IPOB: Court revokes Kanu’s bail, orders his arrest

The Abuja division of the Federal High Court has issued a bench warrant for arrest of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, after revoking the bail earlier granted him.
Justice Binta Nyako, who issued the arrest warrant, relied on section 352(4) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015, saying the court would proceed with his trial in absentia. 
The order followed the inability of Kanu’s counsel, Mr. Ifeanyi Ejiofor, to give reason for the repeated failure of his client to appear in court to answer to the charge of treasonable felony against him. 

Nyako, thereafter, adjourned the case to June 18 to commence Kanu’s trial in his absence. 
It was the prosecution counsel, M.S. Labaran, who moved an application for a bench warrant when the case was called up for trial. 
Kanu, whose whereabouts has remained unknown since September 2017, was hitherto, answering to a five-count charge, which the Federal Government entered against him and three other pro-Biafra agitators, Chidiebere Onwudiwe, Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi.

Meanwhile, shortly after the IPOB leader was declared “missing,” Nyako, on February 20, 2018, okayed separate trials for the other three defendants. 
Kanu, who has dual citizenship, has been reportedly sighted at various locations outside the country, including Jerusalem and the United Kingdom. 
When the proceedings resumed yesterday, the prosecution counsel, Labaran, urged the court to revoke the bail it granted the defendant on April 25, 2016. He informed the court that all the three persons that stood surety for Kanu had since applied to withdraw from the matter. 

“We humbly submit that the defendant has been given adequate opportunity in line with Section 352(4) of the ACJA. When he failed to utilize such opportunity, the court took the appropriate step of initiating proceeding requiring the sureties to show cause. 
“Even at that, this court has been so magnanimous in granting several adjournments, giving the sureties the opportunity to show cause. Consequent upon which the court delivered a ruling on November 14, 2018, for the sureties to forfeit their bail bond, a matter that is currently the subject of appeal.

“It is our submission that the request by counsel to the defendant is rather belated. This is the kind of application that he ought to have brought when the court, after granting the defendant bail, adjourned for nearly 12 months. 
“We urge the court to discountenance the request for adjournment to give any explanation, and order that the bail be revoked and issue a bench warrant against the defendant. Finally, we urge the court to issue an order for trial of the defendant in absentia, in compliance with relevant portions of the law.” 
Efforts by Ejiofor to persuade the court for a short adjournment for him to file affidavit evidence to explain his client’s disappearance failed as it was refused.
Ejiofor had insisted that Kanu’s disappearance was occasioned by the unwarranted invasion of his home by the Nigerian Army. 

However, Nyako, who traced the history of the case and the continued absence of Kanu in court, overruled him. She said: “I am of the opinion that learned counsel is only seeking for time to delay the inevitable.”
 The court had, on April 25, 2016, released Kanu on bail on health ground after he had spent a year and seven months in detention. To secure Kanu’s release, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, Uchendu and a Jewish High Priest, Emmanu El- Salom Oka BenMadu, on April 28, 2016, signed an undertaking to ensure his attendance in court. 
Meanwhile, Nyako, on Wednesday adjourned indefinitely an earlier proceeding the court initiated for all the sureties to appear and show cause why they should not forfeit the N100million that each deposited as bond for Kanu to be released on bail. 

Nyako had, on October 10, 2017, ordered the three sureties to show cause why they should not be committed to prison over Kanu’s repeated failure to appear for continuation of his trial or why the N100m they individually deposited to secure his bail should not be forfeited to the Federal Government. Alternatively, the court said the sureties were at liberty to produce the IPOB leader for his trial. The order followed an application the Federal Government made pursuant to section 179 (1) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, ACJA, 2015.
 In a ruling on November 14, 2018, Nyako ordered the sureties to, in the interim, deposit the bail bond in the court within two months. All the sureties have, however, gone before the Court of Appeal to challenge the ruling.

In the charge, the prosecution had, among other things, alleged that Kanu imported radio transmitter known as TRAM 50L, which was concealed in a container that was declared as used household items, for the purpose of using same to disseminate information about secession plans by the IPOB.
The prosecution further alleged that Kanu, “on or about April 28, 2015, in London, United Kingdom, did in a broadcast on Radio Biafra monitored in Enugu, Enugu State, and other parts of Nigeria within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, refer to Major General Muhammadu Buhari, GCON, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a paedophile, a terrorist, an idiot and an embodiment of evil, knowing same to be false and you thereby committed an offence contrary to section 375 of the Criminal Code Act, Cap C. 38 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004.”