Detained Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, has announced that he won’t, both now and ever, face any trial conducted by any judge or court without jurisdiction or whose jurisdiction does not pass constitutional muster.

He said that this decision would stand even “if it will take the rest of my life in detention to produce me before a proper and impartial court, so be it.”

Kanu, who has been facing trial since his extraordinary rendition from Kenya in 2021, announced this in his “Open Letter to the General Public,” dated February 14, 2025, which was sent to The Guardian by the head of his legal team, Aloy Ejimakor.

He stated, “On September 24, 2024, I decided that I have had enough of taking my chances at getting justice from a judge that, in June 2021, sent me to secret police detention without fair hearing, later refused to transfer me to prison to better prepare for my trial, and capped it all by refusing to restore my bail. Instead, she ordered an accelerated trial in the face of the reality that I will never get a fair trial whilst detained at the DSS.

“These are the major reasons that compelled me to request the recusal of the judge, and having consented to it, she proceeded to make an order removing herself from my case. That order has never been challenged on appeal; thus, it remains extant to this day.

“But instead of the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court doing the lawful thing by assigning my case to another judge, he connived with the federal government to eat crow and send my case to a judge that stands recused by a valid order.”

Kanu, who concluded this Open Letter by making it clear that it should in no way be construed to mean that there are no decent judges in Nigeria who can be trusted to deliver even-handed justice in his case, stated that this is not the issue.
He added, “Instead, the issue is that my case is deliberately being shielded from judges and justices that are deemed to be committed to doing justice even when it means that the federal government must lose.”

According to Kanu, he has been compelled by the events of the past few days to take the unusual step of writing this Open Letter for the singular purpose of calling the attention of the general public to the serial executive and judicial fraud being perpetrated against him since his extraordinary rendition in 2021. The details are as follows:

In a judgement entered on March 1, 2017, the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled that “IPOB is not an unlawful group.” At the time, this ruling received widespread publicity.

He said, “This landmark ruling (made by the court before it turned unjust) emanated in a criminal proceeding that required ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt,’ in which the federal government and I presented our respective cases. The federal government did not go on appeal as the law mandated (if they were dissatisfied with the judgment). This abominable incident was the earliest sign yet that the government and its judiciary have struck an unholy and fraudulent alliance to deny me my rights and thereby imperil the lives and liberty of millions who identify with IPOB.”

He stated that on October 26, 2022, a Federal High Court declared his extraordinary rendition and detention unconstitutional, stating that his manner of arrest and detention in Kenya, his continued detention in Abuja, his subjection to physical and mental trauma by the respondents, and the inhuman and degrading treatment meted out to him amounted to a “brazen violation of his fundamental right to dignity of person and a threat to life under Section 34(1)(a) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).”

Recalling that the court further ordered the federal government to apologize to him and pay compensation, Kanu argued that “this judgment is sufficient to have ended my lengthy detention and encouraged the federal government to constructively engage me on the issue of the self-determination agitation that triggered this whole saga.”

Concluding, Kanu said that his case is “deliberately being shielded from judges and justices that are deemed to be committed to doing justice even when it means that the federal government must lose. Be that as it may, if it will take the rest of my life in detention to produce me before a proper and impartial court, so be it. But let me say this for the world to know: I will not succumb to any trial conducted by any judge or court whose jurisdiction does not pass constitutional muster. Not now, not ever.”