The Indigenous People of Biafra,
IPOB, yesterday asked the Court of Appeal to deliver judgment on its embattled
leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, whether his case file was missing or not.
IPOB had raised the alarm over
the purported disappearance of the case file of its leader, Mr Nnamdi Kanu at
the Appeal Court.
The group said the announcement
of the disappearance of the file was a huge joke that further portrayed the rot
in the Nigerian Justice sector, while calling on the chief Judge of the
federation to step in and salvage what was left of its integrity.
IPOB head of Directorate of
Service, Mazi Chika Edoziem, in a statement recalled that the Court of Appeal
panel heard Kanu’s matter in March 2017, insisting that any attempt to delay
the judgment on the ground of a missing file amounted to perversion of justice
and criminal conspiracy.
According to IPOB, never in the
history of Nigeria had it been reported that a case file of such magnitude went
missing on the day judgment was meant to be delivered.
The statement read: “This very
matter, Appeal Case No CA/A/78A/C/2018, which is a legal action against the
decision of Justice John Tsoho to reverse himself on an earlier ruling he made
rejecting masked witnesses when he was the presiding judge before the matter
was transferred to Justice Binta Nyako, is over a year old contrary to the law.
“February 13, 2018 was the day
Appeal Court of Nigeria agreed, after much protestation from IPOB lawyers and
in direct contravention of a key constitutional provision, to deliver its long
overdue judgment in the matter of Nnamdi Kanu vs Justice John Tsoho.
“On getting to court, instead of
the usual adjournment that characterizes IPOB cases in Nigeria and ECOWAS
courts, the panel of judges announced, to the dismay of the court and others
assembled, that the file was not before them.
“Not minding that this was a high
profile matter already outside the constitutionally guaranteed three months
maximum for delivery of judgment, the lead judge announced that the matter
could not proceed, without the case file.
“The questions we are asking are;
what happened to the decision of the initial panel that heard the case on the
8th March 2017 considering that Appeal Court of Nigeria is a supposedly
competent court of records? Where is the copy of their judgment, because judges
must have a copy of their judgment in their own personal files?
“Assuming and for the purposes of
benefit of doubt that Kanu’s file is missing, how about the judgment written by
the panel of judges that heard the matter on the 8th of March 2017, which they
were meant to deliver on the 8th of June 2017 at the very latest as guaranteed
by law?
“Does it mean Nigerian courts do
not keep records of their judgments or are we to assume that Appeal Court
judges are ignorant of the Nigerian Constitution to the extent that they are
unaware that the statutory limit on delivery of all Appeal Court judgments is
90 days?
“Why wasn’t judgment in this
matter delivered within the constitutionally guaranteed 90 days, which is 8
June 2017? What this case is telling the world is that Nigerian Appeal Court
judges do not obey the constitution of Nigeria they are supposed to interpret
and uphold.
“We view this ugly development as
a desperate conspiratorial move to deny long overdue justice for Mazi Nnamdi
Kanu and IPOB by Nigerian judicial officers on the orders of the Nigerian
presidency.
“Our humble request to the
President of the Nigerian Judicial Council, NJC, President of the Appeal Court
of Nigeria and Attorney General of the Federation, AGF is to recall the
original panel of judges that heard the matter on the 8th of March 2017 to deliver
their judgment as required by the Nigerian Constitution.”
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