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A Nigerian separatist leader arrested last month and brought back to his country to stand trial has been illegally detained in Kenya and is in need of medical assistance, his wife and lawyers have said.
Nnamdi Kanu’s banned movement, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), which campaigns for a separate Biafra state for the Igbos in southeastern Nigeria, has been charged with attacks on police, a charge he denies .
His arrest was one of two measures taken by President Muhammadu Buhari’s government against separatists in recent weeks as the Nigerian leader comes under pressure to deal with growing insecurity in the country.
Nigerian officials said Kanu was arrested in late June and returned to the country with the help of Nigerian partners, although officials gave few details on where and how he was held.
His UK-based wife Uchechi Okwu-Kanu told AFP he was on a business trip to Kenya when he was arrested, detained and tortured for eight days, before being repatriated by plane to Nigeria.
“It was an extraordinary rendition, he was taken to Kenyan soil and taken to Nigeria,” she said in an interview this week.
She said Kanu, who is also a British citizen, needed a visit from the British consular services to gain access to medical treatment for heart disease and should be transferred out of security service detention to a prison.
“If he is transferred to prison, he will have a doctor who can monitor him every day,” she said.
The British High Commission in Abuja has said it is ready to provide consular assistance and has requested clarification on the circumstances of his arrest.
Kanu’s lawyers visited him this week in Abuja, they said.
They say the 53-year-old IPOB leader was traveling with his British passport when he was illegally detained in Kenya and extradited.
“He was initially accused of being an Islamist terrorist by the Kenyan security forces upon his arrest, which was apparently a lure to keep him until the arrival of the Nigerian security forces who had him by. therefore extradited by rendition to Nigeria, “senior lawyer Ifeanyi Ejiofor told AFP.
He said the legal team planned to challenge Kanu’s extradition and treatment.
A European diplomatic source in Nigeria told AFP that his government also confirmed that Kanu was being held while in Kenya.
Kenya’s Home Office said it was not at all aware of the case, while Kenya’s high commissioner to Nigeria told local media his country was not involved in the case. arrest and extradition.
Kanu appeared in court in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, in June, where a judge remanded him until his trial resumed in late July.
Separatist tensions
Calls for a separate state of Biafra in the southeast are sensitive.
A unilateral declaration of independence by an Igbo army officer in 1967 sparked a brutal 30-month civil war that left more than a million dead, mostly Igbos, from the effects of conflict and disease.
In recent months, southeastern Nigeria has seen an upsurge in attacks, with around 130 police and security officers killed and around 20 police stations attacked this year, local media reported.
IPOB has denied that its armed wing, Eastern Security Network or ESN, is behind the violence, accusing the government of a smear campaign.
Southeast separatism is just one of the challenges Buhari’s government faces ahead of the 2023 elections.
This month, security forces raided the home of Sunday Igboho, a burning leader who campaigns for an independent nation for the Yoruba ethnic group in the southwest.
Igboho was on the run after a shooting that killed two of his men and weapons and ammunition were discovered at his home, the State Services Department’s intelligence agency said.
Nation of more than 210 million inhabitants and more than 250 ethnicities, Nigeria is regularly shaken by ethnic tensions in different regions of the country.
The three most important groups are the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Igbo in the southeast and the Yoruba in the southwest.
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