By CHARLES IWUOHA

The defence team of leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnandi Kanu, has warned that the Abuja Federal High Court judgment which convicted the agitator should not be allowed to set a precedent in Nigeria’s legal system.

A member of the defence team, Barrister Njoku Jude Njoku, made the assertion in a statement on Wednesday, stating that the judgment has demonstrated that “Nigeria’s judiciary is at war with its own laws”.

Kanu was convicted for terrorism, and sentenced to life imprisonment by the court presided by Justice James Omotosho on November 20, 2025.

He has since been moved to the Sokoto Correctional Centre, where he is serving the life sentence.

Shortly after his conviction, the IPOB leader’s lawyers had vowed to appeal the judgment. Also, some opinion leaders, particularly in the South-East, have called for a political solution to the matter.

However, Kanu’s defence team have been picking holes in the verdict. In the statement made available to journalists in Umuahia on Wednesday, Njoku, who spoke on behalf of the Mazi Nnandi Kanu Global Defence Consortium, said the manner of Kanu’s conviction shows there is something wrong in Nigeria’s judicial system.

Kanu and his defence team had argued that the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act 2013, under which he was charged, had been repealed by the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition Act) 2022.

Njoku faulted the judge for convicting Kanu with what he described as a “repealed law”.

The statement said: “There are moments in every nation’s legal history when a single court ruling forces the country to confront an uncomfortable question. Are we a nation governed by laws, or by the moods and improvisations of those who interpret them?

“Justice Binta Nyako’s court produced one such moment in 2017. Now, Justice Omotosho of the Federal High Court has produced another. At the center of this legal storm is one man, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, and one disturbing judicial choice – to insist on conducting a criminal trial under a repealed law.

“In any country that claims to operate under the rule of law, this would not even be a debate. The Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013 was repealed by the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act 2022.

It is a matter of record.

“Yet in ruling after ruling—both in the no-case submission and the final judgment—Justice Omotosho never once took judicial notice of this repeal.

Instead, he inserted the now infamous phrase – “Assuming, without conceding, that the TPAA is repealed”.

“One does not “assume” a repeal. One acknowledges it as a matter of law. The Evidence Act mandates courts to take judicial notice of all enacted laws.

Supreme Court decisions—from NNPC v Fawehinmi to Abacha v Fawehinmi—state clearly that failure to take judicial notice of the law vitiates proceedings.”

Njoku added that those justifying the judgment have clung to Section 98(3) of TPPA “like a drowning man to driftwood”, insisting it allows the judge to proceed under TPAA as if TPPA never existed.

Describing the argument as intellectually dishonest, the lawyer noted that savings clauses do not and have never resurrected dead statutes.

He cited case laws, including AG Lagos v Dosunmu, Uwaifo v AG Bendel abs Afolabi v Governor of Osun State to stress that a repealed statute cannot be used to impose new liabilities or sustain ongoing proceedings unless properly migrated.

“You cannot run a 2024 trial under a 2013 law simply because both once dealt with terrorism. If this logic stood, Nigeria could still conduct trials under the 1979 Constitution, military decrees from 1998 or even colonial ordinances,” the statement said.

The lawyer blamed the confusion on a pronouncement of the Supreme Court.

“It is no secret in legal circles that the Supreme Court’s December 2023 judgment created the confusion Justice Omotosho is now exploiting. In what can only be described as a per incuriam oversight, the Court declared that TPAA and CEMA were “extant” when both had been repealed.

“That single line has now become a shield for judicial stubbornness. But even the Supreme Court cannot breathe life into a repealed statute. If they made an error, the remedy is clarification—not perpetuation.”

Warning that the issue is not just about Kanu, the defence team noted that every Nigerian is vulnerable is a judge can ignore the Constitution, the Evidence Act, binding judicial precedents and an extant federal statute.

If a repealed law can be used today because a judge “assumes without conceding” that it was repealed, then no one is safe from arbitrary prosecution. When legality becomes negotiable, liberty becomes expendable,” the statement said, adding that Kanu had to be convicted because admitting the mistake would unravel the entire trial and embarrass the judicial establishment.

The statement added, ”Instead of correcting the error, the system doubles down. Instead of acknowledging illegality, it manufactures logic to justify it. Instead of upholding justice, it protects institutional ego. Meanwhile, one man—whether you support his politics or not—sits in solitary confinement, his liberty suspended, his health deteriorating, all because the system prefers stubbornness over justice.

“A judiciary that refuses to obey its own laws is not a court of justice. It is a court of convenience. Justice Omotosho’s ruling must not be allowed to stand—not because of politics, but because of precedent. If this judicial experiment is permitted to settle into law, Nigeria will wake up one day to find that statutes no longer matter, repeals no longer matter,

Jurisdiction no longer matters, and due process is whatever a judge says it is. That is the road to judicial anarchy.”

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