Leaked ‘Sensitive Details’ Cost Kanu His Case – Ejiofor

A former lead counsel to the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, has accused what he described as “amateur legal showmen” of derailing a carefully structured legal strategy that could have prevented Kanu’s conviction.

Ejiofor made the allegation in a statement issued on Saturday, saying the “social-media-driven lawyers” led the IPOB leader into a “judicial ambush”.

Justice James Omotosho had on Thursday sentenced Kanu to life imprisonment after convicting him on seven counts of terrorism, incitement, treasonable felony, and illegal importation of a radio transmitter.

Reacting to this, Ejiofor said he broke his silence following an outpouring of calls and emotional appeals from supporters after the court proceedings.

Ejiofor, who handled Kanu’s case from 2015 to December 2023 before the legal team was restructured under the leadership of Prof. Mike Ozekhome, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, said the team had been on the verge of a “monumental breakthrough” following the landmark 2022 judgment of the Court of Appeal, which discharged and acquitted Kanu.

According to him, sensitive details of strategic legal engagements were leaked by Kanu to individuals he described as “clueless clowns” posing as legal consultants, who then exploited the information to push for changes that disrupted a winning strategy.

“Regrettably, certain sensitive details of this progress were, perhaps innocently, disclosed by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to some of these clueless clowns. Rather than support a strategy they barely understood, they seized the information as an opportunity to derail the entire process and treacherously orchestrated a change in the status quo. Consequently, we exited the team, gloriously, and with our integrity intact.

“A high-profile, internationally sensitive criminal trial is not a circus ring. Once these bloated, delusional entertainers-in-wigs inserted themselves, everything degenerated into a grotesque parody of legal representation,” he wrote.

Ejiofor accused them of prioritising media attention over legal preparation, turning every court appearance into content production.

“Instead of crafting legal strategy, they crafted Instagram stories. Instead of mastering case law, they mastered camera angles. Their priority wasn’t research or preparation, it was posing, filming, updating, grandstanding, and going viral,” he said.

He alleged that despite court warnings against self-representation in a complex terrorism-related trial, these lawyers encouraged Kanu to take over aspects of his defence, a move he described as catastrophic.

“They railroaded him, knowingly or unknowingly, into the savage pit of a full criminal trial, fully aware that other lawful escape routes existed,” Ejiofor stated.

The former lead counsel said exaggerated and misleading public updates from the group became tools used against Kanu in court, claiming that every social-media statement turned into evidentiary landmines.

Ejiofor questioned why globally respected Senior Advocates, such as Chief Kanu Agabi and Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu, were abandoned at the most critical stage of the trial.

“Who replaces world-class physicians with herbal storytellers during brain surgery? Only a system already preparing for disaster,” he wrote.

He called for a complete overhaul of the defence strategy, warning that no meaningful rescue attempt could succeed unless the damage done by the “self-advertising jesters” was first reversed.

“This is not the time for comedy or inflated egos. It is time for competence. Time for real advocacy. Enough is enough.”

Ejiofor insisted he left the case “gloriously and with integrity intact,” but expressed regret that what he called avoidable errors had now led to a devastating outcome.