Nnamdi Kanu: UK Aiding Nigeria in Persecuting Its Own Citizen – AVID Alleges

The United Kingdom has been accused of facilitating the “persecution” of its citizen, Nnamdi Kanu, by the Nigerian government by the American Veterans of Igbo Descent, AVID, an organization of retired and active US military members of Igbo descent.

Kanu, the head of IPOB, the Indigenous People of Biafra, is a British citizen.

AVID maintained that Kanu cannot be tried and found guilty under a nonexistent law in a statement signed on Monday by its president, Dr. Sylvester Onyia.

Kanu and his defense team have been claiming that the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition Act) 2022 revoked the Terrorism Prevention Amendment Act 2013, which was the basis for his charges.

In a statement headed “A dead charge cannot kill a living man,” AVID accused the UK of remaining silent despite the obvious injustice that the Nigerian government had inflicted upon Kanu.

AVID emphasized that the UK government’s silence on the issue amounted to active complicity and that the country could not claim ignorance of the illegal character of the trial.

“The United Kingdom cannot pretend not to know,” the statement added. Furthermore, its silence has become active complicity. The United Kingdom, whose citizens are the targets of this legal abomination, is well aware of the situation in Nigeria. However, it has opted for diplomatic paralysis, silence, and apathy.

This quiet is not impartial. It’s not inactive. It goes beyond being careless. Now it’s turned into complicity. Because the precise regulation that is currently being broken against its own citizens on a daily basis was created by the United Kingdom itself, not Nigeria, the United States, or the European Union.

In Entick v. Carrington (1765) 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 at 1066, Lord Camden established the fundamental premise more than 300 years ago: “If it is law, it will be found in our books.” It is not a law if it cannot be found there. Nullum crimen sine lege, or “no written law, no crime; no valid law, no valid charge,” is still the most basic formulation of the idea.

“No man is to be punished but for a clear and certain breach of the law,” states William Blackstone, the most quoted legal authority in the English-speaking world, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1769), Vol. I, at p. 44. In The Law of the Constitution (1885), pp. 188–189, A.V. Dicey, the founder of the modern rule of law, emphasized it even further: “Where there is no law, there is no offence; where there is no offence, there can be no punishment.”

In The Rule of Law (2010), p. 41, the most renowned contemporary judge in the United Kingdom, Lord Bingham, reiterated the same principle in the twenty-first century: “The criminal law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear, and predictable.”

AVID cautioned that the UK’s deliberate complicity in Nnamdi Kanu’s punishment through silence will be remembered by history.

The statement further stated that in Kokkinakis v. Greece (1993) 17 EHRR 397, the European Court of Human Rights, which the UK assisted in establishing, summarized the centuries-old British approach by ruling that “an offence must be clearly defined in law.”

Nigeria is breaking this exact premise. Furthermore, the United Kingdom, the world’s creator of the principle and the country that transmitted it to its colonies, Commonwealth, and international human rights law, is now turning a blind eye as its own individual is being prosecuted on a count that the Supreme Court of Nigeria has rejected.

six counts under a statute that was abolished on May 12, 2022.

It is known in the UK. The UK is cognizant of this. This doctrine was written in the UK. But the UK remains silent. It is no longer ignorant to remain silent. It’s no longer carelessness. It is a diplomatic green light for persecution, an endorsement.

“The UK is permitting its own citizens to be persecuted.” The UK has abandoned its own legal tradition, its own citizens, and the rule of law it once defended by refusing to speak, step in, or even admit the ridiculousness of prosecuting a British citizen on a dead, abolished, and judicially buried charge.

“A government is not only failing in duty when it refuses to protect its citizens’ most fundamental legal right, which is the freedom from prosecution under a statute that has been repealed. The persecutor is being encouraged. By quiet. by giving in. by unwritten agreement. by being casually diplomatic. This is the embarrassment of the United Kingdom, and history will document it,” AVID said.

On November 20, Judge James Omotosho will render a decision in Kanu’s trial.

Speaking before to the verdict, AVID contended that the matter should not have reached the judgment stage because it had been dead for years.

“Justice James Omotosho will attempt to deliver judgment in a criminal case that has been legally dead for years on November 20, 2025,” the message continued. In front of him, Count 7 is the exact twin of the previous Count 15, which the Nigerian Supreme Court reviewed on December 15, 2023, and ruled that “the offence as laid does not exist in the body of our laws.” Count 15 is struck out because it is inept.

“The prosecution never made any changes. As the Supreme Court specifically instructed, they never reframed it under the proper statute (CEMA). Justice Omotosho never gave them an instruction to follow the Supreme Court. Rather, they merely renumbered the body, and on March 29, 2025, they made Mazi Nnamdi Kanu enter a new plea to a crime that had already been buried by the nation’s highest court.

Three years prior to the new arraignment, on May 12, 2022, the National Assembly abolished and replaced the Terrorism (Prevention) Act 2011 as revised in 2013, which is the basis for the other six offenses.

“No court in Nigeria in 2025 has jurisdiction to try any citizen, under any circumstances, on the strength of a repealed law or a count the Supreme Court has declared non-existent,” according to AVID, which reiterated Kanu and his defense team’s claim.

This isn’t a test. Dressed in court robes, this is a constitutional travesty. The 1999 Constitution’s Section 36(12) is not a proposal. Repealed legislation is not “in force.” A count that the Supreme Court deems “non-existent” does not constitute a charge. According to the statement, an individual held for years on such a charge is not an accused person but rather a hostage.

In its ruling on November 20, the group of retired and active US military soldiers of Igbo descent requested that the court dismiss the lawsuit against Kanu.

“We, American Veterans of Igbo Descent, men and women who have battled and suffered for constitutional democracy, declare unequivocally that Justice Omotosho is not facing any legitimate charges.

Therefore, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s ongoing arrest has no legal justification.

“We demand that on November 20, 2025, Justice Omotosho do the only thing permitted by the Nigerian Supreme Court and the Constitution: strike out the entire charge and order Mazi Nnamdi Kanu’s immediate, unconditional release.” Justice is not anything less.

It is a constitutional insurrection by judges. The Supreme Court has been disregarded. Furthermore, the United Kingdom’s silence encourages and facilitates this persecution. The world is observing. The remark went on, “History is being recorded.”