ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- The Federal High Court sitting in Umuahia, Abia state has fixed 4 October, 2022, to hear Nnamdi Kanu’s extraordinary rendition suit, filed before the court in March.
The date for the hearing was announced in a statement on Thursday, by Aloy Ejimakor, the Special Counsel for Nnamdi Kanu and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).
Mazi Kanu has been detained by the secret police, Department of State Services (DSS) since his rendition to Nigeria from Kenya in June 2021 by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government.
The separatist leader is currently standing trial for terrorism-related offences.
In the statement titled “Court to hear Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s extraordinary rendition case on 4th October,” Ejimakor said the suit before the court is ‘sui generis’ (of a special class).
He said: “it is primarily aimed at redressing the infamous unlawful expulsion or extraordinary rendition of Nnamdi Kanu, 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.”
Kanu’s lawyer added that he also sought relief from 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. I am also seeking to halt his prosecution and restore him to the status quo before he was rendition on 19th June 2021.
“On 19 January, 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, 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.”
Ejiofor thanked his colleagues who had been putting in the work in the prosecution of the complex suit, namely Patrick Agazie, Ifeyinwa Nworgu, Tochukwu Arugbuonye, Franklin Amandi, Ohaeto Uwazie and Mandela Umegborogu.