ABUJA, NIGERIA — As the legal battle surrounding the conviction of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, shifts to the appellate court, a prominent constitutional lawyer and legal analyst has released a comprehensive briefing note outlining the precise constitutional question at the absolute core of Kanu's ongoing appeal. Christopher Chidera, Esq., a respected member of the Nigerian bar, issued a detailed public brief designed to clear away widespread misconceptions regarding the defense's strategy, arguing that the entire validity of Kanu’s conviction rests on a fundamental constitutional principle that the trial court systematically failed to address.
According to Chidera, much of the public commentary and media analysis surrounding the high-profile case has become bogged down in complex academic debates regarding the utility of "savings clauses" or whether the repeal of a statute automatically obliterates all pending criminal prosecutions. The legal expert asserted that these arguments are largely secondary distractions from the purest and most potent constitutional challenge being advanced by Kanu’s defense team as they seek to overturn the lower court's judgment.
The crux of the matter, Chidera explained, begins with an indisputable legislative fact: the old Terrorism Prevention (Amendment) Act of 2013 (TPAA 2013), under which Kanu was originally charged, was completely and formally repealed by the National Assembly through the enactment of the newer Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act of 2022 (TPPA 2022). While this total legislative repeal is a matter of public record, the brief notes that when Kanu repeatedly raised the issue of the law's repeal before the Federal High Court on October 23, and across multiple sitting dates on November 4, 5, 7, and 20, 2025, the presiding judge, Justice Omotosho, consistently refused to take formal judicial notice of the repeal.
Chidera strongly criticized the trial court's handling of this statutory shift, pointing out that despite being specifically invited by the defense to exercise its powers under Section 122 of the Evidence Act—which mandates that Nigerian courts must take judicial notice of all domestic laws and legislative changes without requiring external proof—the court repeatedly proceeded on an evasive "assuming without conceding" basis. By utilizing this cautious judicial phrasing, Chidera argued, the trial court bypassed its fundamental duty to formally identify exactly which written penal law was actively in force at the time of Kanu's ultimate conviction on November 20, 2025, thereby creating a severe constitutional vulnerability under Section 36(12) of the 1999 Constitution.
Addressing the role of savings clauses, which the prosecution heavily relied upon to sustain the trial, Chidera clarified that Kanu's appeal does not dispute the basic operational survival of the trial itself. Section 98(3) of the 2022 Act functions as a standard savings clause, working in tandem with Section 6 of the Interpretation Act to ensure that ongoing proceedings, pre-existing rights, and accrued liabilities are not automatically wiped out when an old statute is replaced. However, the legal analyst emphasized that a profound and dangerous misunderstanding exists within the judicial system regarding the difference between preserving a courtroom proceeding and preserving a living penal law.
"A savings clause keeps the case moving on the court docket, but it does not define any crime, nor does it prescribe any punishment," Chidera wrote in his brief. "It is not a substantive law under which a citizen can be legally convicted. Section 36(12) of the 1999 Constitution explicitly mandates that no person shall be convicted of a criminal offense unless that specific offense is defined and the exact punishment is prescribed in a written law in force at the time of conviction. A repealed law cannot logically or legally be described as a written law in force on the day Mazi Nnamdi Kanu was convicted."
The legal expert noted that while a savings clause successfully preserves the administrative movement of a case, it lacks the constitutional capacity to act as a living penal statute. Therefore, the simple, devastating question that Justice Omotosho failed to answer remains unresolved: what specific written law in force on November 20, 2025, defined the offenses and prescribed the exact punishments for which Kanu was convicted? Chidera observed that the lower court's final judgment leaned entirely on the procedural protections of the savings clause but completely failed to point to the specific, active offense-creating sections of the current 2022 Act to justify the conviction.
As the matter moves before the Court of Appeal, Chidera stated that the appellate justices are now legally obligated to confront this exact constitutional riddle. The higher court must definitively identify the valid, active written law that authorized the conviction on that specific date in late 2025. Chidera concluded that if the appellate court can clearly point to such a living law, the conviction may stand; however, if it cannot find an active statute that satisfies the strict requirements of Section 36(12), it must confront the constitutional reality that the law used to convict Kanu did not survive the repeal, meaning the conviction itself would be fundamentally unconstitutional.
