A Senior Advocate of Nigeria
(SAN), Mike Ozekhome, has said the invasion of the home of the leader of the
Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu complicated the legal case
against him.
This comes hours after the IPOB
leader was absent in court to answer to accusations of engaging in activities
that posed threat to Nigeria’s sovereignty which were slammed against him by
the federal government.
Speaking on the matter when he
appeared on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Ozekhome said the government
should have waited for the result of the legal actions taken against the IPOB
leader and not resort to invading his residence by the military.
He said: “Now assuming that
Nnamdi Kanu has breached every single material particular of those bails, what
is the answer? The answer is again through the judicial process.
“The Federal Government has
already done the right thing through its lawyers that filed a motion before the
same judge, Justice Binta Nyako, to say ‘my lord, Nnamdi Kanu has breached
these bail conditions. The Federal Government should have waited for that legal
process to accomplish rather than invade the home through the military.”
Following Kanu’s alleged
disappearance, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who volunteered as surety for the
IPOB leader when he was granted bail, approached the court requesting to be
discharged from the suretyship, bond and recognisance of his bail.
On Senator Abaribe’s application,
Ozekhome said: “That is where section 171 of the administration of the Criminal
Justice Act comes into play.
“The section says a surety can go
back to court and apply and say ‘hello sir, discharge me from my suretyship
obligation, I can no longer see the person that I stood surety for because that
person, after the invasion of his home, I’ve not seen him. Abaribe in law will
be entitled to ask the court for such prayers.”
“The question then comes; can you
tell Senator Abaribe to produce a person that he cannot lay hands on? God
forbid, let us assume Nnamdi Kanu was kidnapped and he’s in kidnappers’ den,
can you call Abaribe and say ‘you must produce Nnamdi Kanu, even though we are
aware that he’s in the kidnappers’ den?” he wondered.
Ozekhome added,“We saw that the
period of invasion was the last time Nigerians saw Nnamdi Kanu in his house.
That’s what you call the ‘doctrine of the last scene’. So going by the doctrine
of last seen, and the doctrine of ‘res ipsa loquitur’, it means that the last time
Nigerians saw Nnamdi Kanu was when he was in his home in Umuahia and the
military invaded that home and he has not been seen since then”
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