MASSOB rejects life sentence for Nnamdi Kanu

The Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra has denounced the life sentence imposed on the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, characterizing the verdict as politically driven and an assault on the Igbo community.

In a statement issued on Friday by its leader, Comrade Uchenna Madu, the organization asserted that the ruling delivered by Justice James Omotosho demonstrated "open anger and tribalism," accusing the judge of "condemning Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to his master’s prison."

"This is not justice but retribution from an individual acting out a script filled with deep-seated hatred and envy towards Ndigbo. "Ndigbo have been condemned to life imprisonment in Nigeria," MASSOB stated.

Madu further remarked that President Bola Tinubu had "ignited an irreparable fire in Nigeria," asserting that the ruling had "struck the Nigerian state on its crumbling foundation."

The statement continued, "Nigeria has sentenced Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to life imprisonment for statements made from abroad after unlawfully abducting him from Kenya, disregarding a United Nations ruling that called for his release, and prosecuting him under a law that is no longer in effect."

The organization also accused the government of exhibiting double standards in cases related to terrorism. It contrasted Kanu’s sentence with that of Boko Haram co-founder Mamman Nur, who was recently given a five-year prison term. Nur, who has long been accused of orchestrating attacks that resulted in thousands of deaths, was labeled by MASSOB as "a chief Islamic terrorist commander responsible for over 2,000 fatalities."

"In contemporary Nigeria, words spoken from London incur a harsher penalty than mass murder," the group asserted. "Mazi’s true offense was his courageous revelation of the radical Islamic jihad engulfing Nigeria and the government’s collusion with the jihadists," MASSOB concluded.

“The appropriate remedy, they maintained, is his immediate release,” the statement said.

MASSOB further noted that the United States government has publicly stated, since 2017, that it does not consider IPOB a terrorist organisation.

The group criticised the use of what it claimed was “a repealed anti-terror law” to prosecute Kanu, saying the absence of a savings clause further undermines the legality of the charges.

“This injustice is not against Mazi Nnamdi Kanu,” MASSOB said. “It is against Ndigbo.”

The organisation insisted the ruling underscored what it described as the “brutal, lawless, totalitarian nature of a genocidal regime.”

Madu stated: “Ndigbo have been condemned to life imprisonment in Nigeria.”

After almost four years of evading bail, Kanu was apprehended and extradited to Nigeria due to the collaborative efforts of Nigerian intelligence agents and the International Police, commonly referred to as Interpol.

During his extended stay in London, United Kingdom, where he also holds citizenship, Kanu utilized social media and Radio Biafra to disseminate purportedly inflammatory statements against the Nigerian government, security forces, governors from the South-East, other leaders, and President Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd).

In his capacity as the director of Radio Biafra, a licensed radio station in the UK, Kanu advanced the cause of Biafran separatism, a movement that seeks to re-establish a separatist state that previously existed in the former Eastern Region of Nigeria during the civil war from 1967 to 1970.