Human rights lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome(SAN), who is the lead counsel to the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Nnamdi Kanu, on Wednesday, raised the alarm that his client’s sight had deteriorated. Ozekhome told the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, that Kanu, who is currently in custody of the Department of State Service, DSS, may go blind if nothing was urgently done to restore his sight. Details coming.

  The Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption (PACAC) has criticized the recent decisions by the judiciary which elevated technicality over substantial justice. In a letter signed by its acting head, Professor Saddiq Raddah, the committee cited the cases of a former governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu; the governorship judgments in Rivers, Zamfara and Bayelsa States as “a clear preference for technicality at the expense of the justice.” It said the decision of the Supreme Court in Kalu’s N7bn case by disregarding the fiat given by the President of the Court of Appeal relying on Section 397(7) of the ACJA threw overboard the 12 years of labour of the trial court and the Court of Appeal for a fresh start. PACAC said the 2015 Rivers State governorship election dispute where the Supreme Court ruled that the petitioner, who complained of substantial non-compliance with the Electoral Act ought to prove it polling unit by polling unit, ward by ward. PACAC also stated “Even more grievous are the Supreme Court decisions in Zamfara and Bayelsa States in 2019 by which it effectively transferred the electoral victory of one party to another which had been massively rejected at the poll by the electorates. “In other words, the Supreme Court set aside the decision of the electorate and assumed the powers to install the losers in both the executive and legislative arms of government in Zamfara State and in the executive arm in Bayelsa State. “Thus, the Supreme Court had handed over the governance of a state from a party the electorate had overwhelmingly voted for, to a party that they had firmly rejected at the polls. “In other words, in these two cases, the court constituted itself into the electorate of Zamfara and Bayelsa states, by imposing its will over the states’ electorate. “This constituted a major breach of the constitution and our democratic rights because neither the constitution nor the practice of democracy contemplates any situation, in which a court replaces the votes of the electorate with its judicial votes.” PACAC also warned that in the appointment of judges, “a ‘family affair’ judiciary must be avoided at all costs.”

  A former National Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance, Chief Victor Umeh, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari made a simple case of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, too complex for Nigeria. Umeh said continued incarceration of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra by the Federal Government was unjust to the Igbo nation. The former APGA chief made these remarks in Onitsha during the 20th year Episcopacy celebration of the Most Rev. Dr Valerian Okeke, the Archbishop of Onitsha Catholic Archdiocese at the Basilica of Holy Trinity. He said he had advised the Federal Government that the manner it was handling Kanu’s case was not the best way, adding that the matter had become too big for Nigeria to handle. He said, “They treat Nnamdi Kanu’s issue as a personal thing. It is not. Kanu enjoys the solidarity and sympathy of Igbo people because they believe he fights for them and anything he says, they do, he is calling for the de-marginalisation of Ndigbo. He wants equality for all Nigerians. The Federal Government thinks it is Kanu they are dealing with, not knowing that they are dealing with all of us, the entire Igbo nation. “It is pertinent for the Federal Government to realise that they are dealing with the entire Igbo nation and that has become so difficult for them to handle.” “The issue of Kanu is a simple thing to handle if they listen to the yearnings of Igbo people to ensure justice in the Nigerian nation. “If they do it, there will be no problem. Once the government changes its attitudes towards Igbo, we will embrace Kanu and ask him to allow this thing to lie. I know he will do it as he did during the governorship election.” “When the last governorship election became so tensed when it became obvious that the election may not take place, they reached out to Kanu, who called off the sit-at-home and ordered that everybody should go to the election. People then became confident and participated in the election. “They are not using the right approach. They are not. I have said this for the past six years. What I am telling you today is what I had told them for the past six years. Let them remove the hand of the monkey from the pot of soup before it becomes the hand of a human being. That is the way to go.” “An Umuahia High Court has given the Federal Government leeway by stating that Kanu’s arrest was illegal and therefore he should be released. It is a judgement of a court. So, it is better for President Buhari to obey the judgment of Umuahia High Court and allow peace to reign in Nigeria and let us move forward.”