Kanu’s family wants judges sanctioned over alleged court disobedience

Family of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has called for the sanction of the Chief Judge of Federal High Court, Justice John Tsoho, and Justice Binta Nyako over alleged disobedience to court orders.

The family said the flagrant disobedience to court orders by Justice Tsoho and Nyako as presiding judges had brought the judiciary into disrepute. A statement, signed yesterday in Abuja by his brother, Emmanuel Kanu, on behalf of the family and made available to journalists, highlighted key judicial pronouncements from Nigerian courts and international bodies, all of which, it claimed ruled in favour of Kanu’s release.

Kanu, however, commended the timely intervention of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kudirat Motonmori Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun, in ensuring that the decade-long trial was duly re-assigned to a competent judge.

He stated: “We welcome the timely intervention of the 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.

“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 order of recusal made in her 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, that made the recusal order ought to be sanctioned for bringing the judiciary into disrepute.”