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A member of the Global Legal Consortium for Nnamdi Kanu, Christopher Chidera, has questioned the legality of the conviction and life imprisonment of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, arguing that the conviction was built on a repealed penal law and a series of errors by three courts.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja on Thursday on his legal brief concerning the case, he argued that the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and Federal High Court each made separate legal errors that ultimately led to Kanu’s conviction.
According to him, Kanu was discharged and the charges against him quashed by the Court of Appeal on October 13, 2022, and every subsequent step in the case therefore required a fresh legal foundation.
“Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was discharged, and the charges against him were quashed, on 13 October 2022. From that day, every later step needed a clean legal foundation. There was none,” he said.
“What followed was not a lawful trial continuing. It was one unauthorised act stacked on another until conviction and life imprisonment.”
Chidera said the central legal issue was the distinction between saving a pending proceeding after the repeal of a law and reviving the repealed law itself.
“Proceedings can survive repeal. The repealed penal law itself does not,” he said.
He explained that a savings or transitional provision could preserve a pending prosecution or accrued rights and liabilities after the repeal of legislation, but could not revive the repealed statute.
“It does not bring the repealed statute back to life. It does not cancel the repeal. It does not turn a dead penal law into a living one,” he said.
According to him, the fact that a proceeding was saved from being terminated by repeal did not resolve the separate constitutional requirement concerning the law under which a person could be convicted.
“Saving the case is not the same as identifying the written law that created the offence and the penalty on the day of conviction,” Chidera said.
He argued that the requirement was reinforced by Section 36(12) of the Constitution, which, according to him, required the offence and penalty to be contained in a law in force.
“Savings preserve proceedings. They do not resurrect dead penal legislation,” he said.
On the Court of Appeal, Chidera focused on the role of Justice Tsammani, now a Justice of the Supreme Court, and the principle of functus officio.
He argued that once the Court of Appeal had delivered its final decision discharging Kanu and quashing the counts on October 13, 2022, it had completed its function in the matter.
“Once a court has given its final decision on a matter, its job on that matter is finished. Lawyers call that functus officio. In plain terms: the court has spoken; it cannot keep holding the case,” he said.
Chidera alleged that a “stay” was subsequently used to prevent the discharge from taking effect, arguing that such a mechanism could not lawfully keep a discharged accused person within what he described as a concluded criminal process.
“That is the first break. Everything after it depends on treating a finished judgment as if it were still open,” he said.
Chidera also questioned the Supreme Court’s handling of the case under Justice Lawal Garba, arguing that setting aside a Court of Appeal decision was different from reviving charges that had already been quashed.
He said a higher court could overturn a lower court’s decision and, where appropriate, order a fresh trial, but argued that this was different from treating quashed counts as though they had never been quashed.
“An appeal and a revival of charges are not the same thing,” he said.
“An appeal asks: was the Court of Appeal right to quash the counts?
“Revival would mean: those quashed counts come back to life as if they were never quashed, and the same trial simply ‘continues’ on the same pieces of paper.”
According to him, the quashing of a count meant that the charge was no longer before the trial court.
“Winning an appeal does not automatically mean the dead counts are alive again. After a count is quashed, that charge is no longer before the trial court,” he said.
Chidera argued that the Supreme Court could order a fresh trial but could not treat the original charges as having remained pending.
“You may send a case back for trial. You cannot treat the corpse of the charge as if it were still breathing,” he said.
He also questioned whether the Supreme Court could confer subject-matter jurisdiction on the Federal High Court where, according to him, the relevant law did not provide such authority.
“A court only has power to try a case if the law gives it that power and a living charge is before it,” he said.
Chidera further alleged that the Supreme Court judgment treated the repealed terrorism statute, the former Terrorism (Prevention) Act, as “extant” and “subsisting”.
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“Those words mean ‘still in force.’ A repealed penal law is not still in force,” he said.
Chidera also criticised the decision of the Federal High Court presided over by Justice Omotosho, particularly its treatment of the savings and transitional provisions in the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act.
He argued that the 2022 legislation repealed the earlier terrorism legislation but contained provisions designed to preserve pending proceedings.
According to him, however, those provisions could preserve a proceeding without keeping the repealed law alive as the law defining the offence and punishment.
“The new Act contains savings and transitional clauses. Those clauses can keep a pending process from dying with the old statute. They cannot keep the old statute itself alive as the law that defines crime and punishment,” he said.
Chidera specifically referred to Sections 97 and 98 of the new Act, arguing that they should not be treated as a general provision that simply preserved the old law.
“On a fair reading they require the matter to be carried onto the law then in force — the new Act — not tried to the end as if the repealed Act still created the offences,” he said.
He also relied on Section 122 of the Evidence Act, arguing that the court was required to take judicial notice of written law, including the repeal of a statute.
Chidera said Section 36(12) of the Constitution was central to the legality of the conviction.
“Section 36(12) of the Constitution is blunt. No person shall be convicted of a criminal offence unless that offence and the penalty are written in a law in force,” he said.
He argued that a conviction based on the architecture of a repealed penal law could not satisfy that constitutional requirement.
“A conviction in 2025 built on the architecture of a repealed Act collides with that clause,” he said.
Chidera also referred to Supreme Court authority concerning repealed statutes and the principle he associated with Egigia, arguing that the principle cautioned against conviction under a repealed penal statute.
He alleged that the trial court nevertheless relied on the repealed legislation as though it remained in force.
“These are not hidden defects. They sit on the face of the record,” he said.
Summarising his position, Chidera identified what he described as three separate legal failures involving the courts.
According to him, the Court of Appeal had concluded its work after discharging Kanu and quashing the counts but subsequently allowed the matter to remain within the criminal process.
He said the Supreme Court then treated an appeal as though it revived the quashed counts and also treated the repealed terrorism statute as still in force.
He further argued that the Federal High Court treated the saving of the proceedings as though it also preserved the repealed penal law and subsequently convicted Kanu without identifying a written law in force that created the offences and penalties.
“Criminal judgment is lawful only if three things exist together: a living charge, a court that actually has that charge before it, and a written law still in force that creates both the offence and the penalty,” he said.
“Remove any one and the conviction has no legal floor.”
Chidera warned that treating the continuation of proceedings as sufficient could, in his view, create a broader legal problem concerning quashed charges and repealed criminal legislation.
“If this method is allowed to stand, any quashed count can be recalled by the word ‘continuation,’ any repealed statute can be kept on life support by the word ‘savings,’ and section 36(12) becomes decoration,” he said.
He concluded by challenging the legal basis upon which the quashed charges were returned to the trial process and the repealed law was relied upon.
“Show us the law that brought the quashed counts back into existence.
“Show us the law that made a repealed penal statute still in force.
“Show us the written law that defined the offences and the penalties on the day of conviction.”
Chidera maintained that the preservation of a proceeding after repeal could not, in itself, preserve the repealed criminal law.
“The proceeding may survive repeal. The repealed law does not. Survival of the case cannot be converted into survival of the dead statute,” he said.
“Until that is faced, this is not a lawful chain of judgments. It is a sequence of unauthorised acts.”
