The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) on Friday described the life sentence handed down to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, as unacceptable, arguing that it effectively amounts to a life sentence for the entire Igbo race.
MASSOB leader Uchenna Madu stated that the court’s decision would not weaken the struggle for Biafra.
Madu said, “President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has finally set Nigeria on irredeemable fire. He has finally shot the Nigerian State on its deteriorated foundation.”
He added that the judgment was “not justice but a vengeance from a man playing the script loaded with pathological hatred and jealousy against Ndigbo using Nnamdi Kanu as a standard for Igbo attack.”
He continued: “We saw the unpretended and open anger and tribalistic nature of Justice James Omotosho during his biased ruling, sentencing Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to prison.
“Nigeria sentenced Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to life in prison for words spoken from foreign soil after illegally kidnapping him from Kenya, ignoring a United Nations ruling demanding his release, and prosecuting him under a law that no longer exists.
“Just a few days earlier, on November 18, Boko Haram co-founder and a chief Islamic terrorist commander, Mamman Nur, responsible for over 2,000 deaths of Nigerian citizens, was sentenced to just five years in prison.
“In Nigeria today, words from London carry a heavier penalty than mass murder. The real crime of Mazi was his bold exposure of the radical Islamic jihad consuming Nigeria and the government’s symbiotic relationship with the Islamic jihadists.
“It is further evidence of the brutal, lawless, totalitarian nature of this genocidal regime of a clueless president”.
MASSOB noted that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was seized in Kenya in 2021, not extradited, but illegally rendered.
“Kenyan High Court Justice Anthony Mrima, in June 2025, delivered in his judgment that the abduction and rendition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was a blatant violation of his fundamental rights.
“MASSOB was aware that the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, in their opinion released in both 2022 and 2025, stated that the deprivation of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s liberty is arbitrary.
“They maintained that the appropriate remedy is his immediate release.
“Even the United States of America has never designated IPOB as a terrorist organisation.
“The U.S. State Department, on record since 2017, have stated that the United States of America has not considered IPOB as a terrorist organisation
“Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was charged under a repealed anti-terror law, with no savings clause for pending cases.
“This injustice is not against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, it is against Ndigbo”.
