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The family of detained IPOB leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has accused the British Government of failing to use its diplomatic weight to secure a hearing of his appeal, saying London’s response has amounted to “a welfare check, not a solution.”
In a statement signed by Prince Emmanuel Kanu on behalf of the Okwu-Kanu Family, the family said Kanu, a British citizen, has spent a cumulative eight years in Nigerian detention and is now held at the Sokoto Correctional Centre.
His appeal, filed and served in June 2026, remains unlisted and unheard, with no respondent’s brief filed, the family said.
“We demand action, not engagement,” the statement said. “We demand answers, not consular visits.”
The family’s central argument is that Kanu was convicted in November 2025 under legislation that had already been repealed. It cited Section 36(12) of the Constitution, which bars conviction for any offence not defined, with its penalty, in a written law.
According to the family, neither the prosecution nor the trial judge identified a corresponding provision of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 for each offence and the penalty imposed.
It said the court instead relied on a savings clause, which it argued cannot stand in for a provision defining an offence and prescribing its punishment.
The family also listed what it called a series of unprecedented events. It said the Court of Appeal discharged Kanu in October 2022 and quashed the counts against him, yet he stayed in custody.
The Federal Government obtained a civil stay of execution 14 days after that ruling, and the family says he was held for about a year and two months without a valid, subsisting charge. He was later prosecuted on the same counts and convicted.
The family called this a use of civil process to frustrate a criminal appellate decision.
The family said Britain’s consular support has been limited to a call of about ten minutes every three to four months, mainly about his food and health. It asked the UK Government to say publicly: whether it has asked Nigeria to identify the specific legal provisions under which Kanu was convicted; what representations it has made on the unheard appeal; whether his case has been referred to Alistair Burt, appointed in July as the UK’s first Envoy for Complex Consular Detentions, and if not, why not; what it has said about his continued detention and prosecution after the Court of Appeal’s discharge; and what concrete steps it will take, and on what timetable.
The family said it was not asking Britain to decide the appeal. “That is a matter for the courts,” it said.
The statement also drew on the Biafra–Nigeria War, accusing Britain of publicly urging peace while supplying arms to the Federal Military Government.
It cited a US intelligence estimate of August 12, 1969, and a November 1969 House of Commons exchange in which Hugh Fraser said he had been told up to 60 per cent of Nigeria’s battle weapons came from Britain. The family said that hostility “has been transferred” to Kanu.
It also invoked remarks on Saturday by retired Supreme Court Justice Amina Augie, who warned that corruption in the legal profession can turn the courts into “one more market stall.” The family said it sees “a disturbing reflection” of that warning in Kanu’s case.
The statement said Kanu’s health is a serious concern to his family, and that his Supreme Court process, filed in November 2025, and his letters to the Chief Justice of Nigeria and the President of the Court of Appeal have produced no satisfactory response.
The British High Commission and the Federal Government had not commented on the statement at press time.
