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The reason behind the Supreme Court’s decision to deny bail and order the continued detention of the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, has been revealed.
In a ruling led by Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the apex court held that the Court of Appeal was mistaken in discharging and acquitting Kanu based on the prosecution’s illegal actions in bringing him back from Kenya to face trial.
In a lead judgment written by Justice Mohammed Lawal Garba and read by Justice Emmanuel Agim, the Supreme Court acknowledged the illegal manner in which Kanu was brought back to Nigeria from Kenya but asserted that this should not impede the trial court’s jurisdiction.
The court emphasized that, under Nigerian law, evidence obtained through the violation of an accused person’s rights to privacy and illegal search remains admissible in court. It stated that the law does not support an argument by an accused person that an illegality committed by the prosecution against them should divest the trial court of jurisdiction and render the prosecution process incompetent.
The court said, “We have made an analogy of the use of illegally obtained evidence or evidence obtained as a result of the violation of the right of the accused to privacy and the evidence obtained as a result of illegal search. What is the response of our law to such a situation? The position of our law is that, despite what happened, that evidence is proper evidence before the court.”
Justice Agim added that if an accused person feels that their rights have been violated by the prosecution, the remedy, by law, lies in the accused instituting a civil proceeding. He emphasized, “That has been the position of Nigerian law for a very long time. The Nigerian law has not developed to the point whereby it could be said that, on account of the clear violation of the right of an accused person standing trial before a court, the proceeding before that court has become incompetent and the court is divested of jurisdiction to continue to hear the case. That is not our law for now.”
The court concluded that there is no Nigerian law supporting the view that the trial court loses jurisdiction when the prosecution commits illegal acts against an accused person during the trial. It decided not to align with the Court of Appeal’s position, stating, “In as much as we strongly condemn what the prosecution did against the accused, Nigerian law does not support the position taken by the Court of Appeal.”
