By CHARLES IWUOHA

The Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium has described the trial of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), as a calculated effort to force conviction in absence of law.

The consortium, a group of lawyers fighting for the freedom of the agitator, made the claim in a statement signed by Barrister Onyedikachi Ifedi, said the Nigerian government prosecution lawyers “engineered a trial without law” in Kanu’s case.

Kanu was on November 20, 2025 sentenced to life imprisonment by an Abuja Federal High Court presided by Justice James Omotosho, following his conviction on terrorism charges. The IPOB leader is currently serving the sentence at the Sokoto Prison.

Kanu’s lawyers have commenced moves to appeal the conviction and in a statement on Saturday, the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium faulted the trial, noting that the prosecution did not specify the law on which the IPOB leader was prosecuted and convicted.

“It was a calculated effort to force a conviction to survive the absence of law,” the statement said, highlighting what transpired during the proceedings on November 4, 2025, when Kanu took up his own defence.

“On 4 November 2025, a Nigerian Federal High Court sat in Abuja and did something unprecedented in modern constitutional practice. It continued a criminal trial without identifying the law under which the accused was being tried, admitted that the Constitution forbids conviction without such a law, deferred the issue to “final address”, and then abolished final address altogether.

“It was institutional intransigence — a judge and a prosecutor working in tandem to avoid the law,” the statement said.

The defence team observed that throughout the proceedings of 4 November 2025, Kanu asked one question, repeatedly, insistently; “My Lord, please show me the law under which I am being tried.”

“It is the most basic question in criminal justice. And the court never answered it,” the statement said, adding that a”t no point on 4 November, 2025 did Justice Omotosho name an extant statute; identify an operative section; explain which law survived repeal; or state which written law justified detention.”

The defence team argued that the trial did not comply with Section 36(12) of the Constitution which stipulates that no person shall be tried or convicted unless the offence is defined by written law.

“Trial itself is barred where no law exists. You do not “get to defence first” and then check if a crime exists. Detention without law becomes lawful under this logic, which is constitutionally impossible. This was not ignorance.

“It was a deliberate re-engineering of the Constitution to keep the trial alive,” the statement noted.

The defence team equally faulted the argument that nobody came before court to give evidence of extraordinary rendition.

Faulting the claim the defence team said: “This is demonstrably false on the record because rendition was pleaded on affidavit; appellate courts had ruled on It; Omotosho cited the same Kenyan judgment that condemned extraordinary rendition yet stated nothing about extraordinary rendition was placed before him; the Supreme Court itself (Agim JSC concurring) described it as state criminality”.

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