BREAKING: Reprieve for Kanu as court strikes out 8 charges against him

Reprieve came the way of the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (lPOB),  Nnamdi Kanu, on Friday as a Federal High Court in Abuja struck out eight of the 15-count treasonable felony charge slammed on him by the Federal Government.

Justice Binta Nyako, in a ruling, struck out counts 6,7,9,10,11,12,13 and 14 of the charges.

Chief Mike Ozekhome(SAN), leading a team of lawyers, had in an application filed on behalf of Kanu, asked the court to quash the charges against him.

He insisted that the charges brought against him were “legally defective.”

He argued that the court lacked the jurisdiction to try Kanu on the strength of an “incompetent” charge.

Ozekhome told the court that Kanu was “unlawfully, brutally and extraordinarily renditioned from Kenya without his consent”.

He argued that since some of the changes levelled against Kanu were purportedly committed outside the country, the high court in Nigeria, therefore, lacked the jurisdiction to entertain the charge.

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“The charges appears to give this court a global jurisdiction over offences that were allegedly committed by the Defendant, without specifying the location or date the said offences were committed,” he said.

He cited that under the Federal High Court Act such charge must disclose specific location where the offence was committed.

Ozekhome also contended that Kanu could not be charged with belonging to an unlawful organization since the action of the federal government in proscribing the IPOB is still a subject of legal dispute at the Court of Appeal and therefore sub judice.

“This case is hollow, there is nothing in it. It is dead on arrival. Elements constituting the offence must occur within the jurisdiction of this court,” he argued.

But counsel to the federal government, Mr Shuaibu Labaran, urged the court to strike out Kanu’s application and order the Prosecution to open its defence.

He argued that the application would touch the substance of the case that is yet to be heard.

“The position as at now is that the IPOB is a proscribed organization which was duly proscribed through the due process of law,” he submitted, adding that Section 32 of the Terrorism Prevention Act gave the court with the “requisite jurisdiction” to try Kanu.