Abuja – Heavy security was deployed outside Nigeria’s federal high court on Monday as the trial of a leading separatist extradited last month resumed.
Nnamdi Kanu of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), an outlawed movement which agitates for a separate Biafran state in southeast Nigeria, was sent back to Nigeria at the end of June to face trial.
He was arrested in late 2015 in Nigeria but disappeared in 2017 after being released on bail.
“Nnamdi Kanu has been intercepted… He has been brought back to Nigeria, in order to continue facing trial after disappearing,” Nigeria’s justice minister and attorney general Abubakar Malami said in a June 29 statement.
Malami said Kanu faces charges that include “terrorism, treasonable felony, managing an unlawful society, publication of defamatory matter, illegal posession of firearms and improper importation of goods, among others”.
ALSO READ | Separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu held, to face trial in Nigeria
Officials did not say where he was arrested but his family and lawyers claim he was taken while in Kenya.
As Kanu’s trial was scheduled to start Monday in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, many journalists were barred from entering the courtroom, a move that was condemned as restrictive by rights groups.
“We call on the Nigerian authorities to respect the right to a fair hearing and immediately lift the restriction and allow the media unhindered access to the court to do their job,” Amnesty International said in a statement.
Calls for a separate state in southeast Nigeria are just one of the challenges facing president Muhammadu Buhari’s government ahead of the 2023 election.
Another activist, Sunday Igboho, who advocates for independence for the southwestern Yoruba people, was arrested last week at the airport in neighbouring Benin, police and airport sources said.
ALSO READ | Nigerian separatist leader Sunday Igboho on the run after gun battle
Igboho was expected to be arraigned on Monday in Benin’s commercial capital Cotonou.
At least 50 people who support Igboho and the Yoruba separatist cause were outside the courtroom, an AFP journalist at the scene reported.
Igboho was on the run after a gun battle that killed two of his men and weapons and ammunition were discovered at his home, Nigeria’s Department of State Services intelligence agency said.
Igboho “will be extradited to Nigeria as soon as the two countries have agreed on conditions,” a senior Benin police official said, with a second confirming the arrest.
A source at Cotonou airport said he was arrested before boarding a Germany-bound flight.
Nigerian authorities did not immediately respond when contacted by AFP.
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Picture: Getty Images
Source: AFP
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