FG Should Have Treated Nnamdi Kanu The Way It’s Treating Abba Kyari—Lawyer

Barr Aloy Ejimakor, special counsel to the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, says the insistence of the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), that due process be followed in extraditing embattled DCP Abba Kyari amounts to double standards, having failed to adopt same in Nnamdi Kanu’s case.

Ejimakor was reacting to a statement by the AGF’s special assistant on media and public relations, Umar Gwandu. Gwandu claimed that though the FBI was yet to officially write the AGF Office seeking the transfer of Kyari, that everything would be done according to the law.

Kyari, former head of the Police Intelligence Response Team, is wanted by a US court over $1.1million internet fraud allegedly committed by Abbas Ramon, aka Hushpuppi.

Ejimakor told THE PUNCH that, “I don’t want to compare apples with oranges. What I can say is the difficulty through which the US is seeking for the transfer of Abba Kyari to the US is illustrative of what Nigeria should have done in the case of Nnamdi Kanu.

“Kanu probably would have been transferred by Kenya if extradition proceedings were commenced against him.

“What America is accusing Abba Kyari of committing is clearly extraditable under the Nigerian laws and the law of the United States because the offences relate to money laundering, bribery, corruption and all that.

“I am not arranging judgment over Abba Kyari, whether he committed it or not, but the lesson everybody needs to learn is: why would somebody believe that Abba Kyari deserves due process and the same person turns around and jubilates after the unlawful transfer, otherwise known as extraordinary rendition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, and also seeks to jubilate over the attempted unlawful transfer of (Sunday) Igboho from Benin Republic?

“This type of thing goes to indicate the deep fault lines in Nigeria. Somebody from a part of the country thinks it is okay to grab someone from another country without due process and bring him to Nigeria to answer offences of political character, but it is okay for another country to submit itself to seek due process in the transfer of a citizen of Nigeria to the United States. It is a very deep contradiction.”

Nnamdi Kanu is facing charges bordering on jumping bail in 2017 and running a proscribed organisation. He was arrested in Kenya and brought to Nigeria in June 2021.

His case is billed for hearing on October 21 this year after the Department of State Security failed to produce him before Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court, Abuja, last month.