By CHARLES IWUOHA

A legal expert, Okezie Duruji, has said the Nigerian Government's prosecution lawyers adopted silence as a strategy in response to objections raised by the IPOB leader during his trial before the Abuja Federal High Court.

Specifically, Duruji, a member of the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Defence Consortium, pointed out that the prosecution failed to respond to a preliminary objection filed by Kanu challenging the jurisdiction of the Abuja Federal High Court to try him.

In a statement on Thursday, Duruji insisted that the prosecution's failure to respond to the objections means that Kanu's affidavit should have been admitted as unchallenged by the court.

"Before 4 November 2025, Kanu had filed a flagship Preliminary Objection (16 October 2025) supported by sworn affidavit evidence, raising repeal and subsistence of the charging law;

Section 36(12) CFRN; extraordinary rendition; want of jurisdiction.

"There was no response from the prosecution. No counter-affidavit. No written address. No oral response. No preliminary objection in reply. Total prosecutorial default.

"Under settled law unchallenged affidavit evidence stands admitted," Duruji observed, claiming that the prosecution opted to remain silent because it did not have any answers to the issues raised by Kanu.

Faulting what he described as "prosecutorial silence as a strategy", the lawyer highlighted what transpired during proceedings on November 4, 2025, when Kanu defended himself in court.

He said: "Faced with direct, repeated, legally precise challenges from the Defendant — challenges that went to the existence of the offence, the subsistence of the law, and the jurisdiction of the court — the prosecution did nothing: no reply, no counter-affidavit, no oral confrontation, no identification of the governing statute, no opposition on substance.

"This was not incompetence alone. It was complicity through silence."

According to Duruji, the record of proceedings shows that Kanu "destroyed the prosecution by forcing it to confront the law — then watching it refuse to do so."

Duruji further claimed that the prosecution failed by allegedly not identifying the law that created the offence.

He added: "In any criminal trial, the prosecution has one irreducible duty, to identify the law creating the offence and justify the court’s jurisdiction.

"On 4 November 2025, the prosecution did not perform this duty once. Not once did he identify the extant offence-creating statute; respond to the repeal/subsistence argument; clarify which law governed the trial; counter section 36(12) CFRN."

Duruji further argued that the prosecution opted to adopt the strategy of silence because any substantive response would have forced it "to identify a repealed statute; or admit no extant law existed; or concede jurisdiction had collapsed."

"Silence was the only safe option. A prosecution that cannot speak the law has already lost.

"Mazi Nnamdi Kanu did not merely defend himself on 4 November 2025. He exposed the prosecution’s emptiness; forced constitutional questions onto the record;

demonstrated that the state had no law to stand on."

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