The defence team of Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, leader Nnamdi Kanu has accused the Federal High Court of misapplying the law in his conviction, describing the ruling as a deliberate distortion of Nigeria’s judicial principles.
In a legal brief on Thursday, the Global Defence Consortium of Nnamdi Kanu, through counsel Njoku Jude Njoku, argued that the court convicted the IPOB leader under a law that had already been repealed.
According to him, the court relied on a misinterpreted subsection of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2022 (TPPA), while ignoring the repeal of the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2013 (TPAA).
“The certified true copies of the proceedings and judgment reveal a simple truth: Justice Omotosho convicted a man under a repealed law by clinging to a misread subsection of the TPPA,” Njoku said. “The law speaks clearly. Only the judgment does not.”
He explained that the trial violated two fundamental pillars of criminal jurisdiction: first, that the law must have been in force when the alleged conduct occurred, and second, that the law must still be in force at the time of trial, plea, and conviction.
“Yes, the TPAA existed in 2013–2022. Nobody disputes that,” he said. “But the trial and the plea in 2025 occurred when the TPAA had been repealed. A dead statute cannot sustain a living prosecution,” he emphasised.
Barrister Njoku also criticised the court’s reliance on Section 98(3) of the TPPA, which preserves certain liabilities “as if this Act does not exist”.
“Omotosho treated this as a license to ignore the TPPA entirely,” he said. “This is legally impossible. Section 98(3) preserves liabilities, not repealed laws. The court should have applied Section 97, which mandates that trials continue under the extant law.”
He further condemned the use of the phrase “assume without conceding,” which the court employed instead of taking judicial notice of the repeal under Section 122 of the Evidence Act.
“Had the court complied with Section 122, it would have been forced to recognise that the TPPA — not the TPAA — governed the trial, instantly rendering the charges void,” Njoku explained.
“Instead, it performed an evasive linguistic somersault to avoid the inevitable conclusion that the trial under TPAA in 2025 is a nullity,” he added.
The defence counsel further claimed that the judgment was a “repudiation of the rule of law” and warned of the dangerous precedent it sets.
“If this stands, no Nigerian is safe from retroactive prosecution or judicial resurrection of dead statutes,” he said.
“The Court of Appeal must intervene,” he added, pointing out that, “This case is no longer about one man; it is about whether repeal means repeal and whether courts obey Parliament or reinvent statutes to achieve predetermined outcomes.”
