Biafra: Kanu cries to Britain for help

Detained leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, yesterday called on the British government to come to his aid over his continued detention by the Federal Government. In a terse letter through one of his lawyers, Mr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Kanu described himself as a victim of travesty of justice and gross human rights

Detained leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, yesterday called on the British government to come to his aid over his continued detention by the Federal Government. In a terse letter through one of his lawyers, Mr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Kanu described himself as a victim of travesty of justice and gross human rights violation due to his prolonged detention by the Federal Government. Kanu, who expressed readiness to stand trial, said however that what he was yearning for is fair trial as opposed to persecution. In the letter dated March 24, 2016, and addressed to the British High Commissioner in Abuja, the Biafra agitator, who had filed a suit before the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, against the violation of his rights, said he was wrongly arrested and put in detention. He drew the British envoy’s attention to his rights and privileges as a British citizen. “It is repeating the obvious to state that our client is a full British citizen, by virtue of which position he is entitled to all rights, privileges and protections, guaranteed under British laws and conventions. “We are therefore, constrained in the circumstance, to formally notify the British government through this medium, of our well-informed reservations, and apprehension, that our client is undergoing persecution in the charge above referred, and deliberate design by the persecutors to frustrate every effort of the defense team aimed at giving our client a fair trial,” Kanu’s lawyer submitted in the letter. It was the submissions of Kanu’s counsel that the unlawful detention of his client from October 14, 2015 till January 20, 2016, without any lawful orders of court, and in flagrant disobedience of orders of courts of competent jurisdiction, all directing for his unconditional release and discharge, amounts to a gross violation of his fundamental human rights. Ejiofor, who chronicled all the alleged abuses of Kanu’s fundamental human rights, recalled that the Chief Magistrate Court in Abuja specified in the First Information Report originally filed against him had discharged his client of all bogus and frivolous allegations against him, yet “the Department of State Security, that dragged him to court refused to obey the orders of the same court.” This position, according to Ejiofor, “was in keeping in line with the pronouncement of the President if the Federal Republic of Nigeria in his media chat telecasted live on December 29, 2015