Supreme Court wrong to remit case after Nnamdi Kanu’s acquittal by Court of Appeal – Lawyer

A lawyer, Barrister Njoku Jude Njoku, has said the Supreme Court erred in remitting the terrorism trial of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, after his acquittal by the Court of Appeal

Njoku, Consultant to the Mazi Nnamdi Kanu Global Defence Consortium, a group of lawyers fighting for the freedom of the IPOB leader, made the assertion in a statement issued in Abuja,

The statement comes in the wake of Kanu’s refusal to enter his defense after the Nigerian government closed its case against him,

Kanu insists that the prosecution has no case against him, and his defense team argues that his earlier acquittal by the Court of Appeal on October 13, 2022, had nullified his trial,

In the statement titled “A Devastating Critique: The Nigerian Supreme Court’s Unlawful Remittal of Nnamdi Kanu’s Case, the Inviolability of Section 36(9) Immunity, and the Universal Doctrine of Finality of Appellate Discharge,” Njoku faulted the December 15, 2025, decision of the apex court to remit Kanu’s case back to the Abuja Federal High Court for continuation of the Biafra agitator’s trial,

According to Njoku, the decision violated the doctrine of finality of appellate discharge,

He described the apex court’s action as constitutional perversity, noting that the Nigerian Constitution is superior to the Supreme Court,

“The Supreme Court’s decision of 15 December 2023, purporting to remit a charge already extinguished by the Court of Appeal’s lawful discharge of 13 October 2022, constitutes a blatant constitutional perversity that strikes at the very foundation of the rule of law and offends the universal, inviolable Doctrine of Finality of Appellate Discharge, a bedrock principle of common-law jurisprudence recognised across the globe,

While it is accepted that ‘the law is what the Supreme Court says it is’ in the interpretive hierarchy, this maxim yields inexorably to the supremacy of the Constitution under Sections 1(1) and 1(3), the Constitution is the supreme law, not the Supreme Court, The non-derogable immunity conferred by Section 36(9) upon a person discharged by a court of competent jurisdiction is self-executing, absolute, and beyond the reach of any judicial organ, including the apex court,

“Once the Court of Appeal pronounced discharge, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu became constitutionally untouchable for the same offences, the prosecution was extinguished at its root, and jurisdiction to retry him permanently lost (FRN v. Ifegwu (2003) 15 NWLR (Pt 842) 113 at 175, Abacha v. Fawehinmi (2000) 6 NWLR (Pt 660) 228),