Nnamdi Kanu Jail Update: Discharged And Not Acquitted, Arrest And Charges

Nnamdi Kanu Jail Update; Nigeria’s Appeal Court has removed all charges against a British-Nigerian political activist after ruling that he had been illegally arrested abroad.

They had previously detained Mr. Kanu on treason and terrorism-related charges and said that the government would seek other legal options. 

But now the decision is made by a three-person panel led by Justice Jummai Hanatu, who acquitted Kanu of all the allegations against him, even ordering his release from detention.

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Nnamdi Kanu Arrest And Charges

The Federal High Court charged Nnamdi Kanu in Abuja on eight of the 15 counts. He was accused of various offenses, including treasonable felony and terrorism, violations he allegedly did during his separatist campaigns.

At first in 2015, Mr. Kanu was arrested over his protester activities and was re-arraigned before three different federal court judges in Abuja. It was from the first set of charges filed against him and his former co-defendants on December 18, 2015.

He was arrested again and was forced to return to Nigeria from Kenya in June 2021, which his lawyers termed “extraordinary rendition.”

After that, the judge said Mr. Kanu’s arrest in Kenya and extradition to Nigeria obliged the order in 2018 for Mr. Kanu’s detention to face trial after he jumped bail in September 2017.

Nnamdi Kanu Jail Update: Discharged And Not Acquitted

“Nnamdi Kanu was only discharged and not acquitted,” said a spokesperson for Attorney General Abubakar Malami, so it looks unlikely officials will free him soon.

They also said that the court’s decision was based only on Mr. Kanu’s handover and did not apply charges that predate it, which “remain valid issues for judicial determination.”

The court mentioned that Nigeria is a signatory to the OAU Convention that it duly approved, as well as the Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, and a wanted person could be transferred from one country to the other.

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Nnamdi Kanu Early Activism

Nnamdi Kanu started his activism for the freedom of Biafra when he worked as Radio Biafra director and anchor of Biafra awareness under Ralph Uwazuruike.

Ralph Uwazuruike, the leading figure of the Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), said in a meeting with Kaduna that he handed over Radio Biafra to Nnamdi Kanu.

Kanu was an unknown figure until 2009, when he started Radio Biafra, a station that called for an independent state for the Igbo people and broadcast to Nigeria from London.

Not only that, he founded IPOB in 2014. The sole purpose of IPOB is to retain the separatist state of Biafra, which was in Nigeria’s Eastern Region during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970.

On September 5, 2015, Nnamdi Kanu appeared as a guest speaker at the World Igbo Congress, telling his audience, “we need guns, and we need bullets.”