Timeframe: October 2022 – December 2025
Location: Court of Appeal Abuja, Supreme Court Abuja,
Federal High Court
Key Actors: Justices Jummai Sankey, Musa Dattijo
Muhammad, Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, Justice Binta Nyako, Justice K.
Omotosho
Epigraph:
“You cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand.”
— Court of Appeal, 13 October 2022 judgment discharging Nnamdi Kanu
[1].
The Camera Lens
In October 2022, the Court of Appeal stunned the government by discharging Kanu and ordering his release. Supporters danced outside the courtroom. But fifteen months later the Supreme Court reinstated the charges, invoking an obscure 19th-century U.S. precedent to say jurisdiction survives even when a suspect is kidnapped. The paradox was complete: Nigeria’s mid-tier court condemned the rendition; its apex court legitimized it.
Justice Jummai Sankey’s panel declared the charges null because the State violated its own extradition laws [1]. The ruling emphasized that extraordinary rendition offends both international law and Nigeria’s domesticated treaties. It ordered Kanu’s release, instructing government agencies to “immediately free the respondent.” For 24 hours, it appeared the judiciary would correct the executive’s lawlessness.
On 15 December 2023, Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun delivered the Supreme Court’s verdict: while the rendition was “irregular,” it did not deprive Nigerian courts of jurisdiction [2]. The judgment cited Ker v. Illinois (1886) and Frisbie v. Collins (1952)—U.S. cases invoked during apartheid-era trials—to conclude that illegal arrest is irrelevant once the accused is before the court. Critics argued that the court imported foreign precedent while ignoring Nigeria’s own Anti-Torture Act and its treaty obligations. Bound by the Supreme Court, Justice K. Omotosho later claimed he lacked authority to revisit the kidnapping during the 2025 trial, effectively laundering the rendition through judicial hierarchy [3].
When the case returned to the Federal High Court in 2024, Kanu’s lawyers tendered the Kenya judgment, the UN opinion, and the Appeal Court decision as proof that the proceedings were poisoned fruit. Justice K. Omotosho sympathized but held that the Supreme Court’s Ker‑Frisbie ruling barred him from granting relief. His written decision reads like a judicial shrug: “This court is bound… to proceed notwithstanding the irregular manner in which the defendant was brought before it.” In that single paragraph, the moral outrage of the lower courts dissolved into procedural obedience. The judiciary declared the kidnapping illegal and then declared itself powerless to act.
The judicial paradox reveals how courts can acknowledge a wrong yet reward it. By embracing Ker-Frisbie, Nigeria’s Supreme Court signaled that kidnapping may be unlawful but remains profitable. The decision shackled lower courts and set a precedent that will haunt every future dissident.