•Incarcerated IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu
The detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has returned to the Supreme Court to challenge what his legal team described as a “judgment that destroyed justice” — a ruling they say relied on a repealed law to sustain his prosecution despite a binding Court of Appeal decision discharging him of all charges.
In a statement issued by his counsel, Njoku Jude Njoku, Esq., 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, constituted 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 further alleged that the Supreme Court knowingly “resurrected a dead law” — the Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013 — which had been repealed by the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 more than a year before the judgment, reports Daily Independent.
“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The lawyer contended that the apex court’s action amounted to a jurisdictional error, arguing that “a repealed law is a legal corpse which cannot be revived, acted upon, or used to create criminal liability.”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 Yet in Kanu’s case, the Court applied two contradictory legal positions in one ruling — admitting that a repealed law cannot sustain a charge, and still remitting the same repealed-law charge for trial.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 insisted that “no doctrine of finality can shield a nullity,” saying the Supreme Court retains an inherent power 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the apex court of violating Section 122 of the Evidence Act 2011, which mandates all courts to take judicial notice of repealed or newly enacted laws.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 maintained that the Supreme Court had previously set aside its own per incuriam judgments, warning that failure to do so in Kanu’s case “would confirm institutional bias.”
Njoku also claimed that the December 2023 judgment effectively 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 said.
“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 added 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 the fresh suit before the Supreme Court is “not just about Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, but about protecting every Nigerian from future judicial overreach.”
