A Nigerian Federal High Court has sentenced separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu to life in prison after finding him guilty on seven terrorism-related charges linked to violent activities in the southeast.
Justice James Omotosho, who delivered the ruling on Thursday, said the prosecution had successfully proved that Kanu’s broadcasts and directives to members of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) incited deadly attacks on security personnel and civilians. The judge said the violence formed part of Kanu’s campaign for an independent Biafra for the predominantly Igbo region.
While acknowledging that “self-determination is a political right,” Omotosho stressed that any such effort carried out outside the Nigerian constitution is illegal.
Prosecutors had asked for the death penalty, but the judge opted for a life sentence, saying global trends increasingly discourage capital punishment.
“In the interest of justice, I hereby sentence the convict to life imprisonment instead of the death sentence,” Omotosho said. Kanu has 90 days to appeal.
Kanu, who has been in detention since his controversial 2021 re-arrest in Kenya, was removed from the courtroom after angrily protesting the proceedings. His legal team has long argued that his extradition from Kenya was unlawful and compromised his right to a fair trial.
The 56-year-old separatist leader first faced charges in 2015 but fled the country while on bail. His social media postings and his London-based Radio Biafra broadcasts, in which he repeatedly denounced Nigeria’s government, prompted authorities to accuse him of inciting violence.
Security agents returned him to Nigeria in June 2021 after he was detained in Kenya, a case Nairobi has denied any formal involvement in.
During previous hearings, Kanu’s lawyers argued that many of his statements were made in London and should not be admissible in a Nigerian court. “I can’t see how someone would make a statement in London and it becomes a triable offence in this country,” his lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, said in 2021.
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Kanu, a dual Nigerian-British citizen, founded Radio Biafra in 2009 after relocating to the United Kingdom to study economics and politics. In one of his broadcasts, he said: “We have one thing in common … a pathological hatred for Nigeria.”
IPOB seeks the secession of Nigeria’s southeast, the homeland of the Igbo ethnic group. A similar attempt to break away as the Republic of Biafra in 1967 sparked a three-year civil war that claimed more than one million lives.
