For officially and publicly acknowledging the ‘unlawfulness’ of his extradition from Kenya to Nigeria in 2021, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, at the weekend, expressed, in writing, his profound appreciation to the Government of the United States of America (U.S.A), including its mission in Nigeria.
Kanu’s legal team leader, Aloy Ejimakor, who confirmed this to The Guardian, yesterday, said that the team acted on Kanu’s behalf by making public his statement of appreciation titled, ‘Thank you America for officially and publicly acknowledging the unlawfulness of Nnamdi Kanu’s rendition,’ stating that the U.S. acknowledgement was a demonstration of diplomatic courage.
Ejimakor, who said that his team’s attention was drawn to an official publication by the U.S. government a few days ago, which was captioned, ‘2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Nigeria.’
He further said that the U.S. government’s publication acknowledged that Nigeria’s secret police had violated Kanu’s rights during his arrest and extradition, and that Kanu was a victim of “arbitrary arrest” in June 2021.
The legal team said: “It needs to be emphasised that this laudable position, which the U.S. has waited for almost three years to take and make public, is surely well-considered and, thus, important for two reasons.”
“First, it affirms the case-in-chief we have adduced since June 2021 that Kanu was unlawfully renditioned, not lawfully extradited, and these are two opposite concepts that bear dissimilar legal implications.
“The second reason was that it is expected that, coming from a respected and influential foreign power like the U.S., this public acknowledgement will likely encourage the Government of Nigeria to also acknowledge that it had gravely violated Kanu’s inalienable human rights by subjecting him to a horrendous extraordinary rendition.
“To be sure, one way the Government of Nigeria can come clean and acknowledge this egregious wrong done to Kanu is to banish any further temptations to impunity and summon its powers and discretions under the Constitution to bring his prosecution to a close without further ado.”
Ejimakor and his team noted that this is the most sensible thing to do, considering that Kanu’s prosecution has, by effluxion of time, become attritional and questionable to boot, given that it was initiated almost a decade ago in 2015 and for alleged offences that are no longer in play.
He added that there are other cogent reasons, including the open and notorious fact that it is becoming increasingly clear that the IPOB leader may never get a fair trial by dint of the grave complications created by his detention at the Department of the State Services (DSS) facility.
