One of the lawyers representing detained Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, has described the Supreme Court judgment of December 15, 2023, as a “perverse precedent,” warning that it amounts to judicial mutiny against the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
In a strongly worded statement issued on Thursday, Barrister Onyedikachi Ifedi said the five-man panel of the apex court erred by remitting Kanu’s trial to the Federal High Court, Abuja, on charges already nullified by the Court of Appeal, insisting that the ruling was delivered per incuriam and therefore a “legal nullity.”
“The judgment was not merely a miscarriage of justice; it was a judicial mutiny against the Constitution, the African Charter, and binding precedent,” Ifedi said.
He recalled that in Abacha v. Fawehinmi (2000), a seven-man constitutional panel of the Supreme Court affirmed that the African Charter, as domesticated in Nigerian law, holds equal force with the Constitution’s fundamental rights provisions.
By contrast, the smaller five-man panel in FRN v. Kanu ignored that binding authority, stripping Kanu of protections against extraordinary rendition, torture, and inhuman treatment.
“A smaller panel is bound by the decision of a larger panel,” Ifedi explained, citing Oladokun v. Military Governor of Oyo State (1996) where the court held that panel size determines hierarchy within the same court.
“Only an equal or larger panel can depart from such a precedent, not a smaller one,” he said.
The lawyer warned that by discarding the African Charter, the apex court had set a dangerous precedent that threatens all Nigerians.
“If this perverse precedent is allowed to stand, no citizen will enjoy meaningful protection in cases of state violence.
"The rule of law will be replaced by judicial convenience, and the Supreme Court’s integrity will collapse under the weight of its own lawlessness,” he stated.
Kanu has been in the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) since June 2021, after his controversial seizure in Kenya and return to Nigeria under what his lawyers call extraordinary rendition.
In October 2022, the Court of Appeal discharged him on the grounds of the illegal rendition, but the Federal Government challenged the decision, leading to the December 2023 Supreme Court ruling that allowed his prosecution to continue.
International rights groups and local advocates have since urged Nigerian authorities to release Kanu, citing due process violations and his deteriorating health condition.
Ifedi, however, stressed that the matter is now bigger than Kanu, insisting that the judgment undermines the judiciary’s role as the last hope of the common man.
“History will remember this case not as law, but as a monument to judicial betrayal — the day the Supreme Court of Nigeria broke its oath and buried the African Charter alongside the Constitution,” Ifedi declared.
