By Ifeanyi Ejiofor
Justice became a performance. Nnamdi Kanu’s trial was tragically turned into content. Instead of crafting legal strategy, they crafted Instagram stories. Instead of mastering case law, they mastered camera angles”
I had genuinely intended, out of sheer exhaustion and out of respect for the sensitivity of the moment, to refrain from revisiting the saga. But the avalanche of calls, messages and trembling voices from our people has made silence no longer an option.
I am, therefore, compelled to offer sober introspection, especially, as someone who successfully steered this very case for nearly a decade, securing landmark victories, unassailable legal milestones, and enduring a long trail of threats, assassination attempts, and brushes with death. Through all of this, Grace remained my only constant protection.
However, after Thursday’s spectacle, correcting the wild conjectures, poorly manufactured narratives, and brazen misinformation now circulating like a digital epidemic, has become absolutely necessary.
The First Revelation They Won’t Tell You
During the period out team handled this case, from 2015 to 2023, up until Prof Mike Ozekhome, SAN, assumed leadership of the legal team in 2022, we were on the threshold of securing yet another major relief for Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, particularly after the Court of Appeal discharged and acquitted him in 2022. Sustained pressure, strategic diplomacy, and airtight legal maneuvering had placed us on the verge of another monumental breakthrough.
Regrettably, certain sensitive details of this progress were, perhaps, innocently, disclosed by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu to some of these clueless clowns. Rather than support a strategy they barely understood, they seized the information as an opportunity to derail the entire process and treacherously orchestrated a change in the status quo.
Consequently, we exited the team, gloriously, and with our integrity intact.
Instead of crafting Legal strategy, they crafted Instagram stories.
Instead of mastetering case law, they mastered camera angles. At every Court session, their priority wasn’t research or preparation, it was posting, filming, updating, grandstanding, and “going viral”.
Meanwhile, the accused man’s fate hung by the thread.
The Most Tragic Part Of All
Even after the Court explicitly warned that self- representation in a complex constitutional and criminal matter was dangerous, these “consultants” encouraged it, clapping like paid spectators in a village arena.
And so, the unthinkable happened:
1: A trial that could have been paused, or avoided, ab initio, had the proper methodology and engagement been applied.
2: A conviction that could have been prevented.
3: An outcome that was entirely avoidable, yet allowed to proceed under the guidance of legal lightweights intoxicated by social media relevance.
They railroaded him, knowingly or unknowingly, into the savage pit of a full criminal trial, fully aware that other lawful avenues existed.
Even while the trial was ongoing, they busied themselves with dishing out falsehoods, half- truths, and misleading “updates” to an unsuspecting public.
Every lie told outside the court room became a landmine inside the courtroom. Every exaggerated “update” became a contradiction the prosecution gleefully documented. Every camera stunt became a professional embarrassment.
And now, instead of remorse, they have resumed their post trial routine: fresh videos, fresh lies, fresh false hopes, desperate for clicks.
The tragedy continues because the vulnerable still believe them.
The greatest puzzle of all
How did foremost legal minds, globally respected Senior Advocates of Nigeria such as Chief Kanu Agabi, SAN, Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, and other erudite members of the Inner Bar, men fully versed in the anatomy of high-wire criminal litigation, become disengaged at the most critical moment of the trial, only for mediocre adventurers to hijack a matter of international significance, and reduce it to a Tik Tok legal carnival?
Who replaces world class physicians with herbal storytellers during brain surgery? Who replaces strategic diplomacy with reckless grandstanding?
Who replaces law with theatrics?
Only a system already preparing for disaster.
Where do we go from here?
For any meaningful rescue effort by globally respected legal experts, the first task must be to clean up the monumental damage by these self-advertising jesters. A comprehensive review of methodology, effective engagement and drastically reduced publicity must precede any intervention. Only then can a coherent, sophisticated legal and political strategy be fashioned.
This is not the time for comedy. Not the time for inflated egos. And, certainly not the time for social media theatrics.
It is time for soberness.
Time for competence.
Time for real advocacy.
#EnoughIsEnough.
Ejiofor (KSC) was the first publicly known Kanu and IPOB’s Lawyer
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