“Legal Time Bomb: Ejimakor Reveals Why Kanu’s Trial Was Illegally Conducted — And Why His Conviction May Soon Collapse”

By Passman Akpos

In a detailed legal exposition released on Thursday, prominent constitutional lawyer and former lead counsel to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Aloy Ejimakor, has laid out the specific legal reasons why he believes the Federal Government never had the jurisdiction to try the detained IPOB leader—and why the Court of Appeal is now “most likely to overturn his conviction.”

Ejimakor, who led Kanu’s defence team between February 2024 and February 2025, disclosed that the team successfully blocked the trial during his tenure because the charges were fundamentally defective in law and were brought under the wrong statutory regime.

According to him, all the terrorism-related counts were predicated on broadcasts allegedly made by Kanu from 2018 to 2021 while he was abroad, “presumably in the United Kingdom and Kenya.” These were originally filed under the Terrorism Prevention (Amendment) Act 2013 (TPAA 2013) which permitted extraterritorial jurisdiction without requiring the acts to also be criminal in the foreign country of origin.

However, the legal landscape shifted in 2022 when the National Assembly repealed the TPAA and replaced it with the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act 2022 (TPPA 2022), which introduced the decisive double criminality test under Section 76(1)(d)(iii).

Under this new requirement, any act committed outside Nigeria can only be tried locally if it also constitutes an offence in the country where it occurred.

“That singular change,” Ejimakor argues, “destroyed the basis of the prosecution.”

THE CORE LEGAL BARRIERS

Ejimakor outlines several grounds which, according to him, completely oust the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court:

1. Introduction of Double Criminality

The TPPA 2022 fundamentally changed the definition of extraterritorial offences, requiring the prosecution to prove that Kanu’s broadcasts were also criminal in the UK or Kenya.“Given that the broadcasts were political speech,” he wrote, “it is highly unlikely they would be considered terrorism in those jurisdictions.”

2. Trial De Novo Requires Applying the New Law

After Justice Murtala-Nyako recused herself in February 2025, the case was reassigned to Justice James Omotosho, triggering a trial de novo—a fresh trial which, according to long-standing jurisprudence, must be conducted under the law currently in force, not the repealed one.

3. Failure to State the Country of Broadcast

Ejimakor describes the prosecution’s omission of the specific foreign location as a “fatal jurisdictional defect.”Without identifying whether the broadcasts originated from Kenya or the UK, the court cannot apply the double criminality test.

He cites FRN v. Usman (2019) which held that failure to specify the place of offence robs a court of jurisdiction.

4. Uncertainty Violates Fair Hearing

The lack of clarity on applicable law and location of the alleged acts, Ejimakor says, violates Section 36 of the Constitution and Section 220 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), both of which require that an accused person be fully informed of the nature and particulars of the charge.

5. Repealed Laws Cannot Sustain Trials

Ejimakor insists that while the TPPA 2022 saved certain proceedings, it did not preserve repealed jurisdictional provisions. He cites Ifediora v. Idigo and DPP v. Okocha, among others, for authority.

THE PROSECUTION’S DODGY RELIANCE ON THE OLD LAW

Ejimakor accuses federal prosecutors of “sophistry” for clinging to the repealed TPAA 2013, allegedly to avoid the stricter safeguards introduced by the TPPA 2022.

Kanu himself reportedly demanded that Justice Omotosho “show him the law” under which he was being tried.

A PREDICTION OF THE APPEAL COURT’S NEXT MOVE

The former lead counsel concludes that the combination of:

the new double criminality requirement,

the defective charges,

the absence of a specified foreign location, and

the constitutional need to apply the “written law in force at trial time”

means the Federal High Court “lacked the jurisdiction to proceed.”

Ejimakor says a “robust appeal on this ground alone would succeed without more.”