Outburst In Court: Nnamdi Kanu HasSuffered Injustice In His Trial – Opara

Maxwell Opara is a human rights activist/lawyer and one of the counsels of the detained Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. In this interview, the legal practitioner and chartered mediator speaks on what transpired at the last court appearance of the IPOB leader and why he should be freed, among other issues. CHIBUIKECHUKWU brings the excerpts.

We were in court sometime in September and Nnamdi Kanu accused the judge (Binta Nyako) of bias saying that he has lost confidence in the judge in trying his matter. Then he marshaled out some points to back up his position. So based on that, the judge said, well, ‘since you have said that you have lost confidence in me, I have no business still being in this matter. She made an order and recused herself from the trial. She said, well, since you have accused me of being biased, I will take the file to CJ for further decision on the matter. And when she made an order saying that ‘I hereby recused myself from this matter’, there were two different things. There was a subsisting and valid order which she did by sending the file back to CJ for reassignment. As a result of that, we were waiting for them, I mean the prosecution, who brought thematter to court for them to follow up and ensure that the matter is being reassigned. It was not forthcoming. We have to write a letter. I submitted that letter. We followed it up. It was based on that, that the CJ now acted. Based on our letter, we even addressed the press in the process, asking why. For how many months now, when a file is sent to CJ for reassignment, why thedelay because Nnamdi Kanu was ready to face his trial. So finally, we received hearing notice from the court that the matter hasbeen slated for hearing on the 10th of February. So when we received the hearing notice, we went to visit Nnamdi Kanu, we showed him the hearing notice. He then was asking, ah, there is a subsisting order from the judge. Has that order been vacated? We said, no, there is no way they would vacate the order without us. Kanu then said that he would not be coming to that court. We said, no, since we have the hearing notice, out of respect, let us go there. Whatever thethings that we have, we explained to thecourt. It took us a lot of argument before we were able to convince him to accept. So on reaching to court that day, after normal appearances, the prosecution team informed the court that the matter is for trial, that they are ready. So on our own side, we informed my Lord that there is a subsisting order made by this court. So my Lord was saying that CJ gave her a memo that she should continue with the matter. That any of us, any of the parties that feel they have lost confidence in the trial should make it formal. Make it a formal motion? We said, my Lord, this issue would have been proper if there is no order because themotion that we are bringing is for you to make a ruling on top of the existing order. So my Lord said, anyway, that is CJ’s directives. But CJ’s administrative memo cannot set aside an order. In fact, CJ cannot even set aside their own order because we are a court of competent jurisdiction. They cannot set aside an order administratively. Either you set aside the order you made by yourself or on appeal. So my Lord was saying that that is the directive from the CJ. Because of that, from the dock NnamdiKanu was itching to speak. And we were saying you cannot speak because you are being represented by lawyers. So my Lord asked Nnamdi Kanu if we should allow him to speak. And she said, Nnamdi Kanu, if you want to speak, it means that you want to defend yourself. Nnamdi Kanu said, ‘I want to defend myself’. So my Lord granted him that opportunity to defend himself and said that we should not speak. So when NnamdiKanu wanted to speak, one of our lead counsels wanted to talk just to correct an impression, but my Lord said, no, you cannot speak, you don’t have right of audience, that we don’t have right of audience. So we have to keep quiet. On that particular stage, Nnamdi Kanu has taken over his proceedings. We have to keep quiet. Now, remember that Nnamdi Kanu is not a lawyer.

On our own, no lawyer properly called will watch his or her client addressing courtanyhow. We have the training, we have our ethics. The way I’m addressing the court is quite different from the way you and your colleagues will be addressing the court. This is because we choose our words. My duty first is to the court and to protect the courtfirst before my client. So you don’t disrespect the court even though you argue your case. Nnamdi Kanu did not understand it from that angle. From what he was saying after the court, there are some issues he felt that we needed to raise that we were not raising. Some issues that we should be able to tell the court. We said no, we are lawyers, we choose our words, we cannot speak on that particular issue. 

No, you cannot say that. It’s just because he just felt that issues he wanted us to raise were not being raised, or we didn’t present such issues the way he wanted us to present them. We cannot present it from that angle because we have our training, we have our roots. Had it been that my Lord did not allow him to speak, he cannot speak while we are representing him. We know theappropriate language to use to present issues and we will be saying the same thing he wants us to say. Now when Nnamdi Kanuwas allowed, we cannot speak because one, if you are making a presentation, the other counsel is expected to wait and listen to you. If the other counsel is talking, you also wait. When the judge is talking, lawyers don’t talk, you listen to the judge. But in this particular instance, when my Lord allowed Nnamdi Kanu to speak, he was talking as it pleased him and I think he was speaking in that manner based on previous issues. Just to be fair to him, Nnamdi Kanu has suffereda lot of injustice in the course of this trial. Kanu is not the first person that is facing terrorism charges. It’s a normal trial. If you have your case, you prove your case and thejudge will convince and sentence him. If you cannot prove your case, he should be set free. But we are now doing it as if there is something else involved in this matter. Remember that when Nnamdi Kanu was granted bail years back, he was enjoying hisbail until the Federal Government sent Operation Python Dance and 38 persons were killed in his house; he ran away. When he ran away, there in Israel, he deposed an affidavit and sent it to us, we filed it in court, where he said, my Lord, I ran away because of this. If my life will be protected, I am ready to come back to face my trial. Finally, Nnamdi Kanu was abducted there in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria through unlawful means, extraordinary rendition. And the law is explicit on that. If somebody is brought in that particular manner, the way and manner the person is being brought in must be discussed first before the trial. But we raised it, my Lord never listened to us. And the day they brought Nnamdi Kanu to court the first time, my Lord allowed him to speak from the dock without his lawyer, knowing fully well that Nnamdi Kanu has a team of lawyers representing him. The DSS, right there in the court, made an oral application asking my Lord to give them thepower to detain Nnamdi Kanu in their facility. My Lord granted it without Kanumaking his own defense. And we raised this issue, asking my Lord to set aside that proceeding because it was unlawful. On that one, then, when we came back, we applied for the charges to be dismissed and a few of them were dismissed while a few were retained. We went to the Court of Appeal. At the Court of Appeal, the three-man panel unanimously ruled in favour of NnamdiKanu; the next day, the Federal Government refused to release Nnamdi Kanu. TheFederal Government refused to release him the first day, the second day, the third day, until after eighth day. After the eighth day, the Federal Government now filed a motion for the stay of execution in the same Courtof Appeal, the first in history. Since thehistory of criminal jurisprudence in Nigeria, that was the first in history that somebody a Court of Appeal has discharged, another person will now file a motion in the same court, refusing to comply with that order. After eight days, they still had the audacity to come back to that Court of Appeal to file stay of execution. We said no. You cannot stay execution in this kind of matter. So, we brought the application. It was overruled. That particular decision was stayed until they now filed applications and appealed against that to the Supreme Court. For that eight days, Nnamdi Kanu stayed in detention. He stayed in detention for who? Under what law? 

Remember, I started by telling you that no lawyer, properly called, will allow his client to insult a judge. No lawyer, properly called, will allow his client to insult his colleagues, especially a member of the Inner Bar, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, chairman of body of benchers. I took exception to that because you don’t do such in court. I cautioned him, but the only thing is that, there in the court, I can no longer talk. I can no longer call him to order because I’m respecting the order given by the court. Then after the court proceedings, you can see how we were battling with him. When he wanted to speak, I said, no, don’t make such a comment. He was pushing us, he was saying that we should allow him to say hismind. That incident in the video came when one journalist was asking questions from theback. I said, you don’t ask that kind of question. Why are you causing trouble? Nnamdi Kanu then said that I’m distracting him, that I should not talk while he was talking. So now, these are the issues that we have. Personally,  I’m going to see him later. So all these issues are personal because when you have issues with your client, you don’t make it public.

Of course, a lawyer who said that he’s not embarrassed is not a lawyer. I was embarrassed by the way he talked to thejudge. I was also embarrassed by the way he talked to the lawyers. I was also embarrassed by the way he pushed a lawyer and the way he talked to me. Of course, I should be embarrassed. But the point we are talking about is that had it been that my Lord allowed us to be in charge of theproceedings of that day, we should have been in charge of our case and NnamdiKanu would not have been the one talking. When a client is making an application that he wants to speak, you ask, are you disengaging your lawyers? If you are disengaging us, you should do it in a formal way. You see, when my Lord was talking, Nnamdi Kanu was saying, ‘why is it that every time it has to do with my matter, you people will turn the law upside down against me’. He was saying all those things. He was actually visibly angry and saddened to. You cannot see that in normal proceeding, we were handicapped. There was nothing we could have done to actually control that because we were no longer in control of hisproceedings that day. He was in charge. When we now came out, if you watch thevideo, we were trying to control histhoughts, his speeches, but he refused.