‘How various courts broke the law in Nnamdi Kanu’s case’ – Lawyer

A lawyer, Christopher Chidera, has alleged that various courts involved in the trial of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, engaged in a series of illegal acts that culminated in the eventual conviction and sentencing.

Kanu is serving a life sentence in Sokoto Prison after an Abuja Federal High Court convicted him on terrorism charges filed by the Nigerian government.

Speaking on issues surrounding Kanu’s pending appeal in a statement on Thursday, Chidera said the illegalities commenced after Kanu was discharged, and charges against him quashed, by the Court of Appeal on 13 October 2022.

“Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was discharged, and the charges against him were quashed, on 13 October 2022. From that day, every later step needed a clean legal foundation. There was none. What followed was not a lawful trial continuing. It was one unauthorised act stacked on another until conviction and life imprisonment,” he said.

According to Chidera, the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court, were all guilty of illegality in the trial.

He said, “A Court of Appeal that had finished its work and would not let the discharge take effect.

“A Supreme Court that treated an appeal as if it were a revival of quashed counts, and described a repealed statute as still in force.

“A trial court that treated “the proceedings were saved” as if that resurrected the repealed penal law, and then convicted without identifying the written law in force that created the offences and the penalties.

“Criminal judgment is lawful only if three things exist together: a living charge, a court that actually has that charge before it, and a written law still in force that creates both the offence and the penalty. Remove any one and the conviction has no legal floor.”

The lawyer faulted what he described as the reliance on a savings clause to convict the IPOB leader under a repealed law, arguing that while proceedings can survive repeal, the repealed penal law itself does not.

According to him, a savings or transitional clause may keep a pending case from collapsing the day the old statute dies but it does not bring the repealed statute back to life.

“Saving the case is not the same as identifying the written law that created the offence and the penalty on the day of conviction. That second question is imposed by Section 36(12) of the Constitution. It does not disappear because a proceeding was kept alive. Savings preserve proceedings. They do not resurrect dead penal legislation,” he argued.

Citing a pronouncement by Justice Tsammani JCA (now JSC), Chidera noted that once a court has given its final decision on a matter, its job on that matter is finished.

“In plain terms: The court has spoken; it cannot keep holding the case. On 13 October 2022 the Court of Appeal discharged Kanu and quashed the counts. That should have ended the case in that court. His right to immediate liberty under the Constitution attached at once.

“Instead, a device borrowed from civil cases — a “stay” — was used to freeze a criminal discharge. No section of the Constitution, the Court of Appeal Act, or the Court of Appeal Rules authorised that. No settled precedent supports using a civil holding pattern to keep a discharged accused person inside a dead criminal process,” he said.

Chidera went ahead to fault the Supreme Court for reviving counts in the charge sheet that were earlier quashed by the Court of Appeal.

“Winning an appeal does not automatically mean the dead counts are alive again. After a count is quashed, that charge is no longer before the trial court. A higher court may send the matter back for a fresh trial. It cannot order “continuation” as if the old charge never died. Continuation assumes the old accusation is still pending. After 13 October 2022, it was not.

“There is a second problem. A court only has power to try a case if the law gives it that power and a living charge is before it. The Supreme Court cannot hand a trial court subject-matter power that statute does not give. Framing the counts is the prosecution’s job, not the Supreme Court’s. Telling the Federal High Court to continue on quashed counts is an attempt to recreate a charge the appeal court had already killed,” the lawyer stressed.

Chidera, in the same vein, faulted the Supreme Court for allegedly treating the repealed terrorism statute — the old TPAA as “extant” and “subsisting”.

He added, “In 2022 a new law, the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, repealed the earlier terrorism legislation. The new Act contains savings and transitional clauses. Those clauses can keep a pending process from dying with the old statute. They cannot keep the old statute itself alive as the law that defines crime and punishment.

“That is why sections 97 and 98 cannot be blurred into one slogan called “the saving clause.” They do different work. On a fair reading they require the matter to be carried onto the law then in force — the new Act — not tried to the end as if the repealed Act still created the offences. The trial court ignored that command.

“The logical sequence the court refused to follow is simple: The proceeding may survive repeal. The repealed Act remains dead. Therefore the court must identify the written law still in force that supplies the offence and the penalty.

Section 36(12) must be satisfied at the moment of conviction. The court stopped at step 1 and treated it as an answer to steps 2, 3 and 4. That is the error.”

According to him, the action of the courts violated Section 122 of the Evidence Act, which requires a court to take judicial notice of what the written law is — including the fact that a statute has been repealed.

“In substance the court refused that notice and proceeded as if the dead Act still defined crime and penalty. Section 36(12) of the Constitution is blunt. No person shall be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence and the penalty are written in a law in force. A conviction in 2025 built on the architecture of a repealed Act collides with that clause,” he said.

The lawyer said the pending appeal requires that the court should explain the laws relied on in framing the conviction.

“Show us the law that brought the quashed counts back into existence. Show us the law that made a repealed penal statute still in force. Show us the written law that defined the offences and the penalties on the day of conviction,” Chidera insisted.

‘How various courts broke the law in Nnamdi Kanu’s case’ – Lawyer