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A lawyer to Nnamdi Kanu, chief of the Indigenous Individuals of Biafra (IPOB), Aloy Ejimakor, on Monday, expressed issues concerning the failure of the Court docket of Attraction in Abuja to listen to and decide the group’s pending attraction difficult its proscription.
Abdu Kafafati (now deceased), then Chief Choose of the Federal Excessive Court docket, Abuja had, on 20 September 2017, outlawed IPOB as a terrorist organisation.
The courtroom had issued the order based mostly on an ex parte software by then Legal professional-Common of the Federation (AGF), Abubakar Malami.
However IPOB, by its attorneys, filed an attraction in opposition to its proscription the on the Court docket of Attraction.
IPOB, a separatist organisation led by detained Mr Kanu, is agitating for an impartial state of Biafra to be carved out of Nigeria’s Southeast and a part of South-South areas.
Delayed listening to of attraction
After earlier a collection of failed listening to schedules, on 7 March, the Court docket of Attraction in Abuja, fastened Monday, 16 October (in the present day) for the listening to of the IPOB’s attraction.
However, in an interview with PREMIUM TIMES on the premises of the courtroom on Monday, Mr Ejimakor decried the courtroom’s failure to listen to the case after a number of adjournments.
He stated Nigeria’s safety forces counting on the proscription order have been violating IPOB members’ elementary human rights.
“There could possibly be torture, there could possibly be unreasonable time to your detention with out trial, you may get killed extra-judicially. That’s the reason we’re fairly involved about this attraction pending ceaselessly,” Mr Ejimakor stated.
Since 2018 when IPOB lodged its attraction to overturn the terrorist tag, the Court docket of Attraction has but to listen to or decide the attraction.
Evaluating the appellate courtroom’s velocity in deciding an analogous request filed by the federal authorities which halted the discharge of Mr Kanu from detention in October 2022, Mr Ejimakor puzzled why it’s taking the identical courtroom half a decade to adjudicate on IPOB’s software.
“We filed an software for a keep of execution of the terrorist tag; the (authorities) used the keep of execution to roll again the Court docket of Attraction discharge of Nnamdi Kanu; 13 days later, the identical Court docket of Attraction granted the keep of execution of the order discharging Nnamdi Kanu.
“However it’s taking it (the Court docket of Attraction) from 2018 to in the present day (5 years) to resolve the keep of execution of an ex-parte order of the Federal Excessive Court docket that endangers tens of millions of individuals on this nation.”
Implications of terrorist tag
Mr Ejimakor stated the declaration of IPOB as a terrorist organisation “has many antagonistic authorized penalties in opposition to tens of millions of individuals.”
The lawyer defined that IPOB members’ “properties, and cash have been interdicted and seized by the federal authorities.”
He stated if the Court docket of Attraction had decided IPOB’s pending attraction, Mr Kanu wouldn’t have been arraigned for terrorism as there would have been no foundation for the alleged offence.
“Allow us to go by the proposition that the Court docket of Attraction decided the attraction rapidly sufficient and eliminated the terrorist tag on IPOB and de-proscribed it, Nnamdi Kanu wouldn’t have been” repatriated “from Kenya, as a result of there wouldn’t be any foundation to cost him as a terrorist.”
“If the Court docket of Attraction had reversed that very egregious ruling of the Federal Excessive Court docket that declared IPOB as a terrorist organisation in early 2018.
“The foundations of Nigerian safety forces, after they encounter terrorists is shoot to kill, not even shoot to maim.
“So, the explanation we’re very obsessed with bringing this attraction to a closure, and hopefully profitable it’s to take away that hazard – the hazard confronting tens of millions of supposed IPOB members. This stuff are unfair,” Mr Ejimakor stated.
Mr Kanu was in 2015 charged with treasonable felony over his separatist campaigns.
He was held in detention whereas his attraction didn’t make progress in courtroom.
He was granted bail in 2017. His launch infected IPOB confrontations with safety forces which peaked with troopers invading his dwelling in Afara-Ukwu, close to Umuahia, Abia State, in September 2017.
Whereas he fled the nation, the federal authorities approached the Federal Excessive Court docket in Abuja to acquire an order for IPOB proscription.
Mr Kanu remained overseas till the Nigerian authorities forcibly repatriated him from Kenya to Nigeria in June 2021.
The federal government then added terrorism fees to the treasonable felony cost pending in opposition to him and re-arraigned him earlier than Binta Nyako of the Federal Excessive Court docket in Abuja.
Mr Kanu has since remained within the custody of the State Safety Service (SSS).
The Nigerian authorities accuses IPOB of utilizing its army wing, Jap Safety Community (ESN) to terrorise the 5 southeastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.
There have been wanton killings of safety operatives and civilians, and destruction of government-owned establishments by gunmen.
Nonetheless, IPOB has repeatedly denied any involvement within the violence, insisting its marketing campaign for an impartial state is peaceable.
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