Former vice president and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in next month’s election, Atiku Abubakar, will grant detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, unconditional release if he emerges president on May 29, one of his campaign directors has revealed.
Kanu has been in detention facility of the Department of State Services (DSS) since June 2021 when he was intercepted and renditioned to Nigeria from Kenya by the federal government. He is being charged for terrorism.
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja, on Thursday, October 13, 2022 quashed the terrorism charge the federal government had preferred against the detained IPOB leader. It acquitted him of the seven-count charge pending against him before the Federal High Court in Abuja.
In a judgement, the appellate court led by Justice Jummai Hanatu, stated that the “federal government flagrantly violated the law, when it forcefully rendered Kanu from Kenya to the country for the continuation of his trial; and that such extra-ordinary rendition, without adherence to due process of the law, was a gross violation of all international conventions, protocols and guidelines that Nigeria is signatory to, as well as a breach of the appellant’s fundamental human rights. The federal government challenged the judgment at the Supreme Court.
The United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, had in a report it released July last year, intervened with a call on the Nigerian government to “immediately release Kanu unconditionally” and pay him adequate compensations for the arbitrary violation of his fundamental human rights.
Revealing Atiku’s plan, director-general of the Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) of Atiku/Okowa in Anambra State, Prof. Obiora Okonkwo, said the PDP candidate will rely on the Appeal Court judgement to release the Biafra agitator.
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