Lawyers to the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) , Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, have threatened to withdraw from his ongoing terrorism trial, if the Department of State Services (DSS) denied them full access to Kanu.
Kanu has been in their custody for about two years.
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While addressing newsmen in Abuja yesterday, the lead counsel to the IPOB leader, Alloy Ejimakor, said the legal team would not engage in any process that would bring injustice to Kanu.
“We will not participate in the assassination of justice in a Nigerian court over the head of Nnamdi Kanu. We will refuse to be part of the programmed injustice,” he said.
He condemned the action of the DSS to deny access to Kanu by his legal team, which made it difficult to adequately prepare for his defence in the case of terrorism charges leveled against him by the federal government.
Earlier, another member of Kanu’s legal team, Nnaemeka Ejiofor, said the government’s illegal rendition of Kanu from Kanya was an international crime committed by federal government using its security forces.
He said, “If Nigeria were a human being, she would have been sent to prison for committing the heinous crime.”
“The federal government sent people to Kenya to kidnap Kanu; these people should be arrested and punished.
“Unless Nigeria frees itself from the crime of Kanu kidnapping, it will remain a criminal country,” he said, adding that Kanu never committed a crime and therefore did nothing to justify his “persecution by the Nigerian government,” he said.
According to Ejiofor, calling for self-determination and a referendum is not a crime that should lead to the imprisonment of the IPOB leader.
He said Nigeria currently does not have a valid constitution to rely on, pointing out that the 1999 constitution was an extension of the decree of the military junta in power at the time.
“To avoid a vacuum, we manage it as a country and yet the government does not respect it until the people of Nigeria come together to decide whether it should exist as a nation. There can be no Nigeria there,” he added.
Ejiofor stressed the need for a review of the 1999 Constitution, which he said Nigerians were forced to adopt.
He claimed that Kanu was in detention at the direction of the federal government, thereby violating the court’s order, particularly the decision of the Supreme Court, which found that Kanu’s detention had no basis or leg to stand.