Court Orders FG To Return Kanu To Kenya, Pay Him N500m

A Federal High Court in Umuahia, the capital of Abia State, has ordered the Federal Government (FG) to pay N500 million in damages to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, following his illegal kidnapping and abuse of his human rights in Kenya.

The Court also ordered that he be returned to Kenya, from which he was extradited to Nigeria on June 19, 2021.

The Court, presided over by Justice E. N Anyadike, insisted that Kanu’s extradition from Kenya without due process was a flagrant violation of his fundamental human rights.

He ruled that the respondent had failed to refute the applicant’s claims that he was arrested, blindfolded, tortured, and chained to the ground in Kenya for eight days prior to his extradition to Nigeria.
Kanu had approached the court through his special Counsel, Aloy Ejimakor, to challenge his extradition from Kenya on June 19, 2022.

According to Ejimakor, the suit is sui generis (of a special kind) and is primarily aimed at redressing Kanu’s infamous unlawful expulsion or extraordinary rendition, which is a clear violation of his fundamental rights under Article 12(4) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights as well as Chapter IV of the Nigerian Constitution.

He said, “In addition to the rendition, I am asking the Court to redress the myriad violations that came with the rendition, such as the torture, the unlawful detention and the denial of the right to fair hearing which is required by law before anybody can be expelled from one country to the other.

“You will recall that on January 19, 2022, the High Court of Abia State decided that portion of violation of Kanu’s fundamental rights that occurred in 2017. Even as I had made claims that bordered on rendition, the Court declined jurisdiction on grounds that rendition, being related to extradition, lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal High Court. This is what informed my decision to initiate the suit before the Federal High Court.

“To be sure, the extraordinary rendition of Nnamdi Kanu, triggered myriad legal questions that cut across multiple jurisdictions in Nigeria and even triggered the international legal order, to boot. In other words, the rendition has expanded the matter of Kanu far beyond the realms of the Abuja trial and opened up new legal frontiers that must be ventilated to the hilt before other courts and tribunals within and without Nigeria.

“Thus, this very case before the Federal High Court in Umuahia is one of such that is aimed at seeking a definitive judicial pronouncement on the constitutionality of the extraordinary rendition. The ones in the United Kingdom, Kenya, African Union, and the United Nations are in addition.

“I would like to seize this opportunity to express my profound appreciation to the highly competent and hardworking team of lawyers that I am leading in the prosecution of this complex suit. Special mention must be made of Barristers Patrick Agazie, Ifeyinwa Nworgu, Tochukwu Arugbuonye, Franklin Amandi, Ohaeto Uwazie and Mandela Umegborogu”.

“For ease of reference and avoidance of any doubt, the following are the specific reliefs that I requested in the Suit”.

Speaking to journalists shortly after the decision, Ejimakor stated that the decision demonstrated that the court is still the common man’s last hope.

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