Lawyer Challenges Court Over Nnamdi Kanu Conviction.

A member of the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Defence Consortium, Barrister Njoku Jude Njoku, has maintained that the call made by the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, leader for self-defence against armed herdsmen did not amount to an act of terrorism.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Njoku declared that Kanu’s conviction on November 20, 2025, represented ‘the day evidence ceased to matter in Nigerian courts’.

Kanu received a life imprisonment sentence following his conviction on terrorism charges by the Abuja Federal High Court, which was presided over by Justice James Omotosho.

Njoku, in the statement, alleged that the court failed to consider evidence that had already been admitted on record when reaching its decision to convict Kanu.

According to the lawyer, if the judge had examined the evidence presented by Kanu’s legal team, he would have realised that the IPOB leader was not the first person to call for self-defence against attackers.

Njoku alleged that the court remained silent on the evidence submitted by the defence team.

He said, “Once evidence is admitted, it binds the judge absolutely. The conduct, protest, silence, or alleged boycott of the defendant (Mazi Nnamdi Kanu) is legally irrelevant to that obligation.

“A judge may reject defence evidence, but he must first confront it, evaluate it, and explain why it is rejected. Silence is not neutrality. Silence is suppression.

“Had Justice Omotosho evaluated the admitted video exhibit of Theophilus (TY) Danjuma, he would have been confronted with the inescapable reality that public calls for communities to arm themselves in self-defence against murderous violence were not unique to Nnamdi Kanu, nor criminalised when made by powerful establishment figures. Proper evaluation would have compelled the court to accept that Kanu’s calls for guns and bullets in Los Angeles, USA or during broadcasts were framed as community self-defence against the ravages of armed Fulani killer-herders, not incitement to lawless violence.”

He added that if the judge had examined the admitted video evidence of Governor Hope Uzodinma, “he would have known — because Uzodinma stated it publicly — that neither Nnamdi Kanu nor the IPOB had any hand in the killing of Ahmed Gulak”.

“That single evaluation would have punctured one of the most politically weaponised allegations surrounding this case,” Njoku stated, noting that statements made by Director General of the Department of State Services, DSS, Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi, which were also admitted in evidence, shows that the formation of armed vigilante groups for community defence was openly endorsed at the highest levels of Nigeria’s security establishment.

“That acknowledgement would have led inexorably to the conclusion that Kanu was right to form the Eastern Security Network, ESN, to defend Igboland when the state failed to do so.

“Had Justice Omotosho evaluated the evidence surrounding the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry Report on #EndSARS violence, he would have seen the documentary trail showing that Nnamdi Kanu repeatedly wrote to and consulted South-East governors, urging them to establish a regional security outfit similar to Amotekun. Their refusal — not Kanu’s ambition – precipitated the formation of ESN. Proper judicial evaluation would have made clear that ESN was conceptually and functionally analogous to Amotekun, differing only in political acceptance, not in purpose.

“Had Justice Omotosho reviewed and evaluated the admitted Report on #EndSARS violence, he would have been confronted with authoritative findings that squarely blamed killings and violence on the army and police — not on Nnamdi Kanu. That report decisively dismantles the lazy and dishonest attribution of nationwide violence to IPOB broadcasts and would have stripped the prosecution’s claims of moral and evidentiary legitimacy.

“Justice Omotosho would have known that attributing post–June 2021 insecurity in the South-East to Nnamdi Kanu is factually and logically impossible. From June 2021 onward, Kanu was held in underground DSS detention, incommunicado, without access to telephones, visitors, counsel, or even his wife. A man locked in solitary confinement, denied all external communication, cannot simultaneously be directing events outside detention walls,” the statement added.

Njoku criticised what he described as the failure to reconcile the alleged offences with undisputed detention timelines during the trial.

According to him, Kanu would not have been convicted if the court had evaluated the admitted evidence presented by the defence.

However, he further alleged that the court’s refusal to examine the admitted evidence was deliberate.

“It was not procedural; it was outcome-driven. The court ignored them because it was operating under an overriding imperative to convict by all means, regardless of the evidentiary record. This is the gravest danger such a judgment poses: it signals to the judiciary that evidence may be admitted, buried, and erased at the judgment stage without consequence,” Njoku said.

He faulted what he described as the troubling silence of major international organisations, expressing worry that they have not questioned why the court ignored defence evidence which it had itself admitted.

The lawyer added, “This case is no longer about one man. It is about whether courts may openly disregard admitted evidence and still be treated as legitimate. A judiciary that can ignore evidence without explanation has ceased to function as a court of law.”