FG Wants Due Process For Abba Kyari’s, Denies That For Nnamdi Kanu – IPOB Lawyer.
Aloy Ejimakor, lawyer to the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, has demanded why the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), wants to follow due process in the extradition of Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, but avoided same in Kanu’s matter.
Ejimakor noted that the AGF’s office shunned legal procedures to hastily bring the IPOB leader from Kenya to Nigeria but now insisted that the arrest warrant issued against suspended DCP Kyari by the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation would follow due process.
The lawyer stated these in an interview with Punch, while reacting to a statement by Malami’s Special Assistant on Media and Public Relations, Umar Gwandu, who said though the FBI was yet to officially write the AGF Office seeking the transfer of Kyari, everything would be done in line with the rule of law.
Kyari, the suspended former Head of the police Intelligence Response Team, is under investigation for indicted involvement in a $1.1million internet fraud allegedly committed by Abbas Ramon, popularly known as Hushpuppi, and four others.
FG Wants Due Process For Abba Kyari’s, Denies That For Nnamdi Kanu – IPOB Lawyer.
Ejimakor said, “I do not want to compare apples with oranges but what I can say is the difficulty through which the US is seeking for the transfer of Abba Kyari to the US is illustrative of what Nigeria should have done in the case of Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu probably would have been transferred by Kenya if extradition proceedings were commenced against him.
“What America is accusing Abba Kyari to have committed is clearly extraditable under the Nigerian laws and the law of the United States because the offences relate to money laundering, bribery, corruption and all that.
“I am not arranging judgment over Abba Kyari whether he committed it or not but the lesson everybody needs to learn, whether anybody is playing the tribal card or not, is: why would somebody believes that Abba Kyari deserves due process and the same person turns around and jubilate after the unlawful transfer otherwise known as extraordinary rendition of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu and also seeks to jubilate over the attempted unlawful transfer of (Sunday) Igboho from Benin Republic?
“This type of thing goes to indicate the deep fault lines in Nigeria. Somebody from a part of the country thinks it is okay to grab someone from another country without due process and bring him to Nigeria to answer offences of political character but it is okay for another country to submit itself to seeking due process in the transfer of a citizen of Nigeria to the United States. It is a very deep contradiction.”
Recall that Malami at a press briefing in Abuja on June 29, 2021 had announced that the IPOB leader was arrested in a foreign country and extradited to Nigeria.
Upon his re-arrest and extradition in June 2021, he was re-arraigned before Justice Binta Nyako for terrorism-related charges and has since been remanded in the custody of the Department of State Services in Abuja.
Kanu’s trial has been adjourned till October 21, 2021.
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