Fresh details of why the State Security Service (SSS) has not allowed lawyers access to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) have emerged.
Kanu, is facing terrorism charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja, and has been in detention since he was repatriated to Nigeria from Kenya in June 2021 under controversial circumstances.
His legal team has repeatedly accused the SSS of denying them access to Kanu.
On 17 October, the court threatened to jail the Director-General of the SSS, Adeola Ajayi, if he continued to deny lawyers access to the IPOB leader.
On Thursday, the court summoned the SSS DG to defend himself or face jail time over the secret police’s continued refusal to allow lawyers access to Kanu.
The summon, NewMailNG reported, followed a petition by Kanu’s legal team that some armed SSS operatives, on Wednesday, barricaded two of their members from accessing the IPOB leader.
The legal team claimed that the operatives were acting on the “instructions and orders” of the SSS director-general.
Meanwhile, the judge, Binta Nyako, on 20 May this year, ordered the SSS to allow Kanu to receive visitors for three days a week – Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
A copy of the court judgement signed by its Registrar, Yahaya Shuaibu, was obtained by PREMIUM TIMES.
Part of the orders, according to the court document:
“That an order is hereby made varying the condition of visitation to him (Kanu) in custody to 3 days a week. He is to be given a safe and ‘clean’ room to be made available to the defendant at the present (SSS) facility to prepare for his defence with his team of counsel not exceeding 5 in number;
“That they (counsels) should be allowed such facility that is required for the preparation of his defence and be allowed to take notes.”
Some top SSS officials told our correspondent that the secret police has been denying lawyers access to Kanu because the court order only mandated that the IPOB leader be allowed access to his lawyers to prepare for his trial.
The officials, who did not want their names mentioned because they were not authorised to speak on the matter, argued that Mr Kanu’s legal team had not been allowed access to the IPOB leader because the court trial is currently on hold following the initial withdrawal of Justice Nyako from handling the case.
One of the officials, who is very familiar with the case, said Mr Kanu truncated the case when he demanded that the judge recuse herself from the matter.
He said although the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, John Tsoho, later redirected Justice Nyako to take over the case after her initial withdrawal, the court has yet to resume hearing on the matter and the hearing date has not been fixed.
The officials contended that Kanu’s lawyers would only be allowed access to him whenever his trial resumes in earnest.
When contacted on Saturday, Nnaemeka Ejiofor, a lawyer to Mr Kanu, described the position of the SSS as “childish.”
“It’s so childish in the sense that an order of the court does not ordinarily elapse unless it is set aside by another order of court,” Mr Ejiofor explained.
The lawyer stressed that the SSS does not have to determine when Mr Kanu’s lawyers visit him as long as the court order has not been set aside.
“If they are saying we cannot see him until the trial has started. Is it when the trial resumes that we then start preparing our client (Kanu) for trial?
“Do they not know that just as the prosecutor investigates the suspect, the suspect also has the right to investigate the prosecutor?” he queried.
Mr Ejiofor argued that if the SSS contended that Justice Nyako’s order backing lawyers’ access to Mr Kanu was invalidated by the judge’s initial withdrawal, then the IPOB leader should be freed since the same judge ordered his detention.
“It, therefore, means that Nnamdi Kanu has no business being in SSS detention. It also means that his further detention at the SSS facility is illegal because the order has expired according to the SSS,” he argued.
The initial withdrawal of Justice Nyako from the case occurred on 24 September 2024.
The court judgment ordering that lawyers be allowed to see Mr Kanu was delivered on 20 May of the same year.
Meanwhile, it was found out that Kanu’s legal team repeatedly raised the alarm that the SSS was denying them access to the IPOB leader long before the order was issued.
In 2021, for instance, the legal team alleged that the SSS prevented them from seeing the IPOB leader
The SSS allegedly denied them access again to Mr Kanu in 2022, about a year after.
