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From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
A legal practitioner, Christopher Chidera, has written to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and copied the International Bar Association (IBA), accusing NBA of holding a jamboree in Port Harcourt and maintaining studied silence while criminal justice in Nigeria burns.
“As you wine and dine at the NBA jamboree in Port Harcourt, the foundations of Nigerian criminal justice is being set ablaze in Abuja”, Chidera wrote.
Drawing inference to the conviction of the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, Chidera said it was troubling that the Appeal Court on October 13, 2022, discharged Kanu and quashed the charges against him, that notwithstanding, he was not freed.
Chidera said it was unfortunate that despite the fact that no judicial intervention suspending the effect of the criminal appellate judgment was made, no lawful mechanism was invoked to extinguish the consequence of the discharge, yet Kanu was not released and the NBA kept quiet.
He said the most disturbing aspect of the scenario is that it happened and the NBA watched in silence.
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“This is no longer professional neutrality.
It is cowardice. This is no longer respectable silence. It is complicity by silence.
“The Nigerian Bar that once produced Gani Fawehinmi—the fearless lawyer who understood that the first duty of the Bar is to confront power when power becomes lawless—has been reduced to a toothless professional establishment, more interested in jamborees, titles, access and proximity to power than in defending the foundations upon which the legal profession itself stands.
“And while the Nigerian legal system tears those foundations apart, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu remains in prison”, Chidera stated.
The legal practitioner noted that before the Court of Appeal’s discharge, Kanu had already endured 14 months of detention without charge following his extraordinary rendition to Nigeria. Chidera said the Nigerian legal system cannot be allowed to normalise the proposition that a government can disobey a criminal appellate judgment and then invoke civil procedure to prevent that judgment from taking effect.
The lawyer, while asking whether the government can disobey a court order and then obtain judicial protection from the consequences of its disobedience, advised the NBA to act decisively rather than continue to pretend that this is merely another case involving a controversial defendant.
