Nnamdi Kanu Returns to Supreme Court to Challenge 2023 Ruling

The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has approached the Supreme Court of Nigeria once again, seeking to overturn what his legal team calls a “per incuriam judgment” delivered on December 15, 2023.

In a statement issued on Monday by his counsel, Barrister Njoku Jude Njoku, and titled “A Judgment That Destroyed Justice,” Kanu’s lawyers argued that the Supreme Court’s decision, which reversed the Court of Appeal’s earlier ruling that discharged him, was not a mere judicial error but “a conscious manoeuvre designed to keep him in perpetual captivity.”

The statement accused the five-member panel, led by Justice Garba Lawal and supported by Justices Emmanuel Agim, Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, Tijjani Abubakar, and Ibrahim Musa Saulawa, of relying on a repealed law to remand Kanu for trial. The disputed law, the *Terrorism (Prevention) (Amendment) Act 2013*, had been repealed and replaced by the *Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022* on May 12, 2022—more than a year before the Supreme Court delivered its judgment.

Njoku claimed the apex court “resurrected a dead law” to sustain charges against Kanu, describing the ruling as “a deliberate judicial ambush” rather than an oversight. He asserted that since the repealed law no longer existed, the judgment amounted to “a jurisdictional nullity.”

“A repealed law is a legal corpse. It cannot be revived or used to create criminal liability,” he said, adding that by simultaneously acknowledging and applying the repealed statute, the Court “lost jurisdiction.”

Kanu’s team contends that no doctrine of finality can protect a judgment rooted in illegality and that the Supreme Court retains inherent power to correct its own record. The statement further alleged that the Court breached Section 122 of the *Evidence Act 2011*, which requires courts to take judicial notice of repealed and newly enacted laws.

Njoku maintained that a per incuriam judgment is not immune from review and cited past instances where the Supreme Court had reversed similar errors. He also warned that the 2023 ruling undermined Kanu’s constitutional protection against double jeopardy under Section 36(9) of the 1999 Constitution, which prevents a person from being retried after discharge or acquittal.

“The Court of Appeal discharged Kanu, which activated this constitutional protection. Yet the Supreme Court stripped him of that shield and ordered a retrial. That is not law; it is vindictive jurisprudence,” Njoku stated.

Kanu’s latest motion, according to his legal team, is aimed not only at restoring his freedom but also at defending the integrity of Nigeria’s judicial system. Njoku warned that if the ruling is left uncorrected, “dead laws can be revived to prosecute citizens, double jeopardy will lose its meaning, and courts will become co-agents of government reprisal.”

He concluded that rectifying the alleged judicial error is vital “not just for Kanu, but for every Nigerian who looks to the courts for justice.”