The legal team of detained Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, has raised an alarm that the Supreme Court’s decision reversing his discharge by the Court of Appeal has created a precedent that endangers every Nigerian citizen.
In a petition dated September 19, 2025, signed by Njoku Jude Njoku of the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium, the lawyers warned that by validating Kanu’s extraordinary rendition from Kenya, the apex court had effectively declared that no Nigerian is safe from abduction or trial without due process.
According to the defence team, the ruling delivered on December 15, 2023, which overturned the Court of Appeal’s earlier discharge of Kanu, has “collapsed constitutional rights into trivial irregularities” and “endorsed state lawlessness in extraordinary rendition.”
“In so doing, you have set a dangerous precedent that threatens not only one man but the very foundations of Nigeria’s constitutional democracy,” the legal team said.
The legal team added that the apex court ruling “eroded the finality of appellate discharges, exposing citizens to endless retrials and “ignored binding precedents, destabilizing stare decisis.”
“Must Nigeria’s legal system be destroyed just to jail one man?” the petition queried, insisting that the judgment sends “a chilling message: no Nigerian is safe from abduction and trial without due process.”
The lawyers accused the justices of subordinating constitutional guarantees, particularly the right to a fair hearing under Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution, to statutory provisions of the Terrorism Prevention Act.
“The Constitution does not bend to statutes,” the petition stated, arguing that the Supreme Court’s approach inverted the supremacy clause in Section 1 of the Constitution, which declares the Constitution supreme over all other laws.
The defence consortium further argued that extraordinary rendition stripped the courts of competence from the onset, citing the landmark case of Madukolu v. Nkemdilim (1962).
They also maintained that the Court of Appeal’s discharge of Kanu amounted to a final acquittal, meaning any further trial violates the constitutional protection against double jeopardy under Section 36(9).
The petition accused the justices, Kudirat Kekere-Ekun (CJN), Mohammed Garba, Ibrahim Saulawa, Tijjani Abubakar, and Emmanuel Agim, of ignoring binding international obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Nigeria domesticated into law.
They noted that earlier Supreme Court rulings, including Abacha v. Fawehinmi (2000) and Ogugu v. State (1994), affirmed that charter rights are enforceable in Nigeria.
By disregarding these authorities, the lawyers said, the court destabilised stare decisis and “set Nigeria’s jurisprudence on a perilously destructive path.”
While stressing that the petition was not about Kanu alone, the lawyers said the ruling threatens Nigeria’s constitutional democracy itself.
“If the Constitution is no longer supreme, then no Nigerian is safe,” the petition concluded. “If fair hearing can be reduced to ‘illegal arrest,’ then no trial is secure. If appellate discharges can be casually reversed, then litigation has no finality.”
