Why Nigeria Will Never List The Appeal of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu – And The Bill of Indictment Against Every Court That Made This Fraud Possible

By Onyedikachi Ifedi Esq

The question is no longer whether Nigeria will defend the conviction of Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. The question is why Nigeria has decided it cannot afford to.

The answer: listing this appeal would end the Nigerian bench as a credible institution. Not because IPOB says so.

Because the record says so.

THREE FACTS. NO SPIN.

One — The Federal Government filed nothing. Time expired. No brief. No living section. No defence.

Two — The Court of Appeal will not list the case.

Three — The trial judge convicted under a dead law.

That is not delay. That is not congestion. That is a bench that has read the file, understood what is inside it, and decided the safest course is to never open it.

THE BILL OF INDICTMENT
I. THE COURT OF APPEAL — UNLAWFUL CIVIL STAY, THEN REFUSAL TO LIST

The Court of Appeal discharged Kanu. That discharge was a criminal outcome — a final criminal disposition. The same Court of Appeal then responded not with criminal process, but with a civil stay — a mechanism from an entirely different body of law — and used it to override its own criminal discharge.

Within fourteen days, it constituted a fresh panel. Within fourteen days, it kept a man in custody by applying the wrong law to the wrong proceeding. A civil stay cannot undo a criminal discharge. That is not innovation. That is abuse of process.

Then it got worse. Having unlawfully overridden its own discharge, the same court now refuses to list the appeal arising from the conviction that followed. It created the custody and then locked the courtroom door.

Indictment: The Court of Appeal is implicated in unlawfully overriding a criminal discharge with a civil mechanism — and then shielding the resulting conviction from all review.

II. THE SUPREME COURT — QUASHED COUNTS REVIVED WITHOUT JURISDICTION

Counts were quashed. Quashed means dead. Not dormant. Not suspended. Dead. The Supreme Court revived them anyway — not by ordering fresh charges, not by remanding for retrial, but by breathing life into corpses and sending them back for trial as though they had never been quashed.

A court cannot revive what it has no jurisdiction to revive. Every proceeding that followed is tainted by that original excess.

Indictment: The Supreme Court is implicated in creating a trial with no lawful foundation.

III. THE HIGH COURT — OMOTOSHO’S DEAD-LAW CONVICTION

By the time the case reached Justice Omotosho, the Terrorism Prevention (Amendment) Act 2013 had been repealed.

The living statute was the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022, whose transitional provisions told any honest court what to do: continue the saved proceeding under the corresponding provisions of the 2022 Act.

Omotosho had the living law. He had the transition mechanism. He had the Constitution. He had the Supreme Court in State v. Egigia (2024) LPELR-62009(SC), which holds a repealed law has no legal life.

He stated the rule himself: “No written law, no conviction.”

Then he convicted under the dead law.
He did not transition the proceeding. He reached into the grave and dragged out a repealed statute to sustain a conviction. That is not a judge. That is a gravedigger in judicial robes.

Indictment: The High Court is implicated in convicting under a statute that no longer existed, in violation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s own authority, and the mandatory transition to the TPPA 2022.

IV. THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL — FILED NOTHING

The chief law officer of the Federation had one job: defend the conviction or concede it. He did neither. He let time expire. That silence is the only honest document the Federation has produced in this appeal.

Indictment: The AGF is implicated in abandoning a conviction he cannot defend.

WHY THEY WILL NOT LIST IT: BECAUSE THE MAN IS ARGUING HIS OWN CASE

The Nigerian state has one reliable method for killing an appeal: buy the lawyer, or frighten the lawyer. Threaten his practice. Threaten his family. Offer him a bench. Make him understand that diligence will cost him his career. It works. It has always worked.

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu removed that weapon. He is representing himself.

There is no lawyer to threaten. No chambers to squeeze. No promotion to dangle. No silence to purchase.

And so the state is left with the one thing it has never survived: a defendant who knows the law, knows the record, and cannot be bought.

THE BRIEF IS HANDWRITTEN. 115 PAGES. EIGHT ISSUES.

A man in custody, without a law library, without researchers, without the resources the Federation pours into its prosecutors, produced a 115-page appellant brief, handwritten, raising eight issues for determination.

Those eight issues are precise, sequential, and grounded in the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s own authority, and the transitional provisions of the TPPA 2022. They are the reason the Court of Appeal will not sit.

Because to hear them is to answer them. And to answer them is to confront the fact that:

The trial judge recited “no written law, no conviction” — then convicted under a repealed law.

He cited the Supreme Court against dead statutes — then used a dead statute anyway.

The TPPA 2022 provided the exact mechanism for transition — and it was deliberately ignored.

A preserved proceeding is not a resurrected statute.

The conviction therefore has no lawful foundation and is a nullity.

If the Court of Appeal answers honestly, the conviction dies. If it answers dishonestly, the bench dies.

THE JUDICIARY IS NOT PROTECTING THE GOVERNMENT. IT IS PROTECTING ITSELF.

This appeal climbs. If the Court of Appeal affirms Omotosho, the Supreme Court must rule on whether a Nigerian judge may convict under a repealed statute — after that same judge quoted the Supreme Court forbidding it.

The Supreme Court already answered in Egigia. To contradict itself now is to destroy its own authority. Not to contradict itself is to collapse the conviction — and every justice who declined to stop it wears the consequence.

REMEMBER THE FOURTEEN DAYS.

Fourteen days to constitute a panel and keep Kanu in custody after the Court of Appeal had already discharged him.
Months of silence now that he asks for a hearing.

Fourteen days to keep him in chains. Endless silence now that he asks for justice.

That contrast is not IPOB’s allegation. It is the court’s own conduct. When the state needed speed, the judiciary sprinted. When the prisoner needs a hearing, the judiciary vanishes.

TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

Ask Abuja, publicly, every single day:

Why has the Court of Appeal refused to list the appeal?

Why did the Federal Government file nothing before time expired?

Why assemble a panel in fourteen days to keep him in custody, but none to hear his appeal?

And what living Act, and what section, governed the conviction of 20 November 2025?

They have no answers. They answered by filing nothing and hiding the file.

THE CONCLUSION

The Court of Appeal is not saving the government. It is not saving Omotosho. It is not saving the Attorney-General. It is not saving the Chief Justice.

It is delaying the moment when all of them must be judged by the same standard they applied to Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.

That moment cannot be delayed forever. The brief exists. The issues exist. The record exists. The dead law exists. The Constitution exists.

And one sentence from Omotosho’s own mouth — the sentence he then betrayed — will stand as the verdict on all of them:

NO WRITTEN LAW, NO CONVICTION.
THE GOVERNMENT FILED NOTHING.

THE COURT OF APPEAL USED AN UNLAWFUL CIVIL STAY TO OVERRIDE A CRIMINAL DISCHARGE — THEN REFUSED TO LIST THE APPEAL.

THE SUPREME COURT REVIVED QUASHED COUNTS WITHOUT JURISDICTION.

THE TRIAL JUDGE CONVICTED UNDER A DEAD LAW.

EVERY SUPERIOR COURT OF RECORD IS IMPLICATED.

THE CONVICTION OF ONYENDU MAZI NNAMDI KANU IS VOID. IT IS A NULLITY.

List it. Defend it. Or admit you are afraid to.

Issued by:

ONYEDIKACHI IFEDI ESQ.
10 September 2026