Nnamdi Kanu: Ozekhome, Ejiofor should explain why they ignored irregularities – Defence team

The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu’s defence team has said his former lawyers, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, and Mike Ejiofor, should explain why they ignored irregularities in the charge sheet on which the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, leader was prosecuted.

The defence team made the demand on Sunday in a statement issued by a lawyer, Christopher Chidera Esq. The statement described the charge sheet as a legal corpse, arguing that the trial and conviction was based on a repealed law.

According to the defence team, the Supreme Court had pronounced that the charge sheet is the foundation of criminal jurisdiction and without a valid charge, there is no trial, no jurisdiction, and nothing upon which a conviction can rest.

“These are binding pronouncements from the highest court in the land. Yet the previous legal team, Ifeanyi Ejiofor and Mike Ozekhome, SAN, never forced the trial court to confront the plain face of the charge sheet.

“On 13 October 2022, the Court of Appeal delivered a unanimous judgment that should have ended the matter forever. The charges were quashed. The trial court was stripped of jurisdiction. The case was over,” the statement said.

Stressing that the law under which Kanu was charged had been repealed, it pointed out that the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act 2013, the  statute underpinning Counts 1 to 6 in the charge sheet was repealed in 2022 by the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act 2022.

The defence team also pointed out that Section 36(12) of the Constitution stated that a person shall not be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence is defined and the penalty therefore prescribed in a written law.

It further noted that Kanu, when he took up his own defence before Justice James Omotosho, argued that there was no charge against him that exists in any current Nigerian statute.

According to the statement, Kanu’s previous legal team had every opportunity to raise the same objections over obvious defects in the charge sheet, including failure to identify where the alleged broadcasts occurred, and refusal to amend defective counts as ordered by the Supreme Court.

“Yet Ejiofor and Ozekhome never pressed these issues with the vigour required. They never held the trial court to the Supreme Court’s own guidelines. They never insisted on the plain face of the charge sheet.

“One failure allowed an extinguished criminal process to be kept artificially alive through a civil stay. Another failure allowed a trial to proceed on a charge sheet that contained no living law. These are not minor lapses. They are successive jurisdictional collapses that a diligent defence was obligated to prevent.

“A man who had been discharged by a superior court remained in custody, was later tried on a dead charge sheet, and was convicted. That sequence did not begin with the government alone. It was enabled by the failure of those paid to protect his liberty.

“The Kanu family, the legal profession, and the Nigerian public deserve answers. Ifeanyi Ejiofor and Mike Ozekhome, SAN, must explain why they failed to act when the law was clear, the client had warned them, and freedom hung in the balance,” the statement added.