 293 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015, and binding international instruments like the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Article 7) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 14) have all been mutilated in my case.

“This letter sets out, in painstaking details, the catalogue of infractions that now stand as an unerasable blot on Nigeria’s legal conscience, supported by judicial authority. 

“It is further compounded by the fact that multiple authoritative bodies — including the Supreme Court itself, Court of Appeal of Nigeria (which discharged me), the Federal High Court (which declared my extraordinary rendition illegal), the Kenyan High Court, UN Special Rapporteur opinions, and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) — have confirmed that I was abducted, tortured, and extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya in violation of domestic and international law”. 

Kanu, who listed some of the alleged infractions committed against him in the letter, urged the NBA to carry out thorough investigation of his claims and publish a report condemning use of civil procedures to subvert criminal law, and the resurrection of repealed statutes.

“Affirm that no Nigerian should ever again be detained by abduction or tried under a repealed law, restore public confidence in the Bar and Bench,” he urged. 

According to him, this case is not only about me, “It is about whether Nigeria’s judiciary is bound by law or by impunity. The constitution, statutes, and international treaties have all been shredded. The Bar cannot be silent. 

“I hereby call on Nigerian Bar Association to discuss these misconducts as one of your topic of discussions in the ongoing 2025 NBA annual conference going on in Enugu State. 

“Qui tacet consentire videtur — he who Is silent is taken to agree. 

“Silence now would make the NBA complicit in the erosion of Nigeria’s legal foundations. Thank you and God bless the NBA,” Kanu concluded.

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