A lawyer representing Nnamdi Kanu, Barrister Njoku Jude Njoku, asserted that the Supreme Court’s December 15, 2023, decision to remit the IPOB leader’s terrorism trial was an unconstitutional error, arguing that his earlier acquittal by the Court of Appeal should have definitively ended the case.
A lawyer representing the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to remit Kanu’s terrorism trial back to the Abuja Federal High Court. Barrister Njoku Jude Njoku, Consultant to the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium, asserted in a recent statement that the apex court’s ruling on December 15, 2023, violated the core principles of common law.
Njoku argues that the Court of Appeal’s acquittal of Kanu on October 13, 2022, had already extinguished the charges and conferred constitutional immunity under Section 36(9).
He labeled the Supreme Court’s action as a “blatant constitutional perversity,” stating: “The Supreme Court’s decision of 15 December 2023, purporting to remit a charge already extinguished by the Court of Appeal’s lawful discharge of 13 October 2022, constitutes a blatant constitutional perversity that strikes at the very foundation of the rule of law and offends the universal, inviolable Doctrine of Finality of Appellate Discharge, a bedrock principle of common-law jurisprudence recognised across the globe.”
Njoku concluded that Kanu is now “constitutionally untouchable for the same offences, the prosecution was extinguished at its root, and jurisdiction to retry him permanently lost.” Kanu’s team maintains that the prosecution has no case against him.