An Abuja Federal High Court has threatened the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi, with imprisonment if he continues to obstruct the legal team of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, access to him.
In a Notice of Consequences delivered on Friday, the court frowned at the DSS DG for flouting its earlier order to allow Kanu’s lawyers access to their client in their custody.
The notice was served by the court’s Registrar on the DSS and made available to the public by Kanu’s lead counsel, Aloy Ejimako.
“This Notice is necessitated by the repeated disobedience of the court-ordered visitation of Mazi Kanu by the newly appointed Director-General of the State Security Services (Mr Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi), who has, for almost a month, not allowed Mazi Kanu’s Lawyers to visit him,” Ejimakor said. He said if the DSS DG continues on this path, he will vigorously enter contempt proceedings against him.
Kanu has been in detention since 2021 when he was arrested and brought back from Kenya. He has been facing treasonable felony charges since then, but the substantial trial has not yet commenced.
IPOB Reacts
On its part, the secessionist organization IPOB released a statement on Thursday claiming that their leader, Mr Nnamdi Kanu, is being kept in detention only because he has refused to compromise on the Biafran agitation.
In the statement by the group’s Media and Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful, Kanu is described as a “prisoner of conscience.” It reiterated its demand for the release of its leader.
“Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has remained steadfast and true to his people, even after nearly four years of illegal detention by the Nigerian government in the DSS dungeon,” the group proudly asserted.
IPOB recalled that in 2022, the Nigerian Court of Appeal in Abuja had discharged and acquitted Kanu. The United Nations Committee on Arbitrary Detention also condemned his abduction, rendition, and continued detention.
The group said that despite all these interventions, the Nigerian government still disregarded all legal and international suasions to release Kanu. “The Nigerian government knows that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu committed no crime, locally or internationally. His persecution is simply an expression of ethnic hatred against Ndigbo,” IPOB asserted.
IPOB’s statement called on the international community to more forcefully condemn the ongoing persecution and human rights violations against Kanu and his ethnic group – the Igbos, in Nigeria.
“The continued persecution of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu will further expose the mockery of democracy in Nigeria,” IPOB said.
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