Ejimakor Writes DSS, Demands Formal Release Of Kanu

Barr Aloy Ejimakor, the special counsel to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Monday, formally wrote the Department of the State Services to release his client from its custody following the judgement of the Federal High Court in Suit No FHC/UM/CS/30/2022.

Kanu is the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, and has been detained in the DSS headquarters since last year after being renditioned from Kenya to Nigeria, which the high court ruled that it did not follow the rules of law.

The federal government has however refused to release him.

Ejimakor, in a letter to Yusuf Magaji Bichi, director-general, State Security Service, captioned ‘Re: Demand for the Immediate Release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu from Detention in view of the Judgement of the Federal High Court in Suit No FHC/UM/CS/30/2022’, urged the security agency to release Kanu ‘in compliance with the ruling that our client’s continued detention in Abuja is unconstitutional’.

He wrote the DSS boss to “Recall that on 26th October 2022, the Federal High Court entered a judgment against the continued detention of our client at the headquarters of State Security Services in Abuja.”

It would be recalled that the court ruled that, “The manner of arrest and detention of the applicant in Kenya, his continued detention in Abuja, his subjection to physical and mental trauma by the respondents, the inhuman and degrading treatment meted out to the applicant amounts to a brazing violation of the applicant’s fundamental right to dignity of his person and threat to life under Section 34 (1)(a) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).”

Ejimakor stated that on 27th October 2022, he and a lawyer from the Umuahia (Abia State) office of the State Security Services were each availed with Certified True Copies of the judgment and the judgment Order by the Registry of the Federal High Court, which he said ‘affirmatively put your (DSS boss’) office on record Notice of the Judgment’.

According to him, “That was thirty-one days ago, yet your office has failed or otherwise refused to release our client, which is a flagrant disobedience of the judgment.

“Section 287(3) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) provides that: ‘The decisions of the Federal High Court, a High Court and of all other courts established by this Constitution shall be enforced in any part of the Federation by all authorities and persons, and by other courts of law with subordinate jurisdiction to that of the Federal High Court, a High Court and those other courts, respectively.”

He stated further that, “It is mandatory for your office, being the detaining authority, to enforce the said judgment by releasing our client in compliance with the ruling that our client’s ‘continued detention in Abuja’ is unconstitutional.”