From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
Detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has revealed how he was blindfolded and flown into the country in a private jet after his abduction in Kenya.
According to a statement by his counsel, Aloy Ejimafor, the IPOB leader, who is currently in the custody of the Department of State Service (DSS), was flown to Abuja in a private jet on Sunday, June 27, from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Nairobi, and that he was the lone passenger.
Ejimakor, who said he visited Kanu at the detention facility on Tuesday said that Kanu told him he was blindfolded and driven to the tarmac very close to the plane without passing through the airport Immigration and that the plane departed Nairobi at about 12 pm and arrived in Abuja in the evening.
Revealing more details on the abduction, Ejimakor said that ‘Kanu was in point of fact tortured and subjected to untold inhuman treatment in Kenya. He said his abductors disclosed to him that they abducted him at the behest of the Nigerian government.’
On whether Kanu had a hint of why he was abducted, the lawyer said that ‘the people never said much on that except that they were told he was a Nigerian terrorist linked to the Islamic terrorists in Kenya. But after several days when they discovered his true identity, they tended to treat him less badly.’
Continuing, Barrister Ejimakor said that no warrant of arrest ‘was shown to Kanu or even mentioned to him. And for the eight days, he was held incommunicado, nothing of presenting him before a Court or transferring him to an official detention facility was ever mentioned. He was held in a nondescript private facility and chained to a bare floor.’
At the DSS, ‘Kanu was interviewed for the first time in my presence by three DSS officers. The interview was revealing as it contained certain new allegations that were never heard of before. But they all relate to his status as the leader of IPOB,’ Ejimakor said.
The lawyer added that ‘despite what he has passed through, he was in high spirits and looked forward to overcoming the extraordinary rendition that brought him to Nigeria.’
The lawyer stated that ‘in my opinion, before any court can subject Kanu to trial, it has to first conduct a trial within a trial on the grievous incident that forced Kanu to leave Nigeria and the equally grievous incident that forced him back to Nigeria. No court of law, conscience and equity will overlook those two incidents and proceed to trial.’