Department of State Services (DSS)

Underneath the escalating sociopolitical tensions in Nigeria lies a case that, quite starkly, encapsulates the prevailing disregard for constitutional rights, democratic principles, and international obligations: the ongoing detention of Nnamdi Kanu. An outspoken advocate for the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Kanu’s incarceration illuminates a disconcerting narrative of systemic injustices, legal contradictions, and ethnopolitical disparities in the country. The protracted and contentious nature of his detention has escalated beyond the confines of a single case, morphing into a disturbing emblem of an endemic disregard for the rule of law in Nigeria.

Kanu’s extrajudicial rendition from Kenya in 2021 blatantly flouts …

For two years, the federal government of Nigeria has continued to persecute, dehumanise, humiliate, and subjugate citizen Nnamdi Kanu whose only crime was a blunt retaliation against the injustice being perpetrated by the Nigerian system against indigenous people.

In 2017, the Nigerian state designated his group – the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) – as a terrorist organisation. This was the same government that always looked the other way when marauding Fulani herdsmen wreaked havoc on innocent villagers. They were neither blacklisted nor designated terrorists by the Nigerian government rather they were pampered and treated with so much respect as …