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From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has sent a Christmas message from the **Sokoto Correctional Centre**, where he is serving a life sentence following his conviction on terrorism-related charges.
This comes as lawyer Njoku Jude Njoku continues to challenge Kanu’s conviction by Justice James Omotosho, describing the jailing as predetermined.
According to a release by Kanu’s brother, Prince Emmanuel Kanu, the IPOB leader wished all men and women of good conscience a Merry Christmas.
The release added that Kanu thanked everyone for their prayers and wished them well this season and beyond.
Meanwhile, lawyer Njoku Jude Njoku has continued to challenge the judgment delivered by Justice Omotosho against Kanu.
According to Njoku, the most dangerous aspect of the judgment was not merely that it reached a foreordained conclusion, but that it did so by deliberately suppressing evidence the judge had already admitted on record in his own court, thereby converting adjudication into a procedural façade.
“This was not an error of law or an oversight of fact; it was a calculated refusal to engage with material evidence whose evaluation would have fatally undermined the prosecution’s narrative.
“Once evidence is admitted, it binds the judge absolutely. The conduct, protest, silence, or alleged boycott of the defendant (Mazi Nnamdi Kanu) is legally irrelevant to that obligation.
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“Judgment writing is not a negotiation with the accused; it is a solitary judicial duty anchored exclusively to the evidentiary record.”
Njoku added that a judge may reject defence evidence, but he must first confront it, evaluate it, and then explain why it is rejected, stressing that silence in this regard is not neutrality but suppression.
Njoku said that, had Justice Omotosho evaluated the admitted video exhibits of some prominent Nigerians including Theophilus (TY) Danjuma, Governor Hope Uzodimma, Chief Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi, and others, he would have known that the grounds on which Kanu was convicted did not hold water.
“These were not speculative arguments. They were admitted exhibits. Their collective evaluation would have collapsed the architecture of the conviction. That is precisely why they were ignored.
“The refusal to evaluate this evidence was not accidental. It was not procedural. It was outcome-driven. Justice Omotosho ignored them because he was operating under an overriding imperative to convict by all means, regardless of the evidentiary record. This is the gravest danger such a judgment poses: it signals to the judiciary that evidence may be admitted, buried, and erased at the judgment stage without consequence.”
Njoku said that more disturbing in the matter is the silence of major international media organisations, none of which, he said, has asked the most basic question any law student would pose: “Why did the court ignore defence evidence it had itself admitted?”
He said that, by reproducing the conclusions of the judgment without interrogating its evidentiary omissions, the media houses become unwitting accomplices in what he described as the laundering of judicial misconduct.
