Ejimakor Explains Why Malami Is Wrong On Nnamdi Kanu’s ‘Discharged But Not Acquitted’, Statement

Barr Aloy Ejimakor, the special counsel to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Friday, told THE WHISTLER that the position of the attorney general of the federal and minister of justice, Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, that Thursday’s Appeal Court judgement only discharged Nnamdi Kanu, but did not acquit him is ‘flatly wrong and it is perverse to boot’.

Malami had in a statement shortly after the judgement stated that the ruling only discharged Kanu, claiming that it only affected Kanu’s extraordinary rendition suit.

Barr Ejimakor said that “If the FG refuses or stalls on releasing Kanu solely because it desires to levy further or new charges, it will amount to a burgeoning holding charge which is impermissible in our jurisprudence.

“Further, no new charges can stick against Kanu because, in the present circumstance, the extraordinary rendition is an abiding factor that has created a permanent barrier to his prosecution.

“Keep in mind that the extant trial of Kanu could never have proceeded had he not been illegally renditioned. So, it is not legally possible to lose jurisdiction in the extant charges and at once obtain jurisdiction in the next round of charges.”

He said to that end, ‘the judgment of the Court of Appeal has therefore grandfathered a continuing lack of prosecutorial jurisdiction that will, in the interim, be very hard to overcome.

In his words, “Before the levying of any new charges can have a toga of legality or chances of conferring prosecutorial jurisdiction, Kanu has to be released first. Anything to the contrary will be nugatory.”

Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, is being held in the custody of the Department of State Services since last year after being renditioned from Kenya to Nigeria by Nigeria’s security operatives in collaboration with their Kenyan counterparts.