A video and voice notes have been circulating on social media for over two weeks, warning residents of the South-East to remain indoors on October 21 and 22, saying that those days have been declared sit-at-home.

The voice note also threatened to deal with anyone who fails to comply with the directive saying it remains sacrosanct.

This development has generated panic and chaos, particularly in Anambra as some official and non-official engagements fixed for those days have been rescheduled.

For instance, our correspondent gathered that cases coming up at the law courts on those days were rescheduled for another day while school activities were also called off.

When asked, one of the court clerks at the High Court in Onitsha(name withheld), simply told our correspondent, “We heard they have declared October 21 and 22 as a sit-at-home and that necessitated the rescheduling of every engagement on those days. It was rescheduled since last week.

“The reason for the rescheduling of the cases coming up on those days is to avoid a situation where hoodlums will hijack the vehicle that may be conveying suspects to the court from the prisons.”

Our correspondent also observed that, apart from the official engagement, there was panic buying in major markets across the cities as customers were seen engaging in last-minute transactions to avoid being stranded.

A notice notifying parents and students about the postponement of activities was also displayed in one of the schools visited in Onitsha, on Sunday.

The notice read, “Announcement: Good evening Dear Parents and guardians. Based on the circulating threats from IPOB, be notified that there will be no school on Monday and Tuesday, 21st and 22nd October 2024. This is strictly for security reasons. In essence, it is a precautionary measure.

“Mid-term Break begins on Wednesday, 23rd October, 2024. Therefore, students are expected to resume school on Monday, 28th October, 2024. Thanks and Remain Blessed. Signed: Management.”

But while reacting to the development, the pro-Biafran group urged the people to go about their normal business, saying the “illegal” sit-at-home declaration order did not emanate from IPOB, but rather from criminal elements and infiltrators, who are not members of IPOB.

In a telephone interview with our correspondent on Sunday, IPOB’s spokesman, Emma Powerful, said, “IPOB did not declare any sit-at-home order on October 21 and 22. The illegal order is from criminal elements and Finland-based infiltrators who are not our members.

“We urged our people to ignore the order and go about their normal business on those days. IPOB does not want to talk about it because we don’t want to create panic over the matter.

Biafrans must understand that IPOB does not declare unnecessary sit-at-home. We have since suspended it and anybody declaring it is a criminal element that should be ignored.

“We didn’t want to talk about it again in order to avoid giving undue popularity to the inconsequential order from Finland-based infiltrators.”

Kanu, in a tweet posted by his legal counsel, Aloy Ejimakor, on Tuesday, said Biafra is non-negotiable.

Ejimakor tweeted, “Personal Message from Mazi Nnamdi Kanu: “I deeply appreciate the abiding solidarity of the people of Biafra & the entire IPOB noble family against my continued illegal detention.

“I assure you all that our pursuit of self determination to its logical conclusion is non-negotiable.”

Kanu was abducted from Kenya in 2021. Despite an order by the Appeal Court calling for his release, he has remained in custody of the Department of State Services in Abuja, till date.

The Federal Government had filed an appeal before the Supreme court, depicting its stand on the Biafran leader.

He was charged with treasonable felony, managing an unlawful society, publication of defamatory matter, among others.

Recall, about three days ago, civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, appealed to President Tinubu to release Kanu, as a way to implement national reconciliation.

Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, has also urged the president to grant the IPOB leader’s release and hand him over to any of the South-East governors.

In his appeal, Mbah said, “We believe that his release will expedite the healing process Nigeria needs at this time.

“It will also be a pointer to his administration’s extension of brotherly hands of fellowship to Ndigbo.”

The governor had also announced that there’ll be no more “sit-at-home” in the state. The order was earlier given by the separatist group.

IPOB filed a suit at the apex court against the verdict of the Appellate Court which stopped the release of the leader of the Igbo self-determination group.

The lead lawyer for IPOB and human rights activist, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, had in a statement said, “We have appealed to the Supreme Court, to set aside the ruling of the Court of Appeal, staying the execution of the court’s judgment discharging him, and placing a further bar to any further detention and prosecution of Nnamdi Kanu on any charge/indictment before any court in Nigeria.

“Recall that on October 28, 2022, a three-person panel of Learned Justices of the Court of Appeal (Abuja Judicial Division), granted an application for the stay of execution of the judgment of the Court of Appeal, pending the determination of the appeal filed before the Supreme Court by the Federal Government.

After a thorough review of the said ruling by our defence team, eminently led by foremost leading Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), an informed decision was taken by the erudite Senior Advocate, and the entire team, that the said ruling, which has no foundation in law or facts, placed before the court, should be immediately appealed against, for it to be set aside by the Apex Court.

“Our well-informed position was given a final nod by our indefatigable client, Nnamdi Kanu, during my last visit to him.

“We therefore, by this medium, inform the general public, and Umuchineke in particular, that we have filed an appeal against the said ruling of the Court of Appeal delivered on October 28, 2022, and will proactively follow up on the administrative process to ensure that both appeals are given accelerated hearings in line with the extant fast-track rules of the Supreme Court. Prior to the hearing, Kanu’s special counsel, Aloy Ejimakor, had urged the Supreme Court to ensure justice in the trial of his client.

This was made known by the Secretary-General of the organisation, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro.

Isiguzoro said the killings in the South-East would subside if Buhari allows the IPOB leader to address Nigerians.

Speaking on the activities of gunmen linked to Ekpa, the organisation’s Secretary-General reiterated his stance on a plot to destabilise the 2023 elections in the South-East using Ekpa.

According to Isiguzoro, “This madness of sit-at-home and incessant killings and insecurity we are witnessing in the Southeast can be traced to the continuous incarceration of Nnamdi Kanu, which Simon Ekpa is taking undue advantage of.

Ekpa is an opportunist, fame and fortune seeker who saw the window and lapses of Kanu’s detention as an opportunity for him to venture into his journey of amassing wealth from politicians and destroying the people of the South-East.

“The only cure to this madness of Simon Ekpa is a passionate appeal to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to allow the leader of IPOB to address Ndigbo possibly this February before the elections, because there is a grand conspiracy by some external enemies of Ndigbo, and they are using Ekpa to shortchange and ensure that there is an election boycott in the South-East.

The only cure to this Ekpa’s madness is for Buhari to allow Kanu, even if it’s a five-minute broadcast because Kanu has continued to say through his lawyers that these killings and insecurity in the Southeast should end. 

The activities of unknown gunmen instigated by Ekpa should end, and why there has been no effect on those messages is that the people doubt if those messages are from Nnamdi Kanu.

“So, in order to have a peaceful election, the Federal Government should give Nnamdi Kanu a five-minute broadcast to talk to the people of the Southeast; this would end Ekpa and his madness.”

The pro-Biafran group said it was high time the whole world spoke against the atrocity going on in the DSS Abuja dungeon against the leader of the IPOB.

It also claimed that the Federal Government had deliberately planned to eliminate Kanu, at the DSS solitary confinement.

The statement read, “The Federal Government has deliberately planned to eliminate Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, who is illegally detained in DSS solitary confinement.

“Kanu is battling heart problems and some mineral deficiencies which require medical specialists’ attention, but the Federal Government has refused to release him as the courts have ordered and has not allowed him access to his personal physicians.

“Instead, they have resorted to patronising roadside pharmacies for his drug, which we see as a systematic and gradual diminishing of his life and final elimination method.

A few days ago, IPOB legal team members and a brother of Kanu visited him in the DSS custody where he informed them that the DSS agents have not given him his prescribed drugs for nine days and more. More so, the DSS hasn’t given him food for some days, claiming that they don’t have money for his food and drugs. How preposterous!

“We, the global family of the Indigenous People of Biafra, therefore, call on the Federal Government to release Kanu immediately if they can’t afford his medications and food.

“IPOB is more than capable to provide for our leader the best medical services in the world and can give him any food of his choice, but it is their responsibility to ensure that he feeds well with good medical attention because they have illegally keeping him in prison. IPOB will not take it lightly with them if anything untoward happens to him. They cannot succeed breaking him down.

“We, in IPOB, understand the recent actions of the DSS as a plot to systematically diminish and finally kill Kanu by starving him of his drugs and food. But we wish to remind the Nigeria government and all who are remotely interested in Nigeria to bear in mind that IPOB and in fact Biafrans will wage unending wars with the Nigerian state if anything untoward happens to Kanu.

“This is not a threat but a promise that generations of Biafrans must keep even after Biafra Nation has been restored. Several times, we have called on Mallam Abubakar Malami and his collaborators to release Kanu as the courts of competent jurisdictions have ordered.

“More so, the United Nations Working Group gave directives for Kanu to be released and be compensated by this Nigeria government, but Malami, the Fulani cabals, and other self-seeking politicians have refused to obey court verdicts.”

The Court also ordered the Federal government to return him to Kenya from where he was extradited to Nigeria on June 19, 2021.

The Court presided by Justice E . N Anyadike, insisted that the extradition of Kanu from Kenya without recourse to the legal process was a flagrant abuse of his fundamental human rights.

He held that the respondent failed to disprove the claims of the applicant that he was arrested, blindfolded, tortured, and chained to the ground for eight days in Kenya before his extradition to Nigeria.

Kanu, through his special Counsel, Aloy Ejimakor, had approached the court challenging his extradition from Kenya on June 19, 2022.

Ejimakor told the court that the suit is sui generis (of a special class) and was primarily aimed at redressing the infamous unlawful expulsion or extraordinary rendition of Kanu, which is a clear violation of his fundamental rights under Article 12(4) of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, as well as Chapter IV of the Nigerian Constitution.

He said, ‘In addition to the rendition, I am asking the Court to redress the myriad violations that came with the rendition, such as the torture, the unlawful detention and the denial of the right to fair hearing which is required by law before anybody can be expelled from one country to the other. “I am also seeking to halt his prosecution and restore him to the status quo before his rendition on 19th June 2021.

“You will recall that on January 19, 2022, the High Court of Abia State decided that portion of violation of Kanu’s fundamental rights that occurred in 2017. Even as I had made claims that bordered on rendition, the Court declined jurisdiction on grounds that rendition, being related to extradition, lies within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Federal High Court. This is what informed my decision to initiate the suit before the Federal High Court.

“To be sure, the extraordinary rendition of Nnamdi Kanu, triggered myriad legal questions that cut across multiple jurisdictions in Nigeria and even triggered the international legal order, to boot. In other words, the rendition has expanded the matter of Kanu far beyond the realms of the Abuja trial and opened up new legal frontiers that must be ventilated to the hilt before other courts and tribunals within and without Nigeria.

“Thus, this very case before the Federal High Court in Umuahia is one of such that is aimed at seeking a definitive judicial pronouncement on the constitutionality of the extraordinary rendition. The ones in the United Kingdom, Kenya, African Union, and the United Nations are in addition.

“I would like to seize this opportunity to express my profound appreciation to the highly competent and hardworking team of lawyers that I am leading in the prosecution of this complex suit. Special mention must be made of Barristers Patrick Agazie, Ifeyinwa Nworgu, Tochukwu Arugbuonye, Franklin Amandi, Ohaeto Uwazie and Mandela Umegborogu”.

“For ease of reference and avoidance of any doubt, the following are the specific reliefs that I requested in the suit”.

Speaking to journalists shortly after the judgment, Ejimakor said the judgment had shown that the court still remains the last hope for the common man. He called on the federal government to obey the court order and return Kanu to Kenya.

It asked the Supreme Court to set aside the judgement and restore the charge against the respondent to be tried at the trial court.

The government, in a motion on notice in support of the appeal, is also seeking a stay of execution of the judgment of the court presided over by Justice Jummai Sankey, pending the hearing and final determination of its appeal, noting that the IPOB leader posed a flight risk.

The notice of appeal dated October 18 was signed by the Director, Public Prosecution of the Federation, Mohammed Abubakar, Assistant Chief State Counsel, D. Kaswe and A. Aluko and Senior State Counsel, G. Nweze, Department of Public Prosecution, Federal Ministry of Justice.

The appellant averred that the appellate court erred in law when it held that the trial court had no jurisdiction to try Kanu because of “the extraordinary rendition of the respondent.”

It stated, “There was no evidence led by the respondent before the court of the first instance and indeed before the court below to show how he was allegedly abducted and rendered to Nigeria as required by Section 139 of the Evidence Act, 2011 since he alleged that he was abducted without following due process of law.”

The appellant also contended that the court below erred when it held that the executive arm must not be allowed to benefit from the abduction of the respondent “when in fact and by its judgment, the respondent was allowed to benefit from his illegality of disobeying the orders of the court when he jumped bail and was rewarded with a discharge from the charges pending against him at the trial court thereby occasioning a miscarriage of justice against the state and the victims of the crimes perpetrated by the respondent.”

The government claimed that the appeal court was wrong by saying that how Kanu was brought back to the country can vitiate and indeed weaken the criminal charges of treason, treasonable felony and terrorism brought against him.

It added that the lower court made that decision without taking into account the fact that the nature of the “entry’’ of the respondent is not relevant in the determination of the charges against him.

The appellant further stated that the appeal court justices failed to be bound by established judicial precedent on the mode of “entry” of a defendant charged with the commission of an offence established by the Supreme Court.

The appeal court, the FG noted, misdirected itself when it relied heavily on the Organisation of African Unions Conventions on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and cases decided from foreign jurisdictions as against the substantive law covering the criminal procedure in Nigeria.

“The court below overlooked the submissions of the appellant with regards to the ACJA, 2015 which takes its taproot from the grundnorm Section 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) to the effect that it is the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 that governs the trial of every Nigerian charged with the commission of a crime, this failure occasioned the miscarriage of justice,’’ the appeal notice read

The FG further argued that the court below erred in law when it discharged the respondent of the offences mentioned in counts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 15 bordering on terrorism offences contained in the amended charge dated January 14, 2022, and retained by the trial court for want of jurisdiction.

The appeal observed that the appellate court was completely silent and closed its eyes to the obvious fact of the issues which predate the rendition of the respondent because he was standing trial for conspiracy, and treasonable felony terrorism before his escape.

If the learned Justices of the Court of Appeal had taken into consideration the act of illegality of the respondent in jumping bail and the corresponding duty of the appellant to ensure his presence in court, the decision of the court would have been different,’’ the appeal read.

In an affidavit, Loveme Odubo of the Department of Public Prosecution, Federal Ministry of Justice, stated that Kanu has a history of jumping bail and may be difficult to secure if the appeal was not granted.

The affidavit read, “That the respondent is a flight risk person given his previous antecedent of jumping bail while standing trial.

“The respondent is a dual citizen of both Nigeria and Britain which will make it easy for him to move out of Nigeria and escape justice. That the respondent’s presence will be difficult to secure should the judgment of the court below is not overturned and set aside by the Supreme Court.

“There is a need to stay the execution of the judgment of this honourable court to avoid a situation where the judgment of the Supreme Court will be overreached and rendered nugatory.’’

This is just as the pro-Biafran group insists that Soludo secretly set up Ebubeagu in Anambra, and nicknamed them vigilantes while using it to eliminate IPOB members.

The legal team on a routine visit granted by Justice Binta Nyako of a Federal High Court in Abuja was led by Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN) and leader of his legal team, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, accompanied by some of Kanu’s family members.

The visit was to give the detained Biafra nation agitator, feedback on the Court of Appeal’s proceedings of September 13 where the legal team prayed the Appellate Court to dismiss the remaining 7 charges of terrorism and treasonable felony brought against him by the Federal Government.

A statement issued by Ejiofor on Friday after the visit said that Kanu was in high spirits and confident that the Court of Appeal in Abuja would discharge and acquit him from the terrorism charges.

According to him, Kanu used the visit to send words of appeal to his followers especially the Umuchineke to remain consistent, resolute, unshaken, focused and prayerful with the hope that there must be light at the end of the tunnel.

He said that Kanu was very optimistic that “the trial phase is gradually coming to an end”.

The statement reads in part, “The court-ordered routine visit to our client, Onyendu Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has just been concluded at the DSS Headquarters, Abuja, where he is still being held in solitary confinement for over 14 months.

“Feedback was provided to him on the September 13 Court of Appeal proceedings in his appeal against the Federal High Court ruling upholding seven charges against him. Kanu was elated on the performance and legal prowess demonstrated by his legal team, led by Chief Mike Ozekome (SAN).

“Kanu was enthused by the accounts of the advocacy and submissions of Chief Ozekhome, SAN during the proceeding, happy with the panel of Justices, and was completely convinced that justice is already in the offing . He was deeply touched by the sacrifices of Umuchineke, who despite the heavy downpour witnessed in Abuja on that fateful day, still thronged the court, in a show of uncommon solidarity and support for him.

Kanu unequivocally reiterated his abiding confidence in his dogged legal team, who have always been up to the daunting task.

“Onyendu remains firm, tenacious and holding very strongly to his conviction that his trial will surely end in victory.”

Kanu had on September 13 prayed the Court of Appeal in Abuja to review the April 8 ruling of the Federal High Court which struck out only eight out of the 15-count charge and upheld 7 charges against him.

In his appeal dated April 29 and marked CA/ABJ/CR/625/2022, Kanu insisted that the treasonable felony charges against him have no basis in law and applied to be discharged and acquitted by the Court of Appeal.

Ozekhome SAN who argued the appeal on his behalf urged the appellate court to order his release from DSS solitary confinement.

Kanu’s grouse was that the charge gave unlawful global jurisdiction to the high court and that it also failed to disclose the location or date the alleged offencees were committed.

A three-man panel of the Court of Appeal led by Justice Jummai Hanatu has however reserved judgment in the appeal till a date that would be communicated to the parties involved.

The victims, Sunday Nwafor, 59; Uzonwanne Ejiofor, 48; and Wilfred Dike, 36, were held at 14 Brigade Nigerian Army Ohafia, Abia State for over two years

Meanwhile, Amnesty International Nigeria, has welcomed the release of the trio.

In a statement on Wednesday night, Amnesty International urged the government to provide information about the status of other victims of enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention.

“Amnesty International urges Nigerian authorities to provide information about the status of other victims of enforced disappearance and incommunicado detention, grant their families and lawyers access to them, charge them to court, or release them in the absence of any legal authority used to justify their continued detention,” the statement read in part.

Spokesperson for the Nigerian Army, Brigadier General Onyema Nwachukwu,did not take calls nor responded to WhatsApp and text messages from our correspondent on Wednesday night.