As the Retrial of the IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu is around the corner again, a Nigerian lawyer in diaspora urges cooperation among the legal team to ensure the release of the IPOB leader.
By Mike Ojokoro, MSW, LLM
The case is about securing the release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from the illegal and unlawful detention and illtreatnents by the Nigerian state. It is not about any puerile competition of the current legal team or for any unknown or little-known legal person to polish his or her legal resume for self-shining.
Mike Ozekhome (SAN) is a well-known Human Rights activist and professor of law who is versatile and eloquent in law and language use and also a strong proponent of self-determination of a people.
Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Esq is a well-known Human Rights activist who has been the IPOB lawyer for a long time and has secured the release of thousands of Biafrans and Igbo youths who were unjustly being detained/ languishing in Nigerian government detention. That includes Mazi Nnamdi Kanu not only during Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s illegal continuous detention but also during Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s previous arrests, detentions, and legal trials.
While Mr Ejiofor and Prof Ozekhome are no more the current lead counsels in Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s case, their tract records exceptionally stand clear and speak for themselves.
Barr Ife Ejiofor remains the Ipob lawyer who is still currently legally fighting for the release of thousands of Igbo young men and women who disappeared by the government’s agents or were unjustly arrested and put into detention without trial.
Barr Ifeanyi Ejiofor passionately and legally fights for the release of Igbo young men and women who are unjustly being detained by the Nigerian Government security agents and does so at the risk of his own person and with no pecuniary interest of any sort.
Any legally trained person should be legally skilled to get the desired outcome for his client. The previous legal team has effectively done this with we say, in the Court of Appeal judgment we stand!!📌.
The Appeal Court has discharged and acquitted Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Supreme Court agreed with all the legal arguments adduced by the previous legal team, but the Supreme Court lacks the courage to deliver the same judgment as held by the Appeal Court.🎉
Unfortunately, the current legal team in an uncalculated scornful behavior decided to take Mazi Nnamdi back to Egypt called Abuja High Court of Justice Binta Nyako for whatever reason best known to them that leaves one to wonder if the reason is either for competitive purposes which is not healthy for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu or was it just to see if they can rubbish or make a mockery of the laudable legal achievements of the previous legal team of which was particularly secured in the Appeal Court?
Every one of the lawyers attended law school and qualified. However, the stark difference between the previous legal team headed by Ejiofor/Prof Ozekhome interchangeably and the current legal team being led by Mr Aloy Ejimakor is the reputation deficit of the latter.
How can anyone be having an awkwardly coded relationship with a Finland-based terror-sponsored infiltrator and at the same time claiming to be defending Mazi Nnamdi Kanu? And you wonder why he is disallowed to practice in the United States where he was living. Reputation is very pivotal in legal defence and even in the ethics of other professions.
Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s case is cyclically back to Appeal Court hopefully on the 19th of April 2024. That said, the least everyone expects from Aloy Ejimakor’s legal team irrationally brought in by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s two siblings of Eli lineage is a judicial order and judgement by the Appeal Court to release Mazi Nnamdi Kanu just like Ozekhome and Ejiofor did on October 13, 2022.
You cannot by reason of personal interest blackmail the previous legal team to take over the case only to come back later to complain and lament like the biblical Jeremiah the same thing complained about by the previous legal team. But you chose to use the same issue you complained about to blackmail the previous legal team.
The current legal team led by Mr. Aloy Ejimakor must understand that it is now too late to abandon the case for whatever reason. Your lamentation that the Nigerian Government is frustrating the case is in order. But was it not the same thing the previous legal team complained about? It was these circumstances under which Ozekhome and Ejiofor were defending Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and won in the Appeal Court.
Everyone expects the current legal team to do the same. If you abandon the case now, the Nigerian government would quickly jump on this by arranging to allocate an inexperienced government lawyer to pretend to stand for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, and then give Mazi Nnamdi Kanu an undeserved bad conviction. This is why Mazi Nnamdi Kanu should never ever agree again to appear before any Nigerian Court (as per the Appeal Court) until this Appeal’s Court judgement of October 13, 2022, is obeyed.
This has been the position of IPOB!
