A federal judge has ordered that Nigerian separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu should stand trial and face allegations of terrorism and spreading falsehoods.
Kanu will face trial on seven counts of “terrorism” out of fifteen, according to a judge who dismissed eight of the government’s allegations against the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)
Kanu, a British citizen who is the leader of the proscribed IPOB, has rejected all of the allegations, which stem from broadcasts he made between 2018 and last year.
After a federal court judge ordered on Thursday that all trials of “terrorist charges” in Nigeria will now be held in secret, the hearing was held in camera.
Mike Ozekhome, Kanu’s lead lawyer, filed a lawsuit on Thursday to prevent him from being tried on allegations of “terrorism” and “knowingly broadcasting falsehoods” after he was not extradited from Kenya on those grounds.
Kanu fled Nigeria after failing to pay bail in 2017 and was apprehended again in Kenya last year.
IPOB, which Kanu created in 2014, is pushing for the secession of a region of southeast Nigeria where the Igbo ethnic group makes up the majority of the population.
In 1967, the year Kanu was born, Igbo separatists attempted to form the Republic of Biafra, which resulted in a three-year civil war that killed over one million people.
IPOB has instructed citizens of the southeast to “sit-at-home,” a form of civil disobedience to show solidarity with Kanu, since Kanu’s trials began in Abuja.
In the five states of the region, the IPOB campaign has devastated small enterprises and often interrupted other economic activity.
