When Procedure Became Politics in the Trial of Nnamdi Kanu
There are moments in a nation’s judicial history when a single courtroom crystallizes the tension between law, power, and when the bench becomes not merely a place of adjudication, but a mirror reflecting the state of justice itself. The case of Federal Republic of Nigeria v. Nnamdi Kanu, as presided over by Justice James Kolawole Omotosho, was one such moment. It was less a trial about guilt or innocence and more a referendum on the resilience of Nigeria’s constitutional order under political heat.
At its core, the controversy surrounding Justice Omotosho’s handling of Kanu’s proceedings is not about ideology or sentiment. It is about law, its clarity, its consistency, and its capacity to restrain those who wield it. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999, as amended) is explicit: no person may be convicted of a criminal offence unless the offence is defined in a written law. This is the fundamental architecture of legality—nullum crimen sine lege. Yet, under the bright lights of the Federal High Court in Abuja, that bedrock principle appeared negotiable.
A Trial Built on Shifting Sand
From the first procedural sitting, the Kanu case was weighed down by contradictions. The prosecution’s charges oscillated between “incitement,” “terrorism-related communication,” and “conduct capable of breaching public peace.” None of these expressions, as the Nigerian Bar Association’s Human Rights Committee later noted, exist in any codified Nigerian criminal statute. Despite that legal vacuum, the court permitted the case to proceed. The acceptance of undefined offences signaled an early departure from constitutional orthodoxy, creating a precedent that offends the rule of law itself.
To the untrained observer, such technicality might appear trivial; to any serious lawyer, it is catastrophic. The charge sheet is the heart of any criminal proceeding. When its language is vague, the entire trial becomes a theatre without script or compass. Justice Omotosho, by allowing proceedings to continue such ambiguous legal ground, placed political expediency above procedural certainty. The courtroom became a hybrid arena—half judicial, half performative—where the appearance of legality replaced its substance.
The National Judicial Council’s Code of Conduct defines impartiality as “freedom from bias or the perception thereof.” But in Omotosho’s courtroom, perception and practice fused uncomfortably. The court’s consistent pattern of denying defense motions—ranging from applications for bail variation to access to classified evidence—created the image of predetermined restraint. Each refusal may have had textual justification, yet the cumulative effect was unmistakable: the defendant was litigating uphill on a slope designed by the state.
The Erosion of Fair Procedure
In a proper adversarial system, procedure is the invisible scaffolding of justice. It ensures that no conviction can rest on secrecy, speculation, or selective disclosure. But when Kanu’s counsel demanded access to the so-called intercepted communications forming the crux of the state’s case, Justice Omotosho declined, citing “national security considerations.” That phrase, perhaps the most overused in Nigerian jurisprudence, has become a judicial blindfold—an easy way to exclude scrutiny under the pretext of patriotism.
Section 36(3) of the Constitution requires that all evidence in criminal trials be presented in open court, accessible to both parties. The refusal to grant disclosure, therefore, was not an act of judicial prudence but of procedural subversion. The International Commission of Jurists (Africa) has long warned that the moment national security becomes a standing exception to transparency, constitutional rights devolve into conditional privileges. The Kanu trial proved that prophecy true.
Moreover, certain rulings were delivered orally without written reasons, contravening established practice. Without certified orders, appellate recourse becomes illusory—a strategic silence that shields error from review. Even when defense counsel raised objections regarding admissibility, the bench deferred detailed rulings to “final judgment,” effectively muting contemporaneous challenge. Such shortcuts, while seemingly minor, hollow out the adversarial structure that sustains judicial integrity.
The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre’s 2023 report identifies this very pattern as a symptom of systemic compromise: judicial officers constrained not by law but by the invisible hand of political supervision. In Omotosho’s courtroom, that diagnosis found living proof.
The Transformation of the Judge
There is a line between discretion and complicity. Justice Omotosho’s defenders insist that he acted within the permissible bounds of judicial caution in a politically sensitive case. But discretion is not the liberty to disregard due process; it is the responsibility to uphold it even when inconvenient. The African Bar Association’s 2024 study on national-security trials in Africa warns that “judicial restraint, when untethered from legal principle, morphs into quiet endorsement of executive overreach.”
This is the paradox of the Omotosho trial. The judge never raised his voice, never visibly erred in decorum, and yet, through procedural selectivity, advanced the state’s cause at the expense of constitutional fairness. His courtroom was serene, his diction measured, but beneath that calm was a surrender of judicial independence to a political expectation.
What occurred was the subtle corruption of the bench—not through bribery or coercion, but through acquiescence. When the judge begins to see himself as guardian of state stability rather than guardian of the law, justice ceases to be blind; it becomes a mirror reflecting power.
Read also: The Voice That Cross-Examined The Gavel—Part 4
The Consequences Beyond the Courtroom
The implications of Justice Omotosho’s approach extend beyond Nnamdi Kanu’s personal fate. Each procedural irregularity becomes a seed of precedent. Tomorrow, when a different defendant stands accused—whether journalist, activist, or political dissenter—the same justifications may be invoked. In that sense, the trial was not just about one man’s liberty, but about the architecture of justice in a democracy struggling with its own conscience.
Human Rights Watch’s 2024 report on Nigeria notes a pattern of “judicial deference to executive language in politically charged prosecutions.” The Kanu case epitomizes that trend. The judiciary, historically the last refuge against arbitrary governance, risks becoming the administrative arm of state security. When that transformation occurs, every Nigerian, regardless of belief or affiliation—stands vulnerable.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 36 emphasizes that no nation can invoke “national security” to justify denial of fair-trial guarantees. Nigeria is not exempt from that rule. To interpret constitutional safeguards through the lens of state preference is to replace the law with policy—and policy, by its nature, is transient. Law must endure.
A Mirror to the Constitution
At its philosophical core, this controversy is not about Nnamdi Kanu’s politics. It is about whether Nigeria’s courts still function as sanctuaries of neutrality. The Nigerian Bar Association’s 2023 procedural observation report concluded that “judicial management of the Kanu case reflected a troubling elasticity in procedural compliance.” That elasticity, when stretched too far, snapped the spine of constitutional certainty.
Section 6 of the Nigerian Constitution vests judicial powers in the courts “for the purpose of determining the civil rights and obligations of all persons.” That power is sacred. It does not exist to affirm state narratives or to sanitize political inconvenience. It exists to ensure that even the most unpopular citizen can stand before the bench and still find the law untainted.
In Kanu’s trial, that promise was betrayed not by overt defiance but by the quiet normalization of shortcuts. The court became an instrument of process management rather than rights adjudication. The Constitution guarantees equality before the law; what Nigerians witnessed was hierarchy before the bench.
The Verdict of Reason
Justice James Omotosho’s courtroom failed not for lack of intelligence but for lack of constitutional courage. The tragedy of his judgment lies in its formality—it looked like law, it sounded like law, but it was emptied of the procedural discipline that gives law its legitimacy.
To the government, the verdict may have delivered a tactical victory. To the law, it was a moral defeat. The CLEEN Foundation’s 2022 rule-of-law report captures this perfectly: “When a court becomes the stage upon which politics performs legality, justice ceases to be adjudicated—it becomes choreographed.”
The Kanu proceedings marked that choreography. The defendant stood in the dock, the Constitution sat in silence, and the nation watched a drama where verdict preceded evidence.
A judiciary that fears the truth cannot defend the law. And a court that serves the state rather than the Constitution serves neither justice nor history. Justice Omotosho’s court crossed its own line—not with malice, but with obedience. Yet obedience to power, in the temple of law, is the most dangerous form of disobedience to justice.
Professor MarkAnthony Ujunwa Nze is an acclaimed investigative journalist, public intellectual, and global governance analyst whose work shapes contemporary thinking at the intersection of health and social care management, media, law, and policy. Renowned for his incisive commentary and structural insight, he brings rigorous scholarship to questions of justice, power, and institutional integrity.
Based in New York, he serves as a full tenured professor and Academic Director at the New York Center for Advanced Research (NYCAR), where he leads high-impact research in governance innovation, strategic leadership, and geopolitical risk. He also oversees NYCAR’s free Health & Social Care professional certification programs, accessible worldwide at:
👉 https://www.newyorkresearch.org/professional-certification/
Professor Nze remains a defining voice in advancing ethical leadership and democratic accountability across global systems.
Bibliographies
African Bar Association. (2024). Judicial accountability and due process in African national-security trials. Lagos, Nigeria: AfBA Centre for Constitutional Governance.
Amnesty International Nigeria. (2023). Nigeria: Patterns of secret trials and prolonged detentions under the guise of national security. Abuja, Nigeria: Amnesty International.
CLEEN Foundation. (2022). Rule of law and human-rights protection in Nigeria’s counter-terrorism prosecutions. Lagos, Nigeria: CLEEN Foundation Publications.
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999, as amended). (2023 rev. ed.). Abuja, Nigeria: Federal Government Printer.
Federal Ministry of Justice. (2021). Judicial precedents and prosecutorial guidelines in terrorism-related offences. Abuja, Nigeria: Department of Public Prosecutions.
Human Rights Watch. (2024). Nigeria: Justice or security? The erosion of fair-trial standards in political and separatist cases. New York, NY: Human Rights Watch.
International Commission of Jurists (Africa Regional Programme). (2023). Fair-trial guarantees and judicial independence in West Africa: Country case studies (Nigeria). Pretoria, South Africa: ICJ Africa.
National Judicial Council (NJC). (2022). Code of conduct for judicial officers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (revised edition). Abuja, Nigeria: NJC Secretariat.
Nigerian Bar Association Human Rights Committee. (2023). Observations on procedural irregularities in high-profile national-security trials. Abuja, Nigeria: NBA Press.
Nnamdi Kanu v. Federal Republic of Nigeria, FHC/ABJ/CR/383/2015 (Federal High Court Abuja 2025).
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2022). Fair-trial rights and the administration of justice in Africa. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations.
Open Society Justice Initiative. (2020). Securing justice: National security, secrecy, and the right to fair trial in Nigeria. New York, NY: Open Society Foundations.
Premium Times Nigeria. (2025, November 21). From Mohammed to Omotosho: The four judges who handled Kanu’s case. Retrieved from https://www.premiumtimesng.com
Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC). (2023). The judiciary under pressure: An empirical study of executive interference in Nigeria’s courts. Lagos, Nigeria: RULAAC Publications.
United Nations Human Rights Committee. (2019). General Comment No. 36: Article 14 – Right to a fair trial and public hearing. Geneva, Switzerland: UN Doc. CCPR/C/GC/36.
