The family of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has called for the sanction of the Chief Judges of the Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho and Justice Binta Nyako, over alleged disobedience to court orders.
The family said the flagrant disobedience of valid court orders by Justices Tsoho and Nyako as presiding judges has brought the judiciary into disrepute.
In a statement signed by his brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, on behalf of the family on Sunday in Abuja and made available to journalists, key judicial pronouncements from Nigerian courts and international bodies were highlighted, all ruling in favour of Kanu’s release.
Kanu commended the timely intervention of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kudirat Motonmori Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun, in ensuring that the decade-long trial of the IPOB leader is duly reassigned to a competent judge devoid of bias.
He stated: “Whilst we welcome the timely intervention of the Honourable Chief Justice of Nigeria in ensuring that the decade-long sham trial of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is duly assigned to a competent judge untainted by bias or one that openly and unashamedly panders to tribal sentiments or exhibits the tendency to succumb to executive manipulation.
“We find it shocking that it required the involvement of the conscious public and that of the most senior judicial officer in Nigeria for Binta Nyako to obey her own order of recusal made in her own court.
“In any sane country that takes adherence to the rule of law seriously, both John Tsoho, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, and Binta Nyako, the presiding judge who made the recusal order, ought to be sanctioned for bringing the judiciary into disrepute.
“Is it not bizarre that a judge blatantly refuses to obey a court order? A chief judge who seeks to set aside a valid court order through a phantom memo (written note) and a presiding judge who blatantly refuses to honor an order she enrolled in her own court have no business being on the bench.
“It is even more shocking that some poorly informed, self-appointed defenders of judicial impunity in Nigeria would dare argue on the pages of newspapers and in media interviews that a judge can ignore a valid court order. Shocking!
“At the heart of this long-running saga is the attempt by the Nigerian state to criminalize self-determination, which is a right guaranteed by law.
“If people were to take the time to study the origin of the persecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and the travails he continues to endure, they would understandably conclude that the illegal and criminal proscription of IPOB in Abuja courts by haters of the Igbo race is not far removed from what transpired prior to the unleashing of the pogrom and genocidal war that claimed five million Igbo lives in 1966.
“The same way the 1966 coup was tagged an ‘Igbo coup’ and used as a cover to unleash the Holocaust on the Biafra nation, is how they aim to use the cover of terrorism (IPOB proscription) to eliminate the youthful population of the East and jail Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
“The purveyors of this false narrative that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is the leader of an outlawed group have never asked themselves how a court of law in the same Abuja found that IPOB is not an unlawful group. Instead of appealing the decision, Abubakar Malami went to the chambers of his fellow Fulani and hater of the Igbo race, Justice Kafarati, to declare IPOB a terrorist organization without following due process as outlined in the Nigerian Constitution.
“Today, traducers of Biafra’s self-determination have latched onto this illegal ex-parte proscription order to charge Mazi Nnamdi Kanu with facilitating terrorism, while completely ignoring that the same Abuja court ruled IPOB is not an unlawful group. Selective obedience and disobedience to court orders is the issue Nigeria faces in this case, and we must all confront it.
“This matter has only just begun, and by the time this sham trial is finished, the Nigerian judiciary and its injudicious selective justice will be exposed for the world to see. The damage the Nigerian judiciary is about to suffer will be indelible in the minds of the populace.”
He added that no common law society can hope to use an outcome in a civil suit to confer criminal liability on an accused person, insisting that the proscription of IPOB, upon which the charges are based, was made in a civil process without fair hearing, and therefore cannot stand.
