Confusion Inside Nnamdi Kanu’s Legal Team

Lead counsel to the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Barrister Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has clarified that no new lawyer has been added to the team of counsels defending his client before the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja.

At the Abuja division of the court, Kanu was arraigned by the federal government on an amended charges bordering on terrorism and treasonable felony.

Ejiofor’s statement was posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday after the Special Counsel to the IPOB leader, Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, had revealed that Chukwuma Machukwu Ume (SAN), has been added to the legal team, describing it as a “groundbreaking” development.

In Ejimakor’s tweet, he stated that Ume SAN is now part of the IPOB legal team.

But while reacting to the development, Ejiofor explained that the information that Ume, SAN, has been included in the legal team representing Kanu at the Federal High Court, Abuja was ” gross misinformation.”

He added that the SAN was engaged to defend Kanu in a pending case at the court of Appeal involving the proscription of IPOB.

“Firstly, I say straight away that the information, in all respects and in actual fact, is a gross misinformation. No SAN, apart from Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, is in the legal team defending Onyendu in the aforesaid pending criminal matter. Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi KANU picked Chief Ozekhome by himself as soon as he was renditioned back to Nigeria from Kenya on the 29th June, 2021, from where he was crudely ambushed and abducted.

“Secondly, Chief Chukwuma Machukwu Ume, SAN, on the instruction of Onyendu, was ONLY introduced into the ALREADY EXISTING IPOB legal team, ABLY HEADED BY MY GOODSELF, to prosecute the pending appeal challenging the PROSCRIPTION OF IPOB. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the defence of ONYENDU in the ongoing criminal trial before the Honourable Justice Binta Nyako at the Federal High Court , Abuja. The appeal MACHUKWU SAN is involved in is pending at the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division. This appeal and the 15-count Amended Charge pending at the Federal High Court, Abuja, ARE ENTIRELY TWO DIFFERENT CASES,” he stated on Facebook.

Ejiofor however insisted that “any instruction to engage any lawyer whatsoever to join in the legal team representing either Onyendu or IPOB in cases pending in court MUST come from Onyendu himself as he did of Chief Ozekome. It can NEVER come from any other person howsoever or whatsoever.”