Nnamdi Kanu: Lawyer accuses NBA of engaging in jamboree ‘while criminal justice burns’

A lawyer, Christopher Chidera, has slammed the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, for failing to speak up and intervene in what he described as injustice and unfair trial of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu.

Chidera, a member of the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Legal Consortium, said the NBA has become a spectator to the destruction of the criminal justice system in Nigeria. The lawyer made the assertion in a letter addressed to the leadership of the NBA, and copied to the International Bar Association, IBA.

The NBA is currently holding its annual convention in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, with about 23,000 legal practitioners from across Nigeria said to be in attendance.

Frowning at the NBA’s silence on Kanu’s case, Chidera accused the association of cowardice.

He said, “The NBA is holding a jamboree while criminal justice burns. As you wine and dine at the NBA jamboree in Port Harcourt, the foundations of Nigerian criminal justice are being set ablaze in Abuja.

“And the most disgraceful part is not merely that this is happening. It is that the Nigerian Bar Association is watching it happen and has chosen silence. This is no longer professional neutrality. It is cowardice. This is no longer respectable silence. It is complicity by silence.”

He expressed concern that the NBA that once produced Gani Fawehinmi, “the fearless lawyer who understood that the first duty of the Bar is to confront power when power becomes lawless”, has been reduced to a toothless professional establishment, more interested in jamborees, titles, access and proximity to power than in defending the foundations upon which the legal profession itself stands.

Highlighting injustice in Kanu’s trial, he noted that on 13 October 2022, the Court of Appeal discharged the IPOB leader, quashing the charges against him. According to him, for eight days no appeal or stay of execution was filed by the Nigerian government against the judgment.

“For eight days, the judgment stood and Mazi Nnamdi Kanu remained entitled to the consequence of that judgment: his liberty.

“Then, eight days later, an unprecedented procedural manoeuvre appeared. A civil stay of execution was obtained against the effect of a criminal appellate discharge. That sequence should shock the conscience of every criminal lawyer in Nigeria,” Chidera said.

He stressed that the Court of Appeal’s decision amounted to a criminal discharge by a superior court, which meant that Kanu should have been freed.

“Yet a civil stay was deployed to prevent the immediate effect of that criminal judgment from operating,” he noted.

He added that before the discharge by the Court of Appeal, Kanu had already endured approximately 14 months of illegal detention without charge following his extraordinary rendition to Nigeria.

“A citizen was held in custody while the State had not placed him before the court on a valid charge. The Constitution was not silent on the subject. The law was not silent. Yet the Nigerian legal establishment largely watched,” he added.

The lawyer in the same vein faulted the NBA for keeping silent when the court failed to sanction the DSS and the then Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, Abubakar Malami, SAN, following contempt proceedings brought against them for disobeying the Court of Appeal judgment.

“A court helping a contemnor circumvent a final appellate order is beyond reprehensible. And the Nigerian Bar Association should have said so,” he noted.

Stressing that the NBA has a duty to answer, Chidera added, “The Nigerian Bar Association cannot continue to pretend that this is merely another case involving a controversial defendant. The question is not whether you support Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The question is whether the law applies to him. The question is whether an appellate criminal discharge means what it says.

“The question is whether the government can disobey a court order and then obtain judicial protection from the consequences of its disobedience. The question is whether a contemnor can be rewarded with judicial indulgence. The question is whether a functus officio court can be made to act through procedural ingenuity. And the question is whether the Nigerian Bar Association has the courage to confront these questions.”

Chidera urged the NBA to resurrect the spirit of Gani Fawehinmi, noting that the late legal icon held government to account over all manners of injustice.

Condemning the silence of the NBA, the lawyer added, “The watchdog has become a lapdog. NBA, where is your conscience? Where is the Nigerian Bar Association?”