Lawyer warns Tinubu, security agencies against calling IPOB terrorist group

Aloy Ejimakor, special counsel to Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), has warned President Bola Tinubu to stop referring to IPOB as a terrorist organisation.

Mr Ejimakor, in a statement on Friday, also warned Nigerians, including the country’s security forces and media organisations to desist from tagging IPOB as a terrorist group.

The lawyer said Mr Kanu’s legal team has the firm instruction of the IPOB leader to issue “the final warning” to all persons and institutions in Nigeria.

“Henceforth, any further reference to IPOB as a terrorist organisation will be met and countervailed with muscular litigation and other lawful measures, regardless of who the entity is,” he said.

Mr Ejimakor cited a judgement delivered by the High Court in Enugu in 2023 which de-proscribed IPOB as the reason for issuing the warning.

“This is because there is a subsisting judgement of a competent high court in Nigeria which ruled that IPOB’s proscription/declaration as a terrorist group by (the then President Muhammadu) Buhari is illegal, discriminatory and unconstitutional,” he said.

“Compliance with this judgement strictly demands that IPOB should no longer be referred to as a terrorist organisation.”

‘No IPOB member has been convicted of terrorism’

Mr Ejimakor stressed that those calling IPOB a terrorist organisation were yet to adduce any evidence to show the group had engaged in any terrorist activity.

The lawyer argued that since the proscription of IPOB in 2017, no IPOB member had been convicted of any terrorist act despite “thousands of arrests, abductions, horrendous torture, false flags and allegations of extrajudicial killings” against the group.

“Accordingly, we hereby demand that the general public, Presidency, Nigerian Army, Nigerian Police and any erring media houses should forthwith cease and desist from attaching such defamatory and prejudicial label to IPOB led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” he stated.

Backstory

Earlier in September 2017, the then-president, Mr Buhari, signed a presidential proclamation proscribing IPOB.

In September 2017, a Federal High Court in Abuja formalised the IPOB’s proscription and tagged the group a terrorist organisation.

The then Acting Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Abdul Adamu Kafarati, granted the order proscribing IPOB, following an application filed and moved by the then Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

The South-east Governors Forum would later follow up with an announcement that they had proscribed the group in the region.

IPOB, through their legal team, had challenged the proscription in courts for several years without success.

But on 23 October 2023, a State High Court in Enugu, nullified the proscription of the IPOB, consequently destroying the basis upon which the separatist group was declared a terrorist organisation by the Nigerian government.

The IPOB leader, Mr Kanu, filed the suit in January 2023 against the Nigerian government and the South-East Governors’ Forum.

The judge, A.O. Onovo, in his judgment, declared that the reliance on the country’s Terrorism Prevention Act and the administrative action of the South-East Governors’ Forum and the federal government to proscribe IPOB contravened Section 42 of the Nigerian Constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of ethnicity.

Justice Onovo held that the proscription of IPOB was also a violation of Mr Kanu’s fundamental rights as enshrined under Articles 2,3,19 and 20 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (Enforcement and Ratification) Act.