Nnamdi Kanu sacks legal team, revives objection against terrorism trial

Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), on Thursday, announced the disengagement of his Kanu Agabi-led legal team at the Federal High Court in Abuja.

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The Biafra agitator told trial judge James Omotosho at the hearing scheduled for him to open his defence that he was willing to defend himself without the help of a lawyer.

Following the IPOB leader’s decision, all the senior advocates in the team, including Mr Agabi, a former Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), withdrew their continuous appearance in the case.

Against this development, Mr Kanu, who is currently addressing the court from the dock, challenged the jurisdiction of the court to try him.

Mr Kanu has severally raised objections against the court’s jurisdiction to conduct his trial. The former trial judge, Binta Nyako, dismissed his arguments on different occasions before the case was reassigned to the latest judge, Mr Omotosho.

His decision to disengage the lawyers who took over his defence just this year sparked a surprise, coming barely 24 hours after he met with the defence team preparatory to Thursday’s proceedings.

It came three days after a protest led by human rights activist Omoyele Sowore in Abuja on Monday called for an unconditional release of Mr Kanu from custody.

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The IPOB leader’s break with his lawyers on Thursday introduces a new twist in a trial with chequered history dating back to 2015.

Mr Kanu was first arrested in September 2015 over his agitation through radio broadcasts for the secession of the Igbo-dominated South-east from Nigeria as a sovereign Biafra nation.

The case, since kicking off in 2015, has passed through four judges of the Federal High Court in Abuja, the current one being the latest, and paraded successive defence teams.

The Biafra agitator was released on bail from the custody of the SSS in 2017, but subsequently fled the country after soldiers invaded his home in Afara-Ukwu, Abia State, in September that year.

This halted his trial until he was rearrested and brought back to Nigeria in June 2021.

Mr Kanu, a citizen of Nigeria and the United Kingdom, is standing trial on terrorism charges that accuse him of inciting violence that led to killings and destruction of property for years in the South-east states.

The Court of Appeal in Abuja freed him in October 2022, striking out the terrorism charges against him on the grounds of the illegality of the manner of bringing him back from Kenya to Nigeria in June 2021.

But the Supreme Court overturned the Court of Appeal’s decision in December 2023 and ordered the trial to continue at the Federal High Court.

The Supreme Court ruled that there is no Nigerian law that prohibits the use of “illegally obtained evidence for the trial of a defendant.”

The prosecution subsequently opened and closed its case with five witnesses.

Mr Kanu’s decision to disengage his legal team on Thursday, when he was scheduled to open his defence, comes on the heels of an application he personally signed on Tuesday, listing his proposed witnesses.

Defence plan

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Kanu had, in a motion he personally signed and filed on 21 October, listed some serving and former officials he wants subpoenaed to appear in court as his witnesses.

The list containing a category of serving and former officials whom Mr Kanu described as compellable witnesses includes, Abubakar Malami, former Attorney-General of the Federation; Nyesom Wike, the FCT minister; Theophilus Danjuma, a retired lieutenant-general and former Chief of Army Staff (COAS); Tukur Buratai, another retired lieutenant-general and former COAS; Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State and Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo State.

Others are Dave Umahi, Minister of Works; Okezie Ikpeazu, the immediate-past Governor of Abia State; Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, the immediate-past Director General, National Intelligence Agency (NIA), and Yusuf Bichi, a former Director-General of the State Security Service (SSS).

Mr Kanu, in the motion, promised to “provide the sworn statements of all voluntary witnesses to this honourable court, and to notify the prosecution within a reasonable time.”

NAN reported that earlier on Wednesday, the IPOB leader held his private consultation with his legal team at the courtroom where he is being tried.

Mr Kanu, who was brought to court by the operatives of the SSS, met with members of his legal team in the courtroom as earlier ordered by the trial judge.

(NAN)