Nnamdi Kanu: Court acted like tribunal determined to convict at all costs – Lawyer

Amid the controversy over the delay in listing the appeal filed by Nnamdi Kanu to challenge his conviction, a lawyer,

Onyedikachi Ifedi, has said the trial court acted like a tribunal that was bent on convicting the IPOB leader at all costs.

Kanu’s family and his lawyers have accused the Nigerian government of running from the courtroom after it emerged that the prosecution has also refused to file a response to the appeal.

The Indigenous People of Biafra has threatened a boycott of the 2027 election in the South-East and other ‘Biafra territories’ if the appeal is not listed for hearing.

Reacting to the unfolding developments in a statement on Saturday, Ifedi said, “The record of this trial does not read like a court seeking truth or lawfulness. It reads like a tribunal operating under a predetermined directive, where the statute book was treated as an inconvenient obstacle to be bypassed.”

The lawyer said the court presided by Justice James Omotosho abandoned the constitution by allegedly refusing to “show the law”, as requested by Kanu during the trial.

“The commentators who mocked Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s demand—“My Lord, show me the law”—thought they were ridiculing a pro se defendant. In truth, they were cheering Justice Omotosho’s public execution of the Nigerian Constitution. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was right. Justice J.K. Omotosho owed him that answer as a basic constitutional prerequisite. Instead, the trial court chose defiance, shielding a dead law from the light of the statute book to secure a pre-engineered conviction,” he said.

According to him, the court violated the provisions of Section 36(12) of the 1999 Constitution which stipulated that no person shall be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence and penalty stand in a written law in force at the time of conviction.

He added, “Which written law was in force on 20 November 2025? It was not the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013 (TPAA). The National Assembly executed and buried that statute in May 2022. The only written law in force on conviction day was the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 (TPPA).

“Justice Omotosho did not convict under the living law of the land. He convicted on a legal corpse. The Constitution does not care what law was on the books when the state began its hunt; it demands to know what law exists on the day the judge pronounces “guilty.” By sentencing a man under a dead statute, the court committed an unpardonable constitutional violation.”

Ifedi also accused the court of violating Section 36(6)(a) of the Constitution. He said, “After forcing an unrepresented defendant to navigate his own defence, the court systematically refused to inform him, in detail, of the case he was meeting under any extant statute. The charge sheet named one non-existent law and six other legal fiction; the judge protected the lie.”

Ifedi noted that under Section 122 of the Evidence Act 2011, judicial notice of the laws of Nigeria is mandatory. According to him, the court must know the law and the judge does not need a party to bring the Official Gazette as he is sworn to embody it.

“When an unrepresented defendant stood alone and explicitly demanded that the court take judicial notice of the 2022 repeal, Justice Omotosho performed a masterpiece of judicial gymnastics. In his judgment, he claimed to “assume without conceding” that the 2013 Act was repealed. A judge does not “assume” the repeal of a penal statute; he acknowledges it or he violates his oath as a judge. To “assume” repeal while continuing to convict under the repealed text is pure intellectual dishonesty—keeping a dead statute alive just long enough to pass a life sentence,” he said.

“Worse still was the hypocrisy. The trial court had no trouble taking judicial notice of an ex parte administrative order to brand IPOB a proscribed group. The court gladly opened its eyes to notice what helped the state, but struck itself blind when asked to notice that the prosecution’s charge sheet was a legal nullity.”

Citing Ogbomor v. The State & Nwankwoala v. FRN, the lawyer stressed that the Supreme Court had pronounced that when an accused is tried under a repealed, non-existent law, the entire trial is an absolute nullity, no matter how many months or years were wasted conducting it or the amount of evidence.

Also pointing to A.G. Lagos v. Dosunmu, he said, “A repealed statute is dead. You cannot erect a lawful conviction upon a legal void.”

The lawyer, in the same vein, alleged that the court violated the directives of the National Assembly in the manner it handled the trial.

He said, “The National Assembly did not leave room for judicial discretion. Sections 97 and 98(2) of the TPPA 2022 issued an unequivocal statutory command: pending proceedings from the repealed TPAA 2013 shall be migrated and continued under the new Act TPPA 2022.

“Section 98(3) TPPA—a standard savings clause preserving accrued liabilities—does not create a parallel universe where repealed laws remain active for conviction. A savings clause saves liabilities; it does not resurrect dead statutes to override Section 36(12) of the Constitution.

“Justice Omotosho openly defied the National Assembly’s mandate. He did not migrate the trial. He did not amend the charge sheet. He did not re-arraign the defendant or take a fresh plea under the living 2022 Act. He kept the dead statute in the dock, went through the motions of a trial, and called it justice.

“One judicial slip is an error. Two might be incompetence. But a triple stack of deliberate evasions—ignoring the Constitution, suffocating the Evidence Act, and defying the statutory command of the 2022 Act—is not an error. It is judicial rebellion. You do not refuse to tell a pro se defendant the law he is answering, you do not refuse to notice that the charge is built on a dead Act, and you do not refuse to migrate the case as commanded by the National Assembly, unless the verdict was written before the trial ever began.”