The leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu’s defence team has said his former lawyers, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, and Mike Ejiofor, should explain why they ignored irregularities in the charge sheet on which the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, leader was prosecuted.
The defence team made the demand on Sunday in a statement issued by a lawyer, Christopher Chidera Esq. The statement described the charge sheet as a legal corpse, arguing that the trial and conviction was based on a repealed law.
According to the defence team, the Supreme Court had pronounced that the charge sheet is the foundation of criminal jurisdiction and without a valid charge, there is no trial, no jurisdiction, and nothing upon which a conviction can rest.
“These are binding pronouncements from the highest court in the land. Yet the previous legal team, Ifeanyi Ejiofor and Mike Ozekhome, SAN, never forced the trial court to confront the plain face of the charge sheet.
“On 13 October 2022, the Court of Appeal delivered a unanimous judgment that should have ended the matter forever. The charges were quashed. The trial court was stripped of jurisdiction. The case was over,” the statement said.
Stressing that the law under which Kanu was charged had been repealed, it pointed out that the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act 2013, the statute underpinning Counts 1 to 6 in the charge sheet was repealed in 2022 by the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act 2022.
The defence team also pointed out that Section
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