It is impossible that Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and director of Radio Biafra, tendered an apology to President Muhammadu Buhari, his lawyer, Vincent Obetta, has said.

Speaking with TheCable on Wednesday, Obetta said reports of Kanu’s apology were proof that government was trying to use all instruments at its disposal to “puncture” the Biafra campaigner’s defence. “It is not true,” he said. “The government is using every instrument to puncture what we are doing.”

The Department of State Services (DSS) arraigned Kanu in court in October. Shuaibu Usman, presiding over the chief magistrate court, Wuse zone 2, Abuja, had earlier discharged him on all counts of criminal conspiracy and ownership of an unlawful society brought against him by the federal government. The federal government then filed a fresh five-count charge of treasonable felony against Kanu, after Adeniyi Ademola, a justice of the federal high court, Abuja, ordered the DSS to release him “unconditionally”.

In his ruling, Ademola held that the continued detention of Kanu by the DSS was unlawful, since the accused was yet to be charged on suspicion of terrorism. Speaking before the federal high court the following day, Kanu said he has lost confidence in the court’s abilities to give an order and have the authorities follow it, asking the court to leave him in detention. “I will rather remain in detention than subject myself to a trial that I know amounts to perversion of justice,” he had said.

•Text courtesy ofTheCable.Photo shows Nnamdi Kanu.