Kanu seeks Britain's help over continued detention

Detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has taken his plight to the British Government.
Kanu in a terse letter through one of his lawyers, Mr Ifeanyi Ejiofor, said he is a victim of travesty of justice and gross human rights violation due to his prolonged detention by the federal government.
The IPOB leader, who expressed his readiness to stand trial, said, however, that what he is yearning for is nothing but fair trial and not persecution.
In the letter dated March 24, 2016 and addressed to the British High Commissioner in Abuja, the Biafra agitator, who has filed a suit before the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) against the violation of his rights, said he was wrongly arrested and put in detention.
He drew the British envoy’s attention to his rights and privileges as a British citizen.
“It is repeating the obvious to state that our client is a full British citizen, by virtue of which position he is entitled to all rights, privileges and protections, guaranteed under the British laws and conventions.
“We are, therefore, constrained in the circumstance, to formally notify the British Government through this medium, of our well-informed reservations, and apprehension, that our client is undergoing persecution in the charge above referred, and deliberate design by the persecutors to frustrate every effort of the defence team aimed at giving our client a fair trial”, Ejiofor submitted.
It was the submissions of Kanu’s counsel that the unlawful detention of his client from October 14, 2015 till January 20, 2016, without any lawful orders of court, and in flagrant disobedience of orders of courts of competent jurisdiction, that amounts to a gross violation of his fundamental human rights.
Ejiofor, who chronicled all the alleged abuses of Kanu’s fundamental human rights, recalled that the Chief Magistrate Court in Abuja specified in the First Information Report originally filed against him had discharged his client of all bogus and frivolous allegations against him.
According to him, “It is the position of our law, that dual citizenship is a constitutional right of the citizens of Nigeria, clearly provided for under Section 28 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended 2011. Dual citizenship is not a crime under our law.
“Our reservations on the President’s comment were under-pinned by the findings made in the ruling delivered on February 29, 2016, by Hon Justice John Tsoho, wherein our client and the two other defendants were denied bail.