Order Nnamdi Kanu’s release immediately, Ozekhome tells Buhari

Nnamdi Kanu and lawyer, Mike Ozekhome

Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), the lead counsel to the detained leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to order the unconditional release of the IPOB leader through a productive political solution.

In a letter dated October 3, 2023, Ozekhome said the President should order Kanu’s release by instructing the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) to wield his powers under Section 174 of the 1999 constitution to enter a “nolle prosequi” to immediately halt the present restlessness and sit-at-home mantra currently ravaging the South East and paralysing business and normal life in the region.

According to Ozekhome, the appeal was to enable the President to correct a long-standing travesty, the continued detention of Kanu under cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions, also adding that the IPOB leader is currently being tried at the Federal High Court for sundry offences, in the course of which he was granted bail.

Kanu, he said has dutifully observed the terms and conditions of the bail until he was brutality attached by men of the Nigerian Army on the 10th and 14th September 2017 and that 28 people were brutally mauled down and Kanu managed to escape out of the country by whiskers.

“It was apparently a state-sponsored assassination attempt on his life. As if that was not bad enough, Kanu’s subsequent sojourn in exile to seek refuge in London, from where he travelled to Kenya, was brutality aborted on 26th June, 2021 when he was savagely abducted, blind-folded, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for eight days in a secret location and forcibly renditioned back to Nigeria.

“This was carried out arbitrarily without due process and recourse to the judicial system of Kenya, the United Kingdom (UK) and Nigeria. Indeed in Kenya, Kanu had simply been tortured and made to disappear and kept out of circulation and public view in a secret facility for eight days by the Kenyan authorities and at the behest of the Nigerian authorities.

“It was an illegal collaboration between the Kenyan and Nigerian secret agent”, he added and further explained that the purpose of the petition was to invite the President to calmly consider the grounds on why the continued detention of Kanu violates all known laws and norms of both international and domestic laws.

“Of particular concern is the July 2022 ruling of the UN working group on arbitrary detention which was adopted on 4th April, 2022 at its 93rd session held on March 30th – April 8, 2022”, he said and urged the President to right the current wrongs against Nnamdi Kanu by ordering his immediate and unconditional release.

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