June 28. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A Nigerian court has again rejected the request of the leader of the separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, for his release on bail, something he already did during a hearing in May.
Judge Binta Nyako has indicated that the second request presented by Kanu supposes “an abuse of judicial procedures” for “trying to litigate again a matter already decided by the court”, according to the Nigerian newspaper ‘The Premium Times’.
Likewise, he has demanded that the leader of the IPOB explain why he refused to appear in court since 2017 and his arrest, while his lawyer, Mike Ozekhome, has recalled that Kanu had to flee after an operation by the security forces against his living place.
“During the invasion of Kanu’s home, 28 people were arrested by the army, forcing him to flee for his life,” Ozekhome said. The proceedings against the Biafran leader began after his arrest in 2015, although they were suspended in 2017 after he fled the country after the aforementioned operation, launched shortly after being released on bail in April of that year.
However, he was arrested and extradited to Nigeria in July 2021 after being detained abroad, without further details being released. Kanu himself filed a lawsuit in September 2021 against Kenyan officials for what he describes as an illegal extradition to Abuja.
The IPOB, an organization founded by Kanu in the United Kingdom in 2014 and declared a terrorist group by Abuja, has established itself as the voice of the Biafrans, among other things thanks to Radio Biafra, which broadcasts from London to the southeast of Nigeria.
On May 30, 1967, the Biafra region proclaimed its independence from Nigeria and thus unleashed a bloody civil war that lasted for three years and left more than a million dead, most of them from hunger and disease.
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