Another Court Orders FG To Return Kanu To Kenya, Pay Him N500m As Damages
A Federal High Court sitting in Umuahia, Abia State, has ordered the Federal Government to return the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, to Kenya from where he was extradited on June 19, 2021 without due process.
The Court also ordered the government to pay Kanu N500 million as damages following his illegal extradition and abuse of his human rights in Kenya.
Delivering judement on the matter, the trial judge, Justice E. N Anyadike, ruled that Kanu’s extradition from Kenya without due process was a flagrant violation of his fundamental human rights.
The Court also held that the Federal Government which is the respondent failed to refute Kanu’s claims that he was arrested, blindfolded, tortured, and chained to the ground in Kenya for eight days prior to his extradition to Nigeria.
Kanu through his lawer, Aloy Ejimakor, approached the court to challenge his extradition from Kenya on June 19, 2022.
Ejimakor said the suit is sui generis (of a special kind) and primarily aimed at redressing Kanu’s infamous unlawful expulsion or extraordinary rendition, which is a clear violation of his fundamental rights under Article 12(4) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights as well as Chapter IV of the Nigerian Constitution.
According to Ejimakor; “In addition to the rendition, I am asking the Court to redress the myriad violations that came with the rendition, such as the torture, the unlawful detention and the denial of the right to fair hearing which is required by law before anybody can be expelled from one country to the other.
“You will recall that on January 19, 2022, the High Court of Abia State decided that portion of violation of Kanu’s fundamental rights that occurred in 2017. Even as I had made claims that bordered on rendition, the Court declined jurisdiction on grounds that rendition, being related to extradition, lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal High Court. This is what informed my decision to initiate the suit before the Federal High Court.
“To be sure, the extraordinary rendition of Nnamdi Kanu, triggered myriad legal questions that cut across multiple jurisdictions in Nigeria and even triggered the international legal order, to boot. In other words, the rendition has expanded the matter of Kanu far beyond the realms of the Abuja trial and opened up new legal frontiers that must be ventilated to the hilt before other courts and tribunals within and without Nigeria.
“Thus, this very case before the Federal High Court in Umuahia is one of such that is aimed at seeking a definitive judicial pronouncement on the constitutionality of the extraordinary rendition. The ones in the United Kingdom, Kenya, African Union, and the United Nations are in addition,” he said.