“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are”, said Benjamin Franklin. Those words commend themselves to us today as we examine the landmark ruling of the Court of Appeal, Abuja, on the prosecution of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
The judgement came like a bolt out of the blue. No one — at least, not among the commentariat — had an inkling of where the pendulum of justice would swing. It is not everyday that judges rise up to their historic responsibility of dispensing justice without fear or favour. When the judgement is against the government of which the judiciary is an arm, it is even more remarkable.
The Law Codes have set the rules of the game to ensure a level playing field and protect the weak against the strong. “No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.” For good measure it also adds that, “A law is valuable, not because it is a law, but because there is right in it.”
So, rightness is at the heart of law. That is why the law insists that, “He who comes into equity must come with clean hands”.
Kanu’s case has tenaciously hugged the headlines all year round. Every time he appears in court, a circus show is staged by his ardent followers and the reverberations are felt in his southeast homeland where Mondays had been declared work free days in sympathy with the IPOB leader. He had breached the conditions of the bail earlier granted him by Justice Binta Nyako before whom he was originally arraigned for treasonable felony, on the grounds that there was a real threat to his life. Irritated by his continued vituperations against the government of Nigeria, other ethnic nationalities and political leaders in government, the authorities resorted to self-help allegedly by luring him to Kenya and then abducting him in a manner fit for Gestapo movies.
Justice Nyako had held that the IPOB leader’s arrest in Kenya and repatriation to Nigeria were in compliance with her order in 2019 for his arrest to face trial. She struck out eight of the 15 amended charges filed against the defendant and dismissed the defence team’s objection over the court’s jurisdiction to entertain the suit.
But the appellate court declared Kanu’s abduction from Kenya to Nigeria as illegal and unlawful and quashed the entire terrorism charges brought against him by the Federal Government. It further stated that the Federal Government breached all local and international laws in the forceful rendition of Kanu to Nigeria thereby making the terrorism charges against him incompetent and unlawful.
Justice Oludotun Adefope-Okojie who read the Appeal Court’s verdict held that the failure of Nigeria to follow due process by way of extradition was fatal to the charges against Kanu. The court also held that the failure of the Federal Government to disclose where and when the alleged offences were committed was also fatal to the terrorism charges and made them liable to dismissal. It added that the Federal Government, having flagrantly breached the fundamental rights of Kanu, had lost the right to put him on trial.
The court held that the Federal Government had no reason to have chosen the path of self-help.
“By engaging in utter unlawful and illegal acts and in breach of its own laws in the instant matter, the Federal Government did not come to equity in clean hands and must be called to order. With appalling disregard for local and international laws, the Federal Government has lost the right to put the appellant on trial for any offence”, said the court.
The court added a word of counsel for the government: “Treaties and Protocols are meant to be obeyed. No government in the world is permitted to abduct anybody without following the due process of extradition. Nigeria is not an exception or excused. Nigeria must obey her own law and that of the international community so as to avoid anarchy”.
It is befuddling why the federal government did not tow the path using existing Mutual legal assistance treaties to commence legal processes to extradite Kanu from the UK or Kenya or wherever else he may have been living in.
Mike Ozekhome SAN, who led Kanu’s team of defence lawyers, applauded the judgement of the Appeal Court.
“There was one fundamental issue on which the court today anchored this judgment and which is that the lower court never evaluated the mountain of evidence placed before it regarding the forceful capture, kidnap, torture, and extraordinary rendition of Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya back to Nigeria on the 26th of June 2021”, said the lawyer.
Explaining further, he noted that the lower court had ignored the mountain of evidence produced to back his client’s claim. “We placed this before the lower court in more than 10 paragraphs of solid materials to show the circumstances under which Nnamdi Kanu was forcibly abducted, kidnapped, blindfolded, tortured, and rendered back to Nigeria extra-judicially, extra-legally against the laws of Kenya, against the laws of Nigeria, against all international instruments dealing with extradition, including various sections of the extradition act of Nigeria, including section 15.”
Will the government relent or will it start shopping for new stratagems to continue keeping Kanu out of circulation? Will Theodore Roosevelt’s words ring a meaningful tune in their ears — “No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it”?
The Kenyan misadventure has made many people reel back to the botched attempt to kidnap Second Republic Minister Umaru Dikko in 1984 under the military regime led by Major-General Buhari. If the international community could cry foul at that time even though the offence was perpetrated by a military regime, it is anybody’s guess how the global community views the Kenyan abduction under our current democratic dispensation.
Pronouncements by government operatives since that judgement indicate that they still haven’t come to terms with the fact that the government ought to obey its own laws. A statement signed by Dr. Umar Jibrilu Gwandu, Special Assistant on Media and Public Relations to the Attorney General of the Federation, said, “For the avoidance of doubt and by the verdict of the Court, Kanu was only discharged and not acquitted.”
He observed that the decision handed down by the court of appeal was on a single issue bordering on rendition. “Let it be made clear to the general public that other issues that predates rendition on the basis of which Kanu jumped bail remain valid issues for judicial determination”, he declared, adding that, “The Federal Government will consider all available options open to us on the judgment on rendition while pursuing determination of pre-rendition issues.”
Surely, there must be some person or entity somewhere that can prevail on the clay effigy not to insist on a swim?
We must do things differently, going forward. When the United Kingdom was confronted with the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland (a.k.a. “irregular war”; “low-level war”; or, more famously, The Troubles, it dug deep to find a political solution despite the foreboding of naysayers.
The conflict claimed more than 3,500 lives 52% of whom were civilians, 32% British security forces and 16% paramilitary groups. A peace process was initiated, resulting in the famous Good Friday Agreement of 1998 which restored self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of “power-sharing” and included acceptance of several mutually agreed clauses.
I have made reference to The Troubles to show that in ethno-nationalist conflict situations, if three is a will, there will be a way. The British did it; so can we.
The case against Kanu was instituted by the federal government. The charges were not levelled by one tribe against another. It is sterile to continue colouring every pronouncement on it in veiled tribal innuendoes. After his tribulations and the way Nigerians from different parts of the country have called for his release, Kanu himself must have developed a renewed respect for the country of his birth by now. Things may not be the way they are supposed to be, but we should all keep working at it to make it the idyllic home we desire.
“Reconciliation”, says Violeta Chamorro, “is more beautiful than victory.”
If I were President Buhari, in seeking peace and national cohesion, I would listen to the doves rather than the hawks. Instead of continuing on the legalistic road to nowhere, I will order the release of Nnamdi Kanu immediately.
