The detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has once again approached the Supreme Court to challenge what his legal team describes as a “judgment that destroyed justice.”
His lawyers argue that the ruling — which upheld his continued prosecution despite a prior discharge by the Court of Appeal — was founded on a repealed law and represents a serious assault on constitutional principles.
In a statement issued in Abuja by his counsel, Njoku Jude, Kanu’s legal team alleged that the apex court’s judgment of December 15, 2023, delivered by a five-member panel led by Justice Garba Lawal, amounted to a “calculated assault on constitutional justice.”
According to the statement, “What unfolded that morning was not a judicial error. It was a conscious judicial manoeuvre designed to ensure that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu remained in perpetual captivity, despite a binding Court of Appeal judgment discharging him of all charges.”
Njoku accused the Supreme Court of knowingly “resurrecting a dead law” — the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013 — which had already been repealed by the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 more than a year before the controversial judgment.
“The Supreme Court did not merely overlook the repeal — it affirmatively misrepresented a dead law as alive,” he said. “This was not ignorance. It was judicial falsehood with consequential oppression.”
The lawyer argued that the apex court’s decision amounted to a jurisdictional error, noting that “a repealed law is a legal corpse which cannot be revived, acted upon, or used to create criminal liability.”
He added: “The Supreme Court knows this principle. It has set aside judgments of lower courts for far less grievous errors. Yet in Kanu’s case, the Court applied two contradictory legal positions in one ruling — admitting that a repealed law cannot sustain a charge, and still remitting the same repealed-law charge for trial. This contradiction voids the judgment ab initio.”
Njoku maintained that “no doctrine of finality can shield a nullity,” stressing that the Supreme Court retains inherent powers to correct its own record when a judgment is rooted in illegality.
The statement further accused the apex court of violating Section 122 of the Evidence Act 2011, which mandates all courts to take judicial notice of repealed or newly enacted laws.
“The Court did not merely ‘miss’ the repeal,” Njoku said. “It violated a mandatory statutory duty to acknowledge it. A judgment delivered per incuriam — in ignorance of a binding law — is not protected by finality.”
He recalled that the Supreme Court had, in the past, set aside its own per incuriam judgments, warning that failure to do so in Kanu’s case “would confirm institutional bias.”
Njoku also contended that the December 2023 ruling stripped Kanu of his constitutional protection against double jeopardy under Section 36(9) of the 1999 Constitution.
“The Court of Appeal had discharged Kanu, which triggered this constitutional shield,” he explained. “Yet the Supreme Court stripped him of this fundamental right and sent him back to face the same counts. This was not judicial reasoning. It was judicial punishment.”
He cautioned that if the judgment is allowed to stand, “dead laws can be revived to prosecute citizens, double jeopardy will lose its meaning, and courts will become co-agents of government reprisal.”
Njoku concluded that Kanu’s latest legal move is “not just about Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, but about protecting every Nigerian from future judicial overreach.”
