The Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday sentenced Biafra agitator Nnamdi Kanu to life imprisonment for acts of terrorism and to lesser jail times for other ancillary offences.
It took trial judge James Omotosho more than five hours to deliver the 144-page judgement.
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The judge convicted Mr Kanu of terrorism offences, including issuing death threats to people, inciting violence against security personnel and ordering the destruction of government facilities and foreign embassies via a series of online broadcasts.
The secessionist was also convicted of issuing and directing the enforcement of an unlawful stay-at-home order on Mondays across Nigeria’s South-east, where violators were attacked or killed. He was jailed for life for these offences.
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The judge also convicted him for being a member of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), designated a terrorist organisation and proscribed by a court order in 2017. Mr Kanu led the organisation. He was jailed 20 years for the offence.
The court also convicted the IPOB leader and sentenced him to five years in jail for smuggling a radio transmitter into Nigeria in 2015, to further the operations of his Radio Biafra.
The Nigerian government compiled tons of the recordings of Mr Kanu’s online broadcasts where he issued death threats and ordered attacks and destruction of public facilities from 2018 to 2021 and presented them in court as evidence.
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Judge Omotosho noted that the evidence presented by the prosecution through five witnesses was uncontroverted, as Mr Kanu failed to enter defence. Mr Kanu defied repeated calls by the judge to put forward his defence.
Mr Kanu was bent on not entering defence, which would have required him to call witnesses and testify for himself, after abruptly sacking his team of lawyers and opted for self-representation at a critical stage of the trial last month.
As the trial proceeded, Mr Kanu maintained that it was unnecessary for him to enter defence because, according to him, the terrorism charges were brought under the repealed Terrorism Prevention Act 2013.
He clung onto this argument until the judge foreclosed his defence on 7 November. The judge would describe Mr Kanu’s reasoning in his judgement on Thursday as a mark of ignorance of the law.
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Mr Kanu was first arrested in 2015 for his agitation over Radio Biafra for the breakaway of Nigeria’s South-east and parts of neighbouring states as a sovereign Biafra. The arrest set off a trial that lasted 10 years, passing through four judges.
Read the full judgement of the Federal High Court in Abuja, convicting him and sentencing him to life imprisonment on Thursday (20 November) here.
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