By Duncan Odey
In a statement yesterday, Aloy Ejimakor, Special Counsel to IPOB leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has revealed some new details about his client’s ordeal in Kenya and how he ended up in Nigeria.
Kanu who is currently in custody at DSS headquarters in Abuja, revealed that that he was flown to Abuja in a private jet on Sunday 27th June, 2021 from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi. He was the only passenger.
Barrister Ejimakor, who said he met with Kanu at the DSS yesterday said that Kanu told him he was blind-folded and driven to the airport tarmac very close to the plane without passing through the airport Immigration. The plane departed Nairobi at about 12pm and arrived Abuja in the evening.
Giving more details on the abduction, Ejimakor said that “Kanu was in point of fact tortured and subjected to untold inhuman treatment in Kenya. He said his abductors disclosed to him that they abducted him at the behest of Nigerian government”.
On whether Kanu had an idea of why he was abducted, the lawyer said that “The people never said much on that score except that they were told he was a Nigerian terrorist linked to the Islamic terrorists in Kenya. But after they discovered his true identity, they tended to treat him less badly”.
Continuing, Barrister Ejimakor said that no warrant of arrest “was shown to Kanu or even mentioned to him. And for the eight days he was held incommunicado, nothing of presenting him before a Court or transferring him to an official detention facility was ever mentioned. He was held in a nondescript private facility and chained to a bare floor”.
At the DSS, “Kanu was interviewed for the first time in my presence by three DSS officers. The interview was revealing as it contained certain new allegations that were never heard of before. But they all relate to his status as the leader of IPOB”, Ejimakor said.
The lawyer added that “despite what he has passed through, he was in high spirits and looked forward to overcoming the extraordinary rendition that brought him to Nigeria”.
“In my opinion, before any Court can subject Kanu to trial, it has to first conduct a trial within trial on the grievous incident that forced Kanu to leave Nigeria and the equally grievous incident that forced him back to Nigeria. No court of law, conscience and equity will overlook those two incidents and proceed to trial”, Ejimakor said.
