ECOWAS Court: IPOB to go on appeal, describes verdict as “most bizarre”

From Chuks Moses, Awka
The Indegenous People’s of Biafra(IPOB) has described the throwing out of Nnamdi Kanu’s suit against the Nigerian Government as “most bizarre”, and went ahead to highlight areas in the judgement it took exception to.
In its reaction signed by the Media/Publicity Secretary, Emma Powerful and made available to journalists in Awka, the group stated that the outcome didn’t come to IPOB as a surprise that the ECOWAS Court judgement after nearly 4 years of prevarication.
“Our leader (Kanu) went to ECOWAS Court in the hope of avoiding  the judicial complicity of the bench in Nigeria in the reign of lawlessness… but to our horror we ended up with a timid frightened judge …delivering a truly timid judgement that carefully circumvented all our prayers before the court.
“The ECOWAS court found, after purportedly scrutinising avalanche of evidence presented during the hearing, that our leader Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was unable to prove infractions on his fundamental rights. Bizarrely the judge wanted a video evidence of where the DSS was torturing our leader. The question therefore is, how can any reasonable human being… think that the victim of state sponsored torture can film the event in real time? This beggars belief.
“Regrettably, it is the same manner the likes of Dasuki and Sowore were granted bail by several courts of competent jurisdiction and Nigeria Government contemptuosly disobey the  court orders, was the same manner Nnamdi Kanu was severally admitted to unconditional bail by both the Federal High Court Orders and Magistrate Court, still the Nigeria Government failed to obey the court orders to effect of these bails. This very prayer that formed the fulcrum of this case were completely ignored ….
“It is very pertinent to note that the infractions mustn’t be physical assault alone but the moment there was no existing court order legitimising the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, his further detention in the absence of any valid orders of court amount to  gross violation of his fundamental human rights to freedom of movement, dignity of human person and liberty. Even this basic legal right was lost on ECOWAS Court.
“Overwhelming evidence were presented before them but due to Federal Government of Nigeria pressure, they nominated a Kogi State born Judge to be the lead judge while forcing the only Igbo judge on the panel to recuse himself. With this ruling ECOWAS Court have decided to turn justice on its head. Various court orders flagrantly disobeyed by the Nigeria Governments and specific pronouncement of … Muhammed Buhari, where he expressly stated that Nnamdi Kanu cannot be released, were rather not considered by the court. The highly compromised Panel turned a blind eye to these compelling infractions.
“In view of the chequered  history of the case, it is unconventional and legally not permissible under the extant rule of ECOWAS Court to assign a case such as this to a Nigeria born Judge from Kogi State to be presided over, talkless of writing and reading the lead Judgement…
Necessary steps will be taken to apply for a review before the Appellate division of the ECOWAS Court. If this judge thinks they can get with this travesty of justice then they don’t know IPOB very well….
IPOB pointed out that the ECOWAS Court will also be on trial because it knows the bulk of its funding comes from Nigeria.